FreshBooks Pricing: How Much Does FreshBooks Cost?

FreshBooks price plans start as low as $4.50 per month and go as high as $15 per month, although there's also a custom-priced version for enterprise businesses. That price range is very low for accounting software, but every user added after the first will cost an additional $10 per person per month, which can add up.

FreshBooks is a leading service in the accounting software industry. It includes a wide range of features, with plenty of third-party integrations available for any functionality it doesn't offer.

But is it worth the cost? There are plenty of factors to consider, from which features you need to the cost of billing annually vs monthly. And, once you've made up your mind, you can get FreshBooks today with a 30-day free trial to try it out.

Here's our overview of FreshBooks' pricing.

In this guide:

• FreshBooks Online Pricing Plans
• How Does FreshBooks' Pricing Compare With Other Solutions?
• Verdict – Is FreshBooks Online good value?

FreshBooks Pricing Plans

We'll take a look at each of the software's three main pricing plans, as well as a fourth, custom-priced option aimed at enterprise-level operations.

A 30-day free trial is available for all plans, though there's no permanent free version of any FreshBooks plan.

FreshBooks Lite Plan

The cheapest FreshBooks plan, Lite, starts at $4.50 per month when billed annually. Billed monthly, it's a flat $6 per month.

This lightweight plan is designed for freelancers and the self-employed: It'll help one person keep their invoices, bills, and tax information in order. The primary features include unlimited customizable invoices, as well as unlimited expense entries, time tracking, and estimates. It'll let users accept their clients' payments online through credit card and ACH payments, and will automatically import expenses from users' bank accounts. Users will also have access to over 200 integrations, though many of these third-party services will come with their own monthly charge.

One big restriction under this plan? Users are capped at just five billable clients.

FreshBooks Plus Plan

The Plus Plan costs $7.50 per month when billed annually, and $10 per month when billed monthly.

Under this plan, which is FreshBooks' most popular offering, users will get all the features found in Lite, with the cap on billable clients raised to a healthy 50. Quite a few additional, very useful features kick in as well: For starters, Plus users will be able to set up invoices, late fees, and late payment reminders on an automated, recurring basis. This automation saves a lot of hassle, and is a big benefit of accounting software in general. Plus also comes with client retainers, as well as an unlimited number of proposals.

FreshBooks Premium Plan

FreshBooks' Premium plan will cost you $15 per month billed annually, and $20 per month billed monthly.

But that price hike won't get you any additional features. It does boost the billable client cap up to 500, though, which isn't nothing.

In the end, Premium isn't as cost-effective as the Plus plan, which is available at almost half the cost. Still, by the time a business is large enough to field between 50 and 500 clients, they likely won't notice the $20 per month cost to use this plan.

FreshBooks Select

Finally, there's the FreshBooks Select plan. It comes with a dedicated Account Manager, includes customized training for a business's entire team, and opens up “super low” credit card transaction rates to help larger operations save even more. The cost is customized, meaning you'll need to get in touch with FreshBooks directly in order to find out how much it might cost your business.

Needless to say, this plan is only for enterprise operations, so most businesses should opt for a lower plan tier.

Add-Ons: Team Members and Advanced Payments

All the prices listed above are the base prices you can expect to pay. Each starting price gives a business one user account. The charge to add more team members to the Lite, Plus, or Premium plans is $10 per person per month. This can add up fast, so make sure you know how many people will need to regularly access your accounting software before you commit to FreshBooks.

FreshBooks has another popular add-on, Advanced Payments, which can be added to the Plus and Premium plans for an additional $20 per month.

Advanced Payments lets users operate a virtual terminal for faster payment acceptance. It's secured and PCI-compliant, though it comes with a 3.5% + $0.30 fee per transaction, in addition to the monthly charge. Without it, users will still have a recourse for payments, since all the plans will let users accept credit cards and ACH bank transfers.

How Does FreshBooks Pricing Compare With Other Solutions?

FreshBooks isn't the only software name in the accounting game. Here's a quick overview of the other top accounting services available today, and how much they cost compared to FreshBooks' plans.

Xero

Available from $4.50 per month, Xero has three plans: Early, Growing, and Established. Early is the $4.50 per month plan, Growing costs $15 per month, while Established costs $30 per month.

The Early plan has more restrictions than FreshBooks' comparable Lite plan, allowing just five invoices and quotes, five bills, and reconciliation for just 20 bank transactions. The Growing plan offers more functionality, including unlimited invoicing, billing, and bank transactions, but it's still not as much as FreshBooks Plus has to offer. Xero's pricing is comparable, but FreshBooks still comes out on top.

Zoho Books

The Zoho Books accounting app starts with the $9 per month Basic plan, followed by the $19 per month Standard plan, then the $29 per month Professional plan.

It's an attractive option, as even the Basic plan has a wide range of abilities with no strong limitations, aside from a cap of 50 contacts. If your business needs multiple team members to access its accounting software, Zoho Books' pricing isn't bad: The Basic plan supports two users at no extra cost, the Standard plan supports three, while the Professional plan supports ten.

Sage 50cloud

The Sage 50cloud software solution comes in three plans. They offer different pricing for monthly vs annual bills, but the monthly bills require a one-year commitment, which is functionally pretty close to paying an annual bill.

At any rate, three plans are available: Pro Accounting, for $50.58 per month when billed monthly, and $503.23 per year when billed annually; Premium Accounting, for $78.21 per month when billed monthly, and $311.45 per year when billed annually; and Quantum Accounting, for $197.55 per month when billed monthly, and $792.78 per year when billed annually.

All these plans are more expensive than FreshBooks, though the Quantum Accounting plan in particular offers something unique: It's for businesses with up to 40 employees, and includes industry-specific features that make it a custom fit for the construction, distribution, manufacturing, and nonprofit industries.

FreeAgent

Refreshingly, FreeAgent just has one plan. It'll cost you $12 per month for the first six months, and then $24 per month after that. Users, clients and projects are all unlimited, and there's a 30-day free trial as well.

The service is based out of the UK, and that's when their support hours are, which may pose a barrier to US-based businesses. London, for example, is a full eight hours ahead of the west coast. Otherwise it's a solid service, handling estimates, invoices, expenses, time tracking, banking, and projects.

QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online offers three plans: The Simple Start plan costs $12 per month; Plus costs $35 per month; and Advanced costs $75 per month.

In general, QuickBooks offers even more features than FreshBooks, although it has fewer third-party integrations. In terms of functionality, QuickBooks' Plus plan is comparable to the Plus plan from FreshBooks.

The plans each support a different number of users. Simple Start has just one, Plus supports up to five users, and Advanced supports up to 25 users. As a result, the number of employees any given business needs to access its accounting software might make QuickBooks a cheaper alternative to FreshBooks: If just one or two users need it, FreshBooks is cheaper, but any more, and QuickBooks is the better deal.

Get the full lowdown in our FreshBooks vs QuickBooks head to head guide

Verdict – Is FreshBooks good value?