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Wave Pricing: Plans & Cost Calculator 2026

Free tier includes basic accounting, with paid plans from $8/user/mo to $40/mo for receipts, payroll, or advanced features.

AccountingPer SeatPrice verified 5 days agoFrom $8/mo Free plan ✓

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Wave plans and pricing

High· Verified July 2, 2026

Starter

Free

Best for: Just starting / basics only

✓Unlimited invoicing
✓Estimates
✓Bookkeeping
✓Unlimited customers and products
✓Add your logo and brand colors to an invoice

View on vendor site

Receipts

$8/user/mo

Best for: This plan focuses on efficient receipt management and expense tracking

✓Receipt scanning
✓Automatic bookkeeping record creation
✓Upload receipt files from desktop or mobile

View on vendor site

Pro

$19/user/mo

Best for: Polished, more automation, cash flow

✓Automated bank transaction imports
✓Unlimited collaborators
✓Remove Wave branding from invoice footer
✓Automated late payment reminders
✓Unlimited, secure, and reliable bank connections

View on vendor site

Payroll

$40/user/mo

Best for: Designed for businesses managing employee payroll, including tax calculations and direct deposits

✓Payroll processing
✓Manage 1099 contractors
✓Direct deposit

View on vendor site

Wave pricing: the quick answer

Quick answerLast verified: July 2, 2026High

Wave is free to start and $19 a month for Pro as of July 7, 2026. 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 $6 per active person. Free accounting is genuinely free; the money shows up when you take payments.

StarterFree
Receipts$8/user/mo
Pro$19/user/mo
Payroll$40/user/mo

Use the interactive Wave pricing calculator to estimate your exact monthly cost at your team size, with annual-billing savings and the hidden costs counted in.

Free tier

Yes

Billing model

Per Seat

Cheapest paid

$8/user/mo

Annual discount

Not offered

At $8/mo to start, Wave sits 60% below the $20/mo median across 13 accounting tools we track.

Wave cost calculator

What Wave really costs

What sits on top of the plan fee

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.

Card processing fee, and the fixed piece Pro drops

Every card payment on the free Starter plan costs 2.9% plus $0.60. Upgrading to Pro at $19/mo keeps the 2.9% but waives the fixed 60 cents per transaction. On 100 invoices a month that fixed fee alone is $60, so a business collecting a lot of small payments can save more than the Pro subscription costs just by moving up. Amex runs 3.4% either way.

2.9% + $0.60 (Starter) / 2.9% + $0 (Pro)

Payroll base plus per-person fee

Wave Payroll is $40/mo plus $6 for every active employee or contractor. A five-person team is $40 plus $30, which is $70 a month layered on top of whatever accounting plan you run. That is a separate subscription, not a Pro feature, so treat it as its own line if you have staff.

$40/mo + $6/active person

Receipt scanning as an add-on

Automatic receipt scanning and the bookkeeping records it creates cost $8/mo on top of your plan. Pro already includes unlimited receipt capture, so this add-on mainly matters if you stay on the free Starter tier but still want to skip manual entry. Weigh the $8 against just moving to Pro.

$8/mo

Pricing Expert Take

Independent analysis · Wave

Verified Pricing Data

Value Analysis

$8/mo60% below median

Category median: $20/moBased on 13 products in this category

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.

Hidden Costs

Card 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.
Payroll is a separate subscription at $40/mo plus $6 per active employee or contractor.
Automatic receipt scanning is an $8/mo add-on unless you are on Pro, which already includes it.

Red Flags

Based on analysis of recent Reddit and G2 discussions.

Green Wins

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.

Verdict

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.

ComparEdge EditorialUpdated: July 2, 2026