Online Bookkeeping Services: What They Cost in 2026

Disclaimer: This is educational information. Always verify specifics with your CPA or tax advisor. Prices and packaging change constantly in this category, so confirm directly with any provider before you sign.

The Short Answer

Online bookkeeping services generally run $199 to $995 a month once a human bookkeeper is attached, and from $99 for software-only tiers, with most businesses landing between $300 and $700. Tax return filing is usually a separate charge of $1,000 to $2,450 a year. The spread is wide because providers don't price the same thing: some charge by your monthly expenses, some by revenue band, some by transaction count, and at least one bills annually only. Two businesses with identical books can get quotes $400 a month apart depending on which structure they walk into.

What the Major Providers Charge

Every figure below came off the provider's own site, and the date we checked is in the caption. We publish the date because this category repackages constantly, and a price with no date behind it is just a rumor.

Published starting prices for ongoing bookkeeping. Verified on each provider's own domain: Xendoo and Bench on September 20, 2026, Pilot on September 27, 2026, Bookkeeper360 on September 14, and 1-800Accountant on September 7. Nearly all are "starting at" figures that rise with complexity.

Swipe sideways to see the whole table.

The Pricing Structure Matters More Than the Headline

This is the part that decides your bill, and almost nobody explains it, so here's each model and who it punishes.

Priced by your monthly expenses

This is the most common model in the category, and both Xendoo and Pilot use it. Xendoo caps each tier by what you spend: $50,000 a month on Essential, $75,000 on Growth, $125,000 on Scale. Easy to quote, and the bill follows your cash out the door instead of the hours anyone put in.

The flaw is that spending and bookkeeping effort aren't the same thing. A business with lumpy purchasing can cross a tier in a month when the actual work was trivial, and seasonal stock-ups do the same thing every year. We walk through a worked contractor example on our Xendoo page. The short version: quote yourself on your heaviest month.

Priced by revenue band

Bench's entry plan, Bookkeeping Light, is aimed at businesses at or under $250,000 a year. Cross that line and you're into the $399 Bookkeeping plan. Revenue bands are more predictable than expense caps, but they have the same basic flaw: revenue is a poor proxy for how hard your books are. A one-person consultancy at $300,000 with twelve invoices a year is far simpler than a $200,000 restaurant with daily deposits and tip reporting, and the banding doesn't know that.

Priced by transaction count

1-800Accountant's bookkeeping starts at 75 monthly transactions. Transaction counts actually correlate with the work, which makes this the most honest of the structures. The catch is that most people badly underestimate their own count. Every card swipe, every transfer between accounts, and every payment processor payout is a transaction, and payment processors in particular generate far more lines than owners expect.

Priced by what the software does versus what a person does

Pilot's $99 Essentials tier is AI-only, cash basis, with in-app messaging and no assigned bookkeeper. That's a genuinely different product from Core, which puts a US-based bookkeeper on your account. So the $99 isn't comparable to anyone else's headline on this list, and it shouldn't be read as Pilot being four times cheaper than Xendoo.

Pilot stacks expense levels on top of the tiers, and the two don't line up the way you'd guess. Essentials covers up to $100,000 a month in expenses. Core starts at $299 a month up to $15,000 in expenses, then steps to $499, $559, $679, $799, and $999 below $200,000 (each a starting price, all billed annually). So the cheaper-looking AI tier covers nearly seven times the spend of Core's $299 band. Untangle that before you compare Pilot's entry number to anyone else's.

What Is Usually Not Included

The headline plan almost never covers everything. Budget separately for:

• The tax return. Most bookkeeping plans stop at tax-ready books. Filing runs $1,000 to $2,450 a year depending on entity type, or is bundled at the top tier.
• Catch-up work. If you're behind, that's a separate project, and we quote catch-up bookkeeping flat after a free review. Quotes in this category commonly run several hundred to several thousand dollars depending on how many months are open.
• Payroll. Usually an add-on, often routed through a third party like Gusto.
• Sales tax filings. Almost always separate, and priced per state.
• Accrual accounting. Several providers put cash basis on the entry tier and charge more for accrual. If you carry inventory or bill progressively, you likely need accrual from day one.
• Talking to a CPA. Xendoo's CPA consultation starts at $140 for 15 minutes. Pilot's tax consulting starts at $250 an hour for a single-member LLC and $400 an hour for partnerships and corporations. Bench includes up to four advisory calls on its tax plans, then $250 a call for returning customers. Advice is a line item more often than people expect.

When an Online Service Is the Right Call

Plenty of the time, honestly. National providers are a good fit when your business is straightforward and location-independent: an ecommerce seller, a SaaS company, a consultant, an agency. If you operate in one state with no local tax layer, want software-first reporting, and would rather have a team than a person, the national model is built exactly for you.

Coverage is the other honest point in their favor. One bookkeeper is one person who takes vacations and gets sick. That's a structural weakness of every solo practice, this one included.

When It Costs You More Than It Saves

The national model struggles in a few specific places.

State and local tax layers. Pennsylvania is the clearest case we deal with. Act 32 attaches a PSD code and a resident EIT rate to every employee, with a separate Local Services Tax layered on, and the full mechanics are in our PA local income tax guide. A provider whose clients sit mostly in Texas and Florida isn't careless when this slips. It never comes up in their book of business. If you run PA payroll, put the question to any national provider directly and see whether the answer gets concrete.

Industries with real accounting complexity. Construction retainage, progress billing, job costing, restaurant tip reporting, inventory. These need accrual and they need somebody who has seen the pattern before.

Books that swing. If your monthly expenses move a lot, expense-capped pricing will move you around in ways that have nothing to do with the work involved.

A Note on Stability

This category has real turnover. Bench paused operations in late December 2024, was acquired by Employer.com within days, and resumed in January 2025. It's operating and taking new customers today. We walk through what that means for a Bench customer on our Bench page.

The general lesson applies to any provider: ask who holds your data and how you get it out. The safest answer is books that live in your own QuickBooks Online or Xero account, under your login, so leaving is an access change instead of a migration. The IRS puts the recordkeeping obligation on you, not on whoever you hired. If a provider goes dark, that's still your problem to solve.

How to Compare Quotes Without Getting Fooled

Four questions that surface the real number:

• What moves me to the next tier, and what does it cost when I cross it? Expense cap, revenue band, transaction count, or entity count. Get it in writing.
• Is this cash or accrual, and what does accrual cost? Entry tiers are frequently cash basis only.
• What is the all-in twelve-month number including the return? Plan price times twelve, plus filing, plus payroll, plus sales tax.
• Whose account are my books in, and what happens on the day I leave?

We publish our own plans at $399, $599, and $1,199 a month on our pricing page, tiered by how complex the books are rather than by what you spent that month. We don't file tax returns. We produce tax-ready books and work with your CPA, so a fair comparison against a bundled provider is our fee plus your CPA's fee, not our fee alone.

Provider by Provider

We keep a detailed page on each of these, with current terms, contract language, and a twelve-month cost example:

• Xendoo, including the expense caps and a catch-up price that appears two different ways on their own site.
• Bookkeeper360, which supports both Xero and QuickBooks Online, with every figure priced line by line.
• Pilot, built around venture-backed startups, and what the $99 tier actually is.
• 1-800Accountant, where every plan is billed annually and the refund window is short.
• Bench, and how the model compares to a local bookkeeper.

The Bottom Line

Most businesses comparing these options are looking at roughly $4,600 to $10,850 a year once the tax return is included. That's $3,600 to $8,400 for the bookkeeping plan, plus $1,000 to $2,450 to file. The providers are closer on price than their headline numbers suggest. What actually differs is the pricing structure, whether a person or software does the work, and whether anyone involved understands the tax rules where you operate.

Run the twelve-month math on your heaviest month. The average month will lie to you, and that one adjustment changes the answer more often than anything else on this page.

If you want a second opinion before you sign anything, we'll look at your books for free and tell you honestly whether a national service would serve you better. We're in Cranberry Township and we work across the Pittsburgh area. Call (412) 407-7420.