Pricing
Intuit offers three versions of QuickBooks Online for small businesses. (The Advanced tier is more appropriate for larger companies.) The Simple Start plan ($38 per month) supports one user and an accountant with basic needs, while still providing a surprising amount of functionality. The Essentials level ($75 per month) accommodates three users. It unlocks AI capabilities, along with features such as automated sales tax, support for multiple currencies, and time tracking. The Plus tier ($115 per month) allows up to five users. It includes advanced capabilities, such as budgeting, connections to all sales channels, jobs and job profitability, and purchase and sales orders. You can try out any version with a 30-day trial.
Xero’s Early plan ($20 per month) has many limitations. You can enter just five bills and dispatch only 20 invoices each month, as well as do basic income and expense management and send quotes. You also get basic analytics features, with advanced visual reports. The Growing level ($47 per month) removes the monthly restrictions on bills and invoices. It also unlocks more advanced analytics features and tools, such as customizable graphs and dashboards. The Established tier ($80 per month) gets you additional capabilities, such as advanced cash flow projections (180 days), employee expenses, and support for multiple currencies. All versions support an unlimited number of users, but prices are increasing in October 2025.
Winner: Xero
Getting Started
Both sites help ease you into setting up your company file. They gather information about your business by asking questions, which they use to build the foundation for your records and transactions. They make suggestions about what some of your first steps might be, such as connecting to your financial institutions so you can import transactions or setting up a service so you can accept customer payments electronically. Each devotes a major section to its core settings, which you will need to occasionally revisit to toggle a feature or modify its operations.
Account and settings page in QuickBooks Online (Credit: Intuit/PCMag)
Once you complete all the setup steps, each site introduces you to its dashboard. QuickBooks’ home page shows more information than Xero’s, including a list of tasks that need attention and customizable Shortcuts. It also displays your bank accounts and their alliances, along with colorful charts for Cash Flow Trend, Expenses, Invoices, and Profit & Loss. The dashboard supports some customization options, and everything links to the details behind it. The new, AI-powered Business Feed at the top of the page suggests actions you should take (such as, “Review [current dollar amount] in invoices”) and features you should explore (such as, “Use personalized reminders to get paid in time”).
Xero’s dashboard has a sparser, simpler design. Charts and lists, such as Account Watchlist, Bills You Need to Pay, and Invoices Owed to You, keep you focused on the numbers you need to know. Links in each section take you to the underlying detail.
Winner: QuickBooks Online
User Experience
Both applications have effective (though very different) navigation systems and user experiences. QuickBooks Online updates its interface regularly. It uses a lot of color, fonts, and graphics. Some pages display an almost dizzying amount of content, which makes them slightly slow to load. Xero’s navigation tools have changed little over the years, and they make sense once you learn where everything is. The site has a no-frills, professional, and uniform look. Its simplicity and consistency make it feel snappy.
Which is better is a matter of preference. But Xero hasn’t done anything to freshen up its look or make its navigation tools more intuitive in years, so it could use some updating. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online offers a state-of-the-art user experience, which is welcome when you’re working on accounting tasks.
Winner: QuickBooks Online
Accounting applications eliminate duplicate data entry and minimize errors by providing record templates for customers and vendors, along with those for products and services. Once you enter an address, description, or price, you never have to enter it again. All you need to do is select the correct record when you create a transaction.
Customer record in QiuckBooks Online (Credit: Intuit/PCMag)
Both QuickBooks Online and Xero provide thorough record templates for customers and vendors. Once you open a record, you can view lists of existing transactions (such as estimates or quotes and invoices) with that individual or company and directly create new ones. QuickBooks Online offers more options here because it supports more transaction types. It also includes action icons on customer records so you can, for example, quickly call or email them and create related tasks.
Winner: QuickBooks Online
Products and Services
QuickBooks Online allows more data fields for products and services (such as photos, SKUs, and sub-products). It’s also more adept at inventory tracking. You can specify a starting balance (stock level) and a reorder point for each record. Xero doesn’t support a reorder point, and you have to go elsewhere on the site to enter your starting balances. It also doesn’t allow item assembly, such as selling multiple related products as a kit. And it doesn’t integrate with sales channels; QuickBooks Online Plus can connect with major sites, such as Amazon, Etsy, and Shopify.
Product record in Xero (Credit: Xero/PCMag)
Xero offers an inventory add-on, Xero Inventory Plus (for $39 per month), to Growing and Established subscribers. This solution goes beyond what QuickBooks Online does, though several third-party companies offer integrated inventory solutions for QuickBooks Online. Inventory Plus integrates with Amazon and Shopify.
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Winner: QuickBooks Online
Sales and Purchase Forms
To effectively interact with customers and vendors, you need to be able to easily create professional forms. Both QuickBooks Online and Xero provide preformatted templates for customer statements, estimates or quotes, invoices, and purchase orders, in addition to other less common forms. Each app has a slightly different set of fields in its default forms, but both allow you to complete them by selecting options from lists of customers or vendors and products or services, along with anything else that’s necessary (such as discount or quantity) If you set up a payment service, customers can click a link to settle up with a bank or credit card payment. Automated email reminders help you get paid faster.
Both allow you to modify forms to meet your needs, but QuickBooks Online provides more options, including choices of colors and fonts, custom fields, easy-to-edit content blocks, and multiple templates. You can also see what your form looks like as an email or PDF and to the payer. Once you save an invoice, you can adjust its payment options, change its status (such as Opened, Viewed, or Sent), and further customize it.
Invoice in Xero (Credit: Xero/PCMag)
Xero’s customization tools aren’t as flexible or intuitive. You can change the default settings (such as payment due date and quote expiration date), but you have to download a ZIP file containing modifiable Microsoft Word templates for anything further. The whole process seems unnecessarily complicated and discouraging.
Winner: QuickBooks Online
Reports
Both accounting solutions offer the reports you need to manage your company’s finances. They provide dozens of preformatted options for every area, such as expenses and vendors, financial performance, transactions, and Who Owes you and What You Owe.
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They also allow you to customize reports, save your customized templates, and export them in Excel and PDF formats. Xero also supports CSV files and Google Sheets as an export destination. You can email and schedule QuickBooks reports.
Each has advanced output options. For example, Xero offers the Business Performance and Business Snapshot reports. Xero Established subscribers can also pay for the Advanced Analytics Plus add-on, which unlocks advanced analysis in areas such as cash flow and profitability. QuickBooks Online has custom and management reports.
Winner: Tie
Mobile Access
Both QuickBooks Online and Xero offer mobile apps for Android and iOS. They have excellent dashboards that show overviews of key financial elements that might require immediate action, such as bank account balances, links to transactions, and outstanding invoices. Beyond that, QuickBooks Online provides the Business Feed, a profitability number, a to-do list, and quick action icons. Xero has a link to a Profit and Loss report, as well as a Cash In and Out graph and a list of outstanding bills.
Customer record, invoice, and dashboard screens in QuickBooks mobile app (Credit: Intuit/PCMag)
Both apps carry over the most important data from the browser-based versions, including lists of customers, expenses, and invoices. The QuickBooks Online apps are more attractive, offer a little more transaction detail, and provide buttons in customer records for quickly calling or emailing contacts. They also allow you to auto-track your vehicle’s mileage as you drive and snap photos of receipts to record and store.
Customer record, invoice, and dashboard screens in Xero’s mobile app (Credit: Xero/PCMag)
Winner: Tie
The above categories aren’t exhaustive. For example, both applications also provide great tools for tracking projects and their profitability. They both have payroll capabilities that cost extra, too. QuickBooks Online pairs with QuickBooks Payroll, while Xero integrates with Gusto. Each also extends its native capabilities through hundreds of add-ons.
Additional features are unique to each. QuickBooks Online supports budgets and time tracking (in Xero, you must tie time tracking to projects). Meanwhile, Xero has specialized tools to track business assets and manage their depreciation and disposals.
Winner: Tie
