For US and Canadian freelancers whose week is invoicing plus bookkeeping, Wave is $0 against FreshBooks' $43 — and it never counts clients. FreshBooks earns its fee when you need proposals, retainers, or accountant access, or when you work outside North America.
At a glance
| Product | Best for | Starting price | Free plan | Stands out for | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wave | US and Canadian freelancers who want invoicing and bookkeeping at no monthly cost | $0 Starter; Pro $19/month USD ($190/year) | Yes — Starter is a free plan, not a trial | Unlimited invoices, clients, and bookkeeping records with no client cap | US and Canada only; reminders and bank imports sit behind Pro |
| FreshBooks | Project-based service businesses that need proposals, retainers, and accountant access in one place | From $23/month (Lite, billed monthly) | 30-day free trial, no credit card required | Estimates, proposals, and invoices that look consistent without design work | Plans capped by billable client count — archived clients count |
Rows marked “Not verified” have not been confirmed against the vendor’s current pricing page. We publish the gap rather than an estimate.
In the US or Canada, Wave handles unlimited invoicing and bookkeeping for $0 — you only pay when a client pays online. Pay for FreshBooks when you need proposals, retainers, or an accountant login.
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Every “Wave vs FreshBooks” search gets you the same table: two logos, a feature checklist, and a verdict that hedges. This page skips the checklist, because the decision is not made of features. It is made of what each product meters — and the two meters are completely different animals.
Two pricing pages, two different meters
FreshBooks meters clients. Your price is set by how many people you bill, and the cap counts archived clients as well as active ones — the rule that decides most FreshBooks purchases, and the one the plan cards don’t print (the full review covers it in depth).
Wave meters nothing by count. Unlimited invoices, unlimited clients, unlimited bookkeeping records, at $0. Wave’s bill is a cut of online payments instead: 2.9% + $0.60 per card transaction, 1% ($1 minimum) per bank payment.
So the short version: FreshBooks charges you for being popular. Wave charges you for being paid. Everything else on this page is arithmetic on top of that sentence.
One boundary before the arithmetic: Wave serves the US and Canada only. This comparison is written for those two markets. If you invoice from anywhere else, Wave is off the table and the free-tools guide lists substitutes.
The prices, side by side
| Wave Starter | Wave Pro | FreshBooks Lite | FreshBooks Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (USD, monthly) | $0 | $19 ($190/year) | $23 | $43 |
| Billable client cap | None | None | 5 | 50 |
| Invoices and estimates | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bookkeeping and reports | Included | Included | Tax reports only | Included |
| Receipt capture | $8/mo add-on | Included | Not included | Included |
| Card fee (Visa/Mastercard) | 2.9% + $0.60 | 2.9% + $0, first 10/mo | Not published on the pricing page | Not published on the pricing page |
| Bank payment (ACH/EFT) | 1% ($1 min) | 1% ($1 min) | Not published on the pricing page | Not published on the pricing page |
All figures checked 3 November 2026. FreshBooks’ promotional first-month pricing is left out on purpose; the table shows what you pay after any promotion ends. FreshBooks accepts cards, ACH, wallets, and buy-now-pay-later — but its per-transaction rates live in the app, not on the pricing page, so the only number you can plan on before signing up is the subscription itself.
That gap in the table is not laziness. Wave publishes flat rates anyone can check; FreshBooks does not. When one side of a comparison is auditable and the other is not, you should notice — it matters more than any single feature row.
The comparison most reviews get wrong
Most matchups price Wave’s free plan against FreshBooks Lite. That is the wrong fight. Lite’s five clients — with archived clients counting toward them — is a trial extension with a sticker price, not a plan a working freelancer can live on past the first good year. The review makes that case in full.
The honest matchups are:
- Wave Starter ($0) vs FreshBooks Plus ($43). These are the two usable floors. Wave already includes at $0 what FreshBooks gates at $43: real bookkeeping records and reports, unlimited invoices, no client cap. The $516/year difference buys proposals, retainers, and an accountant login — and nothing else.
- Wave (any plan) vs FreshBooks Premium ($70). If your client list is long or unpredictable, FreshBooks only works at the unlimited tier. That is $840 a year for invoicing software before processing fees.
None of this makes FreshBooks a bad product. It makes it a specialist purchase: you pay when the client-facing layer — proposals, retainers, accountant handoff — is the part of your week you want removed.
What a real month costs
Subscriptions are easy to compare; payment fees are where the surprise lives. Take a month of $3,000 invoiced across six $500 invoices and run it through Wave’s published rates:
| How clients pay | Wave Starter | Wave Pro |
|---|---|---|
| All card | $90.60 | $106 |
| All bank (ACH) | $30 | $49 |
| Half and half | $60.30 | $77.50 |
Wave Starter, all-card: 6 × (2.9% × $500 + $0.60). All-bank: 6 × max(1% × $500, $1). Pro adds its $19 subscription.
Two things fall out of this table that almost nobody mentions:
Wave’s bill depends on how your clients pay, not on how much you invoice. The same $3,000 costs $30 or $90 depending on the payment method your clients choose. ACH bank payments at 1% are a third of the card route — so the single highest-leverage move for a Wave user is putting the bank-payment option in front of every client. With FreshBooks, the subscription is fixed no matter what; the fee variable is simply hidden from the pricing page.
Nobody should buy Wave Pro for the payment discount. Pro waives the $0.60 fixed fee — for the first ten card transactions per month. That is a rebate worth at most $6/month, on a plan that costs $19. The other $13 is what the automation actually costs.
Wave Pro's payment discount caps at $6/month. Ten transactions × $0.60 is the whole benefit; after the tenth, rates return to Starter levels. Buy Pro for automated reminders and bank imports — never for the fees.
One more Wave cost that hides in plain sight: receipt capture is an $8/month add-on on Starter (included with Pro). FreshBooks bundles it from Plus. For a freelancer who wants scanned receipts, the real Wave floor is $8, not $0 — still a third of FreshBooks Plus, but not zero.
The price of each capability
Flip the question: instead of “which plan”, ask “what does each capability cost”. Same verified numbers, sharper answer:
| Capability | Wave | FreshBooks |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice with no client cap | $0 | $70/mo (Premium) |
| Financial and accounting reports | $0 | $43/mo (Plus) |
| Receipt capture | $8/mo add-on or Pro | $43/mo (Plus) |
| Automated late-payment reminders | $19/mo (Pro) | Included — tier not marked on the plan cards |
| Automatic bank transaction import | $19/mo (Pro) | Included — tier not marked on the plan cards |
| Proposals and client retainers | Not offered | $43/mo (Plus) |
| Accountant access | Not offered — bookkeeping is sold as a service (Wave Advisors, from $149/mo) | $43/mo (Plus) |
| Project profitability | Not offered | $70/mo (Premium) |
FreshBooks lists automated reminders and bank imports in its full plan comparison, but the plan cards don’t mark which tier starts them — confirm in the 30-day trial before counting on either at Lite.
Read the table as a map of the two products’ souls. Wave’s charges cluster around chores (automation, receipt scanning). FreshBooks’ charges cluster around clients and documents (caps, proposals, accountant access). That is the real axis of this decision — not features, but which kind of work you are willing to pay someone else to absorb.
One row deserves pulling out, because it is where most readers’ actual question lives. If you need accounting for freelancers rather than invoicing — reports, an accountant, a year-end that does not involve a shoebox — the table collapses to a single line: $43 for FreshBooks Plus against $0 for Wave. The question then stops being about features and becomes whether your accountant will work from Wave’s reports or wants a login in a product built around accountants. That is a conversation to have with the accountant before you choose, and it is the one part of this comparison no pricing page can settle.
Where FreshBooks earns the money
The pre-invoice layer is real work. Estimates, proposals, and retainers in the same system as the invoice means the numbers a client agreed to are the numbers that get billed. Wave has no equivalent — your proposal lives in a doc and your invoice in Wave.
Accountant handoff is a login, not an export. From Plus, your bookkeeper gets access instead of a shoebox of CSVs. Wave’s answer is selling the bookkeeping itself (Wave Advisors, from $149/month), which is a different purchase entirely.
The trial and refund make the decision cheap. Thirty days, no credit card, every feature but Advanced Payments — and a 30-day money-back window after purchase. You can run a real billing cycle through FreshBooks while Wave keeps running free beside it, and let your own invoices pick the winner.
It works outside North America. If you invoice from the UK or elsewhere, this comparison ends here: Wave isn’t available to you and FreshBooks is.
Where Wave quietly charges
Honesty cuts both ways. Wave’s “$0” has a fine-print list:
- The fee is the bill. $90/month on $3,000 of card payments is a real subscription — you just pay it per transaction instead of per month.
- Automation starts at $19. Reminders, recurring billing, and automatic bank imports are Pro features. The free plan assumes you will chase invoices yourself.
- Receipt capture is $8/month. Included with Pro, an add-on on Starter.
- Live chat and email support come with any paid add-on, per Wave’s own plan comparison — the pure free plan leans on self-serve help.
- Payroll is an add-on, as it is at FreshBooks.
None of these are traps — they are priced plainly, which is more than can be said for most “free” software. But budget the real total, not the headline.
Who should pick which
- Pick Wave if you invoice from the US or Canada, your week is invoicing plus bookkeeping, your client list grows or accumulates history, and your proposals live in email or documents anyway. You will pay $0–$8/month and a per-payment fee, and never think about client counts.
- Pick FreshBooks if proposals, retainers, or an accountant login are the parts of admin you want gone; if you bill by project and want profitability per project; or if you work outside North America. Budget for Plus at $43, treat Lite as an extended trial, and use the 30-day no-card trial to confirm before paying.
- Run both, briefly. Wave is free forever and FreshBooks’ trial needs no card. Send a real invoice through each in the same month — the differences that matter will show up in your own workflow, not in anyone’s comparison table.
Frequently asked
Does Wave count archived clients?
No — there is no client cap to count against. Wave’s pricing page sets no limit on clients, active or otherwise. This is the mirror image of FreshBooks, where archived clients occupy cap slots until you delete them.
Which one is cheaper?
It depends on how your clients pay, not on the sticker price. Wave’s cost is the fee schedule above; FreshBooks’ is a fixed subscription plus in-app processing rates. For a US/Canada solo who banks on ACH payments, Wave is dramatically cheaper. For anyone who needs proposals and accountant access, the comparison is $8–$19 against $43, and FreshBooks is doing more work for it.
I’m in the UK — which applies?
Neither number on this page transfers cleanly. Wave serves the US and Canada only, and FreshBooks prices per region. The free-tools guide covers invoicing options that work outside North America.
Can I switch later?
Both advertise import paths — Wave’s Advisors onboarding explicitly covers switching from other software, FreshBooks lists data import in its plans. Test with one real client before you commit either way; migrations are where invoice histories go to get lost.
How this comparison was written
This is a research-based comparison: every price, fee, and limit above was taken from the vendors’ own pricing and payments pages on 3 November 2026 (sources listed at the top of this page). Nothing here is hands-on, and anything the vendors do not publish — FreshBooks’ processing rates, the tier that starts its automated reminders — is printed as a gap rather than guessed.
FreshBooks runs a partner programme; this site is not enrolled and no affiliate links are active on this page. Wave has no programme here at all. Nothing paid to be declared the winner, and nothing was.
Related reading
- FreshBooks review: pricing and client limits — the archived-client rule in detail, and why Lite is a trial extension.
- Bonsai vs. FreshBooks — what changes when the proposal and the contract join the decision.
- Best free tools for freelancers — where Wave fits in a full six-tool free stack.
- Invoicing & accounting for freelancers — every comparison in this category, including markets Wave doesn’t serve.
Sources we used
Pricing and feature claims should be checkable against these sources. Plans change without notice, so confirm on the vendor’s site before buying.
- Wave pricing page — Plan names, prices, plan features, and add-on costs, checked 3 November 2026.
- Wave payments page — Card and bank payment fees, and the Pro first-ten-transactions discount terms, checked 3 November 2026.
- Wave receipts page — Receipts Plan at $8 USD/month or $72/year, checked 3 November 2026.
- FreshBooks pricing page — Plans, client limits, plan features, and add-ons; the FAQ confirms archived clients count toward the cap, checked 3 November 2026.