QuickBooks Self-Employed vs Wave for Canadian Freelancers (2026)

You are a Canadian freelancer or sole proprietor, you have a pile of receipts and a bank feed full of mixed business and personal charges, and you have landed on the two names everyone mentions: QuickBooks Self-Employed and Wave. Both are real, both work in Canada, and both can carry you a long way. This page gives you a fair, accurate head-to-head, then introduces a third path for the specific person whose main job at tax time is maximizing and filing every deduction on the T2125.

This is written for the Canadian self-employed individual who files a T2125, "Statement of Business or Professional Activities," with their personal T1 return. If that is you, the right tool is the one that fits the form you actually file, not the one with the longest feature list.

QuickBooks Self-Employed: built around the solopreneur

QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE) is the product Intuit built specifically for freelancers, independent contractors, and one-person businesses, rather than retrofitting full small-business accounting. That focus shows.

What it does well:

• Automatic GPS mileage tracking. This is its single strongest feature. It logs your business kilometres in the background so you have a defensible log for CRA vehicle-expense claims. If you drive a lot for work, nothing else on this page matches it.
• Personal vs business separation. It pulls a connected bank and credit card feed and lets you swipe to categorize each transaction as business or personal, which is exactly the mess a sole proprietor needs to untangle.
• Categories mapped to T2125 lines. Its expense categories line up with CRA T2125 lines (for example Advertising on line 8521, Bad debts on 8590, Business taxes and licences on 8760), so your books match the form.
• Quarterly tax estimate and a TurboTax handoff. It estimates what you owe and passes your T2125 data into TurboTax Self-Employed for filing.
• Receipt scanning and basic invoicing from the mobile app, with your logo.

Current Canadian pricing: the standard rate is around $15/month CAD, and Intuit runs frequent promotions (often roughly half off for the first few months). The Canadian App Store listing shows in-app subscription tiers of $4.99, $9.99, $14.99, and $19.99 CAD depending on the plan or bundle, with a 30-day free trial. The Canadian app listing was last updated December 10, 2025, so this is a live, purchasable product in Canada, distinct from the US-only "QuickBooks Solopreneur" rebrand.

Who it suits: a freelancer who drives for work, wants automatic mileage and a clean business/personal split, and plans to file through TurboTax.

Wave: free, real accounting, Canadian-built

Wave was founded in Toronto in 2009 and is now owned by H&R Block, so it understands the Canadian small-business context. Its pitch is hard to argue with on price.

What it does well:

• A genuinely free core. The Starter plan gives you unlimited professional invoicing, estimates, and double-entry bookkeeping with no time limit. For a tight freelancer budget that is tough to beat.
• Real double-entry accounting. You get a general ledger, a balance sheet, and proper financial reports, which is more accounting horsepower than QBSE offers.
• Polished invoicing with online payment acceptance and automatic late-payment reminders on the Pro plan.
• Bank-feed import and auto-categorization on Pro, plus optional human help through Wave Advisors.
• Sales-tax fields on invoices and transactions, so you can tag GST/HST as you go.

Current Canadian pricing: the Starter plan is free. The Pro plan is around $25/month CAD (or about $250/year CAD). Optional add-ons include Receipts capture at around $11/month CAD on Starter (it is included with Pro; the $8 figure often quoted is the US price), Payroll from around $25/month CAD, and Wave Advisors bookkeeping starting around $149/month CAD. Online card payments cost 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction, and Pro waives the $0.60 per-transaction fee on your first 10 card payments each month.

Who it suits: a freelancer who wants real bookkeeping and strong invoicing for little or no money, and who is comfortable assembling tax numbers themselves at year end.

Where both fall short for a T2125 filer

Both tools are good. The gap is not quality, it is fit to the form a Canadian sole proprietor actually files. Here is the honest version.

QuickBooks Self-Employed:

• No GST/HST return filing. You can tag GST/HST on invoices, but QBSE does not prepare or file a GST/HST return, and the sales tax you add to invoices does not flow into its tax summary. So once you cross the $30,000 threshold and have to register for GST/HST, you assemble and file the return entirely outside the tool.
• No Capital Cost Allowance. There are no depreciation classes, no half-year rule, so a laptop, vehicle, or equipment purchase is not depreciated correctly on the T2125. (Here is how CCA actually works.)
• One simplified category set. It cannot model the full T2125 schedule, including the detailed business-use-of-home worksheet or the vehicle worksheet beyond raw mileage.
• The filing is a separate purchase. The estimate and handoff steer you toward paying for TurboTax to actually file.
• It will not grow with you. No true general ledger or balance sheet if the side business scales.

Wave:

• It does not produce a T2125. Wave gives you an income statement, but it does not map your expenses to CRA T2125 line numbers or generate the form.
• No automatic mileage tracking. If you drive for work you log kilometres manually or use a separate app. QBSE clearly wins here.
• No CCA depreciation engine. No classes, no half-year rule, so capital purchases are not handled the way the T2125 requires.
• Sales-tax support is basic tagging, not GST/HST return preparation or filing, and Wave has had known issues reporting tax on payment-processor (Stripe) fees correctly.
• No built-in income-tax estimate or filing path. You export numbers and re-key them into separate tax software.

The common thread: a deduction-heavy freelancer, with lots of cash receipts, a home office, a vehicle, and capital assets, has to assemble the T2125 picture manually outside either tool.

What to look for in a Canadian self-employed tool

When deductions and filing are the priority, judge tools on these, not on feature count:

1. CRA T2125 line mapping. Are expenses organized by the actual line numbers you file (8521, 8523, 8810, and so on), or just generic buckets you have to re-sort later?
2. Receipt-to-line accuracy. When you scan a receipt, does it land on the correct CRA category with the pre-tax amount and GST/HST split out, or do you fix it by hand?
3. Canadian tax handling that matches the form. GST/HST you can actually file from, CCA with classes and the half-year rule, a home office calculator (flat-rate and detailed), and a vehicle log with business-use percentage.
4. An audit-ready export you can file from. A clean tax summary, CSV, and original-document retention you can hand to your accountant or carry into a CRA review.

QBSE wins on mileage and the T2125 category map. Wave wins on free, real accounting. Neither covers all four well, and neither files the return.

Claimable: a T2125-first third option

Claimable is a Canadian tax-deduction tracker built for the self-employed, and it is narrower on purpose. It is a web app that runs in any browser and installs as a PWA. It is not on the App Store or Google Play. Domain: tryclaimable.ca.

What it does:

• Organizes every expense by CRA T2125 line number, so your records are already in the shape of the form.
• AI receipt scanning of images, PDFs, and CSVs that reads the vendor, pre-tax amount, GST/HST, PST, date, and currency, then assigns the CRA category using the business context you describe. It includes bulk upload, duplicate detection, and per-receipt confidence scoring.
• Canadian tax features that map to the form: GST/HST filing (collected, input tax credits, net tax), CCA schedules (classes, half-year rule, recapture and terminal loss), a home office calculator (flat-rate and detailed), and a motor-vehicle log with business-use percentage. USD expenses are auto-converted to CAD at Bank of Canada daily rates.
• Client invoices with GST/HST, and audit-ready exports (a tax summary PDF, CSV, and an audit ZIP) for a clean hand-off into Wealthsimple Tax.
• Security: encryption at rest, HTTPS/HSTS, strict per-user data isolation, an immutable audit log, and SHA-256 receipt integrity.

Be clear about what Claimable is not, because it matters for this decision. It is not full double-entry or general-ledger accounting software. It does not run payroll. It does not have a live bank-account feed or automatic transaction sync: expenses come from receipt scans, manual entry, or CSV import (including bank-statement CSVs). If you need a balance sheet or a bank feed, Wave is the better fit. If you need automatic GPS mileage, QBSE is the better fit. Claimable does neither of those.

Pricing: a 14-day free trial with no credit card required (a 50-scan allowance during the trial, the rest of Pro unlimited). After the trial an unpaid account becomes read-only: your existing data stays viewable and raw CSV export still works. Pro is $249 CAD/year or $49 CAD/month via Stripe and unlocks unlimited scanning, clean (non-watermarked) exports, original-document retention, GST/HST filing, CCA schedules, and the home office calculator. Trial-generated year-end exports are watermarked "not for filing."

Comparison table

Dimension	QuickBooks Self-Employed	Wave	Claimable
CRA T2125 line mapping	Yes, simplified category set	No (income statement only)	Yes, organized by line number
Receipt scanning	Yes (mobile app)	Add-on (~$8/mo Receipts)	Yes (images, PDFs, CSVs, with confidence scoring)
GST/HST	Invoice tagging only, no return filing	Basic tagging, no filing	Filing: collected, input tax credits, net tax
Capital Cost Allowance (CCA)	No	No	Yes (classes, half-year rule, recapture/terminal loss)
Home office calculator	No (no worksheet detail)	No	Yes (flat-rate and detailed)
Vehicle / mileage	Automatic GPS mileage tracking	Manual only	Motor-vehicle log with business-use % (no GPS)
Audit-ready export to file from	Handoff to TurboTax	Export and re-key	Tax summary PDF, CSV, audit ZIP (to Wealthsimple Tax)
Live bank feed	Yes	Yes (Pro)	No (scans, manual, or CSV import)
Invoicing	Basic, with logo	Strong, with online payments	Client invoices with GST/HST
Payroll	No	Add-on (from ~$25/mo)	No
Double-entry / general ledger	No	Yes	No
Canadian pricing	Around $15/mo CAD (promos common), 30-day trial	Free Starter; Pro ~$25/mo or ~$250/yr CAD	$249/yr or $49/mo CAD; 14-day trial, no card

Which should you choose

There is no single winner, so match the tool to your priority.

• Choose QuickBooks Self-Employed if you drive a lot for work and want automatic GPS mileage and a clean business-versus-personal split, and you are happy filing through TurboTax. The mileage feature alone can justify it for high-kilometre freelancers. (Pair it with a guide to vehicle expense tracking so your log holds up.)
• Choose Wave if your budget is tight and you want real, free double-entry accounting and strong invoicing, and you are comfortable assembling your tax numbers yourself or paying Wave Advisors to do it.
• A spreadsheet is honestly fine if you have a handful of transactions a year, no GST/HST registration, and no capital assets. Do not pay for a tool you will not use.
• Choose Claimable if your main job at tax time is maximizing and substantiating deductions: lots of receipts, GST/HST to file, CCA on equipment or a vehicle, a home office, and a need for an audit-ready export you can file from. It will not run your payroll, sync your bank, or keep a general ledger, and it is upfront about that. It is built to get every legitimate deduction onto the right T2125 line and out the door.

If you are just setting up a freelance business, you can start free on Wave or trial any of these and switch later. None of these tools files your return for you, so the question is which one gets your T2125 to the finish line with the least re-keying.

FAQ

Is QuickBooks Self-Employed still available in Canada? Yes. It is live and purchasable on the Canadian App Store (the listing was last updated December 10, 2025) at a standard rate of around $15/month CAD with a 30-day free trial, and Intuit runs frequent promotions. It is a separate product from the US-only "QuickBooks Solopreneur" rebrand, so US coverage about that change does not describe Canadian availability.

Is Wave really free? The Starter plan is genuinely free with no time limit: unlimited invoices, estimates, and double-entry bookkeeping. The Pro plan (around $25/month or $250/year CAD) adds bank-feed import and auto-categorization, and add-ons like Receipts (around $8/month), Payroll, and Advisors cost extra. Online card payments are 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction.

Which one is best for filing a T2125? QBSE maps its categories to T2125 lines and tracks mileage but ignores CCA and has no GST/HST return filing. Wave gives stronger free accounting but produces no T2125, no mileage, and no CCA. If filing the T2125 with full GST/HST, CCA, home office, and vehicle detail is the priority, a T2125-first tool like Claimable is purpose-built for that, while a general-accounting tool is not.

Do any of these file my taxes for me? No. All of them hand off to separate tax software. QBSE passes data into TurboTax, Wave exports numbers you re-key, and Claimable produces an audit-ready export (tax summary PDF, CSV, and audit ZIP) for a clean hand-off into Wealthsimple Tax. You still file the return yourself or through an accountant.

Sources

1. QuickBooks Self-Employed on the Canadian App Store (Canadian availability, December 2025 update, in-app CAD prices, feature claims)
2. Accounting Software for Self-Employed and Freelancers, QuickBooks Canada (live Canadian QBSE page)
3. Form T2125 list of tax categories for self-employed individuals, QuickBooks Canada (QBSE category-to-T2125-line mapping)
4. Calculate your mileage allowance in QuickBooks Self-Employed, Intuit Canada (QBSE mileage help)
5. Wave Pricing, Wave Financial (free Starter vs Pro, Receipts, Payroll, Advisors, payment fees)
6. Wave: Small Business Software, Wave Financial (Canadian product overview)
7. Toronto small business software firm Wave taken over by H&R Block, CBC News (Toronto founding, H&R Block ownership)
8. T2125 Statement of Business or Professional Activities, Canada Revenue Agency (the form, expense lines, CCA, worksheets)
9. GST/HST for businesses, Canada Revenue Agency ($30,000 registration threshold and remittance)
10. Claim capital cost allowance (CCA), Canada Revenue Agency (depreciation classes, half-year rule)