Best Accounting Software for Therapists Under $10 a Month
Under $10 a month, a therapist is really choosing among free plans. Six of the eleven products here cost nothing to start, including Wave, ZipBooks and QuickBooks Online, and Akaunting is the only paid plan that slips under the line, at $8 a month if you pay for the year.
What separates the free plans is how you bill. If clients pay through your EHR and you only need clean books and a year-end profit and loss, QuickBooks Online's two-invoices-a-month cap will not bother you. If you invoice clients yourself, Wave, ZipBooks and Patriot Software Accounting put no cap on invoices, and of those three, ZipBooks is the free one that still connects a bank account. The second split is where your books live: GnuCash and Express Accounts install on one computer, eight others run in a browser (five with a mobile app too), and Heard's site doesn't say.
Our picks
- Free with a live bank feed: ZipBooks. The Starter plan sends unlimited invoices and still connects one bank account, with card payments through Square or PayPal.
- When your EHR already handles billing: QuickBooks Online. $0/mo with one bank connection and a profit and loss report; the cap of two invoices a month only matters if you bill clients yourself.
- Solo practice earning under $50,000: Zoho Books. $0 while revenue stays under $50K a year, with double-entry books, mileage tracking and receipt autoscans included.
- Setting up in one afternoon: Wave. The free Starter plan gives unlimited invoices and a mobile app with the least setup of the group, though transactions go in by hand unless you move to the $19 Pro plan.
- The one paid plan inside the budget: Akaunting. $8 per month billed yearly on Standard Cloud ($12 if billed monthly), for one user plus an accountant and up to a thousand invoices.
At a glance
| Option | Cheapest plan | Starting price | Invoicing | Where it runs | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freesource | $0 on the Starter plansource | Unlimited invoicessource | Web and mobile appsource | Any small businesssource | |
| Freesource | $0 while revenue stays under $50K a yearsource | Invoice limit appliessource | Web and mobile appsource | Freelancers and solo ownerssource | |
| Freesource | $0/mo on the Free plansource | Invoice limit appliessource | Web browsersource | Any small businesssource | |
| Freesource | Free on the Starter plansource | Unlimited invoicessource | Web and mobile appsource | Any small businesssource | |
| Freesource | Free and open source under the GNU GPLsource | Desktop appsource | Any small businesssource | ||
| Freesource | Free for businesses with fewer than five employeessource | Desktop appsource | Any small businesssource | ||
| Under $10 a monthsource | $8 per month billed yearly on Standard Cloud ($12 month to month)source | Invoice limit appliessource | Web browsersource | Freelancers and solo ownerssource | |
| $10 to $25 a monthsource | $23.00 a month on the Lite plansource | Invoice limit appliessource | Web and mobile appsource | Any small businesssource | |
| $10 to $25 a monthsource | $25 per month on the Early plan after the intro offersource | Invoice limit appliessource | Web and mobile appsource | Any small businesssource | |
| $10 to $25 a monthsource | $20 a month, halved to $10 for the first 3 monthssource | Unlimited invoicessource | Web browsersource | Any small businesssource | |
| Over $25 a monthsource | $1,548 per year, billed upfrontsource | Therapists and private practicessource |
Invoice limits on the cheapest plans
The Invoicing column is where a cheap plan either works for a practice or doesn't. QuickBooks Online Free stops at two invoices a month. FreshBooks Lite caps you at five billable clients, which a full caseload passes quickly, and Xero's Early plan allows twenty invoices a month. Zoho Books allows 1,000 invoices a year and Akaunting up to a thousand.
Wave, ZipBooks and Patriot Software Accounting set no invoice cap at all. Of those three, only Wave and ZipBooks do it for free; Patriot's Accounting Basic plan is $20 a month, halved to $10 for the first three months.
Which free plans still import bank transactions
Reconciliation is where the free plans quietly differ. Wave moved automatic bank imports, receipt capture and auto-categorization to its $19 a month Pro plan, and Zoho Books keeps bank feeds for its paid Standard plan ($20 a month, or $15 billed annually). On either free plan you enter or import transactions yourself.
ZipBooks Starter and QuickBooks Online Free each connect one bank account at no cost. GnuCash has no live feed and imports statement files instead. Patriot includes automatic bank imports at its entry tier, which is part of what the $20 buys.
Desktop books versus a cloud login
GnuCash and Express Accounts are the two you install. GnuCash is free and open source under the GNU GPL on Mac, Windows or Linux, with no plan tiers or revenue ceiling. Express Accounts is free for businesses with fewer than five employees and can email reports straight to your accountant. Both keep your data on one machine, so backups are yours to handle, and both are general small-business tools with nothing specific to a therapy practice.
What spending more than $10 gets you
Heard is the only product in the table built for therapists, and it is a bookkeeping and tax service rather than software you run: $1,548 a year, billed upfront, with the bookkeeping done for you and tax filing on higher tiers. It replaces an accountant as well as the software. Among the general tools, Xero's $25 Early plan charges nothing per user, which helps once a second clinician or bookkeeper joins, and Patriot keeps payroll next to the books for the day you hire an associate.
The options in detail
Wave
Wave is the free accounting tool most often recommended to solo therapists, and the free Starter plan is genuinely usable: unlimited invoices, income and expense tracking, and a mobile app, at no cost. The catch since Wave restructured its plans is that automatic bank imports, receipt capture and auto-categorization now sit on the $19 a month Pro plan, so on the free plan you add transactions yourself. For a practice with a handful of client payments a month that is usually a fine trade, and it is the easiest of these to set up in an afternoon.
Zoho Books
Zoho Books has the most generous free plan of the cloud options: a solo practice earning under $50,000 a year gets real double-entry accounting, mileage tracking, receipt autoscans, payment reminders and more than fifty reports without paying anything. The limits that bite are one user plus your accountant, 1,000 invoices a year, and bank feeds being reserved for the paid Standard plan, so free-plan reconciliation means importing statements yourself. If your practice grows past the revenue threshold the step up to Standard is $20 a month, or $15 billed annually.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks now has a free tier, which is news to anyone who last looked at it as the $38-a-month option. The free plan tracks income and expenses, connects one bank account and runs a profit and loss report, but it caps you at two invoices a month, gives no accountant access, and leaves out the mobile app and third-party integrations. That makes it workable for a therapist whose client billing happens inside an EHR and who only needs the books and a year-end P&L, and frustrating for anyone invoicing clients directly. Its real advantage is that almost every accountant already knows it.
ZipBooks
ZipBooks is the free plan that does not make you give up bank connection: the Starter tier sends unlimited invoices, manages unlimited customers and vendors, connects one bank account and accepts card payments through Square or PayPal. Recurring invoices, automated reminders and multiple bank accounts are held back for the $15 a month Smarter plan. The product is older and less actively marketed than Wave or Zoho, and its reporting is basic, but for a solo therapist who wants free books with a live bank feed it is the shortest path.
GnuCash
GnuCash is free open-source accounting software you install on your own Mac, Windows or Linux machine, with no plan tiers, no revenue ceiling and no vendor that can change the terms on you. It does proper double-entry books, customer and vendor tracking, invoicing and bill payment, and a full set of reports including profit and loss. The trade is effort and looks: the interface is dated, there is no bank feed in the cloud sense (you import statement files), and nothing about it is designed for a therapy practice. It suits someone comfortable with a checkbook register who wants their financial data on their own disk.
Express Accounts
Express Accounts from NCH Software is a desktop bookkeeping package whose free version never expires for businesses with fewer than five employees, which covers most private practices. It handles quotes, invoices, recurring billing, accounts receivable and more than twenty reports including a profit and loss statement and balance sheet, and you can email reports straight to your accountant. The free edition leaves out features aimed at larger organisations, and like GnuCash it lives on one computer rather than in the cloud, so backups are your job.
Akaunting
Akaunting is the only paid option here that genuinely lands under ten dollars a month, and only if you pay for a year up front: the Standard Cloud plan is $8 a month billed yearly, or $12 month to month. It is explicitly sold for one-person businesses and includes one company, one user plus an accountant, and up to a thousand invoices. The software is open source with a hosted edition, which also means a self-hosted route if you ever want it, and an app-store model where extras cost more. Support and polish are a step below Wave or Zoho, so it is worth using the trial before committing to a year.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is the friendliest of the paid options and the one reviewers most often single out for people who bill clients directly, but at $23 a month for the Lite plan it is more than double the budget in this question. Lite also caps you at five billable clients, which a therapist with a full caseload will pass quickly, and each extra team member is $11 a month. It runs in a browser and on iOS and Android, and the double-entry accounting underneath is real. Worth a look mainly if steep introductory discounts are on offer and you value the invoicing experience over the price.
Xero
Xero is a serious cloud accounting platform whose entry Early plan costs $25 a month once any introductory offer ends, so it sits well outside a ten-dollar budget. The Early plan is also deliberately narrow: twenty invoices and five bills a month, though bank reconciliation, sales tax and 1099 management are all included. What sets it apart for a growing practice is that it does not charge per user, so bringing in a bookkeeper or a second clinician costs nothing extra. Xero has also announced that subscription prices rise from October 2026.
Patriot Software Accounting
Patriot is a plain, inexpensive online accounting product built for very small US businesses, at $20 a month for the Accounting Basic plan, routinely halved for the first few months. Unlike most cheap plans it puts no cap on invoices or customers and includes automatic bank imports and account reconciliation at the entry tier. Estimates, recurring invoices and receipt management require the $30 Premium plan. Its natural appeal to a therapist is that payroll sits alongside it at a low price, which matters the moment you hire an associate clinician or an admin.
Heard
Heard is the only option here built specifically for therapists, and it is not software you run yourself so much as a bookkeeping and tax service with a dashboard attached: monthly bookkeeping is done for you, with quarterly tax estimates and annual filing on the higher tiers. It is included in this table as the honest ceiling of the category, because at $1,548 a year billed up front it is roughly fifteen times the budget in the question. The case for it is that it replaces both your bookkeeping software and your accountant, and the people doing the work already understand superbills, S corp elections and therapy practice deductions.
How we researched this
This list is limited to full bookkeeping tools. Invoicing-only apps such as Zoho Invoice, Invoice Ninja and TrulySmall Invoices were set aside because they don't keep books, and Found and Lili were set aside because they are business bank accounts with bookkeeping attached. Hurdlr publishes no price outside its app, Sage no longer lists a $10 plan in its US lineup, and Odoo's free single-app plan was too unclear about what it covers. The four over-budget products are here on purpose, so a reader can see what FreshBooks, Xero, Patriot and a therapist-specific service actually cost.
Prices are the regular rates, not the introductory cuts FreshBooks, Xero, Patriot and Wave were advertising in September 2026. Xero has announced a price rise from October 2026, and Zoho Books' free plan ends at $50K in yearly revenue, so recheck both before signing up. The Invoicing column is empty for GnuCash and Express Accounts because their pages list invoicing without stating any limit, and Heard's Invoicing and Where it runs cells are empty because its site states neither. There is no compliance column: these tools hold payments, not clinical notes, which stay in your EHR.