Three tools, three pricing models. QuickBooks charges $660/year. Wave Pro charges $192/year. Helix is $279 once — forever.
QuickBooks Essentials costs $660/year and rising — Intuit has raised prices 64% since 2020. Wave was the free alternative, but Wave Pro now costs $192/year after moving bank reconciliation, receipt scanning, and support behind a paywall. Wave also shut down its community forums in 2025. Helix is $279 one time — no monthly fees, no price increases, no features held hostage. It includes invoicing, expense tracking, P&L, balance sheet, CRM, scheduling, and time tracking. Break-even versus QuickBooks: 5 months. Break-even versus Wave Pro: 17 months. But after that, Helix is free forever while the other two keep charging. Over 5 years with 11% SaaS inflation, QuickBooks costs $8,847. Wave Pro costs $2,578. Helix costs $279.
QuickBooks and Wave are pre-selected below. Add any other tools to see the full picture.
| Feature | QuickBooks | Wave | Helix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | Yes | Yes (free) | Yes |
| Expense Tracking | Yes | Pro only | Yes |
| CRM / Client Management | No | No | Yes |
| Scheduling / Booking | No | No | Yes |
| Payroll | Yes (+$45/mo) | Yes (+$40/mo) | No |
| Works Offline | No | No | Yes |
This is really a question about what you need and what you're willing to pay for it. QuickBooks is the industry standard — your accountant knows it, your bank connects to it, and it does accounting extremely well. It also costs $660/year and climbing.
Wave was the scrappy free alternative that small businesses loved. But Wave isn't really free anymore. In 2024, they moved bank reconciliation behind the Pro paywall. In 2025, they shut down their community forums. Support now requires a paid plan. The pattern is clear: Wave is slowly becoming the subscription they promised they'd never be.
Automatic bank feed syncing, massive accountant ecosystem, reliable payroll processing, and deep reporting. If your accountant lives in QuickBooks and you need payroll, those are genuine advantages Helix and Wave can't match today.
Helix isn't just accounting software. It's a business command center: CRM, scheduling, time tracking, invoicing, P&L, balance sheet, and budget management in one app. You don't need QuickBooks plus Calendly plus a CRM plus a time tracker. And you pay once — $279, then it's yours forever. No price increases, no features moving behind paywalls, no surprises.
$279 once. Everything you need. Nothing you pay monthly for.
Get Helix — $279 Calculate Your Savings· Data sourced from official pricing pages