---
title: "How much a bookkeeper costs in 2026 | Ledgerbrook"
source: https://ledgerbrook.com/blog/how-much-does-a-bookkeeper-cost/
description: "A bookkeeper costs $11 to $25 an hour freelance, about $73,800 a year on staff, or under $100 to $750 a month outsourced."
---

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# How much a bookkeeper costs in 2026

September 27, 2026 · [Omkar Moraye](/about/)

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## How much does a bookkeeper cost?

A US bookkeeper earns a median $24.36 an hour, or $50,670 a year (BLS, May 2025). On staff, benefits push the real cost to about $35 an hour. Freelancers on Upwork charge $11 to $25 an hour. Outsourced services publish flat monthly fees from under $100 to $750 for a small business.

## The three ways to pay, side by side

There are three ways to pay for bookkeeping, and each is priced in a different unit. Freelancers bill by the hour, an employee is a salary, and an outsourced service charges a flat monthly fee. Put in the same unit, they compare like this:

| How you pay | Published rate | What the rate buys | What sits on top of it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Freelancer, by the hour | $11 to $25 an hour on Upwork | Hours of work, however long the file takes | Your own time checking the work, plus the software |
| Employee, full time | $24.36 an hour median wage | A person who is there whether or not the work is | About 31% more in benefits and payroll costs, plus a desk, software and training |
| Outsourced service, monthly | Under $100 to $750 a month for a small business | A closed month: categorized, reconciled, reported | Usually catch-up work, sometimes a setup fee |

Sources: [Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for bookkeeping clerks](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/bookkeeping-accounting-and-auditing-clerks.htm) (May 2025), [BLS employer compensation costs](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t04.htm) (June 2026), [Upwork’s bookkeeper rate page](https://www.upwork.com/hire/bookkeepers/cost/) and each service’s own pricing page, all read in September 2026.

## What an in-house bookkeeper really costs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median US bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerk at **$50,670 a year, or $24.36 an hour**, as of May 2025. The bottom tenth earn under $36,000 and the top tenth over $74,550.

The wage is not the cost. For office and administrative staff in private industry, wages are only 68.7% of what an employer pays per hour. The other 31.3% is benefits: paid leave, health insurance, retirement contributions and the legally required payroll taxes. Grossed up by that share, the median bookkeeper costs:

| Period | Wage only | With benefits and payroll costs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Per hour | $24.36 | about $35.46 |
| Per month | about $4,223 | about $6,150 |
| Per year | $50,670 | about $73,800 |

That still leaves out the software licence, the computer, and the weeks before a new hire knows the file. It also assumes the work fills a full-time week. For most businesses with under a few hundred transactions a month it does not, which is why a full-time hire usually only makes sense once bookkeeping has grown into accounts payable, receivables and payroll as well.

## What a freelance bookkeeper charges

Freelance rates vary more than any other option. [Upwork](https://www.upwork.com/hire/bookkeepers/cost/) shows a median of $11 to $25 an hour for bookkeepers on its platform. US-based freelancers with years of QuickBooks experience charge well above that. [goLance’s 2026 rate guide](https://golance.com/hiring/best-freelance-bookkeepers-hourly-rate) puts freelance bookkeepers at $25 to $225 an hour, with experienced ones mostly between $63 and $110.

The hourly rate is only half the figure. The other half is how many hours the file needs, and that depends on volume. For a file that takes 5, 10 or 20 hours a month:

| Hours a month | At $15 an hour | At $25 an hour | At $60 an hour |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 5 | $75 | $125 | $300 |
| 10 | $150 | $250 | $600 |
| 20 | $300 | $500 | $1,200 |

Hourly billing has one structural problem. You pay for time, not for a finished month, so a slower bookkeeper costs more for the same result and you cannot forecast the bill until the month is done.

## What an outsourced bookkeeping service charges

Outsourced services quote a flat monthly fee and scale it by the size of the file. The published entry prices for small businesses, for plans where a person keeps the books, read in September 2026:

| Service | Entry price | What sets the tier |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Ledgerbrook <br>[Get a free file review](/contact/?from=blog%2Fhow-much-does-a-bookkeeper-cost) | $99 or $199 a month | Accounts and transactions per client file; no hourly limit |
| [Bench](https://bench.co/pricing) Bookkeeping Light | $199 a month | Businesses with $250,000 or less in yearly revenue |
| [Merritt Bookkeeping](https://www.merrittbookkeeping.com/pricing) | $250 a month | One standard plan |
| [Intuit Experts](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/oa/live/pricing/) full-service | From $300 a month | Average monthly expenses; one-time cleanup fee first |
| [Xendoo](https://www.xendoo.com/xendoo-pricing/) Essential | $395 a month | Up to $50,000 monthly expenses, 4 accounts |
| [Pilot](https://pilot.com/pricing) Core | From $399 a month | Monthly expenses, from $9,000; includes a US-based bookkeeper |
| [Bookkeeper360](https://www.bookkeeper360.com/pricing) | From $399 a month | Monthly close; weekly is $599 |
| [inDinero](https://www.indinero.com/pricing/) Essential | From $750 a month | Controller-led, accrual available |

Ledgerbrook’s monthly close is $99 or $199 per client file, per month. The lower figure is the standard band: Up to 3 bank or credit card accounts, and up to 200 transactions a month. Anything above either limit is the higher one. There is no hourly limit inside either band, so a month that takes longer than usual costs the same.

For a like-for-like comparison of what each of these includes, see [the best bookkeeping services for small business, compared](/blog/best-bookkeeping-services-for-small-business/). For the cheapest end of the table and what those plans leave out, see [affordable bookkeeping services](/blog/affordable-bookkeeping-services/).

## What changes the price, whoever you hire

Every pricing page above scales on some mix of the same four things:

1. **Transaction volume.** More transactions means more to categorize and match. Bookkeeper.com’s tiers run 100, 200 and 300 transactions a month.
2. **Number of accounts.** Every bank, credit card and loan account is reconciled on its own every month. Xendoo’s plans step at 4, 6 and 12 accounts.
3. **Monthly expenses or revenue.** Pilot, Xendoo and Intuit Experts tier on expenses; Bench and Bookkeeper.com on revenue. It is a proxy for volume, and a rough one: a business with a few large payments pays more than one with many small ones.
4. **How far behind the books are.** Almost every service prices catch-up separately. Xendoo’s catch-up starts at $295 a month of backlog, Merritt’s at $200, and Bookkeeper360’s onboarding starts at $1,000. Months that are wrong rather than missing are a cleanup, and [what a QuickBooks cleanup costs](/blog/quickbooks-cleanup-cost/) compares those prices.

What should not move the price is the business’s success. A file is not harder to reconcile because the numbers in it are bigger.

## Freelancer, employee or service?

**A freelancer** suits a business that has someone who can review the work and wants to pay only for hours used. The risk is continuity: if the freelancer disappears, so does the knowledge of the file.

**An employee** suits a business with enough work to fill most of a week, usually once payables, receivables and payroll are all in-house. Below that, you pay a full salary for part of a job.

**An outsourced service** suits most small businesses in between: a fixed monthly figure, a closed month on a known date, and no hiring. The things to check are who owns the books if you leave, whether a person or software does the categorizing, whether the price has a revenue or hours cap, and whether catch-up is priced before you sign. The questions to put to any quote are in [what outsourced bookkeeping costs](/blog/outsourced-bookkeeping-cost/).

## When the cheapest option costs more

The figure to compare is the cost of a closed, reconciled month, not the hourly rate. A $15-an-hour bookkeeper who leaves three accounts unreconciled costs more than a service at four times the rate, because someone has to pay to fix it before the tax return. If your books are already behind, price that first: Ledgerbrook’s catch-up is $99 per month of backlog, and a [free file review](/contact/?from=blog%2Fhow-much-does-a-bookkeeper-cost) counts the months before anything is quoted.

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Published September 27, 2026 · Updated September 28, 2026

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[

 Previous BlogSeptember 27, 2026

### Best bookkeeping services for small business

Nine bookkeeping services compared on published price, software and fit, read September 2026. Written by one of the nine.

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Next Blog September 28, 2026

### Affordable bookkeeping services in 2026

The cheapest published bookkeeping plans with a person on the books, priced over a first year, and what each leaves out.

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