Project and task management decision
Bonsai
Build a narrow, self-hosted workflow (clients + time + invoices + payments) — realistic for a small technical team using existing OSS components — but reproducing Bonsai’s full integrations, polish, mobile apps, and enterprise support is not practical for a solo developer.
Visit website↗$15/mo
$180/yr
Per seat. Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off80 h to build
$20/mo8 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Bonsai alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Manage clients and projects, track time, generate invoices and accept payments, and publish simple proposals/contracts.
What it still won’t have
- Years of integration partnerships (Zapier, QuickBooks, Xero, Calendly) and maintained connectors
- Polished, battle-tested UI/UX and mobile apps
- Enterprise onboarding, dedicated support, and SLA-backed uptime
- Advanced reporting, resource planning, and proprietary templates
- Scale reliability and mitigations for payment processing edge cases
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a self-hosted minimal Bonsai clone using a PostgreSQL database, Node.js (Express) backend, Next.js frontend, and Stripe for payments. Core features in scope: user auth and per-user accounts; client and project CRUD; time entry UI + timesheet aggregation; generate invoice PDFs from templates and accept Stripe payments; simple proposal/contract editor with PDF export; basic reporting (revenue by project). Out of scope: multi-tenant enterprise onboarding, mobile apps, third-party connector marketplace, advanced resource planning, and accounting sync. Deliver automated tests for API endpoints, PDF generation, and payment flows; include error handling for failed payments, concurrency on timesheet edits, and documented deployment scripts (Docker + managed Postgres + object storage).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score67
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productBonsai - Business management software
- official pricingBonsai - Pricing
- official docsProduct Brief Template - Bonsai
- open sourcefrappe/erpnext
- open sourceopf/openproject
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
