Accounting software fee calculator: QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks, Zoho Books and Wave

How the calculator picks a plan

For each vendor, every plan is checked against your inputs:

• Users. QuickBooks Online caps users per plan (1, 3, 5 and 25 billable users) with no option to buy more. FreshBooks and Zoho Books charge per added user. Xero has no per-user fee.
• Volume caps. Xero Early allows 20 invoices and 5 bills a month. QuickBooks Online Free allows 2 invoices a month. Zoho Books caps invoices per year, and on the plans with bills, bills and expenses share one yearly cap. FreshBooks Lite and Plus cap billable clients at 5 and 50.
• Features. Bills (accounts payable), inventory tracking and multi-currency are on or off per plan. Multi-currency, for example, starts at Xero Established, QuickBooks Essentials and Zoho Books Professional.
• Payroll. When you tick payroll, the vendor's payroll add-on is priced at its base fee plus a per-employee fee.

The cost is the plan price, plus extra users, plus payroll. The cheapest plan that meets every need wins, which is not always the lowest tier: once enough extra users are added, a higher plan can come out cheaper. When a vendor offers annual prepay, the yearly figure uses whichever is cheaper.

When a price or feature could not be confirmed on the vendor's own site, the calculator shows "Check vendor" and doesn't guess.

What the numbers include and leave out

• List prices, not promotions. On 6 October 2026, QuickBooks offered 50% off for three months, Xero 80% off for three months, and FreshBooks its own introductory deals. These change often and end, so they are recorded in the research notes but left out of the math. Your first months will cost less than shown.
• Not included: sales tax, card and ACH processing fees (often the biggest cost for a business that invoices a lot), bill-pay transfer fees, add-ons such as time tracking or advanced inventory, and state payroll tax registration costs.
• US pricing only. Plans, limits and prices differ by country.

Judgment calls in the data

Some pricing pages are ambiguous. These calls were made from the vendor's own pages and help articles, and each is noted beside the plan in the research notes above:

• QuickBooks Online Simple Start and bills. The current pricing page lists bill pay under Simple Start, and Intuit's help article on entering bills applies to it. An older Intuit page still lists bill management from Essentials up. The calculator treats Simple Start as supporting bills.
• FreshBooks inventory and multi-currency. FreshBooks' help center describes stock counts on items and per-client currencies with no plan restriction. That is basic stock counting, not inventory costing. If you need cost of goods sold from inventory, treat FreshBooks as not qualifying.
• Xero Early limits are per month, per Xero's developer documentation. The pricing page doesn't say.
• QuickBooks Online Free and bills could not be confirmed, so a QuickBooks Free result for bill-paying businesses is marked "check vendor".

What matters more than the price gap

The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive plan that fits is usually hundreds of dollars a year, sometimes a couple of thousand. These factors often cost more than that:

• Your accountant's software. If your bookkeeper or CPA works in one system, using another can cost more in their hours than the subscription difference. Ask before you choose.
• Bank feeds for your bank. Feed reliability varies by bank and by product. A feed that breaks every month means CSV or QBO imports, which is what the CSV to QBO converter is for.
• Switching later. Moving accounting systems mid-year is expensive. Pick the plan you'll need in 12 months, not today's cheapest.
• Hard caps. QuickBooks Online's user caps, Zoho Books Free's revenue limit, and Wave Starter's lack of automatic bank import are cliffs, not slopes. Check where you'll be in a year.

When a paid plan is worth it

Free plans from Wave and Zoho Books are good for a sole proprietor with a handful of invoices. Pay when you hit a limit that costs you time:

• Service businesses that invoice clients and track time: FreshBooks is built around invoicing. Watch the billable-client caps on Lite and Plus.
• Inventory and multi-currency on a small budget: Zoho Books Professional lists both features at $50 a month. Xero Established, the first Xero plan with multi-currency, is $97, and QuickBooks Online Plus, the first QuickBooks plan with both, is $140 (list prices on 6 October 2026).
• Working with an outside accountant, or needing the widest set of integrations: QuickBooks Online. It costs more at every tier here, and its user caps are firm.

Sources and updates

Each price above links to the vendor page it was read from, with the date. The data is in pricing.json. It is rechecked at least quarterly and whenever a vendor announces a change, and the date at the top of the table moves when it is. If you see a price that has changed, the vendor's page is the authority.

Also available as Markdown.