If your business bills by the hour, the comparison that matters is QuickBooks Essentials at $85 a month against Xero Established at $90 a month. Both vendors keep time tracking above their cheap plan, so the $38 against $25 matchup on the pricing pages compares two plans you cannot actually work in. If you do not bill hours and have no payroll, Wave's free plan is free in a way the others are not. Prices checked 2026-08-17 on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Two things will date this post quickly. Every headline figure the three vendors show today is a promotion, and Xero's pricing page carries its own warning that subscription prices are increasing from October 1, 2026. Treat what follows as a snapshot taken on one day rather than a price list you can lean on in six months.
The number on the screen is not the number you pay
QuickBooks is running 90% off for three months, with the discounted figure set in large type and the real price struck through beside it. Its own banner says the offer ends 8/27, which is ten days after this post went up. Xero shows $2.50 a month for the first six months against a regular $25, and that discount is gated behind a code, open only to US customers buying their first organization on xero.com, and it runs until 30 September 2026. Wave shows $9.50 against a regular $19.
Skim the three pages and all three products look roughly 90% cheaper than they are. Every figure in the rest of this post is the regular price.
Where each vendor puts time tracking
For a consultancy or a repair shop, turning hours into invoices is not a bonus feature. It is the job. Both paid vendors know that, and both of them price it accordingly.
Xero's comparison table lists "Track time and costs for projects" as excluded on Early at $25 a month and excluded on Growing at $55 a month. It arrives on Established at $90. QuickBooks splits the same ground at a different seam: "Add employee time to invoices" appears under Essentials at $85 a month, while "Track project profitability" waits until Plus at $140.
Which means the row most comparison articles put side by side, Simple Start at $38 against Early at $25, lines up two plans that an hourly business will outgrow in its first month of real use. The honest matchup is $85 against $90. At that level the five-dollar gap stops being the deciding factor, and the question becomes which one your accountant already opens every morning.
Exhibit 1
Time tracking sits one or two plans above the price people quote.
Wave is the free one, with an asterisk
Wave's Starter plan costs $0 and it is not a trial. Unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, for nothing, which neither of the others offers.
The asterisk is receipts. Scanning them is an add-on rather than a plan feature, at $11 a month on Starter or $8 a month on Pro, billed annually at $96 and $72. Pro itself is $19 a month, and that is the tier where the automation lives: automatic import of bank transactions, automatic merging and categorising, and reminders for late payments. Put receipt capture on top of Pro and the working figure is $27 a month, which is no longer the cheap option people describe. Xero includes what it calls Smart Document Capture on all three of its plans, so the same job costs nothing extra there.
Card processing is worth reading too if you take payments through the software. Wave charges 2.9% plus $0.60 per Visa, Mastercard or Discover transaction on Starter. Pro drops that to 2.9% plus $0 for the first ten transactions each month and then reverts to Starter rates. Bank payments run at 1% with a $1.00 minimum on both plans, so paying for Pro buys nothing at all on ACH.
Exhibit 2
Wave stops being the free one at the receipts.
Payroll, where only one vendor publishes a full price
If you run payroll, the pricing pages go quiet. Xero is the only one of the three that prints a complete figure: payroll powered by Gusto at $36 a month plus $6 per employee or contractor, the same on all three plans. QuickBooks shows payroll on its pricing page as an optional step at checkout with no price attached. Wave lists a payroll add-on at "from $25/month" and also at "from $40/month", with nothing on the page explaining which situation each figure belongs to.
So price payroll as a separate purchase, and get the number in writing from whichever vendor you are leaning towards before you commit. Choosing accounting software on a payroll figure you had to guess is how people end up switching twice.
The caps and the seat counts
Xero's Early plan caps you at 20 invoices and 5 bills a month, and the footnote is where it bites. The limit covers approving invoices as well as sending them, and transactions started by connected apps can count against it too. A firm with fifteen retainer clients and a few top-ups can cross 20 without ever feeling like it sent twenty invoices.
QuickBooks Free has caps of its own: two invoices a month, one bank connection, and no accountant access at all. If you want a bookkeeper working inside the file, Simple Start at $38 is the floor.
Seats work differently at each vendor, and the difference is easy to misread. Xero charges no per-user licence fee, which counts for a lot once several people need to be in there. QuickBooks counts users and accountants separately: one user plus access for two accountants on Simple Start, three users plus two accountants on Essentials, five users plus two accountants on Plus. Accountant invitations are free, so the seat counts are a ceiling on your own staff rather than a charge for your bookkeeper.
Which one for whom
If you work alone, run no payroll and do not bill by the hour, use Wave Starter. It costs $0, and that is a real recommendation rather than a polite one. Enter the receipts by hand, or pay the $11 a month for scanning when the shoebox starts winning.
A service firm that bills hours has the closer call: QuickBooks Essentials at $85 or Xero Established at $90. Xero charges no per-user licence fee and adds employee expense and mileage claims at that level. QuickBooks gives you three users, free accountant seats, and a bookkeeping profession that mostly grew up inside it. Ask whoever does your books which one they know cold, because that answer is worth more than the five dollars between them.
A growing team splits on what is missing. If it is profit per project, that is QuickBooks Plus at $140 a month. If it is more people in the file without more licence fees, that is Xero, and Established already carries the time tracking and the mileage claims.
The software does not keep the books
Whichever one you pick, categories still drift and receipts still go missing, and somebody still has to sit down once a month and reconcile. The subscription matters less than the monthly habit around it, which is why we would rather talk about the monthly rhythm that keeps books clean than about a plan tier. If handing the whole thing over sounds better than learning another interface, that is what our bookkeeping service is for.
Exhibit 3
Three businesses, three different right answers.
One last thing for the calendar. Xero has told everyone its prices go up on the first of October, so if you are choosing between these three in September, check both pages again before you enter a card.