Wave Pricing: Plans & Cost Calculator 2026
Free tier includes basic accounting, with paid plans from $8 to $40/mo for receipts, payroll, or advanced features.
Wave plans and pricing
Billing surface
Pick a plan, set your seat count and switch billing to see the running total. The full breakdown lives in the calculator below.
Starter
Just starting / basics only
Receipts
This plan focuses on efficient receipt management and expense tracking
Pro
Polished, more automation, cash flow
Payroll
Designed for businesses managing employee payroll, including tax calculations and direct deposits
Wave pricing: the quick answer
Wave is free to start and $19 a month for Pro. The Starter plan costs nothing and covers unlimited invoicing, estimates, and bookkeeping. Pro is $19/mo, or $190 a year billed annually, which is two months free. The real cost is payment processing: Starter charges 2.9% plus $0.60 per card transaction, and Pro waives that fixed 60-cent fee. Receipt scanning is $8/mo and payroll runs $40/mo plus a per-active-person fee. Free accounting is genuinely free; the money shows up when you take payments.
- StarterFree
- Receipts$8/user/mo
- Pro$19/mo
- Payroll$40/user/mo
At $8/mo to start, Wave sits 60% below the $20/mo median across 14 accounting tools we track.
Wave cost calculator
Wave Hidden Costs & Pitfalls
Wave's subscriptions are cheap, so the meaningful costs sit in the fees attached to moving money and running staff, not in the plan price.
Wave pricing, read against its live plans and category
Positioning
Wave's accounting is genuinely free. The Starter plan covers unlimited invoicing, estimates, and bookkeeping at no charge, and Pro at $19/mo (or $190/yr, two months free) adds automatic bank imports, unlimited collaborators, and removes Wave branding. The catch is that the subscription is not where Wave makes its money. Payment processing and payroll are, and those are the numbers that actually move your bill. For a micro-business that mostly invoices and rarely takes card payments, this is about as cheap as accounting software gets.
Cost drivers
- 1Card processing is 2.9% plus $0.60 per transaction on Starter; Pro keeps the 2.9% but waives the fixed 60 cents, so high invoice volume can pay for the upgrade on its own.
- 2Payroll is a separate subscription at $40/mo plus $6 per active employee or contractor.
- 3Automatic receipt scanning is an $8/mo add-on unless you are on Pro, which already includes it.
Strengths
- Unlimited invoicing and bookkeeping on the free Starter plan.
- Pro's waived fixed processing fee can save a heavy invoicer more than the $19/mo it costs.
- Annual Pro billing is $190/yr, effectively two free months.
Editor’s take
Freelancers and micro-businesses that live on invoicing should stay on the free Starter plan and only move to Pro when the per-transaction fee or manual entry starts to hurt. If you need reliable payroll or deeper reporting, the paid Wave add-ons stack up fast, and Xero is the steadier alternative to weigh.
Oleh KemFounder & Lead AnalystWave price history
Frequently asked questions
Sources & verification
| Source | What was checked | Last checked |
|---|---|---|
| Official Pricing Page | Source of verified tiers | July 16, 2026 |
| Official Website | Official vendor website | — |
| G2 | G2 verified user reviews · 4.4/5 · 319 reviews | — |
| Capterra | Capterra verified user reviews · 4.4/5 | — |
| TrustRadius | TrustRadius verified reviews | — |
| PeerSpot | PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews | — |
Every fact on this Wave pricing page is tied to a named source and a verification date. Freshness-sensitive figures trace to the sources above; verify against the vendor before relying on them.
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