Pilot is the safe answer. It has been since roughly 2017, it raised from a16z and Bezos Expeditions, it serves thousands of companies, and no founder has ever been second-guessed for picking it. That is worth something real, and any review that pretends otherwise is not being honest.
It is also a review, so here is the part the safe answer does not put on the homepage: two of its three bookkeeping tiers have no published price, its entry tier is cash basis with a spend ceiling most seed companies cross, and its R&D credit fee is double what several competitors charge.
We build a competing product, so read this with that in mind. Every figure below was read off pilot.com/pricing on 2026-08-10 and you should check it yourself.
The short version
- Essentials is $99 a month, cash basis, capped at $100,000 in monthly expenses.
- Core and Custom are contact-sales. The price a funded startup actually pays is not published.
- C-corp tax filing starts at $2,450 a year. CFO services start at $1,750 a month billed annually.
- The R&D credit fee is 20 percent of the credit received. On a $60,000 credit that is $12,000.
- Books live in QuickBooks Online, which is a genuine advantage on portability.
- The close is monthly, with reports by the 10th business day on Core and the 6th on Custom.
What you actually get at each tier
| Tier | Price | Basis | Notable inclusions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $99 / mo | Cash only | AI transaction categorization, reconciliation, monthly close, year-end tax package, in-app support. Up to $100,000 monthly expenses |
| Core | contact sales | Cash or accrual | US-based bookkeeper, custom chart of accounts, bill management up to 10 a month, reports by the 10th business day, phone and email support |
| Custom | contact sales | Cash or accrual | QuickBooks retention, complex structures, full AP and AR, payroll administration, CFO advisory, 6th business day reporting |
The Essentials tier is the one everyone quotes, including Pilot's competitors, and it is the least representative product on the page. Cash basis with a $100,000 monthly expense cap describes a pre-revenue company burning under $1.2 million a year. That is a real customer and a real fit. It is not the customer most people picture when they say "we use Pilot".
The add-ons, which is where the money is
| Service | Published price |
|---|---|
| Tax, single-member LLC | from $1,000 / yr, or $750 if just formed |
| Tax, partnership or S-corp | from $2,000 / yr, or $750 if just incorporated |
| Tax, C-corp | from $2,450 / yr |
| CFO Basic / Essentials / Custom | from $1,750 / $3,150 / $5,250 per month, billed annually |
| COO Starter | $750 one-time |
| COO Essentials | from $850 / mo |
| Stock administration | $399 / hr, free for pre-seed founders with 5 or fewer cap table members |
| R&D tax credit | 20% of the credit received |
Two lines deserve a second look.
The R&D fee. Twenty percent of the credit received is at the high end of the market. Median's R&D credit service charges 10 percent of the credit and only if the credit is claimed. On a $60,000 credit that is a $6,000 difference, which is more than a full year of entry-tier bookkeeping anywhere. If you are an R&D-heavy company this line may be worth more than the monthly price you spent three weeks comparing.
The stock administration carve-out. Free for pre-seed founders with five or fewer cap table members, $399 an hour otherwise. That is a well-designed giveaway: genuinely useful to the smallest customers, and the meter starts exactly when the work becomes real.
Where Pilot genuinely wins
Four things, and they are not small.
QuickBooks Online. Your books live in portable, mainstream software. Any accountant in the country can open them. Leaving Pilot is a handoff, not a migration off a proprietary ledger. If you have ever been trapped on a platform you could not export cleanly, you know what this is worth.
One vendor, four functions. Bookkeeping, tax, CFO and back-office operations under one roof, with published prices on three of the four. For a founder who does not want to assemble a finance stack, buying one relationship is a legitimate strategy and Pilot is one of the few places you can do it.
Institutional stability. Deeply funded, years of operating history, thousands of customers. In a category where one well-known provider abruptly shut down in December 2024 and filed for bankruptcy protection weeks later, this is not a soft benefit.
A published entry price. $99 with its limits stated plainly is more transparency than several competitors offer at any tier.
Where it does not
Two of three bookkeeping tiers are contact-sales. If you cross the cash-basis line or the $100,000 expense line, and most funded startups cross both, you cannot estimate your own cost. You book a call. That is a deliberate commercial choice and it is also the single most common complaint founders raise about the category.
The close is monthly. Reports by the 10th business day on Core means that in the first third of every month, you are operating on numbers that describe the previous month. That is the industry norm and it was for a century the only economical option. It is no longer the only option, and whether it matters depends entirely on whether you make decisions between month-ends.
Support scales as a team, not a person. Core includes a US-based bookkeeper. Founder reports over the years describe a rotating cast more often than one person who knows the business. This is the usual tradeoff of a service built to scale, and it is why premium firms charge premium prices for a named accountant.
The R&D fee. Covered above. Twenty percent is the number to negotiate or to price elsewhere.
What Pilot actually costs a funded startup
The $99 headline is answerable. The real number is not, so here is the arithmetic with the unknowns marked as unknowns.
Take a seed-stage SaaS company: four financial accounts, Stripe, $140,000 in monthly expenses, accrual required for its board, a C-corp return due, and an expected $60,000 R&D credit.
| Line | Pilot, published |
|---|---|
| Bookkeeping | Core tier. Contact sales. Not published |
| C-corp tax filing | from $2,450 / yr |
| R&D tax credit | 20% of $60,000 = $12,000 |
| Bill management | included on Core, capped at 10 items a month |
| CFO support, if wanted | from $1,750 / mo billed annually = $21,000 / yr |
| Known annual total before bookkeeping | $14,450 |
Two observations. The known add-ons already total more than most competitors charge for a full year of bookkeeping, before the bookkeeping line is filled in at all. And the bill management cap of 10 items a month on Core is the kind of limit that sounds generous until you count your recurring vendors, at which point a growing company is buying Custom.
None of this makes Pilot expensive by definition. It makes Pilot unquotable without a call, which is a different criticism and the one worth making.
What switching to or from Pilot involves
Because books live in QuickBooks Online, both directions are less painful than they are at providers running proprietary ledgers, and this deserves credit.
Coming in, Pilot takes over an existing QuickBooks file or rebuilds one. Expect a catch-up and cleanup quote if prior records need correcting; that is standard across the industry and is quoted separately everywhere.
Going out, you keep the QuickBooks file. That is the whole advantage, and it is real. There is no proprietary export format, no data hostage situation, and any accountant can pick it up on day one. The Custom tier makes QuickBooks retention explicit.
The friction that does exist is the chart of accounts. A chart built for one provider's monthly close is not always shaped the way the next one wants it, and department or class structure often has to be rebuilt. Budget a couple of weeks of overlap rather than a clean Friday-to-Monday handover, and do not switch providers in the month before a board meeting or a filing deadline.
Who should pick Pilot, plainly
Pick Pilot if you are venture-backed, you want one vendor for bookkeeping through CFO, you value books living in QuickBooks Online, and a monthly close is fine for how you run the company. That is a large and reasonable set of companies.
Look elsewhere if any of these is true. You want to know the price without a sales call. You make spending decisions weekly and cannot wait until the 10th business day. Your R&D credit is large enough that 20 percent is a real number. Or you are under $100,000 a month in expenses but need accrual for a raise, which puts you in the gap between the published tier and the unpublished one.
For the full field, see the comparison of the best startup bookkeeping services. For a direct head-to-head, Median vs Pilot. For what the rest of the market charges, what startup bookkeeping actually costs in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Pilot cost in 2026? One published bookkeeping price: $99 a month for Essentials, cash basis, up to $100,000 monthly expenses. Core and Custom are contact-sales. Tax from $2,450 a year for a C-corp, CFO from $1,750 a month, R&D at 20 percent of the credit. Verified 2026-08-10.
Is Pilot worth it for a startup? For a venture-backed company wanting one vendor across bookkeeping, tax and CFO, and comfortable with a monthly close and an unpublished price, yes. Less so if you want current books or a price you can estimate yourself.
What is the catch with the $99 plan? Cash basis only, and a $100,000 monthly expense ceiling. Both are published and both bind sooner than founders expect.
Does Pilot use QuickBooks? Yes, QuickBooks Online, with QuickBooks retention offered on the Custom tier. Your books stay portable.
What are the main alternatives to Pilot? Depends on which constraint binds. Published pricing: Median, CoCountant. Premium accrual and GAAP: Kruze. Cheap and simple: Bench at $199 a month.
How to decide in an afternoon
- Check two numbers against the Essentials limits: your monthly expenses, and whether you need accrual this year. If you clear both, $99 is a genuinely good deal and you are done.
- If you do not, ask Pilot for a written Core quote at your actual volume before comparing it to anything.
- Add the full stack: bookkeeping plus tax plus R&D at 20 percent of your expected credit. Compare that total, not the monthly line.
- Ask one question of every provider on your list, including Pilot: what date are the books current through today. The answers will differ more than the prices.
See Median's published rate card and estimate your own cost without a call.