FreshBooks pricing: Lite, Plus, Premium and Select explained

It's Tuesday, and a two-person handyman outfit finished four jobs last week. The invoices are still in a notebook in the truck. On Thursday night the owner types them into a Word template, saves them as PDFs, and emails them one at a time. Two weeks later one customer has paid, one says they never got it, and the owner has no idea when to nudge the other two without sounding pushy. Their accountant brings up FreshBooks, so they go look at the price.

This post covers FreshBooks pricing for that owner: what each plan costs, what the client limits mean, which add-ons push the bill up, and what still needs a person even after the invoices go out automatically. Everything below comes from FreshBooks' pricing page, which I checked on November 2, 2026. FreshBooks runs promotions often and the page changes, so check it again before you subscribe.

How much does FreshBooks cost?

FreshBooks lists four plans. Before any promotion, Lite is $23 a month, Plus is $43 and Premium is $70. Select has no published price. The page says "Let's Talk" and sends you to sales.

When I looked, a banner read "80% off + Free onboarding support," and each plan said "80% Off for 4 Months." A few things the page doesn't settle, so check them at checkout:

• What you pay after month four. The page shows the regular price struck through but doesn't say in plain words that this is what you'll pay once the discount ends. That's the natural reading. Budget for the struck-through number, not the promo one.
• Yearly billing. There's a Monthly / Yearly toggle labeled "Extra 10% Off," but no yearly prices showed up in what I read. I can't tell you the yearly figure, so look for it yourself.
• The fine print. An "Offer Details" link sits next to the promotion, and its text didn't load for me. Read it before you count on the discount.

The page also offers "Try it free for 30 days" and a "30-Day Money Back Guarantee."

What the client limit means for a small service business

The client limit is what really separates the plans. Lite lets you send invoices to 5 clients. Plus raises that to 50, and Premium and Select have no cap.

Lite looks cheap, but 5 clients barely covers a service business. Suppose you do residential work for new customers every week: you'd be past 5 in your first week or two. It suits a consultant or bookkeeper with a few steady retainer clients. Most trades, salons and practices that bill individual customers end up on Plus at minimum, and a busy shop will outgrow 50 within a season.

So before you pick a plan, count how many different people or companies you invoiced last year. That count tells you more than the feature list does.

What every plan includes

The part I care about most, since it's the part that chases money, is the same on every plan. FreshBooks' comparison table puts these on all four:

• Unlimited, customized invoices
• Automated recurring invoices
• Scheduled late fees
• Automated late payment reminders
• Accepting deposits
• Online card, digital wallet and bank (ACH) payments
• Checkout links
• Unlimited estimates
• A client account portal
• Project budgets and billing

From there, each plan adds:

If you send estimates and want customers to sign them, Plus is where e-signatures start. Retainers also start at Plus, so a law or accounting firm that takes money up front shouldn't start on Lite.

The add-ons that change the monthly bill

The plan price is only the start. FreshBooks lists three add-ons:

• Team members: $11 a month per user on Lite, Plus and Premium. Two are included on Select.
• Advanced Payments: $20 a month on Lite, Plus and Premium, included on Select.
• FreshBooks Payroll: $40 a month plus $6 a month per user, on all four plans.

Here's how that adds up with the regular prices. An owner on Plus with one office person pays $43 + $11 = $54 a month. Add Advanced Payments and it's $74. Add payroll for three people and you're at $132 before a single card fee.

Card and bank transfer fees come on top. The pricing page mentions "1% bank transfer fees" with a footnote that didn't load for me, and Select is advertised with lower card fees and capped ACH fees. Check the current processing rates with FreshBooks before you compare them against your current processor.

What FreshBooks does on its own, and what it leaves to you

Automated reminders and late fees run off an invoice that already exists. In my experience, money gets stuck before that point. FreshBooks won't know a job is done until someone creates the invoice, and on a busy week that's the step that slips.

What the software handles once it's set up:

• Recurring invoices for customers you bill on a schedule, like a monthly maintenance plan or retainer
• Reminders on unpaid invoices and scheduled late fees, sent without anyone remembering to
• A pay link inside the invoice, so the customer can pay by card or bank right away

What still sits with you or your office:

• Turning a finished job into an invoice. Unless the work recurs, someone still has to create the bill. If your jobs live in a scheduling app, a spreadsheet or a group text, that handoff is manual. The guide to automating invoicing walks through each step from job done to paid.
• The wording. The default reminder is fine. A reminder that sounds like you gets paid faster and causes fewer awkward calls. There are copy-ready versions in the overdue invoice email sequence and the shorter payment reminder messages.
• Deciding when to stop automating. Once an invoice is 30 days late, the next reminder should come from you, by phone.

What stays human

Some of this shouldn't be automated, and I'd tell any owner that before selling them anything.

A customer who disputes the work needs a conversation, and another reminder will only make them angrier. Neither should a long-time client asking to split a big bill get a late fee from a machine. Before you turn on scheduled late fees, check that your contracts or estimates actually mention them, and check your state's rules. Plus, the reminder schedule itself is a judgment call about your customers. Contractors billing homeowners might give it a few days, and a firm billing businesses on net 30 might not start until day 31.

My rule is that software sends the routine notices, and a person handles anything where the relationship is on the line.

Is FreshBooks worth it?

If you send more than a handful of invoices a month and chase them by hand, the regular Plus price is less than an hour of your time. The reminders and pay links alone usually cover that. The plan is less useful when your jobs and your invoices live in two systems that don't talk to each other, because the slowest step, creating the invoice in the first place, is still manual.

Connecting those two is the work I do. For a Chicago-area pool service company, I set up the website, Stripe payments and lead capture so money and leads land in one place and nobody retypes anything. For a small business, that usually means a finished job in the scheduling tool creates the invoice, the reminders go out on a schedule that fits the customers, and the owner gets a short list of who needs a phone call. You can see how I approach this on the business automation page. Builds start at $500 one-time, then a flat monthly from $99 after an included run-in period, cancellable.

If your invoices are piling up in a truck or an inbox, book a free 20 minute process audit. I'll look at how a job turns into money for you today and tell you whether FreshBooks, the tool you already have, or a small connection between the two is the cheapest fix.