How we compare accounting software in the US
We list 5 cloud accounting platforms sold to US small businesses, and a published rate card exists for 5 providers. Every figure on this page comes from the vendor's own US pricing page, stored as a field and rendered here, so nothing on this page can quietly drift away from the table below it.
The calculator is driven by team size, because that is the axis most of these vendors gate their plans on. Ranking is arithmetic on the published price at the numbers you enter, nothing else. We do not sell placement, and a vendor's commercial relationship with us never moves a row.
Prices are in USD and are what each vendor publishes to a US buyer. Some are quoted monthly and some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment, which is why the billing basis matters as much as the number. Zoho Books, for example, lists its entry figure as $15/mo (Standard), and the annual basis is part of that price.
QuickBooks or Xero: the accounting software question most US buyers are actually asking
Almost every US search that lands here is some version of this one comparison, so it is worth answering with mechanisms rather than a verdict.
They price on different axes. Xero lists included users as Unlimited on every plan and gates its entry plan on invoice volume instead, listing invoicing as 20/mo (Early). QuickBooks Online does the reverse: invoicing reads Yes (unlimited), and the plan ladder is gated on seats, with included users listed as 1 (Simple Start). So the same business can land on a different rung of each ladder depending on whether it sends a lot of invoices or has a lot of people touching the file.
They handle sales tax differently. QuickBooks Online lists sales tax as Yes and multi-state as Yes. Xero lists sales tax as Yes and multi-state as Yes. Native versus integrated is the distinction to read there, because an integration is a second subscription and a second support queue.
They differ on payroll ownership. QuickBooks Online sells its own payroll and lists it as Yes (add-on). Xero lists No (Gusto), meaning a separate product with its own pricing and its own filings.
They differ on inventory. QuickBooks Online lists inventory as Yes (Plus) and Xero as Limited. If you hold stock, that row can decide the question on its own, and it decides it at a specific plan rather than at signup.
The honest summary is that this is not a quality comparison, it is a shape comparison. Count your seats, your monthly invoice volume, the states you file in, and whether stock and payroll are in scope. Those four answers pick for you.
Seats, invoices and revenue caps: the axes US accounting software prices on
The entry price of any of these products is the floor of a ladder, not a price, and the ladder is climbed by hitting a cap rather than by choosing an upgrade.
Four different caps are in play across this table:
Seats. FreshBooks lists included users as 1, Zoho Books as 3 (Standard), and Wave as Unlimited (with limited roles). Note what the Wave row says about roles: an unlimited seat count with restricted permissions is a different product from an unlimited seat count with full access, and it matters the moment you want a bookkeeper in the file without giving them everything.
Invoice volume. Xero and Zoho Books both meter this. Zoho Books lists invoicing as Yes (annual caps). A business that sends a hundred small invoices a month and a business that sends four large ones will be quoted very differently by the same vendor.
Billable clients. FreshBooks lists invoicing as Yes (client caps apply). That is a cap on how many customers you can bill, not on how many invoices you send, and it is the one buyers most often miss because it does not look like a limit on a feature list.
Revenue. Zoho Books lists its free tier as Yes (under revenue cap), which means the free plan expires by success rather than by feature. Wave lists its free tier as Yes, with the paid step shown in the entry row as Free (Pro $19/mo).
Two rows soften all of this. Contract terms across the table read as No, so a wrong first choice is a month of wasted subscription rather than a year. And accountant access is generally not a paid seat: QuickBooks Online lists Yes (free), Xero Yes (free) and Zoho Books Yes (free), while FreshBooks lists Yes (Plus) and Wave Yes (Pro).
Enter the headcount you will have in a year, not the one you have today. The entry figure is the number you pay in month one and rarely the number you pay in month twelve.
Sales tax, nexus and what US accounting software leaves to an add-on
This is the part of a US ledger that has no equivalent in most other countries, and it is where the cheap end of the table stops being cheap.
Sales tax in the US is set by states and, in many places, by counties and cities underneath them, so the correct rate depends on where the customer is rather than where you are. On top of that, economic nexus means selling into a state you have no physical presence in can create a registration and filing obligation there once you pass that state's threshold, and each state sets its own threshold and its own filing frequency. A business that ships nationwide can end up registered in several states without ever opening an office.
Read three rows against that, because they are not the same row:
Charging the right rate on an invoice. Every product here can put sales tax on an invoice. FreshBooks lists sales tax as Yes and Wave as Yes. What that phrasing tells you is that the rate is something you apply, not something the software determines by jurisdiction.
Tracking what you owe, by jurisdiction. Zoho Books lists tax filing support as Yes and multi-state as Yes (Professional). FreshBooks lists multi-state as Limited and Wave as Limited. If you sell into multiple states, that word is the whole story.
Actually filing the return. Xero lists tax filing as Yes. Note that the filing capability there is named as a partner product, which means an additional cost that does not appear anywhere in this table's price column.
So the question to ask a vendor is not "does it do sales tax". It is: does it determine the rate by jurisdiction, does it track my liability per state, and does it file, or does it hand me a report to file myself? Those are three different products and frequently three different bills.
Payroll, W-2s and 1099-NEC alongside your accounting software
Nothing in this table includes payroll in the subscription price. That is the single most common surprise in the US market, because payroll is where the compliance work actually lives.
QuickBooks Online prices its own payroll add-on at $50/mo + $7/emp, with the per-employee element listed as $6/emp/mo. Wave lists Add-on (+$6/emp) with a base of $40/mo (all states). Xero lists N/A (Gusto), FreshBooks N/A (Gusto) and Zoho Books N/A. Read that as a real line in your monthly cost, because the base fee plus the per-head fee routinely exceeds the accounting subscription it sits on top of.
Your business structure decides whether this is optional. A sole proprietor or single-member LLC reports business profit on Schedule C with the personal return and takes money out as an owner draw, which needs no payroll at all. Elect S-corp treatment and that changes: the owner has to be paid a reasonable salary through payroll, with withholding, a W-2 at year end, quarterly Form 941 filings and an annual Form 940. That election, not headcount, is what puts many one-person businesses into payroll for the first time.
Contractors are the other half of it. If you pay an unincorporated contractor at or above the IRS reporting threshold in a year, you owe them and the IRS a 1099-NEC, and the deadline is the end of January. That is why the contractor row is worth checking rather than assuming: QuickBooks Online lists Yes, Wave Yes, Xero Yes, Zoho Books Yes and FreshBooks Yes. Tracking a 1099 total and electronically filing the form are two different things, and only one of them saves you an evening in January.
None of this is tax advice, and state rules on unemployment insurance registration and workers' compensation vary enough that a first payroll run in a new state is worth a phone call. What the software decides is how much of the work is already done when you make it.
Your CPA or bookkeeper gets a vote on your accounting software
In the US the person who closes your books is often not you, and that changes the decision in a way a feature comparison cannot show.
Accounting and bookkeeping firms standardize. A firm running dozens of clients builds its workflow, its review checklists and its staff training around a small set of platforms, and a client on something outside that set costs them time they will either charge for or decline. Before you shortlist anything, ask the firm you use, or expect to use, which platforms they work in and whether they charge differently for one outside that set. That answer is frequently more decisive than a price difference between two rows in this table.
The mechanics are in your favor either way, because collaboration is generally free rather than a billable seat. The accountant access rows quoted earlier are the ones to check, and Wave is the notable exception in that its collaboration sits on the paid tier rather than the free one, listed as Yes (Pro).
Two more rows matter to whoever does the work rather than to you. Support hours decide how a problem lands mid-close: QuickBooks Online lists support as Phone + chat, Xero 24/7 online, Zoho Books Email / voice / chat, FreshBooks Phone + email and Wave Live chat (Pro). And an open API decides whether your data can be pulled into anything else later, listed as Yes for Xero and No for Wave, which is a real consideration if you are choosing a system you intend to still be on in five years.
The practical order is: ask your accountant first, count your seats and invoices second, check the sales tax rows third, and only then look at the price column. Getting those in the wrong order is how a business ends up migrating a full year of transactions in its second January.