FreshBooks Pricing in 2026: Every Plan, Add-Ons and Real Costs

FreshBooks charges by billable client, not by user. Lite lists at $23/mo for 5 clients, Plus at $43/mo for 50, and Premium at $70/mo for unlimited clients, verified on FreshBooks' US pricing page in September 2026. Select carries no published price, and every plan bills team members separately at $11/mo each. A new-customer promo currently on that page cuts Lite to $1/mo for the first year and Plus and Premium by 80% for three months.

Finpresso data: the accounting software ranking we publish evaluated 264 tools, updated September 2026. FreshBooks sits in that directory next to Xero, QuickBooks, and Zoho Books.

The rates below were read on 25 September 2026 on FreshBooks' pricing page, including its plan comparison table and FAQ. FreshBooks is cloud invoicing software that adds double-entry bookkeeping, bank reconciliation, and an accountant login once you buy Plus or above.

At a glance

Plan	Best for a finance close	USD list, September 2026	New-customer promo	Billable clients
Lite	Solo invoicing, no ledger an accountant will sign	$23/mo	$1/mo for the first year	5
Plus	Bank reconciliation, double-entry reports, accountant login	$43/mo	$8.60/mo for 3 months	50
Premium	Vendor bills and project profitability on top of Plus	$70/mo	$14/mo for 3 months	Unlimited
Select	Higher volume, lower payment fees, 2 team logins included	No published price	Sales quote only	Unlimited

A billable client is anyone you have invoiced, active or archived, so closing out a finished job does not free the slot. Team members are billed on top of every plan, and FreshBooks does not name an expiration date for the current promo on its pricing page, so the discount could change before you check out.

Clients, not seats, decide the plan

FreshBooks counts billable clients, and that number, not headcount, is what pushes you to the next tier. Lite stops at 5, Plus at 50, and Premium and Select go unlimited, according to FreshBooks' own plan comparison table. A freelancer with six ongoing clients cannot stay on Lite even working alone, while a two-person shop billing four retainer clients fits comfortably.

Archived clients still count against the cap, which is the trap. The FreshBooks FAQ confirms client limits track active and archived accounts together, and freeing a slot means deleting the client outright, not archiving a finished engagement. Deleted clients' past invoices stay visible, so nothing is lost by clearing the list.

Team members are a separate line from the plan price. Every plan, including Select, charges a per-login fee beyond what is included, and Select is the only tier that bundles two logins at no extra charge. A two-person firm on Plus therefore pays the plan price plus one login fee, not the plan alone.

What Lite leaves out of the ledger

Lite covers invoicing, estimates, recurring billing, time tracking, and expense logging, all core to running a solo book of business. What it does not include is the accounting layer: bank reconciliation, double-entry reports, and the free accountant login all start on Plus, so a bookkeeper cannot close a Lite file the way a controller expects.

That gap matters for anyone who plans to hand books to an accountant at year-end. If reconciling the bank feed against invoiced income is part of your monthly routine, Lite forces that work into a spreadsheet outside FreshBooks, which defeats the point of subscribing in the first place.

Plus adds the ledger, Premium adds vendor bills

Plus is where FreshBooks becomes a real ledger. On top of everything in Lite, Plus adds bank reconciliation, double-entry financial reports, proposals, retainers, and the free accountant seat that lets a bookkeeper log in without a paid slot. For most service firms that want books an accountant can sign off on, Plus is the practical floor, not Lite.

Premium layers on accounts payable and project profitability, the two features a firm needs once it pays vendors or tracks whether a job actually cleared its cost. If you never enter a vendor bill and never need a per-project margin report, Premium's extra $27/mo over Plus buys features you will not touch; if you do either regularly, Premium replaces a second tool you would otherwise run alongside FreshBooks.

Select is a quote, not a checkout

FreshBooks does not publish a price for Select. The plan page lists it alongside Lite, Plus, and Premium with the same feature checkmarks, but the price cell reads "Select Select" instead of a dollar figure, and the button routes to a sales conversation rather than a signup form. Budget it only after a demo confirms the number, since FreshBooks does not disclose a starting price or a typical range on the page.

What Select is known to include, from the same comparison table: unlimited billable clients, two team member logins at no extra charge, Advanced Payments bundled in rather than billed separately, and lower card and ACH processing rates than the published tiers, though FreshBooks does not print those discounted rates either. If your volume is high enough that per-transaction fees matter more than the monthly plan price, Select is the tier worth a sales call.

Add-ons the plan price does not cover

Advanced Payments costs $20/mo on Lite, Plus, and Premium, and comes included on Select. It is the feature that lets a client save a card on file for recurring charges rather than re-entering payment details every invoice, which matters for retainer-based firms.

Team members run $11/mo per person on every plan, Select included beyond its two free logins. A five-person firm on Plus with three billed team members adds $33/mo in logins alone, which more than doubles the sticker price before anything else is added.

Payroll, run through Gusto, lists at $40/mo plus $6/mo per person, the same structure FreshBooks' pricing page shows across all four plans. It is a separate subscription from the accounting plan, so adding one employee to payroll adds $46/mo to the total bill regardless of which FreshBooks tier you are on.

Card processing on FreshBooks Payments runs 2.9% plus $0.30 per credit card transaction and 1% on ACH bank transfers, per the pricing page FAQ. On a $1,000 invoice that is $29.30 by card versus $10 by ACH, a gap worth steering clients toward the cheaper rail when the option exists.

The promo year is not the renewal year

FreshBooks' current promo cuts Lite to $1/mo for a full first year, and cuts Plus and Premium by 80% for three months only, before returning to list. The promo and the 30-day free trial are two separate offers, and the pricing page does not confirm whether they can be combined, so do not assume a trial month also locks in the discounted rate.

Because the campaign has no printed end date on the pricing page as of this writing, treat the numbers above as what FreshBooks is charging new customers today rather than a fixed-term deal. Re-check the checkout page before you subscribe.

FreshBooks against three ledgers that price differently

The comparison below uses each vendor's published monthly list price, no promos, since FreshBooks' promo runs three months while Xero's currently runs six and ends within days of this writing. Every figure came from the vendor's own US pricing page on 25 September 2026.

Plan built for a small client roster	How it is billed	Monthly list, September 2026
FreshBooks Plus	50 billable clients, unlimited team via add-on	$43/mo
Xero Growing	Unlimited users, no client cap	$55/mo
Zoho Books Professional	5 users included, unlimited clients	$50/mo, or $40/mo billed annually
Wave Pro	Per business, unlimited invoicing	$19/mo, or $190/year
QuickBooks Online Plus	5 billable users, unlimited clients	$140/mo

Xero bills users, not clients, and every plan includes unlimited general users at no per-seat fee. Its US pricing page lists Early at $25/mo (20 invoices, 5 bills), Growing at $55/mo (unlimited), and Established at $90/mo (adds multi-currency and projects), each currently promoted at 90% off for six months through 30 September 2026. That intro window ends within days, and Xero's own page states the list rises on 1 October 2026 without printing the new figure.

Zoho Books stays free for businesses under $50,000 in annual revenue, with 1 user plus 1 accountant. Paid tiers on Zoho's US pricing page run Standard at $20/mo ($15/mo billed annually) for 3 users, Professional at $50/mo ($40/mo annually) for 5 users, Premium at $70/mo ($60/mo annually) for 10 users, up through Elite and Ultimate. An extra user beyond the plan cap is $3/mo, or $2.50/mo billed annually, a line FreshBooks does not sell since it caps clients, not people.

Wave has no client or user cap on Pro, at $19/mo or $190 a year per business, with a promo currently showing $9.50/mo for the first three months on Wave's pricing page. Wave's payroll add-on lists at $40/mo plus $6 per active employee and $6 per contractor, matching FreshBooks' own payroll math almost dollar for dollar.

QuickBooks Online meters billable users, not clients, and Plus lists at $140/mo for up to 5 users with unlimited customers in the file, verified on Intuit's pricing page. A sixth person posting work requires Advanced at $340/mo. Our full breakdown of Intuit's caps and add-on fees is in the QuickBooks Online pricing guide.

Which plan actually fits

Pick by the cap you will hit this year, not the sticker alone. A solo invoicer under 5 clients who never needs an accountant to review the books can start on Lite, but the moment a bookkeeper needs to reconcile the bank feed, Plus is the real floor, not an upsell. Firms already running vendor bills through a separate tool should price Premium against keeping that tool, since Premium folds accounts payable and project margin into the same $70/mo subscription.

If the client count matters more than the user count, FreshBooks' cap structure fits better than Xero's or QuickBooks Online's, which meter people instead. If the reverse is true, an office with more staff than clients, Xero Growing's flat $55/mo with unlimited users is the cheaper structure once a third or fourth person needs a login. Our FreshBooks review covers the product beyond pricing, and the Xero review and Zoho Books review are the fuller look at each alternative above. If Lite's invoicing-only feature set is all you need, best AI for invoicing covers that narrower shortlist, and vendor bills belong on the B2B payment platforms guide or the BILL review once accounts payable is the actual job. The broader shortlists are best AI for accounting and best AI for bookkeeping. Toolradar's QuickBooks vs FreshBooks and Zoho Books vs QuickBooks go head to head on each matchup, and its bookkeeping software guide and Dupple's best bookkeeping software round out the category from a wider lens.

How we priced this

We read FreshBooks' US pricing page and its on-page FAQ on 25 September 2026 for plan prices, client caps, add-on fees, and card processing rates. Competitor figures came from Xero's US pricing page, Zoho Books' US pricing page, Wave's pricing and payroll pages, and Intuit's QuickBooks Online pricing page, all read the same day. Nobody paid for placement in this comparison, and FreshBooks' billable-client structure, not a subjective score, decided the ranking logic. Louis Corneloup, founder of Toolradar and Dupple, edited this piece. Re-check the vendor's checkout before subscribing, since any of these prices can change without a new blog post.

FAQ

How much does FreshBooks cost per month in 2026?

On FreshBooks' US pricing page in September 2026, Lite, Plus, and Premium list at the prices in the table above, rising by billable client cap rather than by user count. Select carries no published price and requires a sales quote. A current new-customer promo brings Lite to $1/mo for the first year and cuts Plus and Premium by 80% for three months, after which billing returns to the list price shown above.

Does FreshBooks charge per user or per client?

Per client. Lite includes 5 billable clients, Plus includes 50, and Premium and Select are unlimited, with active and archived clients both counting against the cap. Team member logins are billed separately at $11/mo each on every plan, so a firm with more staff than clients pays more in add-ons than in the base plan.

What is the difference between FreshBooks Plus and Premium?

Plus adds bank reconciliation, double-entry financial reports, proposals, retainers, and a free accountant login on top of Lite's invoicing features, and raises the client cap to 50. Premium keeps everything in Plus, removes the client cap entirely, and adds accounts payable for vendor bills plus project profitability reporting. The $27/mo gap between them buys vendor bill tracking and job-margin reports, not more invoicing capacity.

Is there a free FreshBooks plan?

No. FreshBooks offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, not a permanent free tier. After the trial, you choose a paid plan or your data stays stored without a live subscription. The current promo pricing, $1/mo for Lite's first year, is the closest FreshBooks gets to free, and it is a discount, not a free plan.

What does FreshBooks charge for team members and payroll?

Team members cost $11/mo each on every plan, with Select including two at no extra charge. Payroll, run through Gusto, lists at $40/mo plus $6/mo per person and bills as a separate subscription from the accounting plan. Advanced Payments, which lets clients save a card on file, is $20/mo on Lite, Plus, and Premium, and comes included on Select.

Is FreshBooks cheaper than QuickBooks Online or Xero?

For a small client roster, FreshBooks Plus at $43/mo undercuts QuickBooks Online Plus at $140/mo and Xero Growing at $55/mo on list price, but the comparison depends on what you are counting. FreshBooks caps clients, not people, so a firm with many staff and few clients may find Xero's flat $55/mo with unlimited users cheaper once a third or fourth login is needed. QuickBooks Online Plus includes 5 billable users and unlimited customers, which suits a team-heavy operation better than a client-heavy one.

Cite this: Finpresso, "FreshBooks Pricing in 2026: Every Plan, Add-Ons and Real Costs", September 2026.

Finpresso covers the close, cash, and the software under them in one daily brief. Join at finpresso.com.