QuickBooks Online has raised its prices more than once in the last year, and if you’re evaluating it in mid-2026, it’s worth understanding not just what you’ll pay today but where the pricing is likely headed next. Intuit implemented what several independent trackers described as its largest single price increase yet on May 1, 2026, and further increases to the Essentials, Plus, and Advanced tiers are set to take effect August 1, 2026. Simple Start and Solopreneur pricing has stayed comparatively stable through these changes. Here’s a full plan-by-plan breakdown, along with the real all-in cost once payroll and other add-ons are factored in.
The Five Plans at a Glance
- Solopreneur — $20/month
- Simple Start — $35–$38/month
- Essentials — $70–$85/month (rising to the higher end August 1, 2026)
- Plus — $110–$140/month (rising August 1, 2026)
- Advanced — $250–$340/month (rising August 1, 2026)
New subscribers typically get either a 30-day free trial or a discount of up to 50% off for the first three months (the two offers can’t be combined), and new signups generally receive their introductory pricing locked in for around six months before the current-rate pricing applies.
Solopreneur — For Gig Workers and Single-Person Businesses
At $20/month, Solopreneur is QuickBooks’ most stripped-down offering, built specifically for one-person businesses and gig workers who need simple income, expense, mileage, and tax tracking rather than full double-entry accounting. It’s a genuinely different product from the rest of the lineup — it doesn’t use the full accounting engine the Simple Start-and-above plans run on, so it’s not meant to grow into a more complex business’s books.
If your business is purely you, invoicing clients and tracking deductible expenses for quarterly taxes, Solopreneur covers that job cleanly. The moment you need real double-entry accounting — for a business loan application, tax preparation by a CPA who expects standard financial statements, or simply more accurate books — you’ll need to move up to Simple Start instead.
Best for: True solo gig workers and freelancers who only need basic income/expense tracking.
Simple Start — The Real Entry Point for Small Business Accounting
Simple Start, priced around $35–$38/month, is the lowest QuickBooks Online tier that provides genuine full small-business accounting — proper double-entry bookkeeping, invoicing, expense tracking, and standard financial reports like a profit and loss statement and balance sheet. It supports a single user (plus your accountant, more on that below), which is its most significant limitation.
For a true solo freelancer or a very small business without staff, Simple Start is often sufficient on its own — some guides even suggest solo freelancers who don’t need Simple Start’s accounting depth can save money with a tool like FreshBooks or Wave instead, reserving QuickBooks specifically for when real double-entry accounting is required.
Best for: Solo freelancers and single-owner businesses that need genuine accounting, not just invoicing.
Essentials — For Small Teams With Bills and Billable Time
Essentials, running $70–$85/month depending on when you sign up relative to the August 2026 increase, adds the features Simple Start locks out: bill management (tracking and paying vendor bills) and time tracking for billable hours, along with support for up to 3 users. It’s aimed at small service businesses — a handful of employees or contractors who need to log time and the business needs to track what it owes vendors, not just what it’s owed by customers.
It’s worth knowing that a fair number of business owners skip Essentials entirely, jumping straight from Simple Start to Plus, because the features that matter most to many small businesses — inventory tracking, project profitability, and class/location tracking — only exist starting at the Plus tier, not Essentials. If your business doesn’t specifically need bill pay and time tracking without inventory or project tools, it’s worth double-checking whether Plus is actually the better direct jump.
Best for: Small service teams (2–3 people) that need bill management and time tracking without inventory needs.
Plus — Best for Product-Based and Project-Based Businesses
Plus, priced $110–$140/month, is where QuickBooks Online adds the features that connect accounting more directly to actual business operations: inventory tracking, project profitability reporting, purchase orders, budgeting tools, and class or location tracking (letting you segment your books by department, store location, or business line). It supports up to 5 users.
This is generally the practical landing spot for retailers, wholesalers, ecommerce sellers, contractors, and any project-based business that needs accounting to reflect operational reality — not just money in and money out, but which products, projects, or locations are actually profitable. If you have more than 3 team members who need system access at all, you’re forced into Plus regardless of whether you need the inventory and project features, since Essentials caps out at 3 users.
Best for: Growing businesses that need inventory, project tracking, or multi-user access beyond 3 people.
Advanced — For Larger, More Complex Businesses
Advanced, at $250–$340/month, is built for larger or operationally complex businesses, supporting up to 25 users and adding a substantial set of premium features: dedicated 24/7 customer support (versus limited-hours phone and chat support on the lower tiers), custom reporting and dashboards, batch invoicing, and — as of the most recent pricing update — bundled premium services like QuickBooks Workforce Elite (a payroll product) and Bill Pay Elite, along with AI-assisted “Continuously Clean Books” categorization with expert verification.
It’s genuinely expensive relative to the rest of the lineup, and the jump from Plus is steep. But for larger teams (roughly 6–25 people) needing that level of access and reporting depth, there’s no real in-between option in QuickBooks’ own lineup — Advanced is the only plan built for that scale.
Best for: Larger businesses (6–25 users) with complex operational and reporting needs.
The Costs That Aren’t in the Base Price
The published plan price is genuinely just the starting point. Payroll is billed entirely separately — Core payroll runs roughly $50/month plus around $6 per employee, and it’s worth adding only if you have actual W-2 employees; if you only pay 1099 contractors, QuickBooks handles those payments without needing the payroll add-on at all. Payment processing fees apply on top of any plan when you accept customer payments through QuickBooks. Live Bookkeeping (Intuit’s assisted bookkeeping service) and QuickBooks Time are also priced separately from the base subscription.
Put together, a realistic “Plus plus payroll” setup for a small business with a few employees can land closer to $200+ a month once you add these pieces — a meaningfully higher number than the base $110–$140 plan price alone suggests. It’s worth budgeting for the full stack, not just the advertised plan cost, when comparing QuickBooks against competitors.
The Free Accountant Access Most People Don’t Know About
Every QuickBooks Online plan includes one free accountant login that doesn’t count against your regular user limit — your accountant or bookkeeper gets full access (or view-only, your choice) without costing you an extra seat. Accountants can also sign up for QuickBooks Online Accountant for free, giving them a single dashboard to manage all their clients’ QuickBooks accounts, often at wholesale pricing they can pass along. If you work with an outside accountant or bookkeeper, this is worth confirming they’re set up correctly, since it’s easy to accidentally burn a paid user seat on someone who should have been added as the free accountant user instead.
How to Choose the Right Plan
Start by being honest about your user count and your actual operational needs, since those two factors — not price alone — determine the right tier. A true solo operator with simple income and expense tracking fits Solopreneur; a solo freelancer or single-owner business needing real accounting should start at Simple Start. A small team of 2–3 people needing bill pay and time tracking (but not inventory) fits Essentials, though it’s worth double-checking whether Plus is actually the better direct jump given how much value sits behind that tier specifically. Growing businesses with inventory, project-based work, or more than 3 users belong on Plus, and larger operations needing deeper reporting and more seats have no real alternative to Advanced within QuickBooks’ own lineup.
It’s also worth factoring in QuickBooks’ pricing trajectory before committing: prices have risen every year recently, with increases in some tiers running well above 10% annually and the Advanced tier seeing particularly steep hikes. If cost predictability matters as much as features, it’s worth comparing QuickBooks’ real all-in cost — plan plus payroll plus payment processing — against alternatives like Xero, which offers unlimited users on every plan starting around $25 a month and hasn’t raised US pricing at the same pace, before renewing into another year of QuickBooks’ rate.
