What Wave costs, what it does better, when to stay, and what moves if you go.
Wave's cheapest plan that does the core job is $19/month — $228 a year, $684 over 3 years at today's price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, tasks and accounting in one suite, so it costs less than Wave after 15 months. What Nexa is not: software someone hosts for you with a support desk, and it does not run payroll. If Wave's strengths below are why you pay for it, stay.
Nexa is $279 once, about $23 a month over its first year. Its Drain Guard reads your expenses (from a linked bank, an imported statement, or ones you type in), finds the charges that repeat, and adds them up by the month. Keep or Cut then walks you through them one at a time. Cancel $23 a month of charges you'd forgotten about and Nexa has paid for itself inside the first year, before you count the Wave bill you'd stop paying.
It depends on what you find and what you cancel, so we don't promise a number. In our demo data, Drain Guard finds 5 subscriptions adding up to $110.13 a month. That is sample data, not a customer's.
Wave says it is built for small business owners and solopreneurs at every stage, not accountants. Its page names freelancers, contractors and consultants. (waveapps.com)
What people outside Wave and outside Nexa say:
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
From Wave's own published feature list, each with whether Nexa has an equivalent:
✓ where Wave's published feature list shows it, ✗ where its record says it is missing, — where its list does not say.
| Wave | Nexa | |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✗ | ✓ |
Wave: $19/month — the cheapest plan that does the core job, from Wave's pricing page, checked September 2026. That is $228 a year and $684 over 3 years if the price never changes. Nexa: $279 once. The break-even point is 15 months.
| Over 3 years, at today's prices | Total |
|---|---|
| Wave, billed monthly | $684 |
| Nexa, one device | $279 |
| Nexa + Cloud Sync on all your devices | $458.64 |
Even with Cloud Sync, Nexa costs less over 3 years than Wave at today's price.
Payment processing: 2.9% + $0.60 per card, 3.4% + $0.60 Amex (Pro: first 10 card transactions/mo at 2.9% + $0); ACH rate not stated on pricing page (unverified).
These import into Nexa by file: clients and leads (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); services and price list (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); jobs (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); open invoices (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); open tasks (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); time entries (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); expenses (CSV or Excel (.xlsx)); bank and card transactions (CSV, OFX, QFX, QBO); personal contacts (CSV or vCard (.vcf) — the exports from Google Contacts, Outlook and iCloud); calendar events (.ics — the export from Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, Calendly and most booking tools). Client addresses go in the Notes column for now. You re-enter once: recurring work, online booking. Past invoices and job history stay in Wave's export as your record.
Getting it out of Wave:
Go to Settings → Data Export. Download customers, invoices, transactions, and accounts.
Every import, with templates: Bring your data. Keep Wave running until Nexa checks out.
The same comparison worked through for specific trades, with a job example and the numbers for each:
At $19/month — the cheapest Wave plan that does the core job, per Wave's pricing page in September 2026 — it is $228 a year and $684 over 3 years at today's price. Nexa is $279 once.
Wave's strengths above — free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping and bank transaction import on Pro — are the reason you pay for it, and you like how Wave does them. Switching tools costs time; it is not worth it to save money on something that already works for you. Your team is large enough that Wave's plans for bigger teams buy you more than owning the software outright. You want software someone else hosts, with a support desk and a roadmap you can ask for features on. Nexa is software you own and run yourself. You run payroll, with taxes and pay stubs, inside the same tool. Nexa stops at the edge of payroll: it hands your payroll app each person's hours, overtime and pay rate — keep a payroll service.
Partly. Your client list (CSV), expenses (CSV), bank and card history (CSV, OFX, QFX, QBO), contacts and calendar (.ics) import by file. Invoices, jobs and services do not — re-enter the open ones and keep Wave's export as your record.
It does not run payroll. It stops at the edge: each person's hours, overtime and pay rate per pay period, as a sheet to type from or a CSV for your payroll app. Taxes, pay stubs and paying people stay there. It is not hosted for you: your data lives on your device. Syncing across devices is optional Cloud Sync, $4.99/month. Automated emails (drip sequences, booking reminders, review requests) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. There is no server sending them overnight. No Google Calendar or QuickBooks sync. Calendars move by .ics file. Invoices, jobs and your services list do not import. Clients, expenses, bank history, contacts and calendar do; the rest you re-enter once. No vendor support desk or roadmap to lobby — you buy it once and own it.
30-day money-back guarantee. Export from Wave first and keep it running while you try Nexa.
30-day money-back guarantee.
· Wave price checked September 2026