Intuit’s 2026 QuickBooks Online price change took effect August 1, and the new list prices go live on the QuickBooks website today, August 3. The increases land on the Essentials, Plus and Advanced tiers — the plans most small businesses with employees, inventory or job costing actually run on. QuickBooks Online Plus goes from $99 to $140 a month. Advanced goes from $200 to $340.
What happened
Intuit announced that monthly subscription prices for QuickBooks Online Essentials, Plus and Advanced would change for renewals on or after August 1, 2026. Per Certum Solutions’ breakdown of the new list prices, Plus rises from $99 to $140 (a $41 increase, roughly 41%) and Advanced rises from $200 to $340 — a $140 increase, or about 70%. Essentials also moves up.
Not every plan is affected. Intuit’s product-update notice says pricing for QuickBooks Free, Lite, Ledger and Simple Start is unchanged, and Intuit Enterprise Suite pricing — which is set by contract — isn’t changing either.
The timing on your own invoice depends on tenure. Insightful Accountant notes the change is reflected on each subscription’s next billing date, that promotional pricing is honored for the duration of the promotion, and that newer clients keep their current price through month six. Certum puts the same protection a different way: for a new subscriber, the increase doesn’t hit until the seventh invoice.
Intuit is positioning the increase as paying for bundled capability rather than a straight price hike, and on Advanced the bundling is substantial. According to Certum’s summary, Advanced now includes Workforce Elite — previously a separate payroll add-on running roughly $160–$250 a month — plus Bill Pay Elite (previously a $540/year add-on), new industry-specific tooling for construction and professional services, and a set of AI features covering automatic transaction categorization, bulk invoicing, conversational reporting, and 13-week cash flow and P&L forecasting.
Why it matters
A 41% increase on Plus is not a rounding error for a small business, and a 70% increase on Advanced is the kind of line item that shows up in a budget review. But the headline percentages and the actual cash impact are two different numbers, and which one applies to you depends entirely on what you were already paying for.
If you’re on Advanced and you were separately paying for Workforce Elite and Bill Pay, the net change may be small — or in some cases close to a wash, since the add-ons Intuit folded in were themselves priced in the same range as the increase. If you’re on Advanced and you weren’t using those add-ons, you’re paying substantially more for capability you may not touch.
Plus subscribers get less of that offset. The $41 monthly increase is roughly $492 a year, and Plus doesn’t absorb the same bundled payroll and bill-pay value that Advanced does.
“QuickBooks Online Advanced goes from $200 to $340 per month, a 70% increase.” — Certum Solutions
What this means for small business owners
This is a good moment to do something most owners put off: actually price out your accounting stack against what you use.
Pull your last invoice before you react. Your billing date, your tenure and any active promotion all change when and whether this hits you. A business six months into a subscription and a business six years in are on different timelines.
Add up your add-ons before judging Advanced. If you’re paying separately for payroll and bill pay, subtract those from the increase before deciding the new price is unreasonable. The comparison that matters is total stack cost, not plan price.
Check whether you’re on the right tier at all. Plan creep is real — plenty of businesses sit on Plus or Advanced for one feature they used during a busy season two years ago. If you’re on Plus purely for inventory tracking you no longer need, or on Advanced for a user seat that’s since gone unused, this is the year to find out. Simple Start pricing didn’t change, and for a service business with no inventory and no job costing, it may be enough.
Don’t downgrade blind. Moving down a tier can drop features you’re quietly relying on — class and location tracking, project profitability, budget-vs-actuals, user permissions. Map what your monthly close actually depends on before you change plans, or you’ll spend the savings on cleanup.
Budget it now, not in January. If you’re on Advanced, a $140/month increase is $1,680 a year. That belongs in your Q4 planning and your 2027 operating budget, not in a surprise variance next spring.
If the AI features are the justification, use them. Automated categorization and cash-flow forecasting only earn their keep if someone reviews the output. Auto-categorization that nobody checks produces a tidy-looking P&L built on wrong accounts — which costs more to unwind than it saved.
The bottom line
The price change is already in effect, and the new numbers appear on Intuit’s site today. For most Plus and Advanced subscribers the practical question isn’t whether to leave QuickBooks — it’s whether the tier you’re on still matches the business you’re running now. Check your next invoice date, total up what you’re paying across QuickBooks and its add-ons, and make the tier decision deliberately rather than by default at renewal.
