FreshBooks vs Wave
Both target freelancers and very small businesses, but from different angles. FreshBooks is a polished invoicing, time tracking and projects tool you pay for. Wave gives you genuinely free core accounting and invoicing, charging only for payroll and payments. Here is how they compare, and which one fits your books.
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How they score
Scores are our editorial assessment against the VettedSaaS rubric · not vendor supplied.
Feature by feature
✓ full · ∼ partial · — noneFeature support verified as of June 2026 · check the vendor for current details.
Pricing, side by side
Per month, US list pricePricing as of June 2026 · check the vendor for current pricing. FreshBooks runs $19, $38 and $65 a month with billable client caps of 5, 50 and unlimited; annual billing saves around 10 percent. Wave Pro is $19 a month, or about $16 a month billed annually; payroll runs from $40 a month plus a per employee fee, and card payments cost 2.9 percent plus 60 cents per transaction.