Rating
4.4
1,721 reviews
Starting price
$19
Flat Rate
Categories
15
Founded
2009
Employees
300
Funding
481.8M
Merger / Acquisition
Wave helps small businesses manage invoicing and basic accounting with a clean interface and mobile accessibility. It’s most used by administrative teams and entrepreneurs handling recurring billing. Users value its free starter plan and invoice automation, though many cite slow ACH payments and limited support. Advanced tools like auto-imported transactions and receipt capture offer added control for growing teams.
Ad spend / mo
$154K
291 paid keywords
Paid visits / mo
34,828
Organic keywords
59,602
Organic visits / mo
400,675
Authority
62
22,322 ref domains
Creatives run
100
as Wave Financial USA Inc.
Active now
55
last 14 days
Advertising since
Jul 2023
2.5+ yrs running
Last seen
today
still active
The shared messaging across Small Business Accounting Software advertisers - the validated angles to copy. See the niche →
(1,721 reviews)
My overall experience with wave was very good it also produced very nice invoices. The free tools that wave offers is also a very good Plus.
Pros: What I liked about wave the most would be the pricing, it seemed I could easily figure things out. Also was easily able to connect the bank to the software.
Cons: What I like the least about the wave software was it wasn't very good for what I needed it for as far as inventory tracking would go.
Sheila K. · Admin · Construction · May 20, 2026
Uptime and use are great - I have a few low volume clients and non-profits that cannot afford the other packages - now they are charging for services that were included in the free package - not cool!
Pros: Accounting software is free - great for small (micro) businesses just starting out or that only have low volume of transactions. Intuitive from an accountant's perspective
Cons: Accounting is free - but now they are removing features from the "Free Accounting" package and charging for them - auto import of bank transactions. Then, limiting the number of users - NOT COOL!
Craig B. · Owner · Accounting · May 7, 2026
| Category | Page | Rank | Placement |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Ledger | 1 | 6 | Shortlist |
Domain confidence 99%
| Keyword they bid on | CPC | Pos | % budget | Landing page |
|---|
| quickbooks | $4.54 | 3 | 21.9% | www.waveapps.com/c/wave-vs-quickbooks |
| wave | $2.18 | 1 | 13.4% | www.waveapps.com/ |
| wave accounting | $10.90 | 1 | 11.0% | www.waveapps.com/accounting-p/accounting-software |
| zoho invoice | $14.02 | 2 | 1.8% | www.waveapps.com/c/wave-vs-quickbooks |
| wave apps | $3.65 | 1 | 1.3% | www.waveapps.com/tax-season |
| quick books | $4.54 | 3 | 1.3% | www.waveapps.com/c/wave-vs-quickbooks |
| best small business accounting software | $18.34 | 4 | 1.2% | www.waveapps.com/accounting-p/accounting-software |
| zipbooks | $7.84 | 1 | 1.1% | www.waveapps.com/compare/zipbooks-vs-wave |
| quickbooks free | $9.01 | 1 | 1.0% | www.waveapps.com/c/wave-vs-quickbooks |
| wave app | $3.65 | 1 | 0.9% | www.waveapps.com/ |
| free quickbooks | $9.28 | 1 | 0.8% | www.waveapps.com/c/wave-vs-quickbooks |
| fresh books | $31.71 | 3 | 0.8% | www.waveapps.com/compare/freshbooks-vs-wave |
| quickbooks for small business | $17.50 | 4 | 0.8% | www.waveapps.com/c/wave-vs-quickbooks |
| waveapp | $3.65 | 1 | 0.7% | www.waveapps.com/ |
| waveapps | $1.92 | 1 | 0.7% | www.waveapps.com/ |
Wave: SMB Software Alternative | Discover Why Wave Is Better
SMB owners know Wave is the easy way to get organized and stay tax-ready...
https://www.waveapps.com › switch-to › wave
Wave: SMB Software Alternative | Discover Why Wave Is Better
SMB owners know Wave is the easy way to get organized and stay tax-ready year-round. See why...
https://www.waveapps.com › switch-to › wave
Wave: SMB Software Alternative | Discover Why Wave Is Better
SMB owners know Wave is the easy way to get organized and stay tax-ready year-round.
https://www.waveapps.com › switch-to › wave
Wave: Small Business Software
Free Accounting Tool By Wave — Everything you need to get paid quickly, track your income & keep your books up to date. SMB owners know Wave is the easy way to get organized and stay tax-ready year-round. No Hidden Fees.
https://www.waveapps.com › wave-accounting › software
Wave Accounting Software - Free Accounting Software
SMB owners know Wave is the easy way to get organized and stay tax-ready year-round. Business...
https://www.waveapps.com › wave › accounting
Excellent in every way as I have used it for now 3 tax years without complaint from either myself or my accountant who works with what I send over in Wave.
Pros: Easy to input information and create my own financial Reports, and my accountant has no issues with importing my entries over for his own purposes to prepare my company’s yearly Return
Cons: Candidly, there is nothing to complain about. Regardless of your level of sophistication, you will find a benefit in using it.
Joseph L. · Principal · Public Relations and Communications · April 28, 2026
Wave is awesome. It is easy to use, looks up to date, it has great pricing and also has a phone app that makes things easy like applying payments and checking invoices when out and about.
Pros: Most everything is free so it is a great value. The price of payment processing is comparable to other services. The invoices and auto invoices work quite well and look nice and it is easy for my customers to pay.
Cons: The most annoying thing is the invoice names especially for auto invoices. I use what was done for invoice names and numbers rather than just a number. So it now makes the next invoice number as whatever the last invoice name was and just add one to it so they don't make sense so I have to manually make a name.
Josh C. · Co-Owner · Design · April 13, 2026
It was positive with small entry fee. It’s easy to use for the non accounting person. All the functions are there that a small organization needs.
Pros: Wave is a very cheap way for solo entrepreneurs. It is packed with all the functionality small businesses needs.
Cons: It is cost effective and easy to use for small businesses and non profit organizations. It gives all the functionality you need.
Nathan H. · Treasurer · Non-Profit Organization Management · April 2, 2026
If you don’t need customer support, wave is a great option for small business book keeping and payment services.
Pros: Easy to use. Good value for the cost. The invoicing and payment acceptance is good. Running payroll was easy.
Cons: Poor customer service. Takes days to get a response. Payroll tax service was disappointing. Ended up moving to another service because of poor support.
C P. · President · Construction · March 31, 2026
It's been a great software to get me started in my business and it's easy for my clients to navigate invoices and payments. That is a win! I am able to track my spending with categories, as well, and that makes it easier to do my taxes at the end of each year.
Pros: I use Wave for my accounting and invoicing software. It's super affordable and easy to implement, which was a great starting point when I launched my business! The customer support has always been helpful when I've needed it. The option to create recurring invoices has been amazing, as well as the reports I can pull at the end of each year. Super helpful!
Cons: The auto-import for my bank transactions has not been working for a while, and although Wave Customer Support did what they could, I wish this could be more easily resolved. It's been a bit tedious having to manually import them. I also think that if I'm paying for a Pro subscription, I should have fewer fees being taken out. (I canceled the Pro subscription before the year was up.) Furthermore, the receipt uploading is great except that it creates a new transaction. It'd be nice if it could match the receipt with the transaction, since I will later import all transactions from the bank into Wave and that will cause duplicates.
Amber M. · Owner · Design · March 24, 2026
Overall, Wave is a great value solution that covers essential accounting needs without overwhelming smaller businesses.
Pros: Wave offers free, easy-to-use accounting tools that are perfect for small businesses needing invoicing and expense tracking
Cons: Features are more limited compared to paid platforms, and customer support options can be slower at times.
Hilary C. · Director · Marketing and Advertising · March 19, 2026
I like this for simple and strightforward invoicing. I htink its great for small businesses and people starting out.
Pros: Easy to use and pretty conperhensive for invoicing and tracking. Easy to use for beginers. I would recommend.
Cons: Never hurts to have more features. Custom fees ect and more tracking would be great. Also an end date to invoicce reminders.
Jenna M. · Operations · Design · March 16, 2026
Overall, I found it very helpful. Wave has a clean, beginner-friendly interface. Even if you don’t have an accounting background, it’s relatively easy to connect bank accounts, categorize expenses, and generate reports.
Pros: One of the biggest advantages of Wave is that the core accounting features are free. For freelancers, photographers, and small service businesses, it allows you to track income, expenses, and basic financial reports without paying for a subscription.
Cons: Wave lacks some features found in more robust platforms like inventory management, detailed project costing, or advanced automation workflows.
Ryan P. · Graphic Designer · Design · March 8, 2026
If you want a free payroll and accounting provider, Wave fits the bill. If problems arise, you might be on your own and dealing with the consequences for months.
Pros: The starter edition is free which is awesome, you are able to process payroll, invoice clients and perform monthly accounting at no cost. There is a small fee for accepting credit card payments which is standard amongst other payment providers.
Cons: Customer support is non existent. Never thought this was a concern until Wave switched payroll processors and caused the system to crash. Wave went silent for weeks, only resolve was to email the company and those went unanswered. Had to turn to Redditt for workarounds, worst part was Wave never took responsibility for their mistake, switched to another provider which I pay for but willing to do so after my experience with Wave.
Tim O. · Partner · Retail · March 6, 2026
Overall, if I had to set things up all over again, I would still pick Wave. It's been an excellent fit for my business.
Pros: I first started using Wave after trying to learn Quickbooks and finding it frustrating and way too complicated for my small, service-bases business. Wave was free at the time, and it was far more intuitive. I had a couple of questions that were easily answered by searching through Wave's online resources. I'm not a professional bookkeeper, and I felt way more confident using Wave than I did using Quickbooks. I've kept using it for years even after there was a cost to do so because it was definitely worth it. It continues to be easy to use, and now that I have a part time bookkeeper who helps me out, it lets us collaborate very well.
Cons: Wave's integration with my bank has not always worked effectively, and that has caused some problems. I'm not clear on whether it's my bank or Wave that's the issue, but a couple of times, the integration stopped working then started working again, and this resulted in some duplicate entries that had to be cleared out. It was simple enough to fix but irritating.
Kathryn S. · Coach and Consultant · Professional Training & Coaching · February 25, 2026
Pros: Wave automatically imports my transactions from my financial accounts (bank accounts, credit card, etc.) to streamline my financial reporting. I love that I can see how much income, expenses, and profit I made in each period and compare it prior periods. My monthly subscription is $19, which feels like a great value.
Cons: I tried to set up a way to send invoices and receive payments through Wave, but even after I was approved, they removed my access due to a blanket assumption around travel agencies. I now need to use an alternative solution for invoicing and collecting payments.
Kristyne W. · Travel Advisor · Hospitality · February 24, 2026
Our overall experience with Wave is that it worked for what we needed when we first started out with our business.
Pros: This was nice when first starting out the business. It was convenient to set up and to use for billing.
Cons: We out grew Wave because it couldn't give us all the options like QuickBooks could. Not easy to search for invoices either.
Shirley R. · Administrative Assistant · Automotive · February 12, 2026
Excellent for almost two years until doing my taxes this year and lost the ability to export transactions without upgrading my plan. I suggested them to many people, but now have to share the bad news with everyone on the free plan.
Pros: Ease to use software with reasonable functionality at the free tier for a single person LLC. Great value which helped manage based transactions.
Cons: Wave removed transaction level CSV export from free accounts and did not disclose the change. The UI still implies export should exist, but it’s now paywalled without warning. This breaks a core bookkeeping workflow: providing detailed expense records to a CPA for tax filing. The only export remaining is a summarized P&L, which is not a substitute for transaction detail in many cases. This feels like a dark pattern upsell rather than a product improvement. I wouldn’t recommend Wave anymore unless you’re prepared to pay just to retrieve your own data.
Nick B. · President · Management Consulting · February 1, 2026
I've been using WaveApps for several years now and have been very satisfied with the ease and accuracy of the site. I would recommend it to any small business as an excellent and cost-effective accounting site. It has many features that I don't take advantage of, but likely would if I had a larger business. I gave it 5 stars and would definitely recommend it.
Pros: I use the free Wave App. I bookkeep for two small businesses and the fact that is free is my favorite feature. I have generally had no issues with the program and when I did have one (the only one), the company support was able to resolve the issue for me in only one call and I've never had an issue again.
Cons: One feature that I would appreciate would be to have an auto-fill feature. For example, I have many entries that are identical except for the date and amount. It would be helpful if it could auto-fill a name or entry after it recognizes the first few letters.
William E U. · Owner · Financial Services · January 28, 2026
Pros: I'm a long-term premium customer. By accident, I used another Google email to log in. Now, I'm stuck at https://next.waveapps.com/onboarding and can't exit. It's a fatal UX fail.
Marcin W. · CEO · Accounting · January 27, 2026
It is a simple, reliable way to track my income. It makes professional invoicing and bookkeeping stress-free.
Pros: The accounting features are totally free and very easy to use. It is perfect for small business owners.
Cons: Payment processing fees are a bit high, and customer support is limited if you don't pay for a plan.
Anonymous User · Engineer · Accounting · January 9, 2026
Pros: I did like that there is a free option available. If you are just starting out as a new business owner and want to get your bookkeeping and invoicing process set up before getting a client, you do have a free option that isn’t a trial.
Cons: Even though the version I had was free, I didn’t like that I couldn’t take off their logo on my invoices without paying for a higher tier plan.
Kimberly C. · Administrative Consultant · Executive Office · December 28, 2025
Love the UI and wanted it to be a viable alternative to the other players in the bookkeeping/accounting market but it fell far short and failed in it’s current itteration. Love the free version but it’s super basic and limited but upgrading to paid version is very expensive when using it for more than 1 business and offers inadequate features to do the job vis-a-vis other competitors in the market. If … WAVE would add AI, connectivity to banks and credit cards, and features to operate multiple businesses in the paid subscription I’d use it. As my daily driver vs the competitors.
Pros: Ability to have multiple accounts/businesses (free version only) Value for the money Very user friendly Payments and invoicing features
Cons: Inability to have multiple accounts/businesses in paid version Poor Value for the money with paid version because each account requires additional pay subscription Lack of AI Categorization vs competitors Lack of connectivity ability to import Banks & Credit Cards transctions
Ron W. · Property Management, Development and Investment · Real Estate · December 7, 2025
I use the product primarily for one purpose: Invoice generation and billing tracking. At one point I experimented with the payroll, but found it didn't provide me enough education about what my responsibilities were as an employer, so found a different solution for that. But as a tool for creating invoices, creating customers, sending bills, and tracking the received payments, I think it's tremendous. It's intuitive, simple, and reliable. I use only the starter version, and it's sufficient for my needs - I'm sure others with more complex needs would push the system in ways I don't, but it's great for me. It's also got some great year-end reporting, which helps me compare my billings against the 1099 files I receive from my clients.
Pros: For a small business needing invoice generation and payment tracking, Wave works really well. The ease of creating invoices is great, and having a clear history to refer to is very helpful
Cons: Like most multi-feature accounting solutions, it can be a bit much to navigate through all of the areas, when you are only interested in one aspect of the site. It's also not always clear what you can and can't do within the free version of the tool, but that's not a deal-breaker.
Eric E. · IT Consultant · Higher Education · November 27, 2025
It's ok, if you're a solopreneur on a budget. Overall, I didn't find any difference between Wave and other mainstream accounting software.
Pros: It takes care of the basics, but if you have a large team with a lot of requirements, it may not be the best fit.
Cons: Basic issues with service. Requests go unresponded. Some things are just weird, like when they hold the funds or do a review without explanation.
Sean C. · Marketer · Marketing and Advertising · November 10, 2025
It was a good experience in general apart from the restrictions and the lack of help unless you pay for the services
Pros: Its primary strength is the completely free access to core features like unlimited accounting, invoicing, and expense tracking.
Cons: A major pain point for users is the lack of robust, live customer support for free users, who are generally limited to an online help center and chatbot.
melissa l. · Admin siding installer · Construction · October 23, 2025
Wave was ridiculously cumbersome. Payroll was a problem. Accounting was a problem. Expense tracking was unnecessarily complex. I do like the invoice generation, but that is it. I wouldn't suggest this product.
Pros: The automatic invoice generation and tracking was good. The cash flow graphics could be helpful if all of your finances are tied to the same system.
Cons: The payroll feature itself was really confusing. I left Wave because of the payroll feature, and I maintain it simply for invoice generation. I didn't find their expense coding process to be very user friendly. The difficulty began very early when the direct deposit process was entirely too cumbersome and took an extremely amount of time. The Wave bookkeeping method was not intuitive - listing out every possible account you can possibly add as well as CASH ON HAND - an account that is a default and has no real application. Nobody is paying me cash for five figure services in 2025. Furthermore, the whole system was duplicative. A payment is registering as paid because it's tied to my checking account, but then is pinging me saying this invoice is not paid, so I mark it as paid, and then WAVE tells me I've been paid twice. Duplicative and unhelpful. It didn't take more than six weeks for me to leave this product screaming.
Naveed K. · Managing Principal · Management Consulting · October 21, 2025
Pros: Wave has very solid web and app platforms. It's easy to navigate and makes the quoting, invoicing, and payment processes very streamlined -- while accepting payments from all major credit cards in Canada. The free version is already very useful for businesses just starting out, or those that are still in the early growth phase, but they also have an affordable paid version that adds a suite of automations and expense / receipt management functions to further boost productivity.
Cons: The main thing I don't like about Wave is that they don't use standardized "GAAP terminology" for some of their financial management and reporting features. While this may make it more accessible to a certain user base, it actually makes it a bit confusing for me (who has a bit of formal CPA / accounting training).
Aaron C. · Founder and CEO · Marketing and Advertising · October 20, 2025
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| Legal Accounting | 1 | 7 | - |
| Medical Accounting | 1 | 7 | - |
| Real Estate Accounting | 1 | 7 | - |
| Bookkeeper | 1 | 9 | Shortlist |
| Church Accounting | 1 | 11 | Shortlist |
| Recurring Billing | 1 | 11 | Shortlist |
| Direct Deposit Payroll | 1 | 12 | Shortlist |
| Expense Report | 1 | 14 | Shortlist |
| Financial Reporting | 1 | 18 | Shortlist |
| Payroll | 1 | 18 | - |
| Accounting | 1 | 24 | Shortlist |
| Accounts Receivable | 1 | 24 | Shortlist |
| Payment Processing | 2 | 14 | - |