# Wave Review: Pricing, Features, Alternatives Wave: Free invoicing and bookkeeping for solo operators, sold direct with no firm console. Pricing from Free tier, SOC 2 unconfirmed, and how it compares to the alternatives, for US accounting and bookkeeping firms. Source: https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/wave/ --- [Accounting Tools](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/) · [General Ledger & Bookkeeping](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/) # Wave Dated · Wave Financial · founded 2010 Free invoicing and bookkeeping for solo operators, sold direct with no firm console [Visit Wave](https://www.waveapps.com/) [All 26 general ledger & bookkeeping tools](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/) Best for Schedule C clients with a handful of invoices a month and no appetite to pay for software Starting price Free tier (Pro is $19/month or $190/year; payroll from $25 to $40/month; receipts $8 to $11/month) SOC 2 Unconfirmed Multi-factor auth Unconfirmed Ownership backed by H&R Block Integrates with Wave Payments, Wave Payroll, Wave Advisors The read ## What Wave does Free is still the headline. Wave's Starter plan carries unlimited invoices, estimates, bills and bookkeeping records at no cost, monetized through card processing at 2.9% plus $0.60 a transaction. The Pro plan at $19 a month or $190 a year adds the parts that make it a real ledger rather than an invoice pad: automatic bank feeds with categorization, receipt capture, recurring invoices, late payment reminders and the standard financial statements. Payroll runs $25 to $40 a month as a separate line. The company has been going since 2010, reports having served 5.9 million small business owners in the US and Canada, and is backed by H&R Block. For the right client this is genuinely appropriate. A sole proprietor with a dozen invoices a month, one bank account and a Schedule C at year end does not need QuickBooks Online, and paying $19 a month rather than $35 or more is a defensible recommendation. Unlimited users on the account means the firm can be invited in without paying for a seat. What a firm has to weigh is that Wave is not built to be used this way. The homepage says as much, describing the product as designed for small business owners and solopreneurs "not accountants." There is no accountant or partner program, no wholesale rate, no discount to pass on, and no console listing every client file behind one login. Each client is a separate account with a separate password, and moving between forty of them means forty logins. The nearest thing to a firm relationship is Wave Advisors, an in-house bookkeeping and coaching service starting at $149 a month, which sells the same work the reader of this page sells. That is a straightforward conflict, not a partnership. The product ceiling arrives quickly too. There is no inventory, no project profitability beyond tagging, no multi-currency of consequence, no class or location dimension worth building reporting on, and a thin third-party app ecosystem compared with QuickBooks Online or Xero. A client who hires two employees, starts holding stock or opens a second entity has to leave, and the migration lands on the firm. Against Zoho Books, the closest priced competitor, Wave loses on almost every dimension except simplicity: Zoho's free tier covers businesses under $50,000 of revenue with a proper accountant seat, and its paid plans start at $15 a month billed annually with far more depth. Against Patriot or FreshBooks the trade is similar. Wave's real advantage is that clients already know it and it costs nothing to start. The tier stays dated, on the firm-side reading rather than a product one. Wave is being actively developed, with recent additions to invoicing and the mobile app, so this is not a stalled roadmap. It is dated for this audience because the vendor has chosen to sell direct to business owners and to compete with bookkeeping firms rather than supply them. A practice can support existing Wave clients perfectly well. Standardizing a book of a hundred clients on it would mean giving up client-file management, partner pricing and any commercial relationship with the vendor at all. Capabilities ## What you get Unlimited invoices, estimates and bookkeeping records on the free Starter plan Automatic bank transaction import and categorization on Pro Receipt scanning with OCR Card payments at 2.9% plus $0.60, reduced to 2.9% flat on the first ten Pro transactions each month Unlimited user access, including inviting an accountant or bookkeeper Pricing, security, integrations ## What it costs and what it connects to Wave has a free tier. Pricing is per business, free tier plus one paid plan. A free trial is available: free Starter plan, no expiry. We could not confirm a SOC 2 report for Wave from public sources. Ask the vendor directly before it touches client data — an absence here means unverified, not absent. Wave does not integrate directly with a general ledger. Beyond that: Wave Payments, Wave Payroll and Wave Advisors. [Vendor pricing page](https://www.waveapps.com/pricing) · [Vendor security page](https://www.waveapps.com/legal/security-and-privacy) Our rating ## Why we rate Wave a Dated Wave is rated Dated: it is one of 8 of the 26 general ledger & bookkeeping tools here that still works but is no longer keeping pace. Still sold and still working, but no longer keeping pace — thin investment, an aging interface, or a roadmap that has visibly stalled. Fine to stay on, hard to recommend adopting. [How these ratings are decided](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/methodology/). Alternatives ## Wave alternatives ### [FreshBooks](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/freshbooks/) Invoicing-led small business accounting where the accountant is a guest, not an administrator Dated ### [Patriot Accounting](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/patriot-accounting/) Low-cost US-only ledger with a partner program built around firm billing and discounts Strong Option ### [Zoho Books](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/zoho-books/) Low-cost cloud ledger with six paid tiers and a free plan under $50K of revenue Strong Option ### [RightTool](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/righttool/) Browser extension that adds shortcuts and batch actions inside QuickBooks Online Top Pick ### [Uncat](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/uncat/) Collects client answers and receipts for uncategorized transactions and syncs them back Top Pick ### [Accounting Power](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/accounting-power/) Write-up and client general ledger sold only to accountants, never direct to their clients Dated [Compare all 26 general ledger & bookkeeping tools](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/general-ledger/) Sources ## Where these facts came from Researched from public sources. Pricing and security claims change without notice, so check the vendor before you buy. Last reviewed September 8, 2026. ### [Wave homepage](https://www.waveapps.com/) Retrieved 2026-09-08 ### [Wave pricing](https://www.waveapps.com/pricing) Retrieved 2026-09-08 ### [Wave Pro plan](https://www.waveapps.com/pro) Retrieved 2026-09-08 ### [About Wave](https://www.waveapps.com/about-us) Retrieved 2026-09-08 Keep browsing ## Other categories [Practice Management (49)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/practice-management/)[Tax Workflow & Document Automation (26)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/tax-workflow/)[Payroll & PEO (19)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/payroll/)[Tax Preparation (18)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/tax-preparation/)[Tax Planning & Advisory (13)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/tax-planning/)[Tax Research (13)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/tax-research/)[Month-End Close Automation (11)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/close-automation/)[Proposals & Engagement Letters (9)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/proposals-engagement/)[Spreadsheet Reporting & Ledger Sync (6)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/spreadsheet-reporting/)[Tax Resolution & IRS Representation (6)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/tax-resolution/)[AI Meeting Assistants (5)](https://node8.ai/accounting-tools/meeting-assistants/) ## Got the stack, still doing the work by hand? 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