QuickBooks vs. Wave vs. FreshBooks: Which Is Best for a Solo Business?

A solo business needs to send an invoice, record an expense, see whether the month made money, and hand a preparer a file that is not a shoebox. QuickBooks Online, Wave, and FreshBooks are the three names in that conversation. I read each company’s US pricing page on October 26, 2026. Two of them had a promotion up. The ordinary price is the one to plan around. The discount is labeled as a discount.

What each one charges

QuickBooks listed Free at $0, Simple Start at $38, Essentials at $85, Plus at $140, and Advanced at $340 a month. New customers were shown half off for three months: $19, $42.50, $70, and $170. Intuit says that discount hits the base monthly price for new subscribers, then the then-current price, and that it can change or end the offer. A price-change note says Essentials, Plus, and Advanced can move on renewals on or after August 1, 2026, while Free and Simple Start do not. The numbers above are what the pricing page showed when I checked, after that date. The note also names Lite and Ledger. They are not these five cards. If someone quotes them, open the page before you compare.

Wave Pro is $19 a month or $190 a year for new US subscriptions, before tax, renewing until you cancel. Starter is $0. The help article updated October 5, 2026 says Starter includes basic accounting and invoicing. Payments, receipt scanning, and payroll cost extra.

FreshBooks listed Lite at $23 a month, Plus at $43, and Premium at $70. The page was also showing 80% off for four months. Treat that as a promotion that was up that day. The 2026 price FAQ lists those same monthly USD prices and yearly totals of $248.40, $464.40, and $756, a 10% discount for paying annually. There is no free-forever plan. There is a 30-day trial with no card, and 30 days to ask for a refund after you pay.

QuickBooks, when the preparer already uses it

Free is one user. It tracks income and expenses, runs a profit and loss, a balance sheet, and an account quick report, and connects one bank. You may send two invoices a month, or unlimited invoices if you qualify for and enable QuickBooks Payments. There is no accountant seat. The pricing page says the mobile app and third-party app connections are not on Free. Phone support, in the same FAQ, is for Simple Start and above: free during the 30-day trial and included while the paid subscription is current.

Simple Start is the solo plan. It adds two accountant seats, broader reports, bookkeeping that learns your categories, and invoices that can take a card or a bank payment through QuickBooks Payments. The card rate is not included in the $38. Check Payments before you compare a $1,000 invoice with Wave or FreshBooks. I will not guess it. Essentials, at three users, is more logins than a one-person shop needs. Plus is where inventory and project profitability start. Skip both until you have that problem.

Pay the $38, after the intro months, when a preparer has asked you to “just use QuickBooks.” Free is a weak daily driver if you invoice every week: two invoices, and no mobile app.

Wave, when the subscription is the problem

Starter is the free ledger plus basic invoicing, in the browser or the app. I will not assign an invoice cap or a client cap, because the help page does not publish one. Recurring invoices, reminders, receipt capture, bank import, and extra users are on the Pro list, along with live chat and email support. Wave says support depends on the plan, so Starter may not match that.

On Starter, card payments are 2.9% + $0.60 for Visa, Mastercard, or Discover, 3.4% + $0.60 for American Express, and bank payments are 1% with a $1 minimum. Pro waives the $0.60 on the first ten card transactions of the month. A receipts-only add-on is $8 a month or $72 a year if you want scanning without the rest of Pro. The details, and how Wave compares with other $0 senders, are in the free invoicing guide.

At $19, Pro is half of Simple Start’s list price. The trade is the preparer’s habit. Some will take an export. Some will ask you to switch. Ask before you build a year of history in the cheaper file. Stay on Starter while you can type the transactions. Pay for Pro when the typing, or the missing recurring invoice, is the Sunday problem.

FreshBooks, when the roster is short

Lite invoices 5 clients, tracks expenses, sends estimates, and takes cards, ACH, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and buy-now-pay-later. Plus moves the cap to 50 and adds proposals, retainers, tax and accounting reports, expense receipt scanning, and an accountant login. Premium drops the client cap and adds bill scanning that can grab line items. Select, above that, is the tier with lower processing rates, a dedicated phone line, and two team seats included. A solo shop can ignore it. I am not quoting a Select price, because the monthly prices on the page were Lite, Plus, and Premium.

Active and archived clients both count. The pricing FAQ says deleting a client you no longer bill frees a seat, and the old invoices remain. Five is plenty until last year’s clients are archived and still occupying the plan.

FreshBooks Payments is listed at 2.9% + $0.30 for credit cards and 1% for ACH. The ACH line has an asterisk on their page. Read it before you trust it on a large invoice. Extra people, payroll, and the virtual terminal are add-ons ($11 a person, $40 plus $6 for payroll, $20 for the terminal). None of that is a day-one purchase.

The trial opens the wider product, including the mobile app, with no card. Use those 30 days to confirm two things the Lite bullets do not settle in one line: whether bank import is on Lite, and whether time tracking for your work is included before you pay. I will not check a box the comparison table did not make obvious.

Lite at $23 is less than Simple Start at $38 only while five billable clients is true. The day you need the accountant in the file, FreshBooks wants Plus at $43, which costs more than Simple Start and more than Wave Pro. Compare those, not Lite against a QuickBooks plan you will never use.

Which login to open

If the preparer wants QuickBooks, buy Simple Start. Skip Free when you invoice more than twice a month. Do not buy Plus for inventory you do not hold.

If they will take an export, use Wave. Starter while the typing is tolerable, Pro at $19 when you want the bank feed and recurring invoices. On a $2,000 card payment, Wave Starter is $58.60 and FreshBooks is $58.30. The subscription is the larger gap, not the 30 cents.

If you sell time to a short list of clients and you care more about the invoice than about the file your preparer was trained on, take the FreshBooks trial. Pay for Lite only if five clients, counting archived ones, is really the whole roster. Otherwise the honest paid plan is Plus, and Wave Pro and Simple Start deserve another look.

Run one system. Send invoices from that system only. Keep PDFs. Treat every intro price here as finished when the offer said it was finished.

Sources

Checked October 26, 2026: QuickBooks pricing, Intuit’s price-change note, Wave Pro, is Wave free?, FreshBooks pricing, and the 2026 FreshBooks price FAQ.

How we score

Desk scores are editorial. They summarize how useful the vendor’s own pricing and help pages were for a solo US business on the date in this guide. They are not customer star ratings, lab benchmarks, or paid placements.

See a price or feature that has changed? Send a correction. Guides are updated from the vendor’s page, not from memory.

FAQ

Which is cheapest for a solo US business?

Wave Starter is $0 for basic accounting and invoicing. QuickBooks lists a Free plan with limits. FreshBooks has no free-forever plan on its pricing page; Lite starts at a monthly fee. Confirm current prices on each vendor’s pricing page.

When does QuickBooks make more sense than Wave?

When your tax preparer already works in QuickBooks, or you need the features listed on a paid QuickBooks plan that Wave Starter does not include. Open both pricing pages before you switch.

Does FreshBooks have a free plan?

FreshBooks’ pricing page does not list a free-forever plan. It offers a 30-day trial without a card and a money-back window after purchase, according to FreshBooks.