Same idea, same place to keep your books: installed locally, file on your own drive. The comparison worth making is the renewal notice and the price of a second seat.
Try Kantivo Free for 30 DaysSage 50 — Peachtree, to anyone who has been doing this a while — runs on your own computer with the company file on your own drive. So does Kantivo. Every other comparison page you will read pits a desktop ledger against a browser; this one does not, because on the one question people care about most — where the data lives — Sage 50 gives the same answer we do.
Credit where it is owed. Sage 50 has been maintained for decades, includes unlimited North America-based telephone support, ships Sage Security Shield, offers industry builds in its Quantum edition, and has a payroll add-on that actually files. There is also a network of certified consultants who will install, host and hand-hold. If payroll runs inside your accounting software today, that alone may be the reason to stay put — Kantivo has no native payroll, and you should hear that from us rather than discover it in week two.
The renewal is the real subject. Sage 50 is a subscription with a minimum one-year term, and the reseller's terms are blunt about it: “annual auto-renewal is REQUIRED to use the product”, cancellable on 30 days' notice before the renewal date. Stop paying and the software stops. Kantivo is an annual subscription too — we have never pretended otherwise — but the figure you start on is the figure you pay for 12 years, and that is the whole of the difference.
Sage 50 prices are the 2026 US Desktop subscription figures published by an authorised Sage reseller and read on 15 September 2026. Sage itself does not publish Sage 50 renewal pricing, so nothing here is quoted that we could not source, and the date is on it deliberately. Sage Accounting, Sage's separate browser-based product, is a different program and is not priced on this page.
| Feature | Kantivo | Sage 50 Premium 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| One user, a year | $299 Basic / $540 Pro | $988.80 |
| Five users, a year | $1,020 (Pro plus four seats at $120) | $2,268 |
| Where the software runs | ✓ Your machine | ✓ Your machine |
| Company file on your own hardware | ✓ | ✓ |
| What you pay next year | ✓ The same figure, for 12 years | Sage's number, renewed automatically — the software requires it |
| US payroll run inside the ledger | ✗ Not built in | ✓ Add-on, $418–$1,013 a year by headcount |
| Telephone support | Support by email and ticket, included | ✓ Unlimited, North America-based |
| Working away from the office | Your licensed users across the network; an accountant joins free and consumes no seat | Sage Drive carries one remote user; more cost extra |
| Accounting standard | ✓ GAAP or IFRS, switchable | A GAAP-oriented US product |
| Invoicing, bills, reconciliation, reporting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Trade-specific editions | ✓ Construction, legal, property, travel, nonprofit, government | ✓ Quantum industry builds |
| Bringing your history over | Lists by CSV, balances at a cutover date. No single-click Sage 50 importer | n/a |
Anything we could not confirm from a source worth citing has been left out of this table rather than filled in — Sage 50 multi-currency by edition, the Pro and Quantum list prices, and whatever Sage's 2026 US renewal increase turns out to be. Ask about a specific one and you will get the distinction between what we know and what we would be guessing.
Both are annual subscriptions and both stop working if you stop paying — that much is identical. What is not identical is the number. Sage 50 renews automatically at whatever Sage sets, and Sage's own certified consultants say publicly that it rises every year, hosted or desktop. Kantivo's is fixed for 12 years from the day you start, in writing.
Going from one Sage 50 Premium user to five means $988.80 becomes $2,268. With Kantivo a user is $120 a year, so the same five people are $1,020 in total. For a small office that is usually the line that settles it.
Sage sells payroll as an add-on, $418 to $1,013 a year by headcount, and it files. Kantivo has no native payroll. If you run payroll inside your ledger, weigh that properly rather than taking our word for the rest of the page. If payroll is outsourced or you have no staff, it is a line item you are not paying Sage either.
Run multiple businesses? Sage charges for each one separately. Kantivo Professional carries five companies on one subscription and Enterprise carries thirty — one bill either way, and companies under common ownership don’t count at all, whether they are corporations, trusts, rental entities or the household’s own books, so an owner with a dozen entities still pays once.
There is no push-button Sage 50 import, and you should hear that before you buy rather than after. Our full-history importer was built for QuickBooks Desktop files because that is where our customers came from. The Sage equivalent is not written yet.
So the realistic route is this: export the chart of accounts, customers, vendors and items from Sage 50 as CSV and load each list into Kantivo; choose a cutover date — a month end or the start of a financial year; key opening balances at that date from your Sage trial balance; and keep the Sage file as the archive for everything before it. Budget a weekend rather than an evening. If years of live transaction detail have to come across rather than sit in an archive, say so first — sometimes the right answer from us is wait.
Thirty days free, no card, every feature unlocked. Install it next to Sage 50 and judge them on your own books while you still have both.