Accounting software is sold on a monthly figure and bought on a monthly figure, and for freelancers the monthly figure is rarely the largest number involved. The costs that matter arrive somewhere else: a percentage on every invoice your client pays by card, an add-on for the thing you assumed was included, and a tier you get pushed up because you signed a sixth client.
Six options below, compared on what they cost once you are actually using them rather than what the pricing page leads with.
The Short Version
- Free is a real option. Wave’s core product costs nothing and Zoho Books is free under a revenue ceiling. Both are proper double-entry systems, not toys.
- Card processing is the real line item. Roughly 2.9% plus a fixed fee per transaction is standard. On £60,000 of card-paid invoices that is around £1,740 a year, which dwarfs any subscription here.
- The upgrade triggers are client count and users, not features. Several tools cap billable clients on the entry tier, which is a strange thing to ration to a freelancer.
- Your bank may already be paying for it. FreeAgent is free for NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank and Mettle business account holders, which makes it the cheapest serious option in the UK by a distance.
- Jurisdiction decides more than preference. Making Tax Digital, Schedule C and cross-border VAT are not features you can bolt on later.
Where the Money Actually Goes
Take a freelancer billing £5,000 a month, mostly to clients who pay by card through the invoice link because it is easier for everybody. The subscription might be £19. The payment processing on £5,000 at around 2.9% plus a fixed fee is roughly £150. The software is 11% of what the software costs.
This is not a scandal — card processing costs money and someone pays it — but it reframes the comparison. The question is not which tool is cheapest per month. It is whether you can take payment some other way, whether the tool lets you, and what the add-ons cost on top.
Then there are the extras that are not in the headline price. Wave charges separately for receipt scanning and payroll. Most tools charge per extra user, so bringing in a bookkeeper costs money. And several entry tiers cap how many clients you can bill, which is the upgrade trigger most freelancers hit first and least expect.
The Six, at a Glance
| Tool | Entry price | Free tier | Strongest for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wave | Free; Pro $19/mo | Yes, unlimited invoicing | Spending nothing |
| Zoho Books | Free under revenue cap; $15/mo | Yes, with conditions | Low revenue, growing later |
| FreeAgent | £19/mo sole trader | Free with some UK banks | UK sole traders |
| QuickBooks Solopreneur | $20/mo | No | US tax filing |
| Xero | $25/mo entry | No | Unlimited users |
| FreshBooks | $17/mo Lite | No | Invoicing and time tracking |
Figures checked in October 2026. Currencies are as each vendor publishes them, which is part of the problem: comparing a dollar list price with a sterling one is not a like-for-like comparison, and regional pricing often differs from both. Confirm on the vendor’s own page for your country before buying.
The Six, in Detail
1. Wave
The only genuinely free full accounting product on this list, and it has stayed free for long enough to be credible. The Starter plan gives you unlimited invoices, estimates, bills and bookkeeping records, with mobile invoicing and a single dashboard.
Pro is $19 a month, or $190 a year, and the thing it buys is automatic bank transaction import and categorisation. That matters more than it sounds: manual statement entry is the task that quietly kills bookkeeping habits around month four.
What it costs beyond the subscription: card payments at 2.9% plus $0.60 per transaction on Starter, with the fixed fee waived on the first ten transactions a month on Pro. Receipt scanning is a separate add-on, as is payroll, from $25 a month. Where it falls down: North America first — the deeper functionality and payroll assume US or Canadian operations, and it is a weak fit for UK or EU VAT.
2. Zoho Books
Free while your annual revenue stays under the threshold — commonly cited at $50,000 — and a full double-entry system rather than a cut-down one. Paid tiers start around $15 a month and climb steeply through five levels.
Its real advantage is that it is one module of a very large suite. If you end up wanting CRM, expenses, inventory and a help desk, they exist and they talk to each other, which is not true of most tools a freelancer starts on.
Where it falls down: the revenue cap is a cliff, not a slope, and it arrives in the year you can least afford admin disruption. The interface carries the density of an enterprise suite, and the upsell into the wider Zoho ecosystem is persistent.
3. FreeAgent
Built for UK small businesses and priced by entity type: £19 a month for a sole trader, £27 for a partnership or LLP, £33 for a limited company, all excluding VAT, with 50% off for the first six months on monthly billing or the first year on annual.
The headline, though, is that it is free indefinitely if you hold a business current account with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland or Ulster Bank, or with Mettle provided you make at least one transaction a month. NatWest owns FreeAgent, which is why. For a UK sole trader already banking there, this is a full-featured accounting package at no cost, and it makes most of the rest of this list academic.
It handles Self Assessment and Making Tax Digital properly, which is the actual job for a UK freelancer, and it is pleasant to use in a way accounting software usually is not.
Where it falls down: it is UK-only in any meaningful sense. If you invoice across borders or expect to relocate, you are buying into a system you will have to leave.
4. QuickBooks Solopreneur
Around $20 a month, and built narrowly for one-person US businesses. Where it earns its place is tax: Schedule C categorisation, quarterly estimated tax, mileage tracking and bank feeds, with a clean path into filing.
For a US sole proprietor whose main annual pain is working out what they owe, this is the most direct answer here. The full QuickBooks Online tier above it starts around $38 if you outgrow the single-person framing.
Where it falls down: deliberately limited. No proposals, no contracts, no project management, and the single-person design is a wall rather than a starting point. QuickBooks also has a long record of annual price rises, so budget for the figure going up rather than holding.
5. Xero
Entry pricing around $25 a month, and the one structural decision that sets it apart is no per-user licence fees. Your accountant, your bookkeeper and your future business partner all get access without changing what you pay, which is unusual and becomes valuable the moment anyone else touches the books.
It is genuinely multi-country, with proper handling of multiple currencies and tax regimes, and the accountant-facing ecosystem around it is the largest of any tool here. If you want to hand your year-end to a professional who already knows the software, Xero is the safe bet almost anywhere.
Where it falls down: the entry tier is limited on invoice and bill volume in a way that catches people out, so check the current caps against your actual monthly count. It is also the most expensive starting point here for a freelancer who will never add a second user.
6. FreshBooks
Lite starts around $17 a month and is the most invoicing-forward option here. Time tracking is built in rather than bolted on, which matters if you bill hourly, and the invoices themselves are the best-looking of the six.
It is designed around the service freelancer rather than the product seller, and it shows in the details: retainers, proposals and project time all sit where you expect them.
Where it falls down: the billable client cap. Lite covers five clients; the Plus tier at roughly $30 a month raises it to fifty and adds double-entry accounting and proposals. Five is a number a working freelancer passes quickly, so treat Plus as the real entry price and compare from there.
The Upgrade Triggers
Every tool here has a moment where your bill changes. Knowing which one applies to you is more useful than comparing entry prices, because the entry price is the one you pay for the shortest time.
- Client count. FreshBooks Lite stops at five billable clients. If you have six, your real price is the Plus tier.
- Revenue. Zoho Books’ free plan ends at a revenue ceiling. Model what you pay the year after you cross it.
- A second pair of hands. Most tools charge per user. Xero does not, which is its entire argument.
- Entity change. Going from sole trader to limited company moves you up a tier in anything priced by entity, FreeAgent included, and roughly doubles the cost.
- Bank switch. Leaving NatWest, RBS, Ulster or Mettle turns a free FreeAgent account into a paid one.
How to Choose
- Check your bank before anything else. If you are a UK freelancer with the right business account, FreeAgent is free and the comparison is over.
- Start from your tax jurisdiction. Making Tax Digital, Schedule C and EU VAT are compliance, not preferences. A tool that does not handle yours is disqualified whatever it costs.
- Add up the payment processing, not the subscription. Multiply your annual card-paid invoicing by about 3%. If that number is uncomfortable, the fix is bank transfer terms, not cheaper software.
- Count your billable clients and your users. Those two numbers determine your real tier more reliably than any feature list.
- Ask your accountant what they use. Unglamorous and the single highest-value step, because the cost of them wrestling with unfamiliar software lands on your invoice.
- Test the bank feed with your actual bank. Automatic import is the feature that keeps the habit alive, and support for smaller or non-UK banks is patchier than the marketing suggests.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I just use a spreadsheet?
For a handful of invoices a year, yes, and plenty of people do. It stops working at the point you need to reconcile a bank statement, chase late payers, or produce something an accountant can use without re-entering it. The realistic threshold is somewhere around twenty invoices a year, or the first time you are VAT registered.
Is free accounting software actually safe to rely on?
Wave and Zoho Books are real double-entry systems, not demos, and both have been around long enough to trust with a year of records. The risk is not quality but direction: free tiers get narrowed, and the revenue cap or feature set you signed up under can change. Export your data periodically so that a change of terms is an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
Why does my invoicing tool take a percentage?
Because card payment has an underlying cost — the card networks and the processor each take a share — and the software passes it on with a margin. You can avoid it by invoicing for bank transfer, which costs nothing and gets paid more slowly. Most freelancers conclude that faster payment is worth roughly 3%, but it should be a decision rather than a default.
How hard is it to switch later?
Moving contacts, invoices and a chart of accounts is routine and every tool here imports CSV. What does not move cleanly is reconciled bank history and attached receipts, so the sane time to switch is at the start of a tax year, with the old account kept open read-only until the previous year is filed.
Do I need double-entry accounting as a sole trader?
Not strictly, in most jurisdictions, for a simple sole trade. You will want it the moment you have a business loan, stock, assets being depreciated, or an accountant producing formal accounts. Since several tools here include it at no extra cost, the question is mostly whether you are choosing a tool that will still fit in three years.
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