This page used to be written as if I had been on QuickBooks Self-Employed for years, watching the bank feed slow down. I have not, and that review was doing something this site is not supposed to do. So here is the honest version, built from Intuit's own documents, with every number and every quote checked on September 25, 2026 and listed at the bottom.
Not Discontinued, Just Not Sold to You
QuickBooks Self-Employed is in an odd state that most reviews handle badly. It is not dead. It is not being sold. Those two facts point in opposite directions depending on who is reading.
Intuit's own notice puts it in one sentence: "If you're currently subscribed to QuickBooks Self-Employed, you can still continue your subscription, or you can upgrade to QuickBooks Solopreneur. New customers will be able to choose from our other products, including QuickBooks Solopreneur."
Read that twice, because the two halves are for different people. If you are already paying for it, nothing changes on your bill and your data stays where it is. If you are arriving now, because a blog post or a YouTube video recommended the product, it is not for sale, and the thing being offered in its place costs more.
What that means for a search: the question behind "QuickBooks Self-Employed review" is no longer "is it good." It is "what do I do now," and the answer depends on whether you are inside or outside.
The Three Ways Out
Stay. Your subscription continues at whatever you are billed today. There is no deadline in Intuit's notice, no shutdown date, and nothing to migrate. The risk of staying is not a shutdown, it is drift: a product nobody sells is a product nobody builds for, and the integrations it has today are the integrations it will have.
Migrate to Solopreneur. Intuit will move your subscription and, in its words, "much of your data" automatically. Lite, the tier comparable to what Self-Employed did, is $20 a month or $215 a year. The migration is where the real cost is, and it is not measured in dollars. More on that below.
Leave Intuit. Wave handles tracking for free, and FreshBooks starts at $23 a month if invoicing is the part that matters. Both prices were checked on this site on September 22, 2026. The catch is the books-to-tax path: Self-Employed and Solopreneur are both built to hand your year to TurboTax, and replacing that means doing the handoff yourself or paying a preparer.
What Moves, and What Gets Left Behind
Intuit's switch guide lists exactly what transfers. This is the part worth reading before clicking anything, because two of the three "cannot" items are the reason people chose Self-Employed in the first place.
Moves automatically: customers, invoices (only for accounts on the new invoice experience), trips, products and services, bank connections, transactions up to three years, and receipts.
Listed as future work, not available now: rules and quarterly tax estimates. If you lean on either, the guide's own advice applies: it says you "may wait until we update the migration experience before you switch products."
Cannot be switched over: third-party app integrations such as Etsy, Uber and Amazon, plus tags and vendors. That first one is the quiet cost. Self-Employed's pitch to gig workers was that marketplace and rideshare income landed in your books without you doing anything. Move to Solopreneur and that connection does not come with you.
And one line in that guide deserves its own paragraph, because it is the difference between a migration and a one-way door: "make sure to download and save your reports and accounting info as you won't be able to access your old account after the upgrade process is complete." After the upgrade, the old account is gone. If you migrate, download first, and treat the export as the archive of record.
The mechanical choices are all reasonable: automatic migration, a manual move that ends with you cancelling the old subscription, or starting fresh. The one to avoid is starting the upgrade without an export.
What the Replacement Costs, Plan by Plan
Solopreneur comes in two tiers, and QuickBooks Online's Simple Start sits above them as the place Intuit points you when you outgrow it. Every price below is printed on Intuit's site, with the promotion beside it.
| Plan | Price | Promotion | What the tier includes | Where it pinches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | None needed | Income and expense tracking, top three reports, one contractor | Two invoices, two receipts and five mileage trips a month |
| Lite | $20/mo, or $215/yr | $10/mo for three months | Unlimited invoices, unlimited receipts and mileage, three contractors, automated bill pay and sales tax, Expert Assisted Tax powered by TurboTax | No accountant access, no report export |
| Simple Start | $38/mo | $19/mo for three months | Everything in Lite plus accountant access, exportable reports, in-person and recurring payments, one sales channel, unlimited contractors, payroll attach | The price, if all you needed was books |
Two arithmetic notes. The annual price is printed on Intuit's own product page at $215, which is $25 less than twelve payments of $20. And the promotion is a three-month discount, not a rate: the fourth month costs $20 or $38 like the pricing page says.
The tier that deserves attention is Free, because it is a demo rather than a plan. Two invoices a month is one client and a change order. Two receipts a month is one lunch. Five mileage trips is a week of a delivery side hustle. If you are reading this because you want to track a business, Free will tell you what the paid product feels like and then stop being useful, which is a fine way to evaluate software and a bad way to keep books.
What Getting Paid Costs
Intuit publishes its processing rates rather than putting them behind a sales call, and the rate card carries a date of its own: accurate as of September 18, 2026.
- Cards and digital wallets on invoices: 2.99%, covering Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Apple Pay, PayPal and Venmo
- ACH bank payments: 1%, with a $1 minimum per transaction
- In-person payments through a reader or tap to pay: 2.5%
- Manually keyed cards: 3.5%
- Buy now pay later: 2.99% with Affirm, 6% plus 30 cents with Afterpay
Run a $600 invoice through both common paths. By card it costs $17.94. By bank transfer it costs $6. That is a $12 difference on one invoice, and a freelancer billing $1,800 a month loses about $430 a year to the difference between letting clients default to cards and asking them to pay by bank transfer. The rate card also says businesses processing more than $2,500 a month can call for up to 25% off standard rates, which is worth one phone call if that is your volume.
Who Should Skip All of This
Skip the migration if you sync Etsy, Uber or Amazon. Those integrations do not move, and the rebuild runs through a sales channel connection that starts at $38 a month. Staying put, or leaving for a tool with the integrations you use, are both more honest answers than paying to lose a feature.
Skip it if you rely on quarterly tax estimates. They are listed as future migration work, and an estimate you lose track of is a penalty you find out about later. Wait for the guide to change, or keep them somewhere else.
Skip Solopreneur if you want the preparer in the file. Accountant access starts at Simple Start, $38 a month, which is nearly double Lite. If the plan is "hand it to my CPA in March," you are pricing the $38 tier, not the $20 one.
Skip the whole category if your books are small. Under a few dozen transactions a month, the honest tool is a spreadsheet and a folder of receipts, and the money is better spent on the person who files. Software subscriptions are the cheapest part of bookkeeping and the least valuable when nothing complicated is happening.
And skip the advice that loyalty is owed here. Self-Employed was a good product for its decade. The reason to stay is that it still does your job today, not that leaving would feel disloyal.
How This Score Works
The criteria below were written before this product was scored, and they are the same five on every review here. Each one takes only inputs you can check yourself on a vendor page: what a plan includes, where it caps you, what processing costs, what is sold separately, and what is printed versus quoted. Nothing in the score depends on how the software feels to use, because that is not something this page can evidence.
| Criterion | 2 points | 1 point | 0 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the entry plan includes | The cheapest paid plan does the product’s core job without an upgrade, and nothing a solo user needs monthly sits a tier up | Core job works, but at least one routine monthly need is only on a higher tier | The cheapest paid plan cannot do the core job without an upgrade or a paid add-on |
| Where the caps bite | No hard cap a one-person business would hit in a year | A cap exists but sits above ordinary solo use | A cap sits inside ordinary solo use |
| Cost of getting paid | Processing rates published, and a bank transfer path under 1.5% or capped | Rates published, but card only or the bank path is 1.5% or higher | Rates not published anywhere public |
| Add-on load | Nothing routine is sold separately; add-ons are genuinely optional | One routine need is priced as an add-on | Two or more routine needs are add-ons, or a required add-on costs half the plan again |
| Price transparency | Every plan price and the renewal price is printed, and promotions state what they renew at | Plan prices printed, but a material cost needs a call, a login or a quote | The entry price only exists as a promotion, or key prices are not public |
Ten points available, halved for a score out of five. A high score means the pricing is honest and the plan you buy is the plan you keep. It does not mean the product is the best one for you.
The Score
| Criterion | Score | Why, from the printed facts |
|---|---|---|
| What the entry plan includes | 1 / 2 | The free plan is a demo: two invoices, two receipts and five tracked mileage trips a month, one user, no accountant access. Lite at $20 does the core job with unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage, but accountant access and report export both start at Simple Start, $38. |
| Where the caps bite | 2 / 2 | Lite carries one user and three contractors. Three is above what most one-person service businesses pay in a year, and there is no transaction, client or invoice cap on the paid tier. |
| Cost of getting paid | 2 / 2 | Rates are printed: 2.99% for cards and digital wallets on invoices, 1% for ACH bank payments with a $1 minimum, 2.5% in person, 3.5% keyed in. The bank path is under 1.5%. |
| Add-on load | 2 / 2 | Payroll, extra sales channels and in-person payments sit on Simple Start and are optional for a one-person service business. Nothing a solo needs every month is metered on Lite. |
| Price transparency | 2 / 2 | Free, Lite and Simple Start are printed at $0, $20 and $38 with the promotion beside them (50% off for three months, $10 and $19), and Intuit prints the annual price, $215, on its own product page. |
| QuickBooks Solopreneur | 9 / 10 | 4.5 out of 5 |
The score belongs to Solopreneur because Self-Employed cannot be bought, and it lands at 9 out of 10. Intuit prints what everything costs, publishes a processing rate card with a date on it, prices a 1% bank transfer path, and puts a real free tier in front of the paid one. The one point it gives up is the same point FreshBooks gave up: accountant access and report export sit a tier up, and a one-person business finds out it needs them at tax time, which is the worst moment to discover a paywall.
What a score cannot capture is the migration. Nine out of ten says the pricing is honest and the plan you buy is the plan you keep. It does not say the trip from Self-Employed to Solopreneur is worth taking, and for a gig worker with marketplace integrations the answer may be that the twenty dollars buys a product that does less of the specific thing they came for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is QuickBooks Self-Employed discontinued?
Not for existing subscribers. Intuit's own notice says that if you are currently subscribed, "you can still continue your subscription, or you can upgrade to QuickBooks Solopreneur." What ended is new sales: "New customers will be able to choose from our other products, including QuickBooks Solopreneur."
Can I still sign up for QuickBooks Self-Employed?
No. Intuit stopped selling it to new customers, and the replacement for a new buyer is QuickBooks Solopreneur at $20 a month, or $215 a year, with a 50% off for three months promotion that puts the first quarter at $10 a month.
What data moves if I migrate to QuickBooks Solopreneur?
Intuit's switch guide lists what migrates automatically: customers, invoices (only for accounts on the new invoice experience), trips, products and services, bank connections, transactions up to three years, and receipts. Rules and quarterly tax estimates are listed as future work. Third-party app integrations such as Etsy, Uber and Amazon, plus tags and vendors, cannot be switched over. The same guide says to download your reports first, because the old account stops being accessible once the upgrade completes.
How much more expensive is Solopreneur than what I pay now?
Solopreneur Lite is $20 a month or $215 a year, so the annual billing saves $25 over twelve monthly payments. What you pay for Self-Employed today is on your Intuit bill rather than on a public page, so the honest comparison is that line against $20. If your current bill is $15 a month, the migration is $60 a year more before any promotion.
Does Solopreneur file my taxes?
Lite carries what Intuit calls Expert Assisted Tax powered by TurboTax, and the price is printed as "Pay only when you file," with 20% off the base price of federal filing. Self-Employed worked differently: it exported your data to TurboTax, which you then paid for separately. Either way, the software subscription is not the tax bill.
What does it cost to get paid through QuickBooks?
QuickBooks Payments publishes its rates: 2.99% on cards and digital wallets for invoice payments, 1% for ACH bank payments with a $1 minimum, 2.5% for in-person tap or swipe, 3.5% for keyed-in cards. Buy now pay later runs 2.99% with Affirm and 6% plus 30 cents with Afterpay. Businesses processing over $2,500 a month can call for up to 25% off standard rates.
What if I would rather leave Intuit entirely?
That is a real option and this site covers both paths: Wave runs the tracking side for free, and FreshBooks starts at $23 a month for invoicing with a five-client cap on its cheapest tier, checked on this site on September 22, 2026. The trade is losing the books-to-tax handoff that both Intuit products are built around, which for some people is the only feature they actually use.
Sources
Prices, plan contents, migration lists and quoted wording were checked against these pages on September 25, 2026.
- Intuit: QuickBooks Solopreneur vs. QuickBooks Self-Employed, for the wording on existing subscriptions and new customers, the $20 monthly and $215 annual price, the tax experience difference, and the automatic migration summary
- Intuit help: Switch from QuickBooks Self-Employed to QuickBooks Solopreneur (updated August 5, 2026), for the list of data that migrates, the items listed as future work, the integrations, tags and vendors that cannot move, and the warning that the old account stops being accessible
- Intuit: QuickBooks Solopreneur plans, for the Free, Lite and Simple Start prices, the 50% off for three months promotion, and the per-plan feature lists including the Free tier caps
- QuickBooks Payments rate card (accurate as of September 18, 2026), for the card, ACH, in-person, keyed and buy now pay later rates
- FreshBooks pricing and Wave pricing, checked on this site on September 22, 2026, for the exit prices named above
For the wider field, see the accounting software roundup and the FreshBooks review. For what to do with the books once they are clean, see the deductions checklist.
