Sage vs. QuickBooks: Features & Price Comparison 2023

QuickBooks is a better accounting software provider than Sage because it offers better features across the board, as well as a stronger customer support team. But Sage is no slouch as it does beat QuickBooks in one key area: pricing.

We know that nobody starts a business for the paperwork. So, to save you time and money, Tech.co's researchers tested and ranked all of the top accounting software available today, pitting QuickBooks vs. Sage in the process.

Here's how each service compares with the other in top categories, including pricing, support, features, and ease of use.

In this guide:

• Sage vs. QuickBooks: Battle of the Accounting Software Providers
• Sage vs. QuickBooks: Pricing Plans
• Best for Business Features: QuickBooks
• Best for Ease of Use: QuickBooks
• Best for Help & Support: QuickBooks
• Alternatives to Sage & QuickBooks
• Final Verdict: Is Sage Better than QuickBooks?
• Our Methodology
• Sage vs Quickbooks: FAQs

Sage vs. QuickBooks: Battle of the Accounting Software Providers

QuickBooks is best for small businesses, while Sage is best for micro businesses on a budget. This is because QuickBooks has the best accounts payable and receivable features, but Sage has the lowest monthly pricing. Sage's cheapest plan, Start, is just $10 per month, while the cheapest plan from Quickbooks, Self Employed, starts from $15 per month.

While the available features vary by plan, QuickBooks handily beats Sage across the board because it offers better tools, including bookkeeping, financial reporting, advanced features, extra software functionality, and it includes mobile use and integrations. QuickBooks also has better support than Sage because the QuickBooks Advanced plan has 24/7 phone and email support, while Sage doesn't offer either on any of its plans.

QuickBooks offers higher plan limits than Sage. Even though both Sage and QuickBooks offer unlimited clients and invoices across all plans, QuickBooks is the only one to include unlimited estimates across all plans, while Sage only includes estimates in its Standard plan. Sage does offer higher user limits overall, with unlimited users on its Standard plan.

Check out our complete guide to QuickBooks Online pricing plans.

Sage vs. QuickBooks: Pricing Plans

QuickBooks offers five plans with monthly costs ranging from $15 to $200 per month, while Sage only offers two plans, which are $10 and $25 per month.

QuickBooks' first plan, Self Employed ($15 per month), supports one user and offers a strong range of features, including some that Sage's cheaper starter plan doesn't. These features include receipt scanning, accountant collaboration, estimate creation, and custom reports. The Sage Start plan ($10 per month) is also for one user and has similar features, plus four tools QuickBooks Self Employed doesn't have: an ability to record fixed assets, a supplier database, a client database, and overdue client payment tracking.

Next up is the $30 per month QuickBooks Simple Start plan, which adds those four Sage plan tools but not much else despite a price hike that puts it above the next Sage plan, Standard, which for just $25 per month adds unlimited users and a host of accounts payable tools that QuickBooks reserves for its $50 per month Essentials plan. QuickBooks also has the $85 per month Plus plan, which supports 5 users and adds project accounting and forecasting tools that no Sage plan has, as well as the QuickBooks Advanced plan, which for a big $200 per month price tag supports 25 user but adds no core functionality.

In addition to QuickBooks' main plans, businesses may want to get the QuickBooks Payroll add-on: Core is $45 per month, plus $4 per employee per month; Payroll Premium is $75 per month, plus $8 per employee per month; and Payroll Elite is $125 per month, plus $10 per employee per month.

Below is a comparison table covering all of the Sage and QuickBooks plans. QuickBooks has a 50% off deal for the first three months for those who skip the free trial, which is reflected in our table.

Sage vs QuickBooks: Which has the best free plan?

Sage and QuickBooks do not offer a permanent free plan. However, both services offer a 30-day trial of their software for free, for any plan tier and the number of users typically allowed for that plan.

Both services also include a few extra deals. Sage users can get 70% off for the first six months of any plan if they sign up for a full year.

Similarly, QuickBooks offers 50% off the first three months even if users are paying monthly. It's worth noting that it won't offer a 30-day free trial to users who sign up for three months of half-off pricing.

Best for Business Features: QuickBooks

QuickBooks and Sage both offer plenty of accounting features, but QuickBooks takes home the prize in every category. Here are the features each software does or doesn't offer, including our researchers' five-point scores for each.

Bookkeeping

QuickBooks (5/5) and Sage (3.8/5) both offer functionality for manually adding transactions, importing bank statements, and automatic bank reconciliation. They both reserve inventory management for their more expensive plans. QuickBooks offers receipt scanning and fixed asset recording, but Sage does not.

Accounts Payable

QuickBooks (5/5) offers a supplier database across all plans, while Sage (4/5) only includes this with the Standard plan. Both QuickBooks Essentials and Sage Standard let users track bills and expenses, set up recurring bills, and record payment in multiple currencies.

Accounts Receivable

QuickBooks (5/5) and Sage (4.3/5) share many accounts receivable features: Both will track overdue client payments, have a client database and online client payments, have invoices and estimates, can set up recurring invoices, will track invoices, and can send invoices via mobile. But QuickBooks lets users send payment reminders, while Sage does not.

Project Accounting

QuickBooks (4.5/5) supports time tracking, employee labor cost calculations, project-specific expenses, and project profitability tracking, while Sage (1/5) doesn't offer any of these project accounting tools on either of its plans.

Reporting and Forecasting

Both QuickBooks (5/5) and Sage (4.2/5) support income statements, balance sheets, sales reports, and an uncommon accounting feature, cash flow statements. But QuickBooks supports custom reports while Sage does not. QuickBooks Plus offers more functionality that Sage doesn't have: a budget management interface and the ability to set up multiple budgets.

Sage's invoicing interface

Best for Ease of Use: QuickBooks

Both Sage and QuickBooks are set up for easy navigation, with a main dashboard that displays the key stats to know and it is accompanied by a sidebar that links to further categories. Each of these categories offers in-depth stats, files, templates, and reports, along with settings that can be adjusted.

The main dashboards are customizable, letting managers predetermine which stats are most important to see first, from Receivables and Payables to the year-to-date's revenue.

Best for Help & Support: QuickBooks

Our researchers score QuickBooks an above average 3.25/5 for its onboarding process, although this loses to Sage's solid score of 4.25/5. Both offered a knowledge base and video tutorial, but only Sage had an in-software tutorial guiding users through each feature as it came up.

So why does QuickBooks have better help than Sage? It's simple: because of its support options. The QuickBooks Advanced plan has 24/7 live support for phone, email, and live chat, while Sage only offers live chat support, with no 24/7 options and no phone or email help.

Alternatives to Sage & QuickBooks

QuickBooks and Sage aren't the only options for accounting software: our researchers also found Xero, FreshBooks, Wave, Zoho Books and Kashoo to be good alternatives. See how they compare in our table below.

QuickBooks remains at the top of our list, but the other heavy hitters include Xero (4.5/5 overall), which starts at $12 per month and offers great integrations and mobile functionality.

Another top choice is Freshbooks (4/5), which is our pick for the best retail accounting software due to its inexpensive $15 per month plans, automated invoicing, and strong profit and loss comparisons. Alternatively, there is also Wave (4/5), which has a useful free plan.

Zoho Books (4/5) is another option because it offers plenty of automated features, from sending invoices and estimates to autoscanning documents to the cloud.

Our Methodology

Tech.co's team of researchers tested nine different sub-categories when looking for the best accounting software solutions. Each software brand was given a score for pricing, support, and software functionality (this includes integrations, mobile ability, and additional features beyond accounting such as payroll), as well as six types of features: bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, project accounting, financial reporting, and budget & forecasting.

These scores were condensed into a single score out of five for each service, giving our reviewers insight into which accounting services were best and which were better in each sub-category.

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