Expensify vs Wave: Which is better for freelancers?
Choosing between Expensify vs Wave comes down to which job matters more to you. Wave is the better pick for a solo owner who mainly needs free accounting and invoicing in one place. Expensify is the better pick for anyone tracking receipts, mileage, and billable expenses, or planning to add a team.
The two tools aren't really built for the same thing. Wave is accounting software that happens to capture receipts. Expensify is an expense platform built around the receipt-to-report workflow, with approvals, mileage tracking, and reimbursements attached.
Where they overlap is expense and receipt tracking, and that's where most freelancers get stuck deciding. Everything below compares them on that overlap and on what each one does best.
Expensify vs Wave at a glance
| Expensify | Wave | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Expense tracking and receipt-to-report | Accounting, invoicing, and payments |
| Receipt scanning | SmartScan on every plan, including the free one | Pro plan ($19/mo) or receipts add-on ($8/mo) |
| Expense reports | Built in, starting on the free plan | Not available |
| Approval workflows | Multi-level, with soft approvals and delegates | Not available |
| Reimbursements | ACH reimbursement, next-day option | Not available |
| Mileage tracking | GPS distance tracking in the mobile app, starting on the free plan | Not available |
| Corporate cards | Expensify Card, plus any existing card | Not available |
| Invoicing | Included, though accounting lives elsewhere | Unlimited on the free plan |
| Accounting and bookkeeping | Syncs to accounting software instead | Full double-entry accounting |
| Integrations | QuickBooks and Xero on Collect, NetSuite and Sage Intacct on Control | Limited, Zapier requires a paid plan |
| Global reimbursement | 160+ currencies, 190+ countries | Not available |
| Starting price | $0 Submit, $5 per member/month Collect | $0 Starter, $19/mo Pro |
| Best for | Freelancers tracking receipts, mileage, and billable expenses | Solo owners who need free books and invoices |
What is Wave, and who is it for?
Wave is accounting software built for freelancers, solopreneurs, and micro-businesses. It handles double-entry bookkeeping, unlimited invoicing, estimates, and financial reports, and it has been owned by H&R Block since 2019. The Starter plan costs nothing and has no time limit or invoice cap.
That audience is enormous. Upwork's Freelance Forward study found that 64 million Americans freelanced in 2023, or 38% of the US workforce, and most of them need books and invoices before they need anything else.
Wave earns its keep on payment processing rather than software fees, charging 2.9% plus $0.60 per card transaction. The Pro plan waives that fixed 60 cents, which matters if you invoice frequently in small amounts.
Wave also captures receipts and categorizes expenses, and that's where the comparison with Expensify actually lives. If you want a closer look at that side of the job, self-employed expense tracking covers what freelancers typically need.
Expensify vs. Wave: Differences
Put the Expensify vs Wave apps side by side, and they overlap in a narrower band than most comparison charts suggest. Both capture a receipt, and only one of them does anything with it afterward.
Expense reports and approvals
Expensify turns your receipts into an expense report on its own, then sends it wherever it needs to go, including to a backup approver when someone's on vacation.
Wave doesn't do reports or approvals. Expenses land in the books as transactions, and that's the end of the line.
Receipt scanning access
Both scan receipts well enough, but the gap is who has to pay to do it.
Expensify puts SmartScan on every plan and shows you the receipt in realtime, so you catch a bad scan while the receipt is still in your hand.
Wave makes you pay to scan receipts from the get-go, either $19 a month for Pro or $8 for the add-on. Reviewers say the reads get shaky on a blurry photo.
Mileage tracking
Expensify logs your miles by GPS while you drive and turns the trip into an expense at the current IRS rate, no notebook in the glovebox.
Wave doesn't track mileage, so anyone who drives for work keeps a log somewhere else and types it in later.
Reimbursements
Expensify pays people back by ACH, the next day if you want (where applicable), and reaches 160+ currencies across 190+ countries when the person you owe is overseas.
Wave doesn't reimburse anyone. It records where the money went rather than moving it between an employer and a person.
Accounting and bookkeeping
Wave keeps real books, with a chart of accounts, reconciliation, and financial statements you can hand to an accountant.
Expensify doesn't keep books and doesn't pretend to. It pushes expenses into QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero, Sage Intacct, and more, so your books stay where they already are.
Corporate cards
Expensify offers the Expensify Visa® Commercial Card, which pulls from your bank account with no deposit and no credit check. Bring Your Own Cards imports the cards you already carry, so you can skip Expensify's card entirely.
Wave has no card at all.
Automatic bank feeds
Wave moved automatic bank imports to Pro, so anyone on the free plan now downloads CSV files and uploads them by hand.
Expensify pulls in card and bank transactions on every plan and matches them to the right receipt for you.
Expensify pricing vs Wave pricing
Wave Starter is free, permanently, and covers unlimited invoicing, estimates, and basic bookkeeping. Wave Pro is $19 per month, or $190 billed annually, and adds automatic bank feeds, receipt scanning, unlimited collaborators, and live support. Payroll runs $40 per month plus $6 per active person, and Wave Advisors bookkeeping starts at $199 per month.
Expensify has a free plan too, called Submit. It covers receipt scanning, mileage tracking, expense reports, categories and tags, and personal card import at no cost, though it stops short of reimbursements, corporate card management, and accounting integrations. Collect picks those up at $5 per member per month, with no platform, setup, or implementation fees.
Line the free plans up, and they solve opposite problems. Wave gives you books and invoices for nothing, but charges $8 a month before it’ll scan a receipt. Expensify scans receipts, logs mileage, and builds expense reports for nothing, but leaves the bookkeeping to something else.
| Expensify Submit | Expensify Collect | Wave Starter | Wave Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software cost | $0 | $5 per member/mo | $0 | $19/mo |
| Receipt scanning | Included | Included | $8/mo add-on | Included |
| Mileage tracking | Included | Included | Not available | Not available |
| Expense reports | Included | Included | Not available | Not available |
| Reimbursements | Not available | Included | Not available | Not available |
| Accounting sync | Not available | QuickBooks, Xero | Full bookkeeping | Full bookkeeping |
| Card payment fee | Not applicable | Not applicable | 2.9% + $0.60 | 2.9% |
Why Expensify?
Expensify is built around the workflow that starts when you get a receipt and ends when the expense is categorized, reported, and reimbursed.
Receipt capture that finishes the job
SmartScan shows its work. The read happens in realtime, so a bad scan gets caught before you've walked out of the restaurant
Capture it however you want. Snap it in the app, text it to 47777 from a US number, drag it onto your desktop, or dump a whole stack at once
Receipts find their transactions. Card charges pair themselves with the right receipt, so nothing gets attached by hand
Built for billable work
Miles count themselves. GPS logs the drive and prices it at the current IRS rate, so nothing gets rounded from memory in April
Tag it to the client. Mark an expense as billable, and it lands on the right invoice instead of the wrong one
Reports a client will actually read. Group expenses into something you can send an accountant without apologizing first
Room to grow
Same tool for one person or 200. Start free, move to $5 per member per month when you need reimbursements and accounting sync, and the tool never changes
Approvals wait until you need them. Hire someone and turn on routing, without moving to a different tool
Your books stay yours. QuickBooks and Xero connect directly on Collect, with NetSuite and Sage Intacct on Control
The scale here is easy to underestimate. IRS Statistics of Income reported that 31.0 million individual returns included nonfarm sole proprietorship activity for tax year 2022, and every one of them filed expenses.
Why Wave?
Wave does something Expensify doesn't, and for a lot of solo owners, it's the more important thing.
Bookkeeping on the free plan
Books for nothing. A proper chart of accounts and financial statements on the free plan, not a stripped-down version of one
Bank reconciliation. Match your bank statement against the ledger and close the month inside the same tool
Invoices post to the ledger. Send an invoice, and the accounting entry happens on its own, with no export step in between
Tax season help
H&R Block in your corner. The AI Tax Assist answers questions in context when filing season arrives
Financial statements on demand. Profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow, generated from the books you've kept all year
One ledger for the whole year. The same records that tracked January produce the numbers you file from in April
Important considerations
Wave suits a solo owner or side business whose main need is free bookkeeping and sending invoices, with no team, no approvals, no corporate card, and no mileage or reimbursement workflow. For that setup, Wave covers the job well.
Everything shifts once expenses turn into a job of their own. Wave has no expense reports, approval routing, reimbursement flow, or mileage capture, so freelancers who bill expenses to clients or drive for work end up tracking those in a spreadsheet alongside Wave.
Wave's free label also comes with limits. Automatic bank feeds and receipt scanning both moved behind the Pro plan, payment processing costs 2.9% plus $0.60 per card transaction, and payroll is a separate subscription at $40 a month plus $6 per person. Wave doesn't handle inventory, time tracking, project tracking, or multiple currencies on any plan.
Payroll is also less of a deciding factor than it looks for this audience. Most freelancers and solo owners pay contractors rather than W-2 employees, and Expensify connects to payroll providers instead of selling its own.
Some of what looks like a Wave advantage is even. Both platforms have a permanently free plan, both send invoices and take online payment, and both chase late payers automatically. The difference that holds is bookkeeping, which Wave does itself and Expensify hands off to whichever accounting software you already use.
Can you use Wave and Expensify together?
Plenty of solo owners run exactly this combination, keeping Wave for invoicing and books while Expensify handles receipts, mileage, and expense reports. Stacking a free tool with a paid one is normal at this size.
The connection works, though not the way most people assume. There's no native Wave integration, so the two connect through an automation layer like Zapier, and the sync runs one way, from Expensify into Wave. Many freelancers skip the automation entirely and move totals across manually once a month, which works fine at low volume.
If you do want them connected automatically, the cost adds up in a way that undercuts the free-Wave appeal. Wave has required a Pro or Advisors subscription to connect to Zapier since May 2025, and Expensify is a premium Zapier app, so you're paying for Wave Pro and a paid Zapier plan on top of Expensify.
Choosing between Expensify and Wave
Here are three situations that cover most freelancers:
You keep simple books and send a few invoices. Wave, and don't overthink it. Free accounting and unlimited invoicing cover the entire job, and a second tool would be solving a problem you don't have yet.
You bill expenses to clients or drive for work. Expensify, and you can start on the free Submit plan. Receipts, mileage, and expense reports are the exact things Wave leaves out, and Expensify covers all three at no cost while Wave charges $8 a month just to scan.
You're about to hire someone. Expensify, and moving before the hire is far easier than moving after. Approvals, reimbursements, and a company card are already sitting on the same plan at the same price, so your second person doesn't force a third tool.
If you're torn, keep Wave for the books and let Expensify handle the receipts. Both have a free plan, so that combination costs nothing to try, and it's the setup most freelancers land on anyway.
Comparing other platforms? See how Expensify stacks up:
FAQs about Expensify vs Wave
-
It depends on the job. Wave is better for a freelancer who mainly needs free accounting and invoicing in one place.
Expensify is better for tracking receipts, mileage, and billable expenses, with SmartScan, GPS mileage capture, and sync to QuickBooks or Xero, starting at $5 per member per month.
-
Wave captures receipts and categorizes expenses for bookkeeping, though scanning requires either the $19 Pro plan or an $8 monthly add-on. It has no expense reports, approval workflows, reimbursements, or mileage tracking.
Expensify is built around that receipt-to-report workflow, so it fits freelancers who bill clients or plan to add a team.
-
Wave is a full accounting platform covering bookkeeping, invoicing, payments, and payroll.
Expensify is an expense platform covering receipt capture, mileage, expense reports, approvals, and reimbursements.
They overlap on receipt and expense tracking, and separate on everything else.
-
Wave's Starter plan is free permanently for accounting and invoicing, though receipt scanning, automatic bank feeds, and live support require Pro at $19 per month or the $8 receipts add-on.
Expensify's Submit plan is also free, covering receipt scanning, mileage, and expense reports. Paid plans start at $5 per member per month and add reimbursements and accounting sync.
-
Yes. Many solo owners keep Wave for invoicing and accounting while using Expensify for receipts, mileage, and expense reports.
The two connect through an automation layer rather than a native integration, the sync runs one way, and connecting them automatically requires a paid Wave plan and a paid Zapier plan.
-
Both have a free plan, so it depends on what you need for free.
Wave gives you bookkeeping and invoicing at no cost, but charges $8 or $19 a month to scan receipts.
Expensify's Submit plan scans receipts, tracks mileage, and builds expense reports at no cost, with reimbursements and accounting sync starting at $5 per member per month.
-
For recording expenses in the books, yes, provided you're on Pro or the receipts add-on. For anything beyond recording, no.
Wave has no expense reports, no approvals, no reimbursements, and no mileage tracking, and Expensify covers the first and last of those on its free plan, so freelancers who bill expenses to clients typically keep both.
-
Wave handles invoicing on the free plan and offers payroll at $40 per month plus $6 per person.
Expensify includes invoicing but doesn't offer payroll, so a freelancer who needs both usually keeps Wave for those and adds Expensify for expenses.
-
Wave encrypts data in transit, stores it on secure servers with access controls, and offers multi-factor authentication across all plans. It has been owned by H&R Block since 2019, which gives it a large parent company behind it.
