Comparison

WeSettle vs Pancake

Pancake is a one-off licence you download and run on your own server. WeSettle is hosted. That single difference decides most of this, so it is worth being straight about where each one wins — including the places Pancake beats us outright.

The short version

Pancake is a licence you install on your own server. WeSettle is hosted, so there is no server, no PHP version to keep current and nothing to patch.
Pancake is the broader product: projects with tasks and milestones, proposals and a client portal. Both of us now have a timer and timesheets that bill onto invoices; Pancake goes further into running the project itself.
WeSettle is the deeper invoicing tool: recurring schedules, automatic reminders, 22 currencies with stored rates, VAT and reverse charge, and a versioned API.
Your clients pay into your own Stripe account either way. We never take a cut of a payment.

Feature by feature

“Not listed” means we could not find that capability described anywhere on pancakeapp.com when we checked on 13 August 2026. It does not mean Pancake cannot do it — only that we would not claim it either way.

Getting set up

The part that decides most of this, before a single invoice gets sent.

Feature	WeSettle	Pancake
How you run it	Hosted for you. Sign up and start.	You install it on your own server.
What your server needs	Nothing — there is no server.	PHP 7.4+, MySQL 5.7+, and the GD, DOM, cURL and mbstring extensions.
Security patches	Applied for you.	Pancake updates itself; the PHP, database and machine under it are yours.
What it costs	£0, £9 or £29 a month. Cancel whenever.	$149 once.
What the licence covers	Your organisation, on any device.	A single website, non-transferable.
Most recent release	Continuously, as changes land.	4.15.3, 12 July 2023.

Invoicing and getting paid

Both tools do the core job. The differences are in the edges.

Feature	WeSettle	Pancake
Invoices and estimatesWe call estimates quotes; clients accept or decline them on their own page.	Yes	Yes
Reusable line items	Yes	Yes
Recurring invoicesOurs are on the paid plans, on full RRULE schedules you can pause and resume.	Yes	Yes
Card payments online	Stripe Connect — paid straight into your own Stripe account.	PayPal, Stripe and Authorize.net.
Multiple currencies	22 currencies, with the exchange rate stored on each invoice.	Add a currency and its rate yourself in Settings.
Automatic payment remindersScheduled per invoice, before and after the due date.	Yes	Not listed
Tax and VAT, including EU reverse charge	Yes	Not listed

Running the business

Where Pancake is the broader product, and we are the narrower one.

Feature	WeSettle	Pancake
Time tracking with timersA start/stop timer and manual entries against a client's project, billed onto a draft invoice in one step. Solo and Business plans.	Yes	Yes
TimesheetsOurs is a week on screen. Pancake's are printable and broken down by task as well.	Weekly, per person	Yes
Projects, tasks and milestonesOur projects carry a client, an hourly rate and an optional budget in hours. There are no tasks.	Projects only	Yes
Multi-page proposals	No	Yes
Client portalClients get a payment page per invoice and an accept page per quote, not a login.	No	Yes
Expenses, billable onto an invoice	Yes	Not listed
Reports and P&LPaid plans. Aging, top clients and P&L, with CSV and XLSX export of the P&L.	Yes	Not listed

Your team, your data

Who else can get in, and what happens when you want to leave.

Feature	WeSettle	Pancake
Team members	Up to 25 on Business, as owner, admin, member or viewer.	Administrator and General User, with per-client permissions.
Public APIOurs is on the paid plans.	Versioned REST API with an OpenAPI spec and a hosted reference.	Yes, with a PHP SDK; the docs are described as an ongoing effort.
Outbound webhooksBusiness plan. Signed, retried, with a delivery log.	Yes	Not listed
Export everything you have	A ZIP of JSON plus every rendered PDF, on every plan including Free.	Not listed

Where Pancake is the better buy

Four honest reasons to go the other way.

You track time by task

We both have a start/stop timer, manual entries and timesheets by person, and both turn tracked time into an invoice. Pancake also breaks time down by task and prints the timesheets. Ours stops at the project: if you need to see which task the hours went on, Pancake does it and we do not.

You run projects, not just invoices

Milestones, tasks, discussions and project progress for the client to see. Our projects exist to bill time: a client, an hourly rate, an optional budget in hours and the time logged against it. We do not do project management, and we are not planning to.

You send long proposals

Pancake builds multi-page proposals from reusable sections, with estimates embedded in them and a client-side accept or reject. Our quotes are a single document with an accept-or-decline page — good for a scope and a number, not for twelve pages of pitch.

You want a real client portal, and you enjoy running servers

Pancake's client area gives clients a login where they can see project progress, discuss files and view every invoice. Ours gives them a payment page per invoice and an accept page per quote. And if the machine, the backups and the PHP upgrades are a Saturday you look forward to, a one-off licence beats a subscription.

What hosting it yourself actually involves

None of this is hidden. It is just easy to skip past when the headline is one payment.

A server, and everything on it

PHP 7.4 or newer, MySQL 5.7 or newer, and the GD, DOM, cURL and mbstring extensions. Once it is yours, so are the upgrades, the backups you find out about the hard way, the TLS certificate, and getting your invoice emails past a spam filter.

One licence, one website

The licence grants a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to install Pancake on a single website — a second site means a second licence, and you cannot hand it on to someone else. Purchases are non-refundable.

The release you install is the one you have

Pancake's blog lists 4.15.3, from 12 July 2023, as its most recent release. That is a fact about a version number and a date, and nothing more — but with software holding your billing records on your own server, it is a fact worth checking before you buy.

Common questions

Is Pancake still being updated?: Its own blog lists 4.15.3, published 12 July 2023, as the most recent release. We are not going to tell you what that means for your business — check pancakeapp.com yourself and decide.
$149 once versus £9 a month. Which actually costs less?: On the licence alone, Pancake. £9 a month is £108 a year, so a one-off $149 comes out ahead somewhere after the first year. What that leaves out is a server to run it on, backups, a TLS certificate, mail that reaches the inbox, and the evenings you spend on all four. If you already run servers and enjoy it, Pancake is genuinely cheaper. If you do not, the subscription is buying you the thing you were about to do by hand.
Can I bring my Pancake data across?: Not automatically — there is no Pancake importer, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. You can import clients from a CSV, and line items onto an invoice from CSV or XLSX, both with templates we give you. Everything else is a manual afternoon.
Do you do time tracking?: Yes, on the Solo and Business plans. There is a start/stop timer on every page that keeps running if you close the tab, manual entries for the hours you forgot, and a weekly timesheet showing who logged what. Unbilled time goes onto a draft invoice in one step, grouped by project, by day or by entry and rounded up to an increment you choose, and it can't be billed twice. What we don't have is tasks: time is logged against a project, not a task within one, and the timesheet is a week on screen rather than a printable report. If you need time broken down by task, Pancake does that and we don't.
Do you take a cut of my payments?: No. Payments run through your own Stripe Connect account, so the money goes directly to you and Stripe's own fees are the only ones involved.

Try it before you install anything.

Three invoices a month, free, with no card and no server. If it is not for you, export everything and go — that works on the free plan too.

Pancake details on this page were taken from pancakeapp.com on 13 August 2026 and may have changed since. Pancake is a trademark of its owners, who are not affiliated with WeSettle. Check their site before you buy.