QuickBooks vs FreshBooks vs Wave: 2026 Prices for Contractors

What changed since the last time you priced these out

If you compared QuickBooks vs FreshBooks vs Wave a year ago, one of the three has genuinely moved. The old shorthand was simple: QuickBooks is the paid one, Wave is the free one, FreshBooks is the invoicing one. The first of those is now wrong, and the free tiers on all three are narrower than the shorthand suggests.

QuickBooks has a permanent free plan. QuickBooks Free costs $0, needs no credit card, and you can stay on it as long as you like. It is not the trial. It is capped hard: 2 invoices a month, 1 estimate a month, 1 connected bank account, 5 mileage trips and 2 receipts a month. The invoice cap lifts to unlimited if you qualify for and enable QuickBooks Payments. That plan is pointed straight at Wave, and Intuit even runs a comparison page against free accounting software.

Wave’s free tier does not cover receipt scanning. Receipt capture sits under optional add ons at $8 USD a month or $72 USD a year, or it comes with Pro. Unlimited invoicing, estimates, bills and bookkeeping records are free on Starter, so Wave is still free. It is just free for less than most contractors assume.

FreshBooks is running an unusually deep discount. The pricing page is showing 90% off for 3 months, labelled a limited time offer. List prices themselves look unchanged at $23.00, $43.00 and $70.00 a month. A 90% headline is a promo, not a price, and it resets in month four.

QuickBooks payment rates were refreshed. The rates page carries a stated accuracy date of April 30, 2026. Cards run a flat 2.99% with no cent fee attached, and the widely repeated 1% ACH cap of $10 is not published on that page today. If you have been quoting that cap to yourself, stop.

The real prices, tier by tier

1. QuickBooks Online

   Intuit publishes monthly prices only. There is no annual toggle and no yearly price anywhere on the pricing page. Simple Start is $38 a month list, discounted to $19 a month under the current 50% off for 3 months offer. Essentials is $75 list and $37.50 promo. Plus is $115 list and $57.50 promo. Advanced is $275 list and $137.50 promo. Seats run 1, 3, 5 and 25 in that order, with access for 2 accountants on the first three tiers. The banner offers the discount or a 30-day free trial as two separate entry paths, and the trial gives full access to any paid plan for 30 days.

   Feature depth is the reason contractors pick it. Receipt capture, mileage tracking, estimates and automated bank feeds run on all four paid tiers. Read the reconciliation rows separately, though: automated bank feeds are on every tier, while the assisted reconciliation row only appears on Plus and Advanced. Project profitability, inventory, purchase orders and contract e-signature also wait for Plus. If you are a one person shop, Intuit also sells Solopreneur, where Lite is $20 a month list, $10 a month on the same 3 month promo, and includes unlimited invoices plus unlimited receipts and mileage.

   Payments run 2.99% on cards and digital wallets, 1% on ACH bank payments, 2.5% in person and 3.5% on keyed in cards. The card rate carries no per transaction cent fee, which is unusual and genuinely cheaper than a flat rate plus 30 cents once your average invoice is small.

2. FreshBooks

   FreshBooks publishes both monthly and annual pricing. Monthly list is $23.00 for Lite, $43.00 for Plus and $70.00 for Premium, with Select quoted through a consultant. The site is running 90% off for 3 months, which prices Lite at $2.30 a month, Plus at $4.30 and Premium at $7.00 for that window. Flip the toggle to yearly and the promo prices are $191.27 a year for Lite, $357.59 for Plus and $582.12 for Premium. FreshBooks lists its regular yearly prices as $248.40 for Lite, $464.40 for Plus and $756.00 for Premium, and those already include the standing 10 percent yearly discount. The promo prices apply to the first year only.

   Check the tier table before you take Lite. Lite caps you at 5 billable clients, and it has no automatic expense receipt data capture and no bank reconciliation. Both of those start on Plus, where the client cap rises to 50. Premium is the first unlimited client tier and the first with automatic bill receipt capture. Mobile mileage tracking and unlimited estimates do run on every tier, and proposals start on Plus. Extra team members are $11 a month each, Advanced Payments is $20 a month on Lite through Premium, and payroll is $40 a month plus $6 a month per person. There is a 30-day free trial and a 30-day money back guarantee.

   Payment fees are not on the pricing page. FreshBooks publishes them in its own support documentation: 2.9% plus $0.30 on standard credit and debit cards, 1% on ACH bank transfers with caps available on Select plans, and 3.5% plus $0.30 on Advanced Payments. The exact Select rates are not published.

3. Wave

   Wave Starter is $0 and it is not a trial. It carries unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, invoicing from the mobile app, and the option to accept online payments. Pro is $19 a month or $190 a year, currently discounted to $9.50 a month for the first 3 months, a stated saving of $28.50. Wave publishes no free trial length anywhere, because the permanently free tier is the trial.

   Watch what free actually covers. Receipt capture sits under optional add ons at $8 USD a month or $72 USD a year, or it comes bundled with Pro. If you have seen $11 quoted for Wave receipts, that is the Canadian price for the same add on, not a second tier. Pro is also where auto import of bank transactions and auto merge and categorize live, so on Starter you keep the bookkeeping records without the automatic import and categorization. And Wave publishes no mileage tracking at all, on either tier. For a contractor who drives to jobs all week, that is the single sharpest gap in this comparison.

   Fees are the trade for the free tier. Starter takes 2.9% plus $0.60 on a card and 3.4% plus $0.60 on American Express. Pro drops that cent fee to $0 on the first 10 transactions a month per Wave’s own plan comparison. Bank payments run 1% with a $1.00 minimum fee.

All three bill the job after you win it. If winning it is the slow part, SimplyWise Cost Estimator turns a photo into an itemized estimate in about 6 seconds. Free to try.

QuickBooks vs FreshBooks vs Wave, side by side

This table compares the three on the workflows a contractor actually runs in a week, not on feature counts. Every figure below was pulled from the vendor’s own page on July 28, 2026. Promo prices are labelled as promos, because all three of them expire.

Do the 12 month math, not the promo math

Every discount in this comparison runs for 3 months. What you actually pay in year one is 3 months at the promo rate plus 9 months at list, and that reorders the table. On the published monthly figures, a first year on QuickBooks Simple Start works out to $399. FreshBooks Lite works out to $213.90. Wave Pro works out to $199.50. Wave Starter stays at $0 and QuickBooks Free stays at $0. That is our arithmetic on the vendor published numbers, not a figure any of them quotes.

Annual billing changes it again, but read the renewal, not the first year. Wave Pro at $190 a year beats its own monthly path and stays $190 when it renews. FreshBooks comes in at $191.27 for the first year on the current promo, then renews at $248.40 for Lite, so the two are level in year one and Wave is cheaper every year after. QuickBooks publishes no annual price at all, so Simple Start has no cheaper yearly lane to switch into. Only two of the three even give you a yearly number, and only one of those two is the number you keep paying.

QuickBooks vs FreshBooks vs Wave: pick by your situation

You want the books your accountant already works in

Pick QuickBooks Online. It is the closest thing small business accounting has to a default, and Simple Start at $38 a month includes access for 2 accountants. It also has the deepest reporting of the three and the clearest upgrade path when the crew grows, from 1 seat on Simple Start to 25 on Advanced. You pay the most for that, and the promo year still lands at $399 on our math. If a clean hand off at tax time is the thing that keeps you up, that is what you are buying.

Invoicing and getting paid is the whole job

Pick FreshBooks, but pick the right tier. Lite at $23.00 a month is fine if you bill 5 clients or fewer and you do not need receipt capture or bank reconciliation. The moment you need either, you are on Plus at $43.00 a month, and that is the honest price of FreshBooks for a working contractor. The yearly promo at $357.59 for Plus is the cheaper way in if you are staying.

You cannot justify a subscription yet

Two real options now, and that is new. Wave Starter is $0 with uncapped invoicing and estimates, which is more generous than QuickBooks Free on the paperwork that matters. QuickBooks Free is $0 with tight caps, and it lists mileage and receipts that Wave Starter does not, but read the footnote on Intuit’s pricing page before you count on them: mobile app access is not currently available with QuickBooks Free, and both automatic mileage tracking and snapping receipt photos are phone jobs. If you send more than two invoices a month, start on Wave. If you barely invoice and want your books in one place before you upgrade, QuickBooks Free is worth the setup.

You drive to jobs every day

Skip Wave. It publishes no mileage tracking on any tier, so every trip is a manual log or a second app. QuickBooks tracks mileage on every paid tier, and lists it on the free plan too, capped at 5 trips a month, though Intuit’s pricing page states that mobile app access is not currently available with QuickBooks Free. FreshBooks lists mobile mileage tracking on Lite through Select. A contractor who drives all week is deducting real money, and the tool that logs those trips without you thinking about it pays for itself long before the subscription does.

Quoting slower than you invoice? Price a job from a photo in about 6 seconds and send it before you leave the site. Free to try.

Bookkeeping is not estimating

QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Wave all live after the deal is won. They bill the customer, categorize the spend and hand your accountant a file. None of them turns a walkthrough into a priced quote while you are standing in the customer’s kitchen, and for most contractors that walkthrough is the slow, expensive part of the week. All three can produce an estimate document. None of them prices the work.

That is the gap the SimplyWise Cost Estimator fills. It turns a photo of the job into an itemized estimate in about 6 seconds, so the number goes out before you leave the driveway. Companion SimplyWise apps cover receipt scanning and mileage tracking, which is worth weighing next to Wave, where receipts cost $8 USD a month and mileage does not exist at any price. It carries a 4.8 rating on the App Store, and pricing is $29.99/mo or $239.99/yr, about $20/mo on annual, with a 7-day free trial.

It is not a replacement for your books, and we are not going to pretend it is. Pair them. Price the job and capture the costs in SimplyWise, then keep the ledger in whichever of the three fits your budget and your accountant.

Keep reading

• The Best Construction Invoice Software: the wider roundup for contractors who bill from the field.
• Photo to Estimate Apps for Contractors: the tools that price a job straight from a picture.
• 12 Best Joist Alternatives for Contractors: where the simple estimate and invoice apps stand in 2026.
• 12 Best Jobber Alternatives for Contractors: the field service ranking for shops that outgrew paperwork.