The Private, On-Device QuickBooks Solopreneur Alternative

Short answer: QuickBooks Solopreneur costs about $20 a month, connects to your bank, and keeps your books in Intuit’s cloud. The strongest QuickBooks Solopreneur alternative for people who want none of that is Keel, an iPhone app with no account, no bank connection, and no cloud, where invoices, receipts, and mileage stay encrypted on the device. Keel’s free plan has no cap on records, and Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription.

QuickBooks Solopreneur is what Intuit points solo business owners toward now that QuickBooks Self-Employed is gone. It is competent software. It is also a subscription that expects a bank connection and an Intuit account, and for a lot of freelancers that is exactly the part they want to opt out of. This article compares Solopreneur with Keel, which takes the opposite architectural bet, and is specific about what you give up in exchange.

What is QuickBooks Solopreneur, and what does it cost?

QuickBooks Solopreneur is Intuit’s current product for solo business owners and 1099 workers. It replaced QuickBooks Self-Employed, which Intuit discontinued before migrating existing subscribers across. Solopreneur costs about $20 per month.

The architecture matters more than the feature list. Solopreneur connects to your bank, stores your data in Intuit’s cloud, and requires an Intuit account. On top of that foundation it gives you invoicing, expense and receipt tracking, mileage tracking, and basic reports, all inside the wider QuickBooks ecosystem. It is aimed squarely at one-person businesses; growing past that generally means moving up to QuickBooks Online.

Why look for a QuickBooks Solopreneur alternative?

People search for a Solopreneur alternative for a few recurring reasons:

• Price: about $20 per month, billed forever, is more than some solo workers want to spend on bookkeeping.
• Bank connection: Solopreneur relies on linking your financial accounts through an aggregator, and whether that plumbing is safe is a fair thing to ask before handing over credentials.
• Cloud storage: your ledger lives on Intuit’s servers rather than your device, which is a different risk profile from keeping the books on-device.
• Simplicity: some people want one focused app for invoices, receipts, and mileage, not a platform they will grow into.

If more than one of those describes you, the problem is not that Solopreneur is bad software. It is that you are paying, monthly, for automation you have decided you do not want.

What is the best private, on-device alternative?

Keel is a private, on-device bookkeeping app for self-employed and 1099 workers, built by Ilura Technology. It creates invoices as PDFs with your own numbering, logo, and brand color, and can carry a payment link as a QR code. Receipts are captured with the camera and read on the device by Apple Intelligence. Trips go into a mileage log. Reports and the Freeboard view sit on top of all of it.

Keel’s defining trait is data handling. Keel does not connect to your bank, does not use the cloud, and does not require an account. Your records are stored encrypted on your iPhone, and Keel’s App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected.” There is no server-side copy to leak, subpoena, or lose access to when a card expires.

The Keel free plan includes unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage. Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription, so it costs less than about thirteen months of Solopreneur at roughly $20 per month, and nothing after that.

How do QuickBooks Solopreneur and Keel compare side by side?

Feature	QuickBooks Solopreneur	Keel
Price	~$20/mo	Free; Pro $249.99 once
Bank connection	Required	Not required
Cloud storage	Required	None (on-device only)
Account/login	Required	Not required
Data privacy	Stored on Intuit servers	Encrypted on your iPhone; “Data Not Collected”
Invoicing	Yes	Yes, unlimited on the free plan
Receipts	Yes	Yes (camera capture, read on-device)
Mileage	Yes	Yes (trips you log, valued at the IRS rate)
Works offline	Limited	Yes
Auto transaction import	Yes	No (manual entry or a photo)
Year-end handoff	Cloud reports and exports	Accountant Pack: CSV plus one-page summary PDF
Best for	Intuit ecosystem, automation	Privacy, simplicity, one-time cost

Where does QuickBooks Solopreneur win?

To be balanced, Solopreneur has real advantages. Because it connects to your bank, it can import and categorize transactions automatically, which removes the single most tedious part of bookkeeping. It sits inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, so if you hire someone, add a second revenue line, or need a proper accounting package, the upgrade path is short. Its cloud model means your data is reachable from a laptop as well as a phone, and Intuit handles the backups.

There is also an accountant argument. Plenty of tax preparers work in QuickBooks daily and will happily take a file from it. If your accountant has a strong preference and you have no privacy objection, that preference is worth real money in reduced friction.

If automatic transaction import, multi-device cloud access, and staying inside QuickBooks are your priorities, Solopreneur is the better choice, and no privacy argument should talk you out of it.

Where does Keel win?

Keel wins on privacy, simplicity, offline use, and total cost. There is no bank connection to set up and no credentials to share. Everything works on a plane or in a basement because nothing syncs to a server. Your records stay encrypted on your iPhone. And because Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, the meter stops: after roughly a year it costs nothing further, while a subscription keeps billing whether you invoiced twice that month or twenty times.

Keel also keeps the three core self-employed tasks together in one focused app. Invoice a client, photograph the receipt, log the drive home. No modules to enable, no chart of accounts to design before you can send your first invoice.

How do I switch from QuickBooks Solopreneur to Keel?

Do it in this order. First, export what you have out of QuickBooks while the subscription is still active. Once it lapses, retrieving reports becomes a support conversation rather than a click. Keep those exports: they are your record for the period QuickBooks covered, and for most returns you have to be able to produce that record for at least three years after you file.

Second, pick a clean boundary. The start of a tax year is easiest, the start of a quarter is fine. Keel does not import a QuickBooks file; the ledger starts empty, which is the honest cost of an app with no server behind it. What you carry over by hand is small: invoices clients have not paid yet, your invoice numbering so the sequence does not restart at one, and your year-to-date mileage figure.

Third, overlap for a few weeks if the switch makes you nervous. Solopreneur bills monthly, so one extra month costs about $20 and tells you whether anything important was living only in the bank feed.

What does tax time look like without a bank feed?

With a bank-connected app, your year-end file is assembled from transactions the feed pulled in and you categorized afterward. With Keel, the file is exactly what you entered. That is less automatic, and it is also easier to stand behind, because every line came from an invoice you sent or a receipt you photographed rather than from a guess about what a merchant name meant.

Keel’s Accountant Pack exports a CSV of invoices, expenses, and trips alongside a one-page summary PDF, and a whole year exports as a single file. That is the artifact you hand your accountant, or the one you sit with while filling in Schedule C. Your mileage log is the trips you entered yourself rather than trips a GPS chip inferred, and Keel values them at the 2026 IRS standard rate of 72.5 cents per mile. The IRS resets that figure every year and publishes it on its standard mileage rates page, so confirm the current number before you file.

One structural detail matters if a number is ever questioned. Keel’s ledger is append-only and hash-chained: entries are added rather than silently rewritten, and each one references the one before it. A correction shows up as a correction, not as a book that always quietly said that.

Who should choose which?

• Choose QuickBooks Solopreneur if you want automatic bank import, cloud access across devices, and the broader Intuit ecosystem, and you are comfortable linking accounts.
• Choose Keel if you want a private, on-device app with no bank connection, no cloud, offline access, and a one-time price, and you are fine entering transactions yourself or photographing them.

Frequently asked questions

Is Keel a good QuickBooks Solopreneur alternative? For a one-person business that would rather not link a bank account, yes. Keel covers the same three daily jobs, invoices, receipts, and mileage, entirely on the device with no account and no cloud. It is a weaker fit if you depend on automatic transaction import, need to work from a laptop as well as a phone, or want everything inside the Intuit ecosystem.

Does Keel connect to my bank the way Solopreneur does? No. Keel has no bank connection, no cloud sync, and no login, so there are no credentials to hand over and no server-side copy of your books to breach. The tradeoff is real and worth stating plainly: nothing lands in your records automatically. You add income and expenses yourself, either by typing them in or by photographing a receipt, which Apple Intelligence reads on the device.

How much cheaper is Keel than QuickBooks Solopreneur? Keel’s free plan has no cap on invoices, receipts, or trips, so the honest comparison is $0 against roughly $240 a year. Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription, so it costs about thirteen months of Solopreneur and then nothing further. Prices on both sides can change, so check each before you commit.

What does Solopreneur do that Keel does not? Solopreneur imports and categorizes bank and card transactions automatically, syncs across devices through the cloud, and sits inside Intuit’s wider product line, so moving up to full QuickBooks later is a short step rather than a migration. Keel has no bank feed and no web app: entries are manual or photographed, and your books live on one iPhone until you export them.

Can I get my records out of Keel if I switch apps again? Yes, and it is worth testing in your first week rather than in April. Keel exports a whole year as a single file, and the Accountant Pack produces a CSV of your invoices, expenses, and trips plus a one-page summary PDF. The underlying ledger is append-only and hash-chained, so each entry references the one before it and a reviewer can see the file was not quietly back-dated.

The bottom line

QuickBooks Solopreneur is a solid bank-connected option if you want automation and the Intuit ecosystem, and about $20 a month is a fair price for that convenience. If you would rather keep your books private and on your own device, download Keel: Invoice Maker & Receipts on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/keel-invoice-maker-receipts/id6786659713

Keel gives you invoices, receipts, and mileage with no bank connection, no cloud, and no account, for free, with a one-time upgrade instead of a bill that arrives every month.

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This article is general information, not tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional.