Quicken Home and Business Alternative and Quicken Business and Personal Alternatives Compared

QuickBooks Online is the best alternative to Quicken Home and Business for a business that is growing, because it is what most US bookkeepers and CPAs already work in, it handles payroll, sales tax and accountant access, and it reads the QBO files our converter makes from your Quicken QIF exports. Pick QuickBooks Lite at $20 if you work alone and nobody else touches the books, or Simple Start at $38 if a CPA does.

The plan-by-plan prices, including the new free tier and what each one locks, are on our QuickBooks Solopreneur pricing and QuickBooks Simple Start pricing pages.

Nothing else puts household budgeting and small business books in one file the way Quicken does, so the honest answer is no single app copies it. What most owners do instead is pair two tools: a business ledger such as QuickBooks, Xero or Wave, plus a personal app such as Quicken Simplifi or Monarch for the household side. The pairing costs more, but each half does its job properly.

Here is what that looks like in dollars for the first year at list price, before intro discounts.

Simplifi's $47.88 is Quicken's first-year price ($83.88 a year after that). Monarch Core is $99.99 a year. If the business side is small enough that the cheapest pairing feels like overkill, staying on Quicken is a perfectly reasonable answer, and our Quicken pricing page shows what each plan renews at.

Yes, once the business needs anything beyond tracking income and expenses. QuickBooks keeps double-entry books, so the balance sheet ties out, and it adds payroll, sales tax, bills, accountant access and integrations with payment processors. Quicken is better only for a very small business run alongside household money by one person who files a Schedule C and wants a single app.

The full feature-by-feature breakdown, including invoicing and rental property, is in Quicken Home and Business vs QuickBooks.

Yes, account by account. Quicken has no direct export to QuickBooks Online, and QuickBooks will not open a QIF file, so the reliable route is to export each Quicken account as a QIF file, convert it to a QBO (Web Connect) file, and upload it in QuickBooks under Transactions, Bank transactions, Upload from file. Transactions arrive in the bank feed ready to categorize and match.

The converter at the top of this page does the QIF to QBO step and shows you the transaction count and date range before you download, so you can check the file against your Quicken register. The step-by-step version, including which business categories to set up first, is on Quicken Home and Business to QuickBooks. If you have many accounts, the bulk QIF to QBO converter handles a batch at once.

QuickBooks Lite at $20 a month, the paid plan on Intuit's Solopreneur page, is the closest fit for a sole proprietor, because it was built for one-person businesses filing a Schedule C, with unlimited invoices, mileage tracking and up to three contractors. If you send fewer than a couple of invoices a month, Intuit's free tier may be enough to start, and Wave Pro at $19 a month is the low-cost option outside Intuit.

Move up to Simple Start when a bookkeeper or CPA needs their own login, which Lite does not include.

Landlords who used Quicken's rental property features usually move to QuickBooks Online Plus or Simple Start with one class or tag per property, or to a dedicated rental tool for leases and tenant payments. Quicken Classic Business & Personal is still the most complete single app for a few doors, so leaving makes sense mainly once you need an accountant in the books or more than one owner logs in.

The trade-offs are covered on QuickBooks for rental property and Quicken rental property manager.

Xero is a good alternative if your accountant works in Xero or you want to leave the Intuit ecosystem, at $27, $59 or $97 a month. Its Early plan caps you at 20 invoices and 5 bills a month, so most active businesses land on Growing. Xero accepts QIF, but Quicken's loose date format causes misread dates, so converting QIF to OFX first is the safer import.

The import steps are on Quicken to Xero.

No. Neither Quicken Classic Business & Personal nor the cloud Business & Personal plan runs payroll, files payroll taxes or issues W-2s. Owners who hire usually add a payroll service and record the totals in Quicken, which works for one employee and gets tedious after that. QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks and Wave all sell payroll as an add-on that posts straight into the books.

Mostly no for new buyers. Intuit stopped selling new QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus and Mac Plus subscriptions in the US on September 30, 2024, and Enterprise is the only Desktop edition still sold. If you already own Desktop, our converter's QBO files import through Web Connect there too, see QIF to QuickBooks Desktop and the support dates on QuickBooks Desktop discontinued.

Not if you export before your Quicken membership lapses and keep the original data file. An expired Quicken Classic membership still opens your file, but online services stop, so do the export while everything is current. Export each account as QIF, convert, and keep both the QIF files and the converted files in one dated folder as your archive.

QuickBooks and Xero read bank transactions from files, not Quicken's categories or reports, so plan to re-create a short chart of accounts and let the bank rules learn. Most owners only bring in the current year plus the prior tax year and keep older years in the Quicken file.

Start with the reason you are leaving. Payroll or a CPA who wants a login points to QuickBooks Simple Start or Xero. Lots of invoices and billable hours point to FreshBooks. Cost alone points to Wave Pro or QuickBooks Lite. If your reason is only that Quicken feels dated, the cloud Quicken Business & Personal plan at $59.88 for the first year is worth a look before you change systems.

Whichever you pick, run one account through the converter above before you cancel anything. You will see in a minute whether your Quicken export converts cleanly, and you will have the first file ready to upload on day one of the new subscription.