QuickBooks Online vs Akaunting: Pricing, Open Source, and Which One Fits (2026)

QuickBooks Online and Akaunting solve the same problem in very different ways. QuickBooks Online is a paid, fully managed cloud service with a large U.S. accountant network, phone and chat support, and a deep feature set. Akaunting is open-source accounting software: its core is free and you can run it on your own server, with extra features and a managed cloud option sold on top. For most owners the choice comes down to whether you want a hands-off service someone else maintains, or free software and full control of your data and code that you maintain yourself.

The quick version:

• Akaunting's core is free and open source, and you can self-host it on your own server. QuickBooks Online is a paid, managed service starting at $20 a month for Solopreneur or $38 for Simple Start at current 2026 prices.
• The free Akaunting version leaves backups, updates, and security to you, and it does not include double-entry accounting or automatic bank feeds; those come with a paid plan or a paid app.
• QuickBooks Online has a large U.S. network of accountants who already work in it, along with phone and chat support, while Akaunting's free version relies on community forums.
• Neither moving to Akaunting nor cancelling QuickBooks preserves your full QuickBooks history with its attachments and audit trail, so archive that history before you cancel.

QuickBooks Online vs Akaunting at a glance

Prices are U.S. list prices in 2026 and change often, so confirm the current figure on each company's pricing page before you decide.

Pricing compared

QuickBooks Online has five plans at current U.S. prices in 2026: Solopreneur at $20, Simple Start at $38, Essentials at $75, Plus at $115, and Advanced at $275 per month. Payroll and payment processing are billed on top of those figures, so the real monthly cost is usually higher than the plan price, and Intuit has raised prices most years. The plans also set how many people can be in the books, from one user on Simple Start up to 25 on Advanced.

Akaunting splits into two paths. The self-hosted core is free to download and run, with paid self-hosted tiers at $72, $168, and $684 per year if you need more companies, users, or vendor support. The managed cloud plans run from Standard at $12, to Premium at $36, Elite at $84, and Ultimate at $218 per month at current 2026 prices, and cost less if you pay annually.

Compared directly, Akaunting is the cheaper software on paper, and it can be free if the base features cover you. What that price does not include is the maintenance, support, and accountant availability baked into QuickBooks. The real comparison is a lower or zero software bill weighed against your own time and the cost of professional help.

Open source and self-hosting: what you gain and what you take on

The biggest difference between the two is not a feature. It is who runs the software. QuickBooks Online is hosted, updated, backed up, and secured by Intuit, and you simply log in and use it. With Akaunting's free edition you download the open-source code and install it on a server you control, which is what appeals to developers and owners who want their financial data on their own infrastructure rather than a vendor's. Because you hold the database, moving or exporting your data later is straightforward, and there is no monthly bill for the core software.

The trade is that everything Intuit handles for you becomes your responsibility. You install updates, run backups, apply security patches, and keep the server online. If you are comfortable with Linux and server administration, that can be a fair price for the control you get. If you are not, you are either learning it or paying someone, and those hours can outweigh the license savings for a small business. Akaunting also sells a managed cloud version for owners who want the open-source app without running a server, which moves it closer to the QuickBooks model on convenience while keeping the app-store pricing.

What does the free version leave out?

Akaunting uses an app-store model: the core is free, and functionality is added through modules, some free and some paid. That keeps the base price at zero, but several features owners treat as standard are not in the free Standard tier. The free plan is limited to one company, one user plus one accountant, and 1,000 invoices, and it does not include double-entry accounting, automatic bank feeds, expense claims, or roles and permissions. Double-entry and bank feeds appear on the Premium cloud plan at $36 a month, while payroll, inventory, projects, and CRM come with the Elite plan at $84 a month at current 2026 prices, or through individual paid apps.

QuickBooks Online includes double-entry accounting and bank feeds on every plan, adds inventory on Plus and Advanced, and offers its own U.S. payroll as a paid add-on. Whether the app-store approach saves you money depends entirely on which modules you need. A freelancer sending simple invoices may never pay a cent with Akaunting, while a business that needs double-entry, payroll, and inventory ends up on a paid Akaunting plan that lands closer to QuickBooks on price.

Support and finding help

QuickBooks Online comes with Intuit's phone and chat support, and behind that the largest pool of U.S. accountants and bookkeepers who already work in the software every day. If you ever hand the books to a professional, finding one fluent in QuickBooks is easy in the United States. Akaunting's free edition is backed by community documentation and forums rather than a support line, with ticket support available on its paid plans. Fewer U.S. accountants work in Akaunting, so professional help can be harder to find and may take longer to onboard.

Who should choose which

Choose QuickBooks Online if you want software someone else maintains, phone and chat support, the widest pool of U.S. accountants who already know the tool, and features like payroll and inventory built into the plan rather than bought as add-ons.

Choose Akaunting if you want free, open-source software, you are comfortable running and securing a server (or you use its managed cloud), and you value keeping your financial data and the underlying code fully under your control. For a technical owner or a business with IT help, the free core and the data ownership are the draw. For an owner who mostly wants the books to work without managing a server, QuickBooks usually wins on convenience.

Either way, one thing does not change: the decision to switch accounting software is separate from the decision about what to do with the history sitting in QuickBooks today.

Switching from QuickBooks to Akaunting? Export your history first

A migration and a complete record are not the same thing. Moving into Akaunting means importing your customers, vendors, and balances so the new books are usable, not copying every year of QuickBooks history into it. Standard migrations generally bring across recent transactions to set up your balances, and they do not carry your attachments or your audit log at all.

Three things routinely stay behind in QuickBooks after a switch, and they are the records you are most likely to be asked for later:

• Your attachments, meaning the receipts and documents attached to transactions, along with the link showing which transaction each file belongs to. QuickBooks' own export separates the files from their transactions, and an import into Akaunting does not bring them across.
• The audit log, the record of who entered or changed each transaction and when. It does not move with a migration.
• Your full multi-year history in its original form, everything past the recent window a migration sets up.

That gap becomes a real loss because of what happens next. When you cancel a paid QuickBooks Online subscription, Intuit keeps the company in read-only mode for 12 months and then deletes it permanently. After that deletion the company is gone, and resubscribing opens a new, empty company rather than restoring the old one. A free trial gets only 90 days. The read-only year explainer covers exactly how much time you have.

The safest time to build the archive is while QuickBooks is still live, before you migrate and before you cancel. If you would rather not spend days rebuilding receipts and reports by hand, that is the service we run. We build one complete, audit-ready archive of your QuickBooks Online company: the full general ledger in both cash and accrual basis, every financial report for each year, every attachment still linked to its transaction, and the audit log, delivered as a single download so you can move to Akaunting and cancel with your whole history preserved.

If you are closing the business rather than switching, the same archive can help support a future IRS request for records, long after the subscription is gone.

Frequently asked questions

Is Akaunting really free?

The core is genuinely free and open source, and the self-hosted Standard edition costs nothing to download and run. The limits are that it covers one company, one user plus an accountant, and 1,000 invoices, and it leaves out double-entry accounting and automatic bank feeds. Those and other features come from paid apps or a paid plan, and the managed cloud version starts at $12 a month at current 2026 prices. So the honest answer is that the base is free and a full-featured setup usually is not.

Do I need to be technical to run Akaunting?

For the free self-hosted version, mostly yes. You install it on your own server and handle updates, backups, and security yourself, which suits developers and teams with IT support more than owners who just want to log in. Akaunting's managed cloud removes the server work for a monthly fee, which is the closer comparison to how QuickBooks Online already works.

Will I lose my QuickBooks history if I cancel after switching?

You can. A cancelled QuickBooks Online company goes read-only for 12 months, then Intuit deletes it permanently, and resubscribing does not bring a deleted company back. Because a migration into Akaunting leaves your attachments and audit log behind, anything left only in QuickBooks is erased on that schedule.

How long do I need to keep my old QuickBooks records?

Usually longer than you would expect. The IRS generally expects business records to be kept for at least three years, with longer periods in some cases: four years for many employment tax records, six years if income was substantially understated, seven years for a worthless-securities or bad-debt claim, and no limit at all for a fraudulent or unfiled return. Your CPA can tell you which window applies to you, and it is usually far longer than a migration keeps.