ZipBooks
Tidy, genuinely free cloud bookkeeping for freelancers and the smallest firms, with paid tiers that add recurring billing and team access.
ZipBooks earns its place by being simple and free where it counts. The Starter plan costs nothing and still sends unlimited invoices, tracks customers and vendors, and connects one bank account, which makes it a real option for a freelancer who just needs to bill and keep basic books. Move up to Smarter or Sophisticated and you get recurring invoices, time tracking, smart tagging and reconciliation, with machine learning that learns how you categorize transactions. The limits are scope. There is no payroll, inventory is thin, the integration library is short next to QuickBooks or Xero, and support is email and chat rather than phone. It is a clean first set of books, not a platform you grow a complex business on.
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A free, friendly first set of books for freelancers who keep it simple.
In its favour
Held against it
Simplicity and price lead, depth is the trade.
ZipBooks scores high on ease of use and value, helped by a free Starter plan and a clean interface. Features and integrations are the soft spot: it covers core books well but lacks the payroll, inventory and ecosystem that growing firms eventually need.
Scored against the same five weighted criteria we use across accounting. See the rubric →
a freelancer or very small firm that wants clean, low cost books and can start free, with no need for payroll or deep inventory.
a growing business that needs payroll, real inventory, or a wide library of third party integrations to run on.
What it costs
Per month, billed monthlyPricing as of June 2026. Starter is free; Smarter is $15 a month and Sophisticated $35 a month. The Accountant plan for firms managing client books is custom quoted. Check the vendor for current pricing.