Something worth noticing happened to the word free this year, and it moved in both directions at once.
Before the list: we make one of these. BrassWell is ours, it is the last entry, and you should read everything below with that in mind — which is also why every price here is the regular price read off the vendor’s own page, not the discounted one, and why the sources are linked at the bottom.
What changed in 2026
On June 1, 2026, Wave moved automatic bank connections out of its free plan and behind Pro at $19 a month. Nobody was grandfathered. Invoicing stayed free.
Meanwhile Intuit went the other way and launched QuickBooks Free — a permanent $0 plan, not a trial, with caps: two invoices and one estimate a month, two receipt uploads, five business trips, one contractor, one bank connection, one user.
So two of the biggest names both offer something called free, and the offers have almost nothing in common. One gives you unlimited invoicing and no bank feed. The other gives you a bank feed and two invoices. Reading either as "free accounting software" tells you nothing useful.
One caveat that most write-ups of the QuickBooks free plan skip, and it changes the arithmetic: switching on QuickBooks Payments removes the two-invoice cap. Invoicing becomes unlimited on the $0 plan. You are paying for it in card processing fees on every invoice rather than in subscription, which may or may not be cheaper depending on your invoice sizes, but it means "I send five invoices a month" does not on its own push you off the free tier.
Two free plans, 2026
Same word. The caps are the product.
Work out which question you are asking
Almost every bad software decision starts here, so it is worth thirty seconds. Expense tracking is three different jobs wearing one name.
Bookkeeping. You need statements that a lender, investor or accountant will accept. Double-entry, balance sheet, the lot.
Getting paid. The expenses are incidental; what you actually need is invoices going out and money coming back.
Not being surprised in April. You need to know how much of what landed this month is not yours, and what the year is adding up to against the lines on a Schedule C.
Nearly everything on the market is excellent at one of those and indifferent to the other two. Pick the job first.
The options, with what they actually cost
Regular monthly prices, US, checked September 10, 2026. Several of these run aggressive introductory discounts — 50% or even 90% for three months — which is not what you pay in month four, so the promotional figures are left out deliberately.
Wave — free, or $19
Best at: invoicing on a budget. Unlimited invoices, estimates and bills at $0 is still the strongest free offer here.
Watch: the automatic bank feed is Pro-only since June. Manual statement upload still works free. Receipt scanning is an add-on — $11 a month on Starter, included with Pro — so a free Wave account that also reads receipts is really $11. No tax set-aside at any price.
QuickBooks — free, $20, or $38
Best at: mileage, and being the thing your accountant already knows. QuickBooks Free is a permanent $0 plan; Lite at $20 lifts the caps to unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage; Simple Start at $38 adds the fuller accounting set.
Watch: the free tier’s caps are low enough that most working people clear them in two weeks — two receipts a month is a trial, not a plan — and it is single-user, so your accountant cannot get in. The invoice cap is the exception: turn on QuickBooks Payments and it disappears, at the cost of card fees on every invoice.
FreshBooks — $23, $43 or $70
Best at: invoicing that looks professional, and client communication around it.
Watch: billable clients are capped by tier — five on Lite. If you have twenty small clients rather than three big ones, the cheap plan is not available to you and the real price is $43. Extra users are $11 each.
A spreadsheet — $0
Best at: being free, being yours, and never changing its pricing.
Watch: it will not chase an invoice, and nobody has ever reconstructed a year of receipts from one in April without swearing. Genuinely fine below a few clients.
BrassWell — $19.99 or $29.99
Ours. Core at $19.99 does manual entry, CSV import and receipt scanning, capped at five invoices a calendar month. Pro at $29.99 adds automatic bank import.
Best at: the third job above — money arrives and is split before you spend the tax, the year adds up against Schedule C lines, and the whole thing assumes lumpy months.
Watch: no payroll, no double-entry statements, and Wave Pro imports your bank for $11 less. If bank import at the lowest price is the whole requirement, buy Wave.
What none of them do for you
Every product on this page will categorize a transaction. Not one of them makes the deduction legitimate. That distinction costs people money every year and no pricing page mentions it.
A category is a label. What the IRS asks for, if it ever asks, is a record: what it was, when, how much, and the business purpose. For most expenses the receipt plus the ledger entry does it. For meals and travel the business purpose has to be written down, and "client lunch" written in March about a lunch in July is a reconstruction, not a record.
Mileage is the sharpest version. The rate changed mid-year in 2026 — 72.5¢ for January to June, 76¢ from July — so a year’s driving is two calculations, and an app that logged the trips without the dates attached has given you a number you cannot defend. We wrote that up separately.
The practical version: whatever you choose, keep the receipt image, and write the purpose at the time. The software is the filing cabinet, not the evidence.
Lock-in, and how to check for it before you care
The expensive part of choosing wrong is rarely the subscription. It is the year of records that only exists inside somebody’s product.
Before you commit, do the export once, on the free trial, with three transactions in the account. If it comes out as CSV with dates, amounts, descriptions and categories intact, you can leave whenever you like and the price becomes the only question. If the export is a PDF report, or a paid feature, or a support ticket, you have learned the most important thing about that product in about four minutes.
This applies to us as well. BrassWell exports everything as one CSV from the plan screen, deliberately including on the screen you see when the app is locked, because an export you cannot reach when your subscription lapses is not an export.
How to actually decide, in about a minute
Count the invoices you send in a normal month. Count the receipts you would photograph. Then look at the caps rather than the headline price — that is where every one of these products is really priced, and it is the number the comparison tables leave out. For most people the binding cap turns out to be receipts rather than invoices: Wave charges $11 a month to scan them and QuickBooks Free stops at two, while the invoice limits on both can be worked around.
If both counts are low, take a free tier and stop reading. If the invoice count is high and the tax question is somebody else’s problem, Wave free or FreshBooks. If April is the thing that worries you, that is the job we built for.
Two things worth checking before you pay anyone
Whether your bank connects. Every product here uses an aggregator, and coverage is not identical. Check your specific institution during a trial, not after.
Whether you can get your data out. Look for CSV export before you put a year of records in. A product that makes leaving hard has told you something about how it expects to keep you.
Questions, answered
What is the best free expense tracker for self-employed people in 2026?
It depends entirely on which caps you hit first. Wave’s free Starter plan gives unlimited invoices, estimates and bills but no automatic bank feed since June 1, 2026, and receipt scanning is an $11 per month add-on. QuickBooks Free includes a bank feed but caps you at two invoices, two receipt uploads and five business trips per month. For most people the receipt cap binds before the invoice cap does.
Is Wave still free in 2026?
Yes, for invoicing. The Starter plan costs nothing and still covers unlimited invoices, estimates, bills, categorization, reconciliation and reporting, plus manual bank statement uploads. What moved behind the $19 Pro plan on June 1, 2026 was the automatic bank connection and the ability to add other users. Receipt scanning has always been a separate add-on, at $11 per month on Starter.
Does QuickBooks have a free plan now?
Yes. QuickBooks Free is a permanent $0 plan, not a trial, with monthly caps of two invoices and one estimate, two receipt uploads, five business trips and one contractor, plus one bank connection and one user. Lite is $20 per month and Simple Start is $38 at regular price; both run introductory discounts that do not apply after three months.
Can I send more than two invoices a month on QuickBooks Free?
Yes, if you switch on QuickBooks Payments. Doing so removes the two-invoice cap and makes invoicing unlimited on the $0 plan. You are then paying per transaction in card processing fees instead of by subscription, so whether it is cheaper depends on how large your invoices are. The receipt, mileage, contractor and single-user limits are unaffected.
Why is FreshBooks more expensive than it looks?
FreshBooks prices by billable clients rather than by features. The $23 Lite plan allows five billable clients, so anyone with more than five active clients is on the $43 Plus plan regardless of which features they use. Additional team members are $11 each per month.
Should I trust a comparison written by one of the products in it?
Not on its own. Check the linked vendor pricing pages, which is why they are listed as sources rather than summarized. The useful test for any comparison like this one is whether it names a case where the author’s own product is the wrong choice — and here that case is bank import at the lowest price, where Wave Pro is $11 a month cheaper than BrassWell Pro.
Sources
- Wave pricing — Wave. Starter at $0 and Pro at $19 monthly, what each includes, and the receipt-capture add-on at $11/month on Starter.
- FAQ: Plans for legacy businesses — Wave Help Center. The June 1, 2026 migration, and confirmation that bank connections moved to Pro without grandfathering.
- Is QuickBooks free? Plans, features, limits — Intuit. The QuickBooks Free caps, item by item, and the fact that enabling QuickBooks Payments lifts the two-invoice limit.
- QuickBooks plans and pricing — Intuit. Lite at $20 and Simple Start at $38, regular price rather than the introductory rate.
- FreshBooks pricing — FreshBooks. Lite, Plus and Premium at $23, $43 and $70, the billable-client limits, and the $11 per additional user.
Looking for more?
Related guides
- A Wave Accounting alternativeThe June change, in more detail.
- QuickBooks Self-Employed alternativeWhat replaced it, and whether going back makes sense.
- What you can actually deductThe reason the categories matter more than the app.
- How much to set aside for taxesThe job most of these tools do not do.
Elsewhere on BrassWell
- All guidesEverything we’ve written, in one place.
- Support Center48 answers, written the way these guides are.
- How BrassWell worksIncome, buckets, tax set-aside and invoicing.
- Ask us directlyA person replies, 9 AM–5 PM Pacific, Mon–Fri.
Prices were read from each vendor’s own pricing page on September 10, 2026 and are US regular prices, excluding introductory discounts. They change often. BrassWell is one of the products compared here and this page is written by its makers; the vendor pages are linked above so you can check every figure. None of the other products are affiliated with BrassWell.