Tool
AI vs human bookkeeping cost calculator
Six ways to get your books done, priced against each other — including the hours they leave with you. Every assumption is on the page and editable, because the assumptions are where the answer actually comes from.
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no email gate.
Where the human-cost defaults come from
- Median bookkeeping rate of nearly $24 per hour, rising to $28 per hour — Intuit QuickBooks, “How much does a bookkeeper cost”, last updated 31 May 2026 (quickbooks.intuit.com)
- US bookkeeper average salary of $57,537 (Glassdoor) and median pay of $49,210 (BLS, 2024) — Intuit QuickBooks, citing Glassdoor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (quickbooks.intuit.com)
- Monthly bookkeeping spend ranges from about $300 for SaaS to about $4,200 for a full-time hire — Intuit QuickBooks, “How much does a bookkeeper cost”, last updated 31 May 2026 (quickbooks.intuit.com)
What this model deliberately does not do
It does not tell you how many hours a given product will actually save. That number does not exist in any verifiable form: every published figure in this category comes from a vendor, with no stated methodology. The sliders are labelled as your assumptions for that reason.
It also excludes one-off costs — migration, catch-up bookkeeping ($295–$1,000+ at published providers), onboarding fees ($1,000–$1,200 at some services) — and annual tax filing, which is separately priced almost everywhere at $1,000–$2,450 a year.
Questions
Is AI bookkeeping cheaper than a bookkeeper?
On the invoice, almost always. On total cost, often not — because software does not remove bookkeeping work, it moves it to you. The calculator prices your hours alongside the subscription, which is the comparison that actually decides the question. If your time is worth $150 an hour and software leaves you five hours a month, it is not cheaper than a $399 service.
Where do the default numbers come from?
Prices come from our verified product data. Human-cost defaults come from Intuit's published guidance citing Glassdoor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The time-saving percentages are your assumptions, not measurements — nobody has independently measured how many hours these products remove, which is exactly why we present them as sliders rather than facts.
Why does the calculator not just tell me the answer?
Because the answer turns on one number we cannot know: what an hour of your time is worth. Set that honestly and the comparison usually resolves itself. Owners who put their hourly value at what they bill clients get a very different answer from owners who put it at zero because they do the books on Sunday evening.
What is not in the model?
One-off costs, mainly: migration, catch-up bookkeeping for prior periods, onboarding fees (which run $1,000–$1,200 at some providers), and tax filing, which is nearly always priced separately at $1,000–$2,450 a year. It also excludes the cost of getting the books wrong, which is the largest number in this whole exercise and the hardest to estimate.