How Much Does QuickBooks Cost? 2026 Pricing Breakdown

The sticker price on QuickBooks Online’s website is misleading. The real bill shows up when you add payroll, extra users, time tracking, and live bookkeeping. They get you with the add-ons.

I’ve been doing this for ten years in the Houston market. I’ve set up QuickBooks for plumbers in Katy, dental offices in Midtown, construction crews in Spring, and family-owned retail shops in Pearland. The call I get every month is the same: “Why is my QuickBooks bill $300 when I thought I was paying $75?” Let me show you what you’re actually paying.

QuickBooks Online Plans: The Sticker Prices

Intuit raised prices in July 2025. If you renewed after that, these numbers apply to you. Most of my clients in Houston saw a 15 to 20 percent increase from what they were paying in early 2025.

Plan	Monthly Price	Users Included	Best Fit
Solopreneur	$20/mo	1	Freelancers, one-person shops
Simple Start	$38/mo	1	Basic invoicing, expense tracking, mileage
Essentials	$75/mo	3	Bill management, time tracking, multiple users
Plus	$115/mo	5	Inventory, project profitability, 1099 tracking
Advanced	$275/mo	25	Custom reports, batch invoices, dedicated support

Source: QuickBooks Official Pricing; Fit Small Business, 2026

Intuit throws out that 50% off promo on your first three months if you don’t take the free trial. Simple Start looks like $19/month that way. I tell my clients not to build a budget around that number. After month four, you’re paying full price.

What Each Jump Gets You

Simple Start to Essentials costs you another $37 a month. That’s a 97 percent jump. You’re getting bill management, three users instead of one, and time tracking built in. If you’re solo, no employees, no vendor bills, that extra $37 doesn’t justify itself.

Essentials to Plus is $40 more per month. Inventory tracking. Project profitability. 1099 contractor management. I talk to construction companies in Spring and retail shops in Pearland who need Plus just to track their materials. They don’t really have a choice.

Advanced at $275 is for the bigger shops. Fifteen or twenty employees. Custom reporting roles. A dedicated account person at Intuit. Most of my clients that size are paying this.

Plus is the sweet spot for most Houston small businesses with a few employees.

The Costs That Aren’t on the Pricing Page

Here’s where things get expensive. The pricing page hides the actual bill.

Payroll

QuickBooks Payroll isn’t bundled. It’s a separate charge on top.

Payroll Tier	Base Fee	Per Employee	Annual Cost (10 Employees)
Core	$50/mo	+ $6.50/employee	$1,380/yr
Premium	$88/mo	+ $10/employee	$2,256/yr
Elite	$134/mo	+ $12/employee	$3,048/yr

Source: QuickBooks Payroll Pricing

I had a client in Katy with ten people on payroll. Core payroll was running him $115 a month on top of his QuickBooks Plus subscription. That’s $230 total before time tracking, before payment processing, before anything else. The payroll add-on costs as much as the accounting software itself.

Time Tracking (QuickBooks Time)

Basic time tracking comes built into Essentials and above. If you want GPS tracking, scheduling, and job-level breakdowns, you buy QuickBooks Time separately (the old TSheets product).

Time Premium: $20/mo base + $8/user/mo
Time Elite: $40/mo base + $10/user/mo

Source: QuickBooks Time Tracking

Eight people on Premium runs you $84 a month. There’s some bundling if you go higher on payroll, but most of my small business clients in Midtown and Spring end up paying this separately.

QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping

If you want someone from Intuit actually reviewing and maintaining your books, that’s QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping.

Monthly Business Expenses	Live Bookkeeping Cost
$0 - $10,000	$300/mo
$10,001 - $50,000	$500/mo
$50,001+	$700/mo

Source: QuickBooks Live Pricing

I had a client in Pearland doing $70,000 in monthly expenses. QuickBooks Live wanted $700 a month. That’s $8,400 a year for bookkeeping on top of his QuickBooks subscription.

At that price, he should just hire a local bookkeeper who understands Houston tax rules and can actually meet with him face to face. He’d get better service for about the same money.

Other Add-Ons

Extra user seats cost more. Going from three users to five is an extra $40 a month. Payment processing is 2.99 percent for invoices, 2.5 percent for keyed cards, plus a quarter per ACH transfer. Third-party integrations like inventory systems or CRMs all charge their own monthly fee.

What Houston Businesses Actually Pay: Three Real Scenarios

Solo Consultant

Let’s say you’re a one-person consulting firm in Midtown.

QuickBooks Simple Start: $38/mo
No payroll (you take an owner draw)
No add-ons
You pay: $456 a year

Service Business With Five Employees

This looks like a HVAC company or plumbing crew in Katy or Spring.

QuickBooks Plus: $115/mo
Payroll Core for five people: $82.50/mo
QuickBooks Time Premium for five users: $60/mo
You pay: $3,090 a year

That’s over $250 a month. Three years ago, the same setup cost about $200.

Established Company With 15 Employees

Think a dental office or construction company with a full roster.

QuickBooks Advanced: $275/mo
Payroll Premium for fifteen people: $238/mo
Time tracking bundles with payroll: free
You pay: $6,156 a year

That’s over $500 a month. Plus payment fees. Plus third-party tools.

The gap between the solo consultant and the established business is huge. And you’re just looking at software costs.

What About QuickBooks Desktop?

Intuit killed new QuickBooks Desktop sales a while back. If you were on Desktop Pro Plus or Premier Plus and wanted to renew, you’re paying more starting this month.

Desktop Pro Plus / Mac Plus: Went from $999 a year to $1,149
Extra user seats: Went from $200 each to $230

The only new Desktop option is Enterprise, and that starts at $1,481 a year.

If you’re still on Desktop and it works for your Houston business, keep it. But if you’re picking software today, use QuickBooks Online. Desktop only makes sense if you’ve got specialized inventory needs that Online can’t handle.

The Price Trend: It Keeps Going Up

Simple Start was $25 a month in 2020. It’s $38 now. That’s a 52 percent jump in five years. Plus went from $70 to $115. A 64 percent jump.

Intuit says the price increases are for automation and better integrations. Maybe. What I see is my clients’ monthly software costs going up every renewal cycle.

Plan on paying 150 bucks a month for QuickBooks Plus within two years. It’s coming.

When the Software Isn’t the Real Problem

Here’s what QuickBooks doesn’t tell you on their pricing page: the cost of using the software wrong.

I see this constantly. Transactions posted to the wrong account. Bank feeds matching to the wrong places. A chart of accounts that turned into a nightmare because nobody cleaned it up. Reconciliations three months behind.

A business owner will connect their bank, think the software runs itself, and walk away. Three months later I open their file and find twelve hours of cleanup work waiting. The hourly cost of fixing that cleanup is way higher than the subscription.

QuickBooks Plus at $115 a month is a bargain if it’s producing clean numbers. If it’s producing a mess, it’s the most expensive confusion you’re paying for.

The Alternative: Let Someone Else Handle It

A lot of Houston business owners eventually stop managing QuickBooks themselves. The cost of doing it wrong, in missed deductions and tax mistakes, ends up costing more than just hiring someone.

A bookkeeper handles the setup, the rules, the reconciliation, the payroll integration, the month-end close. You get clean reports. You don’t have to learn Essentials versus Plus. You don’t troubleshoot why bank feeds stopped working.

If you’re paying $115 a month for QuickBooks Plus and it’s not actually giving you accurate data, hire a bookkeeper. The bookkeeper costs more per month than the software. The accurate data costs less than the mistakes.

Not sure which QuickBooks plan fits, or whether you even need to manage it yourself? EZQ Group’s accounting software team helps Houston businesses set up, optimize, and maintain QuickBooks so the numbers are always right and the subscription is always worth it.