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Bookkeeping Cost Calculator
What should you actually be paying? Put in your volumes and see an in-house bookkeeper, an outsourced service and AI + CPA side by side — costed from published government wage data and real provider prices, every figure linked to its source.
Where these numbers come from
Most “what does bookkeeping cost” pages quote a range and cite nobody. Here is every figure this calculator uses and exactly where it came from, so you can check us.
Bookkeeper wages
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · May 2025The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks at $50,670 a year ($24 an hour) as of May 2025. The lowest 10 percent earn less than $36,000 and the highest 10 percent more than $74,550 — the range shown on the in-house column.
What an employee actually costs
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · March 2026A salary is not the cost of a hire. BLS reports that in private industry, wages and salaries account for 69.9% of what an employer spends on an employee, with benefits making up the other 30.1%. Dividing the salary by that share is what makes the in-house column a true employer cost: a median bookkeeper works out at about $72,489 a year at full time. We use the published share rather than a rule-of-thumb multiplier.
Outsourced service prices
Taken from each provider's own public pricing page, not from a comparison blog: we checked several roundups and their figures did not match the vendors' own pages. Each row shows the date we last verified it, and whether a person does the work or you drive the tool. Only staffed services feed the outsourced range above, because a self-serve AI tier and a staffed monthly close are different purchases. Prices change; if you spot a stale one, tell us.
- Pilot — Essentialssoftware$99 / moself-serve: Pilot's page describes AI categorizing, reconciling and closing the books, with no bookkeeper attached. Its staffed Core plan is quote-onlyverified 2026-09-09Pilot
- Bench — Bookkeeping Growservice$199 / modedicated bookkeeping experts; for businesses under $250,000 in annual revenueverified 2026-09-09Bench
- QuickBooks (Intuit) — Expert Full Service Bookkeepingservice$300 / mostated starting price, charged after an initial cleanup feeverified 2026-09-09QuickBooks (Intuit)
- Bookkeeper360 — Monthlyservice$399 / mostated starting price for a monthly closeverified 2026-09-09Bookkeeper360
- Bookkeeper360 — Weeklyservice$599 / mostated starting price for a weekly closeverified 2026-09-09Bookkeeper360
- Bookkeeper360 — Onboarding & Prior Bookkeepingservice$1,000 / projectstated starting price, charged per project rather than per monthverified 2026-09-09Bookkeeper360
The one figure that is ours, not published
Nobody publishes how many hours a month bookkeeping takes at a given transaction volume, so the workload estimate is ours. The calculator labels it as an estimate, shows the assumptions behind it, and lets you replace it with your own number. Everything downstream of it — the in-house cost — moves when you do. We would rather show you the seam than hide it.
How much does a bookkeeper cost?
The honest answer is that it depends on how much work there is, and almost every published answer skips that step. A bookkeeper's wage is a matter of public record — $50,670 a year at the median, per BLS — but nobody pays a bookkeeper to sit idle. What you actually pay for is hours, and hours come from transaction volume, the number of accounts to reconcile, whether there is payroll, and how many invoices go out. That is why this calculator asks for volumes before it shows you a number.
Hiring versus outsourcing
Hiring makes sense at scale and looks expensive below it, because an employee is a fixed cost against a variable workload. Outsourcing inverts that: the price is flat and the provider absorbs the variance. The crossover is real and the calculator will show it to you honestly — at low volumes a part-time arrangement can beat a monthly service, and the tool says so rather than pretending otherwise.
What the salary figure hides is everything around it: recruitment, software licences, cover during holiday and sickness, and the concentration risk of one person holding the whole history of your books. Those are real costs and this calculator does not attempt to price them, because we have no published source for what they come to at your business. Bear them in mind when the two columns look close.
What changes with AI
The hours in the model are overwhelmingly data entry: matching lines, chasing receipts, reconciling accounts. That is the part software is now genuinely good at, and it is the reason a service can be priced flat while an employee cannot. The part that does not compress is judgment — cut-off, classification, whether the books are actually right — which is why every Pelcro close is reviewed and signed off by a licensed CPA before it is finalized. See how the monthly close works.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does a bookkeeper cost?
- It depends on whether you hire or outsource. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks at $50,670 a year, or $24.36 an hour, as of May 2025. That is the salary, not the cost: BLS also reports that wages are only 69.9% of what an employer actually spends on an employee, so a median bookkeeper costs roughly $72,500 a year fully loaded at full time. Most small businesses do not need full time, which is why the calculator above converts your transaction volume into hours first.
- How much do bookkeepers charge per hour?
- The BLS median hourly wage is $24.36 as of May 2025, with the lowest 10 percent under $36,000 a year and the highest 10 percent over $74,550. An employed bookkeeper at the median therefore costs an employer about $35 an hour once benefits and payroll taxes are included. Independent bookkeepers and firms bill more than the wage rate because their rate has to cover overhead, software, insurance and profit as well as the hour itself.
- How much do outsourced bookkeeping services cost per month?
- Published starting prices from providers we checked in September 2026 run from $99 a month at the low end to $599 a month for a weekly close. Those are starting prices with conditions attached — the cheapest is capped by monthly expense volume, and at least one charges a separate cleanup fee before the monthly rate begins. Providers quote above the published figure as volume and complexity rise, so treat the range as a floor rather than a forecast.
- Is it cheaper to hire a bookkeeper or outsource?
- For most small businesses, outsourcing. A part-time in-house bookkeeper only beats a monthly service once the workload is large enough that you would be paying for a substantial share of a full-time role anyway, and hiring carries costs the salary figure hides: recruitment, software licences, cover during holiday and sickness, and the risk that the person who knows your books leaves. Run your own numbers in the calculator — it shows both, and it will tell you when hiring is the cheaper option.
- What does bookkeeping cost for a small business per year?
- Using the calculator's defaults — a professional services business with 250 transactions a month, three bank accounts, payroll for five people and 30 invoices — the work comes to about 21 hours a month, roughly an eighth of a full-time role. At the BLS median wage that is about $8,900 a year fully loaded. Outsourced services publish starting prices of $1,188 to $7,188 a year, and Pelcro's packages are $1,788, $3,588 or $5,988. Your figures will differ, and the gap widens as transaction volume rises, because a service's price is flat while an employee's hours are not.
- How much does catch-up bookkeeping cost?
- Catch-up is priced per project rather than per month, because what matters is how many months are open and what state the records are in, not how many months have passed. The one published figure we could verify is Bookkeeper360's onboarding and prior bookkeeping, which starts at $1,000 per project. Set the catch-up months slider above zero and the calculator shows what the backlog would cost you in-house at the BLS wage alongside that published figure.
- Where do the numbers in this calculator come from?
- Wage figures come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks (May 2025 data). The benefits load comes from the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release for March 2026. Outsourced prices come from each provider's own public pricing page, each linked and stamped with the date we last checked it. The only figure that is ours rather than published is the hours estimate that converts your volumes into a workload, and the calculator labels it as an estimate and lets you override it.