Keeper Tax vs TurboTax: Self-Employed Cost 2026

For a self-employed filer, Keeper is cheaper than TurboTax in almost every configuration. Keeper Standard is $199 a year and includes a federal return, up to two state returns, a tax pro who reviews and signs the return, and year-round expense tracking. TurboTax Premium, the edition that handles Schedule C, is $139 for the federal return plus $64 for each state, so $203 for one state and $267 for two, with no tracking and no human review. Add TurboTax's Expert Assist and the federal price rises to $209 plus $69 a state. The one place TurboTax wins on price is a filer who qualifies for its no-cost edition, and a Schedule C filer does not.

The two products get compared as if they were the same kind of thing, and they are not quite. TurboTax is filing software you open in the spring. Keeper is an expense tracker that runs all year and files the return at the end. That difference is the whole reason the prices look the way they do, and it is why the cheaper product is usually the one that appears to cost more at first glance. Every figure below was read from keepertax.com, the Keeper help center and turbotax.intuit.com on September 17, 2026, and the TurboTax prices are the list prices before any seasonal discount. Our Keeper Tax pricing page has the full Keeper ladder including add-ons.

Keeper Tax vs TurboTax cost, plan by plan

Two things in that table decide most comparisons. Keeper includes the states and TurboTax bills them one at a time, and Keeper includes a signed human review that TurboTax charges $70 extra for at the federal level and $5 more per state. Everything else is at the margins.

What each filing situation actually costs

Rather than argue about which product is cheaper in the abstract, here is the total for six real situations. Keeper prices are the annual plan. TurboTax prices are federal plus the per-state fee at list, before the discounts Intuit runs early in the season and the increases it applies as April approaches.

The pattern is clear enough to state as a rule. For a plain self-employed return in one or two states, Keeper Standard is cheaper than TurboTax and includes more. The moment your return needs Keeper Premium, which means rental income, a K-1, a third state, foreign income or an EV credit, TurboTax Premium at $139 handles all of those without a tier change and pulls ahead by $130 to $200. Keeper's answer to that gap is the human review and the prior-year filing, which matter a great deal to some filers and not at all to others.

The cost TurboTax does not put on the price tag

TurboTax has no expense tracking. It does not know what you spent in March. When you sit down in the spring, every deduction you claim is one you remembered, found in a statement, or reconstructed from a receipt, and the ones you did not remember simply do not appear on the return. Intuit's own answer to this is QuickBooks Solopreneur, a separate $20 a month product with a TurboTax handoff, which puts a full year of tracking at $240 before you have paid TurboTax a cent. Keeper's tracking is in the $199.

Keeper's own marketing puts the value of that tracking at an average of $1,249 a year in deductions its users uncover, based on its tax year 2023 data. That is the vendor's number and you should treat it as such, but the direction is not in dispute: a tool that scans a year of bank and card transactions finds things a memory does not. For a filer paying 25% between federal and self-employment tax, an extra $800 of deductions is $200 of tax, which is the whole price of the software.

There is a second hidden cost, in the other direction. TurboTax's price is the price on the day you buy, and Intuit moves it. The $139 Premium figure is the list price with a strikethrough on the page, which means a lower promotional price is often showing early in the season, and the price generally rises in the weeks before the April deadline. A February filer and an April filer can pay meaningfully different amounts for the same product. Keeper's $199 does not move with the calendar.

What both products do badly for platform sellers and creators

If you earn through YouTube, Twitch, Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, Patreon or Gumroad, neither product solves the problem that produces the most wrong returns in that group. Platforms report gross on a 1099-K, the amount before their fees came out, and under the current federal rules that form issues when you pass $20,000 and 200 transactions. Your bank, and therefore Keeper, sees only the net deposit. TurboTax sees only what you type in. If your income figure comes from deposits, your reported receipts are understated by exactly the fee total and the fees are never claimed as the expense they are. Whichever product you file with, the gross figure the platform reported is the one that has to go on the return, and if your 1099s arrive as PDFs, a filing tool that can read the 1099 forms directly into the return removes the retyping step where that number usually goes wrong.

Getting the gross, the fees and the net per platform in one place all year is what Earnly does, and it is the piece both tax products assume you have. Our 1099 guide for content creators covers which platforms send which form, and the self-employed income tracker page shows what the per-platform view looks like. Earnly does not find deductions and does not file; it is the income side of the same return.

Refunds, trials and the auto-charge on each

Keeper starts every account with a 14-day trial of the plan you chose, and bills that plan automatically when the trial ends unless you cancel by 11:59 pm Pacific the day before. Its terms then allow a refund only if you cancel within one month of the start of your first subscription term, and nothing after that, with no proration. Because Keeper bills on the web through Stripe rather than through the Apple or Google in-app purchase systems, there is no app store refund route either.

TurboTax works the other way round. You use the software for as long as you like and pay when you file, so there is no trial to forget and no auto-charge. The cost surprises come from a different place: the per-state fee, the Expert Assist upsell during the interview, the $40 fee if you choose to pay out of your refund, and the price rising as the deadline nears. Both companies publish a maximum refund guarantee that returns the software fee if another method produces a larger refund from the same information, with conditions attached in each case.

Where Keeper and TurboTax both lose to Everlance and Hurdlr

If the reason you are comparing these two is simply to get a self-employed return filed for the least money, the honest answer is that neither is the cheapest. Everlance Professional files an all-inclusive 1099 return for $119.99 a year with $1 million of audit defense and automatic mileage tracking, which is $79 less than Keeper Standard and $83 less than TurboTax Premium with one state. Hurdlr Pro is $200 a year, a dollar more than Keeper, and includes federal plus one state filing along with a general ledger and invoicing that neither Keeper nor TurboTax has. Our Everlance pricing and Hurdlr pricing pages cover both, and the Keeper alternatives page lines all four up by the job you need done.

Where Keeper holds its own against those two is the signed review. Everlance and Hurdlr file the return; Keeper has a tax professional review and sign it. For a filer whose return is straightforward but who wants a human name on it, that is the $199 that is hardest to beat, and a preparer doing the same job typically charges $300 to $600, as our guide to accountant costs for the self-employed lays out.

So which one should you buy?

Buy Keeper Standard if you have a Schedule C in one or two states, no rental property or K-1s, and you want deductions tracked all year and a professional signature on the return for one flat $199. It is cheaper than TurboTax for that filer and includes two things TurboTax charges for or does not offer.

Buy TurboTax Premium if your return has rental income, a K-1, three or more states or foreign income and you are comfortable doing it yourself, because at $139 plus states it handles all of that for $130 to $200 less than Keeper Premium. Buy it with Expert Assist only if you have priced Keeper Premium first; the two land within about $100 of each other and Keeper's version includes the year-round tracking and quarterly calls.

Buy neither if your largest deduction is the car and you want the cheapest filed return, because that is Everlance Professional at $119.99. And whichever you choose, if your income arrives as platform payouts, put the gross figures on the return, not the deposits. That is the mistake no filing product catches, because both of them only see what you give them.