QuickBooks Pricing 2026: Online Plans ($38 to $340), What the Free Plan Leaves Out, and Payroll Costs
QuickBooks Online costs $38 a month for Simple Start, $85 for Essentials, $140 for Plus and $340 for Advanced at regular price, as of October 19, 2026, with 50% off the first 3 months. QuickBooks Free is $0 but allows 1 user, 2 invoices a month and no third-party integrations. Payroll (QuickBooks Workforce) adds $50 to $134 a month plus $7 to $17 per employee. Here is what a 6-person business really pays.
How much does QuickBooks cost? The short answer
As of October 19, 2026, QuickBooks Online costs $38 a month for Simple Start (1 user), $85 for Essentials (3 users), $140 for Plus (5 users) and $340 for Advanced (25 users) at regular price, with 50% off the first 3 months for new customers. QuickBooks Free is $0 but allows 1 user, 2 invoices and 1 estimate a month, and no third-party integrations. Payroll, now sold as QuickBooks Workforce, is extra: $50, $88 or $134 a month plus $7, $13 or $17 per employee.
We read Intuit's pricing page (quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing), its QuickBooks Free page and its Workforce payroll pricing pages on October 19, 2026. Intuit changes promotions often; the regular prices are the stable part. The cost examples below are our own arithmetic on Intuit's published numbers.
QuickBooks Online plans side by side
| Plan | Regular price a month | First 3 months (offer) | Users | What the plan adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 1 | 2 invoices and 1 estimate a month, 1 bank account synced automatically, manual sales tax. No mobile app and no third-party integrations |
| Simple Start | $38 | $19 | 1, plus 2 accountants | Unlimited invoicing, expense categorizing, profit and loss and sales reports, bill pay by ACH |
| Essentials | $85 | $42.50 | 3, plus 2 accountants | Enhanced reports, employee time on invoices, lead capture from a website form |
| Plus | $140 | $70 | 5, plus 2 accountants | Budgets, project profitability, inventory, classes and locations (40) |
| Advanced | $340 | $170 | 25, plus 3 accountants | Custom user roles, automated workflows, batch invoices and expenses, Excel sync, priority support |
Paid plans include a 30-day free trial as an alternative to the discount, no annual contract, and cancel anytime. Bill pay is free over ACH up to a monthly allotment, then $0.50 per standard ACH transaction. Intuit's AI features (Intuit Intelligence) are spread across the tiers: expense categorizing from Simple Start, books cleanup and bulk invoices from Essentials, and automatic reconciliation and anomaly checks only from Plus. Three things on the page decide the bill more than the feature list:
- Users are capped by tier. QuickBooks prices by login. The second person who needs to log in moves you from $38 to $85, and the fourth moves you to $140. Accountants are free on every paid plan and do not count.
- The discount is on the first 3 months only. After that the regular price applies every month. Payroll add-ons follow the same rule, and the per-employee fee is not discounted at all.
- Upgrades are easy; Advanced is a jump. Intuit's FAQ says you can move between Simple Start, Essentials and Plus, and switch or cancel at any time. From Plus to Advanced the price goes from $140 to $340 for the extra users and roles.
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Is QuickBooks free?
There is a free plan, and it is narrower than it sounds. Intuit's QuickBooks Free page calls it "Not a trial. Just free": $0 a month with no credit card. It gives 1 user, 2 invoices a month (unlimited if you qualify for and turn on QuickBooks Payments, which charges its own processing fees), 1 estimate a month, and 1 bank account connected for automatic transaction sync. Multi-user access, unlimited invoicing and more bank accounts are not included.
The line that matters for anyone automating their books is on the main pricing page: "Mobile app access and third-party integrations not currently available with QuickBooks Free." Zapier's QuickBooks Online listing names the four paid tiers (Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, Advanced) as the ones it works with. So the free plan suits a sole proprietor who invoices rarely and wants a bank feed. It cannot be the hub of a connected system. The moment a payment processor, a job management app or a CRM needs to write to your books, the floor is Simple Start at $38 a month. If free is the whole point, Wave vs QuickBooks compares Intuit's free plan with Wave's, which has unlimited invoices but no automatic bank feed.
How much is QuickBooks payroll?
Intuit now sells payroll as QuickBooks Workforce. From its payroll pricing pages, read October 19, 2026, the payroll-only plans are:
| Workforce plan | Base a month | Per employee a month | First 3 months (offer) | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workforce Payroll | $50 | $7 | $25 + $7 per employee | Full-service payroll with tax filing, auto payroll for salaried staff, next-day direct deposit, unlimited 1099 e-filing |
| Workforce Premium | $88 | $13 | $44 + $13 per employee | Same-day direct deposit, expert setup review, time tracking and scheduling app, hiring, onboarding and HR workflows (5) |
| Workforce Elite | $134 | $17 | $67 + $17 per employee | Expert setup, tax penalty protection up to $25,000 a year, unlimited HR workflows, geofenced clock-in, mileage tracking, a personal HR advisor |
Two things are easy to miss. First, time tracking is only on Premium and Elite; Intuit's FAQ says so directly. A crew that clocks in from job sites is a Premium customer, which costs $6 more per employee every month than the base plan. Second, the bundles save nothing. Workforce Payroll with Simple Start is listed at $88 plus $7 per employee, which is exactly $38 plus $50. Workforce Payroll with Essentials is $135, which is $85 plus $50, and Workforce Premium with Plus is $228, which is $140 plus $88. Buying payroll and accounting together is a convenience, not a discount.
A worked example: a 6-person service business
Take a 6-person home-services company: the owner, an office manager and a bookkeeper need to log in, and 6 employees are on payroll. It sends about 40 invoices a month and has no inventory. Prices are Intuit's regular and offer prices as read October 19, 2026.
| Line | Year one, with the 3-month offer | Year one, no offer | Year two |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Free or Simple Start | Does not fit: 3 people need to log in and 40 invoices a month is past Free's 2 | ||
| Essentials ($85) | $892.50 (3 × $42.50, then 9 × $85) | $1,020 | $1,020 |
| Workforce Payroll ($50 + 6 × $7 = $92 a month) | $1,029 (3 × $67, then 9 × $92) | $1,104 | $1,104 |
| Total | $1,921.50 | $2,124 | $2,124 ($177 a month) |
What the table shows: the offer is worth $202.50 in year one, and payroll is the bigger line every year. If the crew needs time tracking, Workforce Premium at $88 plus 6 × $13 is $166 a month instead of $92, which adds $888 a year. If a fourth person needs a login, Plus at $140 adds $660 a year. Every hire costs $7 to $17 a month in payroll and, at the user cap, a full plan step in accounting.
The same business on Xero pays $1,572 a year at regular price for Growing plus Xero's payroll, because Xero does not charge per login; the breakdown is in our Xero pricing guide, and the seat math for teams of one to five is in QuickBooks vs Xero. QuickBooks earns its premium when your accountant already works in it, you want Intuit's payroll and tax depth, or you need inventory and project tools on Plus.
Is QuickBooks worth it?
For most small businesses with an outside accountant, yes, on the plan that matches the number of people who log in. Simple Start at $38 is good value for a solo owner who needs unlimited invoicing and integrations. Essentials is the usual landing spot for a small office. Plus is worth it for inventory, project profitability and Intuit's automatic reconciliation. Advanced is priced for teams past 5 users.
What a plan upgrade does not change is the manual work in front of the books: bills arriving as PDFs, receipts on technicians' phones, invoices retyped from a job system. Intuit's AI categorizes and reconciles what is already in QuickBooks. Getting documents in, read and coded is a separate job, and our AI bookkeeping guide prices the tools that do it.
Who can connect QuickBooks to the rest of my business?
A single Zapier workflow from your payment processor to QuickBooks is worth setting up yourself, as long as you are on a paid plan. A builder earns a fee when invoices, bills, payroll hours and payments need to move between QuickBooks, your job or CRM software and your bank with AI reading the documents in between. SuperDupr, Justin McKelvey's company, does that work and does not resell QuickBooks subscriptions. Connecting QuickBooks to the rest of a business is an AI workflow automation project for us, published at $10,000 to $25,000; a bill-and-receipt reading pipeline on its own is AI document processing at $8,000 to $20,000. Most AI systems go live in 2 to 4 weeks, and ongoing support runs $200 to $2,000 a month. You keep your QuickBooks company file and your accountant. If you are not sure you need a builder at all, book a free 30-minute strategy session.
Sources
- Intuit QuickBooks Online pricing page (quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing), read October 19, 2026: Simple Start $38, Essentials $85, Plus $140, Advanced $340 a month; 50% off for 3 months or a 30-day free trial; user and accountant counts; plan features; ACH bill pay allotment and $0.50 overage; "Mobile app access and third-party integrations not currently available with QuickBooks Free"; FAQ on upgrades, cancellation and accountant access.
- Intuit QuickBooks Free page (quickbooks.intuit.com/oa/online/free), read October 19, 2026: $0, no credit card, 1 user, 2 invoices and 1 estimate a month, 1 bank account, features not included.
- Intuit QuickBooks Workforce pricing pages (quickbooks.intuit.com/payroll/pricing and /payroll/pricing/bundle), read October 19, 2026: Workforce Payroll $50 + $7, Premium $88 + $13, Elite $134 + $17 per employee a month; bundle prices; 50% off the base for 3 months; plan features, the time-tracking FAQ and the $25,000 tax penalty protection on Elite.
- Zapier's QuickBooks Online integrations page (zapier.com/apps/quickbooks/integrations), checked October 19, 2026: Premium app, works with Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced.
- Worked example: SuperDupr's arithmetic on the published prices above for an assumed 6-person business with 3 logins, 6 employees on payroll and 40 invoices a month. Xero figures from our Xero pricing guide, read October 19, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
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As of October 19, 2026, QuickBooks Online is $38 a month for Simple Start (1 user), $85 for Essentials (3 users), $140 for Plus (5 users) and $340 for Advanced (25 users) at regular price. New customers get 50% off for the first 3 months or a 30-day free trial. Every paid plan includes free access for 2 accountants (3 on Advanced).
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There is a QuickBooks Free plan at $0 with no credit card, but it allows 1 user, 2 invoices and 1 estimate a month (more invoices if you turn on QuickBooks Payments), and 1 connected bank account. Intuit's pricing page says mobile app access and third-party integrations are not available on Free, so nothing else can sync to it. The paid plans start at $38 a month.
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Intuit sells payroll as QuickBooks Workforce. As of October 19, 2026, Workforce Payroll is $50 a month plus $7 per employee, Premium is $88 plus $13, and Elite is $134 plus $17. New customers get 50% off the base price for 3 months; the per-employee fee is not discounted. Time tracking is only on Premium and Elite.
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No. Intuit's bundles are the exact sum of the two prices: Workforce Payroll with Simple Start is $88 plus $7 per employee ($38 plus $50), with Essentials $135 ($85 plus $50), and Workforce Premium with Plus $228 ($140 plus $88). Bundling saves a login, not money.
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Usually, on the plan that matches how many people log in. A 6-person business with 3 logins and 6 employees on payroll pays $2,124 a year at regular price on Essentials plus Workforce Payroll. The same business pays about $1,572 on Xero, which does not charge per login. QuickBooks earns the difference when your accountant works in it or you need Intuit's payroll, inventory or project tools.
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A single Zapier workflow is worth setting up yourself on a paid plan. When invoices, bills, payroll hours and payments need to move between QuickBooks, your job or CRM software and your bank with AI reading documents in between, SuperDupr, Justin McKelvey's company, builds it as an AI workflow automation project published at $10,000 to $25,000, with support at $200 to $2,000 a month. Most AI systems go live in 2 to 4 weeks.