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.

Start free, no cardWhat free includes

Your agent, any chat

Wave wants $19/mo per business for auto-categorization. I have three businesses.
Here, categorization is my job and it’s free, for all three books under one account. If you want live feeds too, five connected accounts fits the $9/mo Starter plan. Total.

Side by side

Wave pricing verified on waveapps.com, July 2026 (USD).

LedgerMCPWave
Free planUnlimited books, all reports, full AI accessStarter: $0 for one business (invoicing, manual bookkeeping records)
Auto bank feedsFrom $9/mo pooled across ALL books; CSV freePro only, at $19/mo (or $190/yr) per business
Auto-categorizationYour AI categorizes free (CSV) or on live feedsPro only; Starter is manual entry
Receipt captureFree: drop files on transactions, or the agent attaches them$8/mo add-on on Starter; included with Pro
AIClaude or ChatGPT runs the books through 52 MCP toolsMave, a support chatbot for product questions; no AI bookkeeper advertised
Multiple businessesUnlimited under one account, pooled pricingEach business is separate; Pro is per business
Real double-entry ledgerYes, with immutable postings and period locksYes
Data exportOne click, six CSVs per book: transactions, GL, chart, journal, tags, assetsSelf-serve export of accounting data (about four files), reports to CSV/PDF
Invoicing & paymentsNot included: bookkeeping onlyYes, with unlimited invoices even on Starter; pay-per-use card fees

Where each one earns its keep

Bookkeeping depth, free

On Wave Starter, transactions are typed in by hand and receipts cost $8/mo extra. Here, you hand your agent the statement: it imports, categorizes, splits, matches transfers, and staples receipts, all free. You review a queue instead of doing data entry.

More than one business

Wave is built one-business-at-a-time. LedgerMCP was multi-book from day one: unlimited businesses and personal books under one account, switchable in the app, all covered by one agent connection and one pooled bank-feed plan.

Invoicing: Wave wins

Wave’s free unlimited invoicing with card payments is genuinely good, and LedgerMCP has no invoicing at all. If getting paid is your bottleneck, use Wave for that; the honest move is telling you so.

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. Your books stay exportable either way: six CSVs, one click.

Common questions

Wave is free and LedgerMCP is free, so what’s actually different?

What free covers. Wave’s free Starter plan centers on invoicing, with manual bookkeeping and paid add-ons for bank feeds, auto-categorization, and receipts (Pro, $19/mo per business). LedgerMCP’s free tier IS the bookkeeping: unlimited books, categorization by your AI, receipts, reconciliation, and every report, with live bank feeds as the one paid upgrade, pooled across all your books.

Does Wave have AI bookkeeping?

Wave’s advertised AI is Mave, a customer-support chatbot that answers product questions. It does not advertise an AI that keeps your books. LedgerMCP takes the opposite approach: it ships no AI at all and instead lets the assistant you already use (Claude or ChatGPT) operate the ledger directly.

I run more than one business. How do the two compare?

This is the sharpest difference. Wave treats each business separately, and Pro pricing applies per business. LedgerMCP gives you unlimited books under one login for free, one API key that covers all of them, and bank-feed pricing pooled across every book: three businesses with five feeds between them is one $9/mo Starter plan.

Can I move my Wave books over?

Yes. Use Wave’s data export to download your accounting data, then hand the files to your agent: it sets up matching books, imports with dedupe, and categorizes. Most single-business migrations finish in an afternoon, and your Wave account keeps 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.

Free, meet free

Keep Wave if you love its invoicing. Let your agent keep the books here: unlimited businesses, no card.

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