QuickBooks Online costs more again. The fix isn't a coupon — it's the plan-fit read.

Two honest framings before anything else. First, the increases are real and compounding — QBO tiers have risen substantially over five years, and 2026's move continues the pattern as Intuit invests in its platform. Second, the subscription is rarely the real money. At current list prices the step between neighboring tiers is $18 to $200 a month (our arithmetic from Intuit's list prices); the gap between books that close monthly and books that drift is what decides loan approvals, tax-season bills, and whether your P&L means anything. Get the tier right — then spend your attention where the stakes live.

With renewals repricing from August 1, the window before your renewal date is the cheap moment to act — and the sequence matters. First, find your actual renewal date and current plan in the account settings; surprises are worse in September. Second, run the plan-fit read above against last quarter's ledger — features actually used, users who actually logged in. Third, if the read says downgrade, do the usage cleanup before the renewal so the switch lands ahead of the new rate rather than one billing cycle after it. Fourth, check whether annual billing is offered on your tier at a discount — Intuit's billing options change, so read the current terms rather than assuming. And a word on the tempting fifth move: platform-hopping to whatever charges less this quarter pays for re-setup, re-training, broken feed history and a conversion project before it saves a dollar — which is why our advice is fit the tier, keep the platform, spend the difference on discipline.

One more honest boundary: what Advanced is actually for. At $340 it earns its price in a specific shape of business — a team approaching Advanced's own cap of up to 25 users (per Intuit — QuickBooks Enterprise, not Advanced, is the answer past that cap), batch transactions, custom workflows and permissions, dedicated support — which is to say, a business with an internal finance function. If that's not recognizably you, Advanced isn't a status upgrade; it's the most expensive way to run books that a well-fitted Plus or Essentials would carry identically.

And the same candor at the bottom of the chart: Solopreneur Lite at $20 (Intuit's name for the $20 Solopreneur plan) is genuinely a different product, built for a one-person business tracking income, expenses, and estimated-tax basics — not a discount doorway into full small-business bookkeeping. The moment there's a second user, real accounts-payable flow, or anyone else relying on your reports, Simple Start is the honest floor. Under-buying has the same failure mode as over-buying, just quieter: the $18 a month you save (the gap between the two list prices) becomes categories that don't exist and reports a lender squints at.