How much does a bookkeeper cost?

How much does a bookkeeper cost?

As of October 2026, a bookkeeping clerk on staff earns a median $24.36 an hour, and an outside pro bills well above that. Online services with a bookkeeper start at $199 to $400 a month. QuickBooks Online and Xero start at $27 to $38 a month at list price if you do the work yourself. Each price below links to its source, checked October 31, 2026.

The rows measure different things. A wage is what an employee earns before you add taxes and benefits. A billed rate is what an outside pro charges you, with their overhead inside it. A monthly plan is a bundle whose price depends on how much money moves through your books. Xendoo’s tiers step up with your monthly expenses, and Bench’s cheapest plan stops at $250,000 in yearly revenue. Intuit sets the price of its own service from your average monthly expenses and reviews it every three months.

When you compare services, price each one on the same business, using the inputs in the model below. The pay range around the clerk’s median is in our small business accounting statistics.

What does a freelance bookkeeper charge an hour?

Outside accounting and bookkeeping pros billed an average $75 an hour in Intuit’s 2021 rate survey of almost 900 of them, up from $69 in 2019. That is the newest published figure we found; we found no freelance bookkeeping rate from the BLS or the AICPA. Only 48% shared a rate, and the survey is from 2021, so treat $75 as a marker, not a quote.

You can also work up to a fair rate from the wage. A clerk’s median is $24.36 an hour. Across private industry, wages made up 70% of what employers paid per hour worked in June 2026, and benefits and payroll taxes made up the rest (BLS). On that ratio, a median clerk costs an employer about $34.80 an hour all in. That is our estimate, and it assumes a clerk’s benefits look like the private-industry average.

A freelancer has no employer paying that other 30%. They cover their own taxes and insurance, and they can’t bill the hours they spend finding clients. So a freelance rate well above $34.80 is normal.

Bookkeepers split almost evenly on how they bill. In the same survey, 50% billed monthly bookkeeping by the hour and 49% charged a fixed monthly fee. Catch-up work went hourly 62% of the time and cleanup 66%, because nobody can price a mess before they see it.

What does the same business pay four different ways?

For a small business with about 150 transactions a month, our model puts bookkeeping at $75.50 to $410.64 a month as of October 2026, depending on who does the work. The cheapest way costs you the most hours. The prices are sourced. The hours are our assumptions, listed here so you can swap in your own.

The business we priced:

• About 150 transactions a month across one bank account and one credit card.
• Payroll for 3 people, run by a payroll provider. That fee is the same in every row, so it’s left out.
• Under $15,000 in monthly expenses and $250,000 in yearly revenue, and books that are current.
• No tax return. Every setup still needs one.

The hours we assumed:

• A part-time clerk spends 12 hours a month on the books.
• An outside accountant spends 6 hours at year end tidying a do-it-yourself file.
• An outside accountant spends 2 hours a month reviewing books that software has already sorted.
• Outside time is billed at the $75 survey average from 2021.

The payroll tax line uses the BLS figure for part-time workers in June 2026. Legally required benefits cost employers $2.30 an hour on top of $20.15 in wages, or about 11.4% of pay. That covers Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation, and your state’s rates will move it a little. It leaves out paid leave and health insurance, which you may or may not offer.

Over a year, the clerk comes to about $4,928. Paid month to month, the services run $2,388 (Bench Bookkeeping Light) to $4,800, and Bench’s yearly plan brings Light down to $1,910. The year-end accountant setup is about $906, and the AI-assisted setup with a monthly review about $2,820. The gap between the cheapest row and the rest is mostly your own time. If an hour of yours is worth more than about $26.58 to the business, the AI-assisted setup costs less than the do-it-yourself row.

The $75 rate is the weakest input, since it is from 2021. As a lower check, take the BLS median for an accountant on staff, $40.23 an hour, and gross it up by the same 70% wage share. That gives about $57.47 an hour, our estimate. At that rate the do-it-yourself row comes to $66.74 and the AI-assisted row to $199.94.

Two inputs swing the answer more than any price. One is hours. If your books take a clerk 25 hours instead of 12, that row nearly doubles. The other is being behind. Every row assumes current books, and twelve months of catch-up is hourly work that can cost more than a year of keeping up. For the software side over several years, with payroll and extra users added in, see how much accounting software costs.

What makes bookkeeping cost more?

The price follows the work your books make each month, and volume matters most. Every outsourced service we checked ties its price to the size of your books. Xendoo and Intuit use your monthly expenses, and Bench’s cheapest plan uses your yearly revenue. Pilot points to transaction volume and complexity, and Bookkeeper360 to size and complexity. After volume, each of these adds hours or moves you up a tier:

• More bank and card accounts, since each one is another statement to reconcile.
• Payroll and sales tax, which add deadlines. Pilot, for one, prices payroll as a separate service.
• Inventory or project tracking, which is real work on top of the basics.
• Being months behind, which turns a monthly fee into an hourly cleanup.
• Accrual books with deferred revenue or prepaid costs, which need someone who knows the rules.

Reconciling is the piece most owners can learn to do themselves. The reconciliation how-to walks through it step by step.

When is software enough, and when do you need a person?

Software is enough when your books are current and your volume is a few hundred lines a month or less. A person earns the fee once your filings carry real risk or you fall months behind. Most small businesses land in between, with software doing the sorting and a person checking it.

Much of a bookkeeper’s month is mechanical. A transaction comes in, gets a category, gets matched to an invoice or a bill, and gets tied to a statement. Software does much of that now. On QuickBooks Online Essentials and up, Accounting AI sets aside the bank lines it is sure of under Ready to post, and you review and post them. Pilot’s Essentials plan runs its categorizing on AI for $99 a month. BLS expects bookkeeping clerk jobs to shrink 6% from 2025 to 2035, and it says software has automated many of the tasks clerks do.

What software doesn’t replace is judgment. Someone still decides whether a purchase is an asset or an expense, and someone signs off at year end. That is why the fourth row of the model keeps two hours of an accountant’s time. How far AI can go on its own is covered in can AI replace my bookkeeper?

What should you ask a bookkeeper before you hire?

Before you sign, get in writing what the fee covers and who does the work. Those two answers decide whether a quote is cheap or only incomplete. Ask these too, because they catch the usual surprises:

• Which jobs are in the fee? Categorizing, reconciling, payroll entries, sales tax, reports and the year-end handoff are separate jobs.
• What happens to the price when my business grows? Intuit reprices every three months from your expenses, and Xendoo’s Essential plan covers up to $50,000 in monthly expenses and 4 bank or card accounts.
• Is there a setup or cleanup fee? Intuit charges one in the first month if you have two or more months of data in QuickBooks. Xendoo says it charges none.
• Do I own the software account? If you part ways, you want to keep your books.
• When will I see my numbers each month, and who will explain them?
• Is the person I meet the person who does my books?

One easy way to overspend is paying a person to re-key what a tool could import. Let software do the mechanical part, and pay for the hours that need a person.