FreshBooks
Invoicing, expense tracking and time tracking built for freelancers and small service businesses, with AI categorising expenses and drafting reports.
What you'd use it for
Invoicing clients and tracking billable hours as a freelancer or small service business, without setting up full double-entry bookkeeping.
- Send invoices that accept card, ACH, Apple Pay and Google Pay on the payment link itself
- Track billable hours against a client or project and turn logged time straight into an invoice
- Photograph or forward a receipt and have FreshBooks file it under the right expense category
- Run financial reports, such as profit and loss, for an accountant rather than exporting spreadsheets (Plus and above)
- See profitability on a per-project basis once time and expenses are both logged against it (Premium and above)
The verdict
FreshBooks does invoicing, time tracking and expense filing well for a freelancer or small service business, and stays simpler than a full accounting suite because it was never built to be one. The AI layer handles the boring sorting — receipt categorising, report drafting — not accounting judgment. The catch is that the parts that actually show whether the business made money sit above the entry tier — financial reports and accountant access need Plus, project profitability needs Premium — so a growing practice is realistically paying $43-70 a month rather than the $23 headline. It suits someone whose need is genuinely to invoice clients, track expenses and see if they made money; anyone running inventory, payroll at scale, or multi-entity books should look elsewhere.
What it costs
| Tier | Price | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $23/month regular rate (a discounted first-period promotional rate was showing at the time of this check) | A freelancer billing a small number of clients. | 5 billable clients, unlimited time tracking, expense tracking, estimates, card and ACH payments. |
| Plus | $43/month regular rate (a discounted promotional rate was showing at the time of this check) | A growing solo business with more clients and reporting needs. | Everything in Lite, plus 50 billable clients, proposals, client retainers, e-signatures, financial reports, accountant access. |
| Premium | $70/month regular rate (a discounted promotional rate was showing at the time of this check) | A small team tracking profitability across projects. | Everything in Plus, plus unlimited billable clients, project profitability tracking, customised email templates. |
| Select | Custom, contact required | Larger operations needing lower transaction fees and dedicated support. | Everything in Premium, plus lower payment processing fees, dedicated phone support, 2 included team accounts. |
Read from FreshBooks's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.
What you need to start
- A US or Canadian business bank account to accept card and ACH payments through FreshBooks Payments (instant verification via Plaid, or 2-3 business days if entered manually)
- A Plus plan or higher for financial reports and accountant access; Premium or higher for project profitability
Ten minutes to a signed-up account and a sent invoice; getting paid through the platform adds the bank verification step, instant with Plaid or 2-3 business days entering details manually.
Your first run Signup asks only for an email and password, no card, and drops you straight into a dashboard prompting you to add a client and send an invoice; most people have a real invoice sent within the same session.
Where it breaks
FreshBooks was showing steep promotional discounts at the time of this check — Lite at $1 instead of $23, Plus at $8.60 instead of $43, Premium at $14 instead of $70 — all described as limited-time introductory offers. The regular rates above are what a subscription reverts to after the promotional window, and are the figures to budget against, not the promo price shown at signup.
Browser-based, with mobile apps for iOS and Android. Built specifically for service businesses that bill by the hour or by project, rather than product-based retail.
First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.
When not to use it
Not for a product-based or inventory-holding business, since FreshBooks has no stock tracking at any tier. Not for a business that needs payroll or consolidated multi-entity books as a core requirement, since neither lives inside FreshBooks even at Select. Not for a business outside the US or Canada that specifically wants card and ACH collection built into the invoice, since FreshBooks Payments does not operate there.
FreshBooks stays narrower than a full accounting suite on purpose: invoicing, time tracking and expenses, aimed squarely at a freelancer or small service business that bills clients by the hour or the project, rather than a retailer moving inventory. That narrowness is the selling point — less to configure than a general ledger system, at a lower price.
The AI layer does the small, repetitive categorisation work: sorting a scanned receipt into the right expense category, drafting a client-facing report from raw time entries. None of it replaces an accountant’s judgment on anything that actually matters for taxes, but it does remove the manual sorting that eats an hour every month.
The client-count ceiling is the real tier driver
Lite’s 5-client cap is the thing that forces an upgrade for most growing freelancers, not a missing feature — cross that number of active billable clients and Plus becomes mandatory regardless of whether you need proposals or e-signatures. Premium removes the client cap entirely and adds project profitability, useful once you’re pricing project-based work rather than pure hourly billing.
Against QuickBooks and Xero
FreshBooks is deliberately simpler than either — better for a business whose accounting need is genuinely “invoice clients, track expenses, see if I made money this month” rather than full double-entry bookkeeping with inventory and payroll. A business that outgrows FreshBooks usually graduates to QuickBooks or Xero rather than staying and adding complexity FreshBooks was never built to carry.
Alternatives
Money & invoicingAgentsQuickBooks
Bookkeeping, invoicing and payroll for small businesses, with Intuit's AI categorising bank transactions, matching receipts and chasing unpaid invoices on its own.
Money & invoicingAgentsXero
Cloud accounting that reconciles your bank feed, reads incoming bills, and forecasts cash flow, aimed at replacing desktop bookkeeping software.
Money & invoicingAgentsBonsai
Contracts, proposals, invoices and basic tax tracking for freelancers in one place, with AI drafting the first version of each document from a short brief.
Money & invoicingAppsWave
Free accounting and invoicing for a very small business, with transactions from your bank feed categorised automatically instead of typed in by hand.
Get FreshBooks
Buying the tool is not the hard part.
The ebook is about what to hand over, in what order, and how you find out when it goes wrong. One payment, no subscription.