Free accounting software is more common than free software in most categories, because vendors expect to sell payments, payroll or a bigger plan later. These are the published limits, read on 5 September 2026.
Free with no volume limit
Wave Starter allows unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. You pay 2.9% plus US$0.60 per card transaction, and you enter bank transactions by hand: automatic import is the main thing the US$19 Pro plan adds.
Pandle lists bank feeds, receipt uploads, invoicing, quotes, multiple currencies, stock control, unlimited users and Making Tax Digital submissions on its free plan, with a £5 Pro tier above it.
GnuCash has no ceiling of any kind because there is no vendor: it is desktop software under the GNU General Public License.
Free up to a threshold
Zoho Books is free for businesses under US$50,000 of annual revenue, with one user plus an accountant and 1,000 invoices and 1,000 expenses a year.
QuickFile is free up to 200 ledger entries a year; the next tier is £60 plus VAT a year for up to 500.
Invoice Ninja is free for five clients with unlimited invoicing, recurring billing, projects, billable time, inventory and a client portal.
Odoo gives one app free for unlimited users, which covers accounting if you need nothing else from the suite.
What free usually costs you
Three things, in order of how often they bite:
- Manual bank entry. Wave puts automatic import behind Pro; Pandle and QuickFile include feeds free, which is unusual and worth knowing.
- A user count of one. Zoho Books' free tier is a single user plus an accountant. Pandle's is unlimited.
- A revenue or volume test. Zoho Books checks revenue; QuickFile checks ledger entries; Invoice Ninja checks clients. All three are the kind of limit you cross without noticing.
When free is the wrong answer
If you have employees, none of the free tiers here state payroll. If you need multi-currency, Wave and Invoice Ninja's free tiers do and Zoho Books' does at a higher plan. And if your accountant works in one specific product every day, the cost of your software is smaller than the cost of their time.
