Head to head
Xero vs QuickBooks Online
Xero and QuickBooks Online are the two cloud accounting systems most Canadian small businesses choose between. Both handle invoicing, bills, bank reconciliation and GST/HST. What usually decides it is how many people need access, what each plan includes, and which one your accountant already works in.
Who each one is for
Choose Xero if
Several people need access without per-user pricing, you want receipt capture through Hubdoc included, and you're happy to add projects or expense claims as you need them.
Choose QuickBooks Online if
You want projects, inventory, multi-currency and budgeting in one plan, payroll from the same vendor, and your accountant already works in QuickBooks.
Xero and QuickBooks Online, side by side
Checked against both vendors' own pricing and product pages on October 22, 2026. Prices exclude tax and promotions. Plans change often: confirm the details on each vendor's site before you decide.
- Plans and price (CAD a month)
- Xero: Starter $25, Standard $60, Premium $80
- QuickBooks Online: Lite $20, EasyStart $30, Plus $110, Advanced $220
- Users
- Xero: No per-user license fees on any plan
- QuickBooks Online: 1 on Lite and EasyStart, up to 5 on Plus, up to 25 on Advanced
- Invoices and bills on the entry plan
- Xero: Starter: quotes, 20 invoices and 5 bills
- QuickBooks Online: EasyStart: invoicing, no bills; bills from Plus
- Receipt and document capture
- Xero: Hubdoc included on every plan
- QuickBooks Online: Receipt capture from EasyStart
- Multi-currency
- Xero: Premium only
- QuickBooks Online: Plus and Advanced
- Projects
- Xero: Optional add-on, from $10 a month
- QuickBooks Online: Included on Plus and Advanced
- Inventory
- Xero: Not listed on the Canadian plan page
- QuickBooks Online: Included on Plus and Advanced
- Expense claims and mileage
- Xero: Expense claims add-on, from $5 a month
- QuickBooks Online: Mileage tracking on every plan
- Budgets and forecasting
- Xero: Cash flow forecast of 30, 60 or 180 days by plan; budgets from Standard
- QuickBooks Online: Budgeting on Plus and Advanced
- Payroll
- Xero: Not sold on the Canadian plan page; through partner apps
- QuickBooks Online: QuickBooks Payroll add-on: Core $30, Premium $55 or Elite $80 a month plus a per-employee fee
The differences that decide it
Who you pay for
Xero doesn't charge per user on any plan, which suits a business where the owner, a bookkeeper and an outside accountant all log in. QuickBooks Online prices by plan and caps users: one on EasyStart, five on Plus, 25 on Advanced.
Bundle versus add-ons
QuickBooks Plus bundles projects, inventory, multi-currency and budgeting. On Xero, projects and expense claims are add-ons and multi-currency waits for Premium. Compare the plan you'd end up on, with its add-ons, not the entry price.
Payroll from one vendor
QuickBooks sells payroll in Canada as an add-on to its own accounting. Xero's Canadian plan page doesn't sell payroll, and Canadian Xero users usually connect a payroll app.
Your accountant's habits
Both are widely used by Canadian firms. If your accountant already keeps your books in one, that usually outweighs a feature difference, because year-end and GST/HST filing get easier when they don't switch systems for you.
How to choose
Price the plan you'll grow into
The entry plans are cheap at both, but they're narrow. Xero Starter caps you at 20 invoices and 5 bills a month. QuickBooks Lite and EasyStart are single-user, and EasyStart has no bills.
For a business that pays suppliers and has more than one person in the books, the real comparison is usually Xero Standard at $60 a month against QuickBooks Plus at $110. Add Xero's projects or expense claims add-ons if you need them, and QuickBooks Payroll if you'd run payroll there, before you decide which is cheaper.
Introductory offers
Both advertise steep discounts for new customers: Xero takes 80% off the first three months, and QuickBooks shows 90% off for six months. Both renew at the regular price afterwards. Plan your budget on the regular price; the discount only changes the first few months.
Receipts and expenses
Xero includes Hubdoc, which takes photos, uploads and forwarded emails and publishes them to Xero with the document attached. QuickBooks includes receipt capture from EasyStart up.
Both read a photo or a PDF of a receipt. Neither gets the itemized receipt from the store itself, which matters when a card purchase mixes GST-eligible items with personal ones, or when the paper has faded by the time someone photographs it.
Switching between them
Moving mid-year is possible but fiddly: open invoices, unpaid bills, bank rules and historical reports all need to come across. Most businesses switch at year-end, with their accountant, and keep the old system read-only for the retention period the CRA requires.
Reporting and forecasting
Xero builds forecasting into every plan: a 30-day cash flow forecast on Starter, 60 days with custom dashboards, health scorecards and three budgets on Standard, and 180 days with KPI analysis and industry benchmarking on Premium.
QuickBooks keeps budgeting for Plus and Advanced, and adds class and location tracking, up to 40 on Plus and unlimited on Advanced. If you report by location or department, that tracking is often what moves a business to QuickBooks Plus.
Where Smartbills fits
Smartbills isn't accounting software. It's the receipt and expense layer that feeds either one: itemized receipts sent through Smartbills, receipts found in email, bills fetched from supplier portals and photos read down to each tax line, posted to Xero or QuickBooks Online with GST, HST and QST split out. Whichever you choose, it works the same way. We've written our own comparison against each.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Where these facts come from
Get started
Compare on your own data, not ours.
Connect a card feed and your ledger, run it for a month and count the transactions that ended up with an itemized document attached. That number is the comparison that matters.