LedgerMCP vs Wave
The Wave alternative where the AI does the books
Both are genuinely free. The difference is what free means: Wave’s free plan centers on invoicing with manual bookkeeping; LedgerMCP’s free plan is full double-entry bookkeeping that Claude or ChatGPT can run for you, across unlimited businesses.
Your agent, any chat
Side by side
Wave pricing as of August 2026, per waveapps.com (USD).
Free plan
Unlimited books, all reports, connect any AI agent via MCP
Starter: $0 for one business (invoicing, manual bookkeeping records)
Bank feeds & auto-categorization
Feeds from $9/mo pooled across all books; CSV import free, and your AI categorizes either way
Pro only, at $19/mo (or $190/yr) per business; Starter is manual entry
Receipt capture
Free: drop files on transactions, or the agent attaches them
$8/mo add-on on Starter; included with Pro
AI
Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok runs the books through 66 MCP tools
Mave, a support chatbot for product questions; no AI bookkeeper advertised
Multiple businesses
Unlimited under one account, pooled pricing
Each business is separate; Pro is per business
Real double-entry ledger
Yes, with immutable postings and period locks
Yes
Data export
One click, six CSVs per book: transactions, GL, chart, journal, tags, assets
Self-serve export of accounting data (about four files), reports to CSV/PDF
Invoicing & payments
Not included: bookkeeping only
Yes, with unlimited invoices even on Starter; pay-per-use card fees
Try the difference on one month of statements
The fastest way to feel it: export one month of transactions from your bank, open a free LedgerMCP book, and tell your agent to import and categorize. Then do the same month by hand in a Wave Starter book. One of those takes coffee-length; the other is your evening.
Common questions
Does Wave have AI bookkeeping?
No. Wave’s advertised AI is Mave, a customer-support chatbot for product questions; it does not advertise an AI that keeps your books.
I run more than one business. How do the two compare?
Wave treats each business separately. LedgerMCP gives you unlimited books under one login, one API key that covers all of them, and bank-feed pricing pooled across every book.
Can I move my Wave books over?
Yes. Use Wave’s data export to download your accounting data and hand the files to your agent: bulk import dedupes, and most single-business migrations finish in an afternoon, with your Wave account still working while you compare the two.
When is Wave the better pick?
If invoicing is the center of your business (sending invoices, collecting card payments, estimates), Wave does that well on its free plan and LedgerMCP doesn’t do it at all. Some businesses even run both: Wave for invoicing, LedgerMCP as the ledger their AI keeps.