The Best QuickBooks Self-Employed Alternatives (2026)
Short answer: QuickBooks Self-Employed was discontinued and existing users were migrated to QuickBooks Solopreneur (~$20/month). The best QuickBooks Self-Employed alternative for privacy is Keel: free, with Pro a one-time $249.99. It creates invoices, scans receipts, and logs mileage entirely on your iPhone, with no bank connection, no account, and no cloud. If you would rather have automatic tax estimates or auto-GPS mileage, Hurdlr and Everlance are strong bank-connected picks.
Why are people looking for a QuickBooks Self-Employed alternative?
QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE) was Intuit’s low-cost product for freelancers, gig workers, and 1099 contractors. Intuit discontinued QuickBooks Self-Employed and moved existing subscribers to QuickBooks Solopreneur. Many self-employed users are now comparing alternatives because Solopreneur costs more than the plan they had and still requires a bank connection and cloud account.
Common reasons people switch away from QuickBooks Self-Employed include price increases, wanting to avoid linking a bank account, wanting an app that works offline, and wanting invoicing, receipts, and mileage in one simple tool.
What should a good QuickBooks Self-Employed alternative do?
A strong replacement for a 1099 worker usually covers four jobs:
- Create and send professional invoices.
- Capture and organize receipts.
- Track business mileage — the 2026 IRS standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile.
- Help you stay ready for tax time.
Beyond features, the biggest decision is architecture: do you want an app that connects to your bank and stores data in the cloud, or one that keeps everything private on your device?
Comparison table: top QuickBooks Self-Employed alternatives (2026)
| App | Starting price | Bank connection required | Cloud/account required | Invoicing | Receipts | Mileage | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keel | Free (Pro $249.99 one-time) | No | No (data stays on iPhone) | Yes | Yes (on-device scan) | Yes (manual, IRS rate) | Privacy, no bank link, all-in-one |
| QuickBooks Solopreneur | ~$20/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Users staying in the Intuit ecosystem |
| Hurdlr | Free / ~$10/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (auto) | Real-time tax estimates |
| Everlance | Free / premium | Yes (for expense sync) | Yes | Limited | Yes | Yes (auto-GPS) | Automatic mileage tracking |
| Keeper | ~$20/mo | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Limited | Finding deductions + tax filing |
| Stride | Free | No (manual) | Yes | No | Basic | Yes | Free basic mileage + expenses |
Which alternative is best for each type of user?
Best for privacy and simplicity: Keel
Keel is a private, on-device bookkeeping app for self-employed and 1099 workers, built by Ilura Technology. Keel creates invoices, scans receipts directly on your iPhone using Apple Intelligence, and logs mileage trip by trip, stamping each trip at the IRS standard rate. Keel does not connect to your bank, does not use the cloud, and does not require an account. Your data is stored encrypted on your iPhone, and Keel’s App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected.”
Keel is the best fit if you dislike linking financial accounts, want your records to work offline, and prefer one app that handles invoices, receipts, and mileage together. The Keel free plan includes unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage. Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.
Best for automatic tax estimates: Hurdlr
Hurdlr connects to 20,000-plus banks and provides real-time tax estimates as income and expenses come in. Hurdlr offers a free tier and a premium plan around $10 per month. Hurdlr is a strong pick if you want automated income tracking and continuous tax projections and you are comfortable connecting your accounts.
Best for automatic mileage: Everlance
Everlance offers automatic GPS mileage tracking and can sync bank transactions for expenses. Everlance has a free plan and premium tiers and holds a 4.8-star rating across 25,000-plus reviews. Everlance is the best fit if mileage is your biggest deduction and you want trips logged automatically in the background; we compare it head-to-head in our Everlance alternative breakdown.
Best for finding deductions and filing: Keeper
Keeper scans your linked bank and card transactions to surface potential tax deductions and also supports tax filing. Keeper costs around $20 per month. Keeper does not create invoices. It suits people who want software to comb their transactions for write-offs and handle filing in one place — the Keeper Tax alternative comparison covers where that model helps and where it does not.
Best free basic option: Stride
Stride is a free app that tracks mileage and basic expenses. Stride does not create invoices. It is a reasonable no-cost starting point for gig workers who mainly need simple mileage and expense logging.
How does Keel compare on privacy specifically?
The clearest contrast between Keel and most alternatives is data handling. QuickBooks Solopreneur, Hurdlr, Everlance, and Keeper rely on bank connections and cloud storage to power automation. That automation is genuinely convenient, but it means your financial data leaves your device, passes through an aggregator, and sits on a server you do not control.
Keel takes the opposite approach. There is no bank connection, no cloud sync, and no login. Everything you enter stays encrypted on your iPhone, and the ledger is append-only and hash-chained, so an entry cannot be quietly altered after the fact. If privacy, offline access, and not sharing bank credentials matter more to you than fully automated categorization, Keel is the strongest QuickBooks Self-Employed alternative. We lay out the full architectural tradeoff in on-device vs cloud bookkeeping.
How do I move off QuickBooks Self-Employed without losing my records?
Switching apps is where most people lose data, and it is the part no comparison table shows. Work in this order.
Export before you cancel. Your QBSE or Solopreneur history lives in the account, not on your device. Pull your transactions to CSV and download your invoices and reports as PDFs while the subscription is still active. Do this even if you plan to keep paying for a month or two — an export costs nothing and a locked account costs you a year of records.
Pick your changeover date. The cleanest switch is January 1, because the tax year and the app boundary line up. If you switch mid-year, note the exact date and keep both sets of records for that year. Your accountant needs one continuous picture of the year, not two half-pictures with an unexplained gap.
Carry your mileage log across. Mileage is the deduction people most often reconstruct from memory, and a log with a gap in it is what gets the deduction disallowed. Export the trips you already logged and re-enter the running total in the new app so the year still reconciles. The IRS mileage log requirements spell out what each trip record has to contain.
Keep the old export, do not delete it. The IRS generally expects you to keep records supporting a return for at least three years, and longer in some situations — how long to keep tax records covers the exceptions. Your archived CSV is the evidence for the years you filed with QuickBooks, whatever app you use now.
Re-issue nothing. Invoices you already sent under your old numbering scheme stay as they are. Start the new app at the next number in sequence rather than resetting to 1, so your invoice numbers stay unique across the year.
Where are competitors stronger than Keel?
To be fair, bank-connected tools do things Keel does not. Hurdlr and Keeper can automatically pull and categorize transactions, so a month of spending lands in the app without you touching it. Everlance and MileIQ log mileage automatically using GPS, while Keel mileage entry is manual. Keeper adds tax filing. QuickBooks Solopreneur connects to the broader Intuit ecosystem.
That is the real tradeoff, and it is worth stating plainly: Keel has no bank feed, so nothing imports itself. Income and expenses are entered by hand or photographed as receipts. What you get back is a record with no account, no aggregator, and no server — and a year that exports as a single file for your accountant through the Accountant Pack. If automation matters more to you than that, one of the tools above will serve you better.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free QuickBooks Self-Employed alternative? Yes, and more than one. Keel’s free plan includes unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage with no account and no bank link. Hurdlr has a free tier, and Stride is free for basic mileage and expense tracking. The common mistake is assuming free means unlimited everywhere — most free tiers cap the automation that made you want the app in the first place, and all of them except Keel still ask you to create an account before you can start.
What replaced QuickBooks Self-Employed? Intuit discontinued QuickBooks Self-Employed and migrated existing subscribers to QuickBooks Solopreneur, which costs about $20 per month. Solopreneur has the same overall shape — bank connection, cloud account, invoicing, mileage tracking — at a higher price than the old QBSE plan. If you were migrated automatically, export your historical data before you cancel anything, because with cloud accounting your records live in the account rather than on your device.
Which alternative does not require connecting a bank account? Keel does not require a bank connection, a cloud account, or a login — its App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected,” and everything you enter stays encrypted on your iPhone. Stride can be used with manual entry too, though it still needs an account. The tradeoff is that the categorizing is yours to do: you log a trip when you finish it and photograph a receipt when you get it, instead of reviewing a month of imported transactions at the end of it.
Can I get invoices, receipts, and mileage in one app? Yes. Keel combines invoicing, on-device receipt scanning, and mileage logged at the IRS rate in a single app, and exports the whole year as one file for your accountant through its Accountant Pack. Many alternatives cover only part of this — Everlance and Stride are mileage-first, and Keeper does not create invoices at all. Check that gap before you switch, or you will end up paying for two apps instead of one.
What is the 2026 IRS mileage rate? The 2026 IRS standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile for business driving. Commuting between home and a regular workplace does not count, which is the deduction people most often claim by mistake. Whichever app you use, the IRS expects a contemporaneous log showing the date, miles, destination, and business purpose of each trip — a year-end estimate reconstructed from memory is what gets disallowed in an audit.
The bottom line
If you want a private, on-device replacement that keeps invoices, receipts, and mileage on your iPhone with no bank connection and no cloud, download Keel: Invoice Maker & Receipts on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/keel-invoice-maker-receipts/id6786659713
If automation like auto-GPS mileage, transaction scanning, or built-in tax filing matters more to you, Hurdlr, Everlance, or Keeper may be a better fit.
This article is general information, not tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional.
Where Keel actually fits
Private and on-device, with a real tradeoff.
Against cloud, bank-connected tools: no account and nothing readable leaving the phone — but no automatic bank import, and Keel does not file for you. Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
On-device · No account · Data Not Collected