QuickBooks Pricing 2026: Every Plan Costed for Year One and Year Two

Intuit publishes four monthly prices for QuickBooks Online and a discount that lasts three months. Almost every article about QuickBooks pricing stops there, prints the four discounted numbers, and calls it a price list. It is not a price list. It is the first quarter of an invoice.

I price things for a living, so this page is the whole invoice instead. Every plan, at list and at the promotional rate, with year one and year two computed for each. The payroll bundles, with a worked example for a business with three employees. The Solopreneur tiers at the small end. The per plan seat ceilings, which are the thing that quietly forces most upgrades. And an honest section on the figures Intuit does not publish at all, because a pricing article that pretends those figures exist is worse than useless.

The formula is the same every time. Year one equals the promotional price times the promotional months, plus the list price times the remaining months. Year two equals the list price times twelve. Print both, and the category stops being confusing.

QuickBooks Online pricing: all four plans, both years

This is the table the pricing page should print and does not. The promo column is what you see on the banner. The year two column is what you will actually pay for as long as you stay a customer.

Working one row so you can check me: Simple Start is $19 for three months, which is $57, then $38 for nine months, which is $342. Add them and year one is $399. Year two has no promotional months in it at all, so it is $38 times twelve, which is $456.

The Plus row is worth staring at. Plus is badged on the pricing page as the customer favourite, and it is the first plan that tracks inventory, so for a store with stock it is effectively the entry plan. Its real cost is $1,470 in year one and $1,680 every year after that. The $70 banner implies $840.

What the discount is actually worth

The promotion saves you exactly three months at half price, which is one and a half months of list price. Here is what that is worth in dollars, and what the headline number would have implied if the discount ran all year.

On Advanced the promotion is worth $510, which sounds like a lot until you notice the plan costs $4,080 a year in steady state. The discount is a little over six weeks of service. That is a normal, legal, entirely ordinary software promotion. It just is not a price.

The pricing page also shows a free trial for thirty days. I looked for fine print stating whether starting a trial forfeits the promotional rate and could not locate it this session, so I am not going to assert either way. Both offers appear on the page. What is certain is that the list price resumes once the promotional months are spent.

Seats: the ceiling that forces the upgrade

QuickBooks does not price per user. It prices per plan and sets a hard user ceiling on each one, with accountant seats granted on top. No per user add on price appears on the pricing page, so the route to more seats is the next plan up, and the next plan up is a large step.

Cost per seat falls as you climb, which is what you would expect. The catch is that you rarely need seats and features in the same proportion. A four person team that does not need inventory has to buy Plus at $1,680 a year purely to get a fourth and fifth seat, and inherits an inventory module it will not open.

This is where the competition looks structurally different rather than merely cheaper. Xero’s pricing page states “Included: No per-user license fees” and shows no user cap on the plan cards, which is a different pricing philosophy rather than a discount. Zoho Books does charge per user, but transparently, at $3 a month or $2.50 a month billed annually on every paid plan. I put both models side by side in my head to head on seat fees and invoice caps.

What each price tier actually unlocks

Prices are only meaningful next to gates. Here is what the pricing page and the inventory page say each tier includes. Where a page did not state something, I have written that rather than inferring it.

Two rows carry most of the decision. Inventory tracking is the reason a physical products business ends up on Plus, and batch invoicing plus workflow automation is the reason a high volume operation ends up on Advanced. Everything else is seats.

The cheapest route to inventory inside QuickBooks

Intuit’s inventory page says inventory is available in QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced. That makes the cheapest legitimate route to inventory tracking $140 a month at list, $70 a month for the first three, $1,470 in year one and $1,680 a year thereafter. There is no cheaper door.

The same page says inventory works with popular apps and names Amazon, Etsy and Shopify. It does not state a costing method, so if you need to know whether the module runs first in first out or weighted average before you buy, ask Intuit and get the answer in writing. I am not going to fill that gap with a guess.

If inventory is your reason for shopping at all, the ranking changes completely, and I built a separate ranking of accounting software by where inventory actually starts for exactly that reason.

QuickBooks Solopreneur: the small end of the price list

Intuit sells a separate, smaller product for one person businesses, and it is priced well below the main ladder. The Solopreneur page shows three tiers.

Lite includes unlimited invoices, unlimited receipts and mileage, three contractors, the mobile app, automated bill pay, automated sales and sales tax, instant deposit and app integrations. Stepping up to Simple Start adds general reports, cash flow history, in person payments, recurring payments, lending access and unlimited contractors.

Intuit states the boundary plainly on that page: Solopreneur is built specifically for single owner, self employed businesses, focused on automated transaction sorting, goals and tax readiness instead of broader team and inventory features. Take that at face value. If you have a business partner, an employee or stock on a shelf, this is not the product, and the $216 a year you save over Simple Start will cost you more than that in workarounds. Note also that QuickBooks Self-Employed is still referenced as a separate product with its own login, so do not assume it has been discontinued.

If you are a solo operator whose main pain is the annual return rather than the monthly bookkeeping, it is worth reading about tax software for self employed filers before you spend anything on a ledger at all.

Payroll is sold as bundles, and the arithmetic does not decompose

This is the part of QuickBooks pricing that most articles get wrong. In 2026 Intuit does not sell payroll as a clean standalone add on with a published base fee. It sells bundles that pair a payroll product with an accounting plan, and quotes a per employee fee on top.

You cannot back out a payroll price from these. Subtracting the accounting plan gives $50, $40 and $63 respectively, which is not a consistent payroll fee, and Intuit does not publish a standalone payroll base price on that page. So treat the bundle price as the bundle price and stop trying to split it.

A worked example: three employees, steady state

Take the middle bundle, Workforce Payroll with Essentials, which the page badges as the favourite. Base is $125 a month, which is $1,500 a year. Three employees at $6.50 each per month is $19.50 a month, which is $234 a year. Total in a normal year is $1,734.

Here is the same calculation across all three bundles, at year two prices with no promotion applied, for a business with three employees.

Year one is lower on the base component because of the three promotional months. Workforce Payroll with Simple Start works out at $924 of base across year one, the Essentials bundle at $1,312.50 and the Premium with Plus bundle at $2,131.50. I have deliberately not applied the discount to the per employee fees, because the page does not state that the promotion covers them, and I am not going to invent a concession Intuit did not offer.

One published extra: background checks start at $29.99 per report. That is the only ancillary payroll fee I found stated as a number.

The fees Intuit does not publish

A pricing article earns its keep by being straight about the gaps. Here are four, and each one is a real hole in the total cost of ownership.

State payroll filing fees. The payroll pricing page did not state them. Not published.

Contractor payment fees. Same page, same answer. Not published.

Payment processing rates. Neither the QuickBooks Payments page nor the main pricing page lists an ACH, invoiced card, keyed card or in person rate. The page offers competitive payment rates without monthly fees or minimums, on a pay as you go basis, and says that if you process more than $2,500 per month you should call to see if you qualify for up to 25% off standard rates. The sales line printed there is 1-800-264-1859. The discount is quantified. The rate being discounted is not.

Assisted bookkeeping prices. QuickBooks Live, Expert Assisted, Full Service Bookkeeping and Expert Cleanup carry no price on the how it works page, which directs you to call 1-800-365-9606.

The contrast worth noting is that this is a choice, not an industry norm. Wave prints its processing rates right on its pricing page: 2.9% plus $0.60 per credit card transaction and 3.4% plus $0.60 on Amex for Starter users. If total visible cost matters to you, that difference is worth weighing, and I do exactly that in my comparison of what Wave gives away free and exactly where it stops.

QuickBooks Desktop pricing, and why it is not on the menu

If your plan was to pay once for desktop software and stop the monthly bill, that door is closed to new US buyers. Intuit’s stop sell notice says it stopped selling QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Mac Plus and QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll to new US subscribers after Sept. 30, 2024.

The notice also says existing subscribers are not impacted by the change, and that existing Desktop Plus and Desktop Payroll subscribers can continue to renew after that date. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is a separate product and is unaffected. So nobody is being pushed off the product they already pay for. New buyers simply cannot start.

How QuickBooks prices compare to the rest of the category

Same rule as everywhere else on this site: year two, list price, no promotions, cheapest first. This is the only fair way to line up products whose promotional periods run for different lengths.

For completeness at the top of the market: Sage does not show prices at all on its Business Cloud Accounting pricing page. Sage 50 does publish, at $128.67 a month for Pro Accounting with one user, $182.50 for Premium Accounting covering one to five users, and $271.17 for Quantum Accounting covering up to forty, with a minimum one year commitment required. Its desktop bundles with payroll are listed at $1,120 and $1,654 a year. The per additional user fee is not specified.

Which plan I would actually buy

If you are one person with no stock and no employees, buy Solopreneur Lite at $240 a year or use something free, and revisit in twelve months. If you have a small team and no inventory, Essentials at $1,020 is coherent but expensive for what it is, and this is the point in the ladder where I would seriously price the alternatives in my guide to QuickBooks alternatives sorted by the problem that sent you looking.

If you hold inventory, buy Plus and budget $1,680 a year. Do not start on Simple Start intending to upgrade later, because moving a partially built chart of accounts mid year costs more in time than the difference costs in cash. If you are running real volume with a finance person and batch invoicing would save them days a month, Advanced at $4,080 is defensible, and if it would not, it is not.

Whatever you pick, decide it against the gates rather than the banner. I set out the five that matter in the five gates that decide accounting software before price does.

None of the above is tax or accounting advice. Prices, plan contents and tax treatment change, and they vary by jurisdiction. Confirm anything that affects a filing with your CPA or with the taxing authority directly.

Running the business behind the books

A $1,680 ledger is either a serious cost or a rounding error, and which one it is depends entirely on the margin structure of what you sell. That is the part I actually spend my time on.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much does QuickBooks Online cost per month in 2026?

List prices are $38 for Simple Start, $85 for Essentials, $140 for Plus and $340 for Advanced. Each is offered at 50 percent off for three months, so the advertised prices are $19, $42.50, $70 and $170. Month four is charged at list.

Does the 50 percent discount apply for the whole first year?

No. It applies for three months. That is why year one comes to $399 on Simple Start rather than $228, and $1,470 on Plus rather than $840. Year two carries no discount at all.

What is the cheapest QuickBooks plan with inventory tracking?

Plus, at $140 a month list. Intuit’s inventory page states that inventory is available in QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced, so there is no cheaper route. That is $1,470 in year one and $1,680 a year thereafter.

How much is QuickBooks Payroll for three employees?

Payroll is sold in bundles. Workforce Payroll with Essentials is $125 a month plus $6.50 per employee per month, so three employees costs $1,500 plus $234, which is $1,734 in a normal year. The cheaper bundle with Simple Start comes to $1,290 and the Premium bundle with Plus comes to $2,796.

What does QuickBooks Solopreneur Lite cost?

$20 a month at list, promoted at $10 a month for three months. That is $210 in year one and $240 in year two. It covers a single owner business with three contractors and does not include inventory features.

Does QuickBooks publish its payment processing rates?

No. I checked the QuickBooks Payments page and the main pricing page and found no ACH, card, keyed or in person rate. The page offers up to 25% off standard rates above $2,500 a month of processing and gives a phone number, but the standard rates themselves are not published.

Bottom Line

QuickBooks Online costs $456, $1,020, $1,680 or $4,080 a year depending on the plan, and those are the numbers that should drive your decision. Year one is cheaper by $57, $127.50, $210 or $510 respectively, and that is the entire value of the promotion. If you hold inventory, your real price is $1,680, because Plus is the first plan that tracks stock.

Add payroll and the bill rises by about 70 percent: $1,734 a year for the Essentials bundle with three employees, against $1,020 for Essentials on its own. Then accept that processing rates, state filing fees, contractor fees and assisted bookkeeping prices are simply not published, which means your true annual cost is knowable only after you call. That is a legitimate reason to prefer a vendor that prints everything, and a legitimate reason to stay if the product fits. Just do the arithmetic before you sign, not in month four. And again, none of this is tax or accounting advice, so run anything that touches a return past a CPA or the taxing authority.

If you would rather have the entire store built, sourced and launched for you instead of assembling it yourself, my team runs a done for you high ticket dropshipping build and launch service.

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Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.

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