Ask Xero what a switch costs and the answer is "nothing, we'll do it for you" — and for a QuickBooks Online user that is exactly right. Ask what it costs from 1 October 2026, or from QuickBooks Desktop, and the answers change. This page works through both.
Try Kantivo FreeXero is putting up every US plan, and not only for newcomers: Early goes from $25 to $27 a month, Growing from $55 to $59, Established from $90 to $97, for existing subscribers as well. The multi-organization discount goes too, so each additional business is billed at the full rate. The 90%-off introductory offer ends on 30 September. We have priced every Xero figure on this page at the October rates, because those are the ones a buyer deciding today will be paying. Source: Xero's US pricing-plans update page, consulted 25 September 2026.
Xero does not ask a switching customer to move their own data. Since March 2026 its preferred migration partner has been Q2X; Xero subsidises the base conversion in full (Q2X puts its value at $250), and Q2X says plainly that all historical data is migrated — contacts, the chart of accounts, invoices, bills, payments, journals, items and classes among it. For someone leaving QuickBooks Online, that is the most generous onboarding offer in this market.
It is a QuickBooks Online offer. Desktop pays extra, and Enterprise is turned away.
In Q2X's own words: "If you have QuickBooks Desktop, additional fees apply" — the Desktop-to-Online step is $100 — and "QuickBooks Enterprise is not supported." Its list of things it does not convert is specific: projects, budgets, integrations, recurring schedules, bank rules, terms, time activities, purchase orders and tax agencies, with attachments and tracked inventory still marked coming soon.
Kantivo reads QuickBooks Desktop — Pro, Premier and Enterprise — and QuickBooks Online without an intermediate stop. The importer handles IIF, CSV, XLSX, QIF, QFX and QBO, maps accounts, customers, suppliers, items and classes, flags duplicates before anything is written, and reverses a whole batch in one action. And if you would rather not run it, our white-glove migration costs nothing: balances at your cutover date and the current and prior year in detail, loaded into your own installation, followed by a tie-out report setting every account, your receivables and payables and your bank balances beside the figures QuickBooks gave.
How the import works, step by step → · What transfers out of QuickBooks Desktop, field by field →
Put simply: leaving QuickBooks Online with a long ledger you want reproduced entry by entry, Xero's free conversion is the better deal. Leaving Desktop or Enterprise, or wanting to see the numbers agree before you rely on them, is the case Kantivo was built for.
This page used to set our $540 next to Xero Established and leave it there. That flattered us: most small businesses buy Growing, not Established. All three rungs are below, at October's prices.
One person in the books: we come in $168 a year under Growing and $624 under Established. Stretch it to five years and it is $2,700 from us at a rate that cannot move against $3,540 or $5,820 from them — and those Xero totals assume October's prices then hold still for five years, which is a kind assumption about a company raising prices on its existing customers this autumn.
Every Xero plan carries unlimited users — even Early at $27 a month. Professional carries one, and each extra login is $120 a year. Line them up against Growing at the October price: one user and we are $168 ahead, two users and we are still $48 ahead ($660 to $708), three users and Xero is the cheaper product ($780 to $708). That keeps going in their favour with every person you add.
Two qualifications, neither of which rescues the three-user case. Your outside accountant or bookkeeper connecting as a remote advisor is free and consumes no seat at all — two of them can be paired at once — so "my CPA needs access" is not a seat. And the $540 covers five separate companies where Xero wants a whole subscription for each — with no multi-organization discount after 1 October — so a person running two entities is weighing $540 against $1,416. But if three colleagues need their own logins into a single set of books, Xero is priced better for you and we would rather you heard it from us.
Everything above lines Professional up against Growing and Established, because that is where the capacity matches. Plenty of readers are doing a different sum, though — Kantivo Basic at $299 a year versus Xero Early at $27 a month — and on that one the answer depends on how many of you there are.
From October, Early is $324 a year. A single user on Basic pays $299 — $25 less each year, and $1,495 against $1,620 across five. But Early throws in unlimited logins; Basic gives you one, with more at $120 a year, so two people on Basic pay $419 to Early's $324. Two people, one company, a modest run of invoices — Xero Early costs less and we are not going to hide that from you.
Two things end it, and both arrive sooner than people expect. Early is a metered plan, not a lightweight one: 20 invoices and 5 bills a month and then you stop. The twenty-first invoice moves you to Growing at $59 a month — $708 a year against our $540 — and every figure above flips in the same instant. The other is scope. A Xero subscription runs one organisation. Open a second business and you buy a second full-price subscription, while Basic already holds two companies and Professional holds five on the one price.
Which makes the entry-level verdict easy to state. Fewer than 20 invoices a month, a single company, more than one person keying in — go to Xero Early. Working alone, or more invoices than that, or a second set of books, or you would rather the file lived on your own computer than in a data centre — the numbers come back to us and then stay put, because our rate is fixed for twelve years and Xero's rises on 1 October 2026. Here is what sits inside Basic and Professional →
| Feature | Kantivo | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Price (Annual) | $540 — held 12 years | $708 Growing / $1,164 Established (from 1 October 2026) |
| Free migration from QuickBooks | ✓ Desktop, Enterprise and Online — ends in a tie-out report | ⚠ Online: free, full history. Desktop: extra fees. Enterprise: not supported |
| Logins included in the price | ⚠ One ($120/yr per extra) | ✓ Unlimited on every plan |
| Your accountant's access | ✓ Free, seat-free, two at a time | ✓ Free |
| GAAP & IFRS Double-Entry | ✓ Both Standards | ⚠ IFRS-focused |
| Unlimited Invoices | ✓ From Basic up | ⚠ Growing and above (Early: 20/month) |
| Bill Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bank Reconciliation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automatic Bank Feeds | ✓ Two networks, every plan — US institutions | ✓ Wider country coverage than ours |
| Financial Reports | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-Currency | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stock & Inventory Tracking | ✓ On all plans with no product cap — reorder alerts and the Shopify connector come at no extra cost | ⚠ Limited to 4,000 items; purchasing, reorder and storefront sync sit in Inventory Plus, a paid extra the Early plan can't add |
| Online Payments | ✓ (Stripe) | ✓ |
| 12-Year Price Lock | ✓ | ✗ |
| Desktop App (Local Data) | ✓ | ✗ (Cloud only) |
| Machines you may install it on | ✓ As many as you own | ✓ Any browser |
| Multi-Company (Same Account) | ✓ Five on Professional, thirty on Enterprise | ✗ A subscription per organisation |
| Usable with the internet down | ✓ | ✗ Cloud only |
| Native phone app | ✗ Mobile browser only | ✓ iOS and Android |
| Add-on app marketplace | ⚠ Short list, growing | ✓ Extensive |
| Self-Learning AI Assistant | ✓ Community-powered | ⚠ JAX (cloud-only) |
Pro, Premier and Enterprise files come straight in, with no detour through QuickBooks Online and no Desktop surcharge. Run it yourself, or let us run it free and show you the tie-out.
Kantivo installs on your machine against a local PostgreSQL database. It starts with the network unplugged — which one customer needs for real, moving data to his bookkeeper by file transfer because he wants nothing of his in a cloud.
Xero Established becomes $97 a month on 1 October 2026, for customers already on it too. Whatever you pay Kantivo on the day you buy is held for twelve years, so the five-year total on this page is a commitment rather than a projection.
Every Xero organisation is its own subscription, and from October the multi-organization discount is gone. Professional holds five companies for $540 and Enterprise thirty, and companies under shared ownership do not count against the total at all, however many there are.
Three or more staff need their own logins. Unlimited users is included in every Xero price and it is not included in ours. By the third seat Growing costs less than Professional, and the difference only grows. That is a real advantage and no amount of arithmetic on our side removes it.
You are on QuickBooks Online and want every old entry reproduced. Xero's Q2X conversion brings all of your history across at no charge. Ours brings balances at your cutover and two years in detail, with the reconciliation shown. If the full ledger inside the new system matters more to you than that proof, take theirs.
Your day runs on a phone, or on a particular add-on. Xero ships real mobile apps and a marketplace many times the size of ours. We are a desktop application with browser access and a modest integrations list — check it for the tool you cannot work without before choosing us.
The buyer we fit is the other one: coming off QuickBooks Desktop, one or two people posting entries, more than one entity to keep straight, and a preference for holding their own data. For that person both the price and the migration land on our side.
Thirty days free, every feature unlocked, no card. Run the import yourself or have us do it at no cost, and read the tie-out before you commit to anything.