Keeper vs TurboTax: what's the quick verdict?
Keeper is the sharper default for freelancers who want deduction tracking, human review, and quarterly tax support bundled into one subscription — especially once 1099 income gets real. TurboTax fits confident DIY filers who already keep clean books elsewhere and want Intuit's broader form coverage and tiered expert options, from fully self-guided to fully outsourced.
Once you've elected S-corp status, the comparison tightens. Keeper's Business plan currently reads cleaner on published all-in pricing, while TurboTax's S-corp pricing runs higher and it isn't clear from TurboTax's public pages whether that price also covers your personal return — worth confirming before you commit. Every number below is checked as of mid-2026; both platforms adjust pricing tiers often, so verify at checkout rather than trusting a screenshot from last season.
Why 'cheapest' is the wrong first question
Freelancer tax software gets compared like commodity software — lowest sticker price wins. That framing breaks down fast once real income shows up. At $45,000 in side-hustle revenue, the expensive gap is usually missed deductions. At $90,000, it's the quarterly-payment anxiety that turns into a April surprise. At $180,000 with an S-corp election, it's payroll compliance and a defensible salary number. Same two companies, three completely different jobs.
Context matters here too. For tax year 2025 (the return most freelancers are filing in 2026), the standard deduction sits at $15,750 for single filers, $23,625 for head of household, and $31,500 for married filing jointly under OBBBA's adjustments — those numbers step up again for tax year 2026 returns filed in 2027. The 20% qualified business income deduction is now permanent, with 2026 phase-out thresholds starting around $201,750 for most single filers and $403,500 for joint filers. None of that changes which software to buy, but it does change how much is riding on getting the return right — which is exactly the argument for a workflow that catches deductions before filing season, not during it.
The Schedule C to S-corp ladder: matching the tool to your stage
Instead of a generic feature list, here's the true 12-month cost for three named freelancer profiles, using each platform's own published pricing.
Persona 1: the $45,000 side-hustle freelancer
Simple Schedule C, one state, no employees, no S-corp election. Already tracks expenses in a spreadsheet or bank feed. TurboTax's Free Edition is off the table here — it explicitly excludes self-employment and 1099-NEC income. Keeper Standard runs $199 a year and includes federal and state e-filing plus deduction tracking. TurboTax's Do It Yourself Premium lists at $139 federal plus an estimated $69 state, landing near $208 — though the same TurboTax page also advertises a $79 starting federal price, so the real number could land lower once you're in checkout. Using the conservative top-line figures, Keeper comes in about $9 cheaper. That's not the decision. The decision is whether you want deduction capture built in year-round or you're comfortable categorizing everything yourself once a year.
Persona 2: the $90,000 full-time consultant
Same one-state Schedule C setup, but now the IRS's $1,000 estimated-tax threshold is firmly in play and quarterly payments start to matter. Keeper Premium runs $399 a year and adds a dedicated accountant, quarterly Form 1040-ES support, one amendment, and audit resolution help. TurboTax's DIY Premium still prices near $208. Its Expert Assist tier is harder to pin down — TurboTax's general pricing page shows a range topping out around $209 plus state, while its small-business page lists $239 for a sole proprietor's Expert Assist, plus state. Even at the higher end, TurboTax's assisted tier can land near or below Keeper Premium. The gap that matters: if you don't already have a CPA and you're the type who forgets to set aside for the next quarterly payment, Keeper's built-in quarterly support closes a real hole. If a bookkeeper or CPA already covers that, TurboTax's DIY or Expert Assist tier is a reasonable, cheaper path.
Persona 3: the $180,000 agency-of-one with an S-corp election
Owner payroll, Form 1120-S, a Schedule K-1, and a personal 1040 that needs to tie back to it — plus a reasonable-salary number that has to survive scrutiny. Keeper Business runs $1,199 a year and is built to include S-corp filing, quarterly Form 941 payroll support, and a year-end book review; add a reasonable-salary analysis add-on for roughly $200 more, landing near $1,399 total. TurboTax's Expert Full Service Business lists S-corp filing with Schedule K-1s at $1,549, state additional — but whether that figure bundles the owner's personal return isn't clearly stated on TurboTax's own pages, so treat it as a floor, not a total. For this persona, software is only one piece of the puzzle. Reasonable salary, payroll setup, an accountable plan, and state S-corp rules are exactly the kind of decisions that belong in front of a CPA before you file, not after.
| Persona | Keeper 12-month cost | TurboTax 12-month cost |
|---|---|---|
| $45K side-hustle freelancer | $199 (Standard) | ≈ $208 (DIY Premium, contested low end $79 federal) |
| $90K full-time consultant | $399 (Premium) | ≈ $208–$308 (DIY Premium to Expert Assist) |
| $180K S-corp agency-of-one | $1,199–$1,399 (Business + salary add-on) | $1,549+ (Full Service Business, personal return unclear) |
Keeper, reviewed for a business of one
Keeper's core pitch is that deduction tracking and filing shouldn't be two separate purchases. Its Deductions-only plan runs $20 a month but does not include tax filing — it's a scan-your-transactions tool, not a filer. Standard, at $199 a year, adds federal and state e-filing on top, with account linking, receipt uploads, and audit protection. Premium, at $399 a year, layers on a dedicated accountant and quarterly support. Business, at $1,199 a year, is Keeper's answer for S-corps and partnerships, with add-ons — a $800 S-corp or partnership return, a $400 annual payroll package, a $200 profit-and-loss statement, a $200 reasonable-salary analysis, and $35 per 1099 form issued — for anything Business doesn't already cover.
The honest limitation: guarantee language is inconsistent across Keeper's own pages. Its marketing site references a max-refund guarantee, while its help center notes it doesn't offer financial guarantees on refund amount and isn't responsible for covering discrepancies caused by unintentional reporting errors. Read the in-product terms rather than the homepage copy before you count on it. Premium also excludes S-corp and partnership taxes — those require stepping up to Business or buying the add-on.
Who it's for: freelancers and consultants who want deduction tracking built into the same workflow as filing, and who'd rather not hire a traditional CPA just to get quarterly estimates right. Skip it if you already run clean books in QuickBooks or FreshBooks with a CPA relationship in place and just need low-cost DIY filing — you'd be paying for a feature set you're not using.
TurboTax, reviewed for a business of one
TurboTax's advantage is breadth and choice of support level. Free Edition is genuinely $0 for federal, state, and filing — but it explicitly excludes self-employment and 1099-NEC income, so most freelancers skip straight past it. Do It Yourself Premium covers self-employment, investment, crypto, and rental income with 450-plus deductions and credits; its own page shows both a $79 starting federal price and a $139 listed federal price, so budget for the higher figure and treat any lower quote as a possible promotion. Expert Assist adds unlimited access to a tax expert and a final review, priced anywhere from roughly $89 to $209 depending on entry point, or $239 through the small-business sole-proprietor path — another spot where TurboTax's own pages don't fully agree with each other. Expert Full Service hands the return to a preparer entirely; general pages advertise 'starting at $100,' while TurboTax's own form-price list shows a $129 base fee after April 1 plus $20 per 1099-NEC and $80 for a Schedule C with expenses under $1,000 — meaning a realistic freelancer total is genuinely variable and worth getting a quote for before you commit.
The honest limitation: TurboTax's account-syncing for self-employment deductions has limited availability and is built around a single Schedule C, and its online business products don't support C-corps, trusts and estates, nonprofits, or returns needing more than five state filings. If your situation has outgrown a straightforward Schedule C, you'll bump into those edges.
Who it's for: freelancers who already maintain books elsewhere and want guided DIY software, or anyone with investment, crypto, or rental income stacked on top of freelance income who wants one platform to handle all of it. Skip it if you want one predictable all-in price decided before you start — TurboTax's pricing structure makes that hard to promise, and if you're now an S-corp, its bundled personal-plus-entity total isn't clearly published.
Where each tool sits in your financial OS
Both products live in the Foundation layer of a solo operator's financial stack — the compliance and reporting work that has to happen correctly before anything else (banking, savings, growth tools) matters. Neither replaces the bookkeeping layer that feeds it. Keeper and TurboTax both work best when they're receiving clean transaction data from a system like QuickBooks or FreshBooks, rather than trying to reconstruct a year of business activity from a personal checking account in March.
If you're earlier in the stack-building process, start with the self-employment tax guide to understand what you're actually on the hook for, and the 1099-K rules for 2026 to know what your payment processors will and won't report on your behalf — reporting thresholds are payer rules, not a signal about what counts as taxable income. The first financial stack for freelancers walks through where tax software fits relative to banking and bookkeeping if you're building this from scratch.
Skip both if...
Neither Keeper nor TurboTax is a substitute for a CPA or enrolled agent when your situation involves multi-state nexus, foreign income, heavy crypto trading activity, rental property depreciation schedules, an amended return carrying real risk, or an actual IRS notice requiring representation. Both platforms offer some form of audit guidance, but that's support, not representation — and it's not a blanket shield against a real examination. If any of that describes your year, a tax professional should be your first call, with either platform as a supporting tool at most.
Bottom line
At the $45,000 stage, Keeper and TurboTax cost close enough to the same that the decision comes down to whether you want deduction tracking built in year-round. At $90,000, quarterly-tax anxiety tips the scale toward Keeper's built-in support unless you already have that covered elsewhere. At $180,000 with an S-corp in place, Keeper's Business plan is currently the more transparent all-in number, though TurboTax remains workable if you're already deep in the Intuit ecosystem and confirm what its Full Service price actually includes. Whichever tool you pick, treat the S-corp questions — reasonable salary, payroll setup, entity election — as CPA conversations first and software second.