If you are weighing Vyapar vs Riffit as a freelancer, the honest answer is that they were built for two different people. Vyapar is one of India's most widely used billing and accounting apps, and it is excellent at what it does: GST invoicing, inventory, and bookkeeping for small businesses that sell products. Riffit is a WhatsApp-native invoicing tool for service freelancers who just want to bill a client and move on. The question is not which is better in the abstract. It is which one matches the shape of your work.
Full disclosure: I built Riffit. I will compare both fairly, and where Vyapar is the better pick, I will say so plainly.
What Vyapar is built for
Vyapar
Free mobile tier / paid plans from low thousands per yearGST billing, inventory, and accounting for Indian small businesses
Vyapar is a full small-business toolkit. Alongside invoicing it does inventory and stock management, accounting, expense tracking, a point-of-sale flow, GST reports like GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, and e-way bills. It has Android and desktop apps, and a genuine strength most lightweight tools lack: it works offline on desktop, which matters if you run a shop with patchy internet.
The shape of the product tells you the audience. The dashboard is organised around items, stock, and parties, because Vyapar was designed for a business that buys and sells goods and needs its books to balance. If you sell products, manage stock, and file GST every month, very little of that is wasted on you.
What that means for a freelancer
Most service freelancers in India earn under the ₹20 lakh annual threshold, do not register for GST, hold no inventory, and send somewhere between 2 and 15 invoices a month. Drop that freelancer into Vyapar and most of the product is dead weight. You create one or two parties, never touch stock, ignore the accounting modules, and use the invoice screen alone. It works, but you are running a warehouse-grade tool to send a designer's bill.
There is also the creation flow itself. Vyapar lets you share a finished invoice to WhatsApp, but you build the invoice inside the app first. There is no way to type a WhatsApp message and have the invoice generated from that conversation, which is the exact moment most freelancers want to bill: right after the client approves the work in chat.
Vyapar pricing, honestly
Vyapar has a free mobile tier with limits, and paid plans that add the desktop app and premium features. Pricing is split across mobile, desktop, and combo tiers and Vyapar runs frequent discounts, so the headline number moves around. Paid plans generally sit in the low thousands of rupees per year. Because the published price changes with offers, check vyapar.in for the current figure before you decide rather than trusting a number from a review site.
Vyapar vs Riffit at a glance
| Feature | Vyapar | Riffit |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Product businesses, shops, GST-filing SMEs | Service freelancers and solo providers |
| Create from WhatsApp | No (share only) | Yes (guided flow or AI on Pro) |
| Mobile and desktop | Android plus desktop, works offline | Mobile-first, works on any device |
| Inventory and POS | Yes, full | No (not needed for services) |
| GST CGST/SGST split | Yes | No (add GST number, flat rate) |
| Accounting and reports | Yes (GSTR, P&L, more) | No (not built) |
| Free tier | Limited mobile tier | 5 invoices/month plus 14-day Pro trial |
| Paid plan | Low thousands per year, tiered | ₹249/month or ₹199/month billed annually |
| Invoice templates | Multiple | One standard PDF |
Where Riffit fits
Riffit makes the opposite trade Vyapar does. There is no inventory, no POS, no accounting suite, and no GST filing depth. What it does instead is turn a WhatsApp message, or a short dashboard form, into a professional invoice with your business name, your GST number if you have one, and a UPI link the client can tap to pay. You can track which invoices are pending, paid, or overdue, and reminders go out on the due date on the free plan, or on a full schedule on Pro.
The honest limits matter, so here they are. Riffit calculates GST at a flat rate and does not produce the CGST and SGST split that monthly GST filers need. There are no reports and no expense tracking. There is one clean PDF template, not a gallery. The free plan caps at 5 invoices a month and 5 clients, and WhatsApp delivery to the client is a Pro feature. And it is new, in early access, where Vyapar has years of track record.
So which should you use
The short version: if you are a service freelancer billing from WhatsApp, Riffit is the faster, lighter pick; if you sell products, manage stock, or file GST every month, Vyapar is the more capable tool.
Use Vyapar if you sell physical products, manage stock, are GST-registered and filing every month, or want billing and accounting in one place. If you need CGST and SGST splits, e-way bills, and GSTR reports, Vyapar earns its rupees and is the more capable tool. The offline desktop billing is a real plus if your internet is unreliable.
Use Riffit if you are a service freelancer, a designer, writer, developer, or consultant, who closes work on WhatsApp and just wants the invoice to happen without a dashboard tour. If your problem is not missing features but the friction of billing at all, that is what Riffit was built to remove.
If you want a broader framework rather than a head-to-head, the guide on how to choose an invoicing tool as a freelancer in India walks through what to look for. For another retail-leaning tool measured against freelance work, the Swipe billing review makes a similar comparison, and the three-way Zoho Invoice vs Refrens vs Riffit covers the lighter options side by side.
FAQ
Vyapar works for freelancers, but it is built for product businesses that manage inventory and file GST monthly. A service freelancer ends up using only the invoice screen while ignoring stock, POS, and accounting modules. If you sell goods or are GST-registered and filing regularly, Vyapar fits well. If you bill services and stay under the ₹20 lakh threshold, a freelancer-focused tool is a closer match.
Written by
Aaqil · Founder, Riffit
Runs 11pixels Design Studio in Bangalore. Built Riffit because invoicing from a laptop in traffic wasn't an option. Writes about invoicing, freelancing, and running a solo business in India.