How Much Does Bookkeeping Cost? Monthly Prices for 2026

Outsourced bookkeeping for a small business costs $99 to $1,000 a month, going by the prices providers publish as of September 2026. Software-driven services start at $99 to $199. A named bookkeeper working in your file runs $300 to $470. Our own monthly close, reviewed by a CPA, runs from $350 to $1,000 depending on the size of the business. Hiring in-house costs far more: the median wage for a bookkeeping clerk is $50,670 a year, or $24.36 an hour, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before payroll taxes and benefits. Freelance and firm bookkeepers who bill hourly average about $66 to $106 an hour in the published surveys.

What do bookkeeping services charge per month?

From $99 a month for software-driven bookkeeping to about $1,000 a month for a CPA firm closing the books of a business with up to $200,000 in monthly expenses. These are list prices from each provider’s own pricing page as of September 2026.

Provider and plan	Monthly price	What you get
Pilot Essentials	$99	Software-driven, cash basis, up to $100,000 in monthly expenses
Bench Bookkeeping Light	$199	Software-first bookkeeping
QuickBooks Live	From $300, after a one-time cleanup fee	A bookkeeper working in your QuickBooks Online file
Blue Cloud CPA Starter	From $350	Under $25,000 a month in expenses. Monthly close reviewed by a CPA
Bench Bookkeeping	$399	Full monthly bookkeeping
1-800Accountant Business Complete	$469, billed annually	Dedicated bookkeeper from 75 monthly transactions, with tax advisory
Bench Bookkeeping plus Tax	$649	Bookkeeping and annual tax filing
Blue Cloud CPA Growth	From $650	$25,000 to $75,000 a month in expenses
Blue Cloud CPA Premier	From $1,000	$75,000 to $200,000 a month in expenses

One thing to check with any provider, whatever the price: where the books live. Some services keep your records in their own proprietary system, and others work in a QuickBooks Online or Xero subscription that belongs to you. One large provider’s sudden shutdown in December 2024 showed why that matters. Books kept in software you own stay with you if you change providers or the provider changes hands.

What does a bookkeeper charge per hour?

The most recent Intuit rate survey, from late 2021, put the average bookkeeper billing rate at $66 an hour. The National Society of Accountants survey put write-up work done at accounting firms at $105.51 an hour. Both are several years old, so current rates sit above them.

Hourly billing is fading for ongoing work, and that’s good for the buyer. A fixed monthly fee moves the risk of a slow month or a messy bank feed onto the provider. Hourly still makes sense for one-off projects where nobody can see the scope in advance, like untangling a year of commingled accounts.

Is an in-house bookkeeper cheaper?

Not until the work fills most of a week. The BLS median for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks was $50,670 a year in May 2025. With the employer’s 7.65% share of Social Security and Medicare, unemployment taxes, and modest benefits, the cost passes $60,000. Even the top published tier above is $12,000 a year.

The BLS also projects employment in the occupation to decline 6% from 2025 to 2035, which reflects what’s happening to the work itself: bank feeds, receipt capture, and rules-based categorization have automated most of the data entry. What’s left is the part that needs judgment, including accruals, reconciling items, payroll entries, sales tax, and spotting what doesn’t look right. That’s the part worth paying for.

What sets the monthly price?

Size and complexity. Most providers measure size by monthly expenses or transaction count, because those track the amount of work, and then adjust for the features of the business that add reconciliations or judgment. Six things commonly move a business up a tier.

• Number of accounts. Every bank account, credit card, loan, and payment processor is a separate monthly reconciliation.
• Accrual basis. Tracking receivables, payables, prepaid expenses, and deferred revenue takes more than cash-basis categorization.
• Payroll and sales tax. Both generate liabilities that have to be recorded and cleared correctly every period.
• Inventory or job costing. Tracking cost of goods by item, or costs by project, adds a second dimension to every transaction. Our own pricing for manufacturing and inventory-heavy businesses starts at $895 a month for that reason.
• Multiple entities or locations. Separate books, plus the transactions between them.
• Close speed. Books closed by the 7th business day cost more than books closed by the 15th.

What does catch-up bookkeeping cost?

It depends on how many months are missing and how clean the underlying accounts are. The common pricing is a fraction of the normal monthly fee for each month of backlog. Ours is published: 50% of the monthly rate per month behind. A business in our $350 tier that’s 14 months behind pays $2,450 to get current.

Catch-up is where cheap bookkeeping gets expensive. If the books weren’t kept during the year, the tax preparer either rebuilds them at tax-preparer rates or files from bank statements and guesses. In the NSA’s 2020-2021 survey, 78% of preparers charged extra for disorganized records. The other cost is harder to see: a business with no current books is making pricing, hiring, and tax payment decisions without numbers.

If you aren’t sure what shape your books are in, that’s what our $195 Books Diagnostic is for. You get a written review of what’s clean, what needs fixing, and what it’ll cost, and the fee credits toward your first month.

What should I do next?

Pull three numbers: average monthly expenses, number of bank and card accounts, and how many months behind the books are. Those are what any provider will ask for, and with them you can read your price off the table above.

• The DIY versus professional bookkeeping guide covers when doing it yourself stops being worth it.
• The chart of accounts guide covers setting the books up so they feed the tax return.
• The small business accountant cost guide puts bookkeeping alongside tax and payroll in a full annual budget.
• If your business crosses the US-Canada border, the cross-border bookkeeping cost guide covers what dual-currency books add.

This guide is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Which points apply, and how, depends on your facts.