QuickBooks Price Increase 2026: New QuickBooks Online Costs

QuickBooks Online prices went up on August 1, 2026. Essentials moved from $75 to $85 a month, Plus from $115 to $140, and Advanced from $275 to $340. Simple Start was not touched and stays at $38. The new rate applies at your next renewal date on or after August 1, so if you renewed in July you keep the old price for nearly a year.

Last updated August 2026.

This is the second consecutive summer increase, and it is a larger one. Plus went up 22% and Advanced 24%, which is well ahead of inflation and well ahead of what most subscribers budgeted for. Below is what every plan costs now, why Intuit says it raised them, and the handful of things you can actually do about it.

How much is the QuickBooks price increase in 2026?

Three of the four QuickBooks Online plans went up on August 1, 2026. Essentials rose $10 a month, Plus rose $25, and Advanced rose $65. Simple Start did not change. Annualized, that is $120 more a year for Essentials, $300 more for Plus and $780 more for Advanced.

Those are list prices before payroll, payments processing or any add-ons, and before the promotional discount most new subscribers get in their first few months. The promotional rate is what people compare when shopping and the list rate is what they actually pay from month four onward, which is why the renewal shock is so consistent.

When does the new QuickBooks Online price take effect?

At your next renewal date on or after August 1, 2026, not immediately. Existing subscribers keep their current rate until their billing cycle rolls over. A subscriber who renewed on July 20 pays the old price until roughly July 2027. A subscriber renewing on August 15 pays the new price from that date.

That staggering is worth understanding before you panic at a headline. It also means the increase reaches different businesses across a full twelve month window, so if your bookkeeper tells you their client's bill has not changed yet, both of you can be right. Check the renewal date on your subscription page rather than assuming.

Why did QuickBooks raise prices again?

Intuit points to new AI features rolled into the plans, including automated bookkeeping cleanup, invoicing automation and conversational reporting. For Advanced specifically, the increase also reflects bundling QuickBooks Workforce Elite into the plan, a payroll capability that was previously a separate paid add-on.

Whether that is a fair trade depends entirely on whether you use those features. For an Advanced subscriber who was already paying separately for payroll, the bundle can genuinely be close to neutral or better. For a Plus subscriber who wanted a chart of accounts and class tracking and has no interest in AI-generated bookkeeping suggestions, it is a $300 a year increase for capability they did not ask for. Both reactions are showing up loudly in accounting forums, and the split falls almost exactly along that line.

How much does QuickBooks Online cost per month now?

Simple Start is $38, Essentials is $85, Plus is $140 and Advanced is $340 a month at list price. QuickBooks Solopreneur, the sole proprietor plan that replaced QuickBooks Self-Employed, sits below all of them at $20 a month.

The jump from Simple Start to Plus is the one that catches small businesses out, because Plus is where class and location tracking, inventory and project profitability live. Plenty of businesses need exactly one Plus feature and pay $102 a month more than Simple Start to get it. Before accepting the new Plus price, it is worth writing down which Plus-only feature you actually use. If the answer is class tracking for two or three cost centers, and you can live with reporting them another way, Essentials at $85 saves you $660 a year.

Did QuickBooks Simple Start go up in 2026?

No. Simple Start stayed at $38 a month, and Intuit confirmed there are no pricing changes for the Free, Lite, Ledger or Simple Start tiers. It is the only QuickBooks Online plan that escaped this round entirely.

That is a deliberate choice, and it tells you where the pressure to downgrade is expected to land. Simple Start covers income and expense tracking, invoicing, and one user. What it does not cover is bill management, multiple users, class tracking or inventory. Downgrading is a real option for a sole operator, but check the feature list against your actual month rather than against what you think you use.

Is there a QuickBooks Desktop price increase in 2026?

Desktop is a separate and shrinking story. Intuit stopped selling new Pro Plus, Premier Plus and Mac Plus subscriptions on September 30, 2024, and Desktop 2024 is the final release of those editions, supported through September 30, 2027. Enterprise is the only Desktop edition Intuit still sells, and it has no announced end date.

So for most Desktop users the pricing question has been overtaken by a bigger one, which is what happens when connected services stop for their version. Desktop 2023 lost bank feeds, payroll and security updates on May 31, 2026. We cover the full version-by-version schedule and what keeps working on the QuickBooks Desktop discontinued page. The short version: the software keeps opening and your company file is never locked, but the automatic bank feed is gone and importing a Web Connect file becomes the workaround people reach for.

Can you lock in the old QuickBooks price?

Not reliably, and be skeptical of advice that says otherwise. QuickBooks Online is billed as a rolling subscription and Intuit reprices it at renewal, so there is no annual prepay that freezes the rate indefinitely. What you can do is know your renewal date and make any plan changes before it, because a downgrade takes effect at the cycle boundary.

One thing that is worth a phone call: if you have been a subscriber for years and the increase is large enough that you are genuinely considering leaving, retention offers exist and are not advertised. That is not a guarantee, and it works better when you have actually priced an alternative and can say so specifically.

What are the options if the new price is too high?

There are four honest options, and which one fits depends on why you are on QuickBooks at all. Downgrade a tier, move to a cheaper accounting package, drop to personal finance software if your books are not really business books, or accept the increase because your accountant works in QuickBooks and switching costs more than $300 a year of their time.

That last one is the reason most people stay, and it is a legitimate reason. QuickBooks Online is the default in US bookkeeping, and an accountant who logs into your books directly saves real hours. If you are paying a bookkeeper, ask them what a migration would cost in their time before assuming a cheaper subscription is cheaper overall.

The option people skip is the one worth checking first: whether you need business accounting at all. A landlord with three properties, a retiree tracking investments, or a sole proprietor with Schedule C income and no employees is often paying business software prices for a personal finance job. Quicken Classic Business & Personal costs $131.88 a year against $1,680 for QuickBooks Online Plus, and it produces Schedule C, E and F reports. Our Quicken vs QuickBooks comparison lays out exactly where that line sits, and if the household side is what you actually care about, Monarch Money versus Quicken covers the cheaper personal options. Software costs creep like this across every category, and it is worth reviewing what your subscriptions actually total across the year rather than reacting to one bill at a time.

Does the increase affect QuickBooks Payroll?

Payroll is priced separately from the QuickBooks Online subscription, so the plan increases above do not directly change a standalone payroll bill. The notable change is at the Advanced tier, where Workforce Elite is now included rather than sold as an add-on, which materially changes the math for Advanced subscribers who were already paying for payroll separately.

If you are on Advanced and paying for payroll on top, check your next invoice line by line rather than assuming the increase is a straight $65. For some Advanced accounts the bundled payroll offsets most or all of the increase. For others who never needed payroll, it does not offset anything.

What to do this week

Three things, in order. Find your renewal date so you know when the new rate actually applies to you. Write down which features of your current plan you used in the last three months, honestly, not aspirationally. Then decide whether the plan you are on is the plan you need, because a downgrade has to be made before the renewal to take effect at it.

If that review points you away from QuickBooks entirely, move the data rather than abandoning it. QuickBooks Online exports transaction history and reports to CSV and Excel, and most destinations import from there. If you are moving in the other direction, off Quicken and into QuickBooks, the file formats do not line up on their own: QuickBooks Online accepts CSV, QBO, QFX and OFX, and never QIF, which is what Quicken exports. Converting the QIF into a Web Connect QBO file is the step that makes the import work, and the Quicken to QuickBooks migration guide walks through the whole sequence.

Price increases are a reasonable moment to check that you are on the right tool rather than the tool you happened to pick years ago. For a lot of QuickBooks subscribers the answer will still be QuickBooks. For a meaningful minority, this is the year the math stops working.