Is QuickBooks free?
By Riley Park · Last verified: October 2026
Yes, with tight limits. QuickBooks Free costs $0 a month and needs no credit card, but it allows one user with no accountant access, one connected bank, two invoices and one estimate a month (unlimited invoices if you qualify for and turn on QuickBooks Payments), two receipt uploads and five mileage trips a month, and no mobile app or app integrations. Intuit says Free may be offered for a limited time. Verified on Intuit's pricing page and QuickBooks Free guide, October 4, 2026.
What QuickBooks Free includes. Income and expense tracking with one bank connection, three reports (profit and loss, balance sheet, and account quick report), invoicing and estimates within the monthly caps above, receipt uploads, mileage tracking, customer payments through QuickBooks Payments, and chat support. Phone support starts on Simple Start.
What it leaves out. A second user, any accountant or bookkeeper access, the mobile app, third-party app integrations, recurring invoices, time tracking and user permissions. Each of these starts on a paid plan.
Is QuickBooks Free the same as the free trial? No. QuickBooks Free is an ongoing plan with monthly caps. The 30-day free trial is full access to a paid plan, from Simple Start to Advanced, and you subscribe when it ends.
The invoice cap and QuickBooks Payments. Intuit lifts the two-invoice limit when you qualify for and enable QuickBooks Payments, its built-in payment processor. Payments charges processing fees on what customers pay you; see Does QuickBooks charge a fee for credit card payments?
How long is it free? Intuit says Free is currently available at no charge and may be offered for a limited time, and that it will give advance notice and transition options if the plan is discontinued.
How DDR treats QuickBooks Free. DDR reviews four QuickBooks Online plans and lists Free as a dated note, not a fifth plan. Our four-part test for a free plan asks whether a typical one-person business can run a year of normal activity on it, whether it locks out a role the buyer needs, whether a time or revenue cutoff forces an upgrade, and whether the vendor presents it as a standing plan. Two invoices a month, no accountant access, and Intuit's own limited-time wording each fail that test. The plan is still useful if you send very few invoices or take payments through QuickBooks Payments. The QuickBooks Online review covers the full scoring.
When you outgrow it. Intuit's next steps up are Lite at $20 a month (unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage, the mobile app and app integrations, still one user with no accountant access) and Simple Start at $38 a month (one user plus two accountant seats). Moving up keeps your QuickBooks data. Plan-by-plan prices are on How much does QuickBooks Online cost?
Can my accountant use QuickBooks Free? No. Accountant seats start with Simple Start, which includes two. Lite also has no accountant access.
Do Intuit's own pages agree on what QuickBooks Free includes? Not on two points. Contractors: Intuit's Solopreneur plans page lists one 1099 contractor on Free, while the comparison table on its main pricing page shows contractor management only on paid plans. AI features: the main pricing table shows one Intuit Intelligence feature on Free, smart expense organization, while the Solopreneur plans page says Intuit Intelligence is not available on Free. If either matters to you, confirm inside QuickBooks before relying on Free for it. Lite includes three contractors, and Simple Start includes unlimited contractors and the wider Intuit Intelligence set. Both pages read October 4, 2026.
Are there free alternatives to QuickBooks? Two other products DDR reviews have free plans that pass the test above: Wave Starter, with unlimited invoices, and Zoho Books Free, for businesses under $50,000 a year in revenue, with one user plus an accountant. See QuickBooks vs Wave and QuickBooks vs Zoho Books.