Zoho Books
Full-featured cloud accounting with a permanent free tier for micro businesses.
Overview
Zoho Books covers the full bookkeeping cycle for solo, small, and mid-sized firms: invoicing, expense tracking, bank feeds, reconciliation, tax filing, and financial reporting. It sits within the broader Zoho ecosystem, so firms that already use Zoho CRM, Zoho Inventory, or other Zoho apps can connect them without adding third-party middleware.
The platform suits solo bookkeepers, small firms, and mid-sized practices. Its free plan is available to client businesses with annual revenue under $50k and covers the core features needed to maintain a clean set of books. For very small clients not yet ready to pay for software, it removes one barrier. UK users can file MTD VAT returns and Corporation Tax directly from within the platform.
Zoho Books works with Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Zapier, Google Drive, Gmail, and Outlook. Automation rules can categorise recurring transactions, send payment reminders, and trigger workflows. Multi-currency is available from the Professional plan upwards, covering over 170 currencies.
Country coverage is one of Zoho Books's strongest features and is often overlooked in side-by-side comparisons with QuickBooks and Xero. Beyond the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, the platform handles GST and TDS compliance for India, VAT for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar, and full localised reporting for Mexico. For firms with clients across any of these markets, Zoho Books's regulatory coverage is a category by itself: QuickBooks Online and Xero have shallower or absent presence outside their core English-speaking markets.
AI features inside Zoho Books today include automatic transaction categorisation that learns from past coding decisions, anomaly detection on bank-feed entries, smart payment reminders that adjust frequency based on client response patterns, and Zia (Zoho's AI assistant) for natural-language reporting queries such as "show me last month's top five overdue invoices". The features matter most at scale (50+ transactions per client per month) and add limited value on very small clients with under 20 transactions per month. None of the AI features cost extra on top of the standard tier pricing.
Pricing starts at $0 per month on the Free plan. Standard is $20 per month (or $15 billed annually) and Professional is $50 per month (or $40 billed annually). All paid plans include a 14-day free trial. The Zoho affiliate programme pays 15 to 20 per cent recurring commission for 12 months on new paid sign-ups.
Key facts
- Starting price
- Free
- Pricing model
- Per entity
- Free trial
- Yes
- Free tier
- Yes
- Deployment
- Cloud, Mobile
- Geography
- US, UK, AU, CA, Global
- Founded
- 1996
- Support
- Phone, Email, Chat, Knowledge Base, Community Forum
- Languages
- English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish
- Works with
- Stripe, Paypal, Shopify, Zapier, Google Drive, Outlook, Gmail
- Last verified
- 2026-05-04
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Micro-business clients with under $50k annual revenue. Zoho Books's free tier covers their needs.
- Firms whose clients already use Zoho CRM, Inventory, or other Zoho apps and want connected accounting.
- UK practices whose clients need MTD VAT and Corporation Tax filing directly from the platform.
Cons
- Mid-market clients that have outgrown SMB-grade accounting. Zoho Books is sized for small operations.
- Practices that want deep practice-management alongside the ledger. Zoho Books is ledger-only.
- Firms whose clients refuse to live inside the Zoho ecosystem. Connector breadth is narrower than QBO or Xero.
Pricing
| Tier | Price | Billing | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Per month | One user plus one accountant, invoicing, bank reconciliation, and basic reporting. Available to businesses with annual revenue under $50k. |
| Standard | $20 | Per month (or $15 billed annually) | Three users, bank feeds, sales tax tracking, and custom reports. |
| Professional | $50 | Per month (or $40 billed annually) | Five users, multi-currency, inventory, purchase orders, and project tracking. |
Frequently asked questions
What is Zoho Books and who is it for?
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Alternatives to Zoho Books
Other AI tools in the Core ledger and bookkeeping category.
Last verified 2026-05-04. Pricing and features come from vendor-published specs. See our methodology.