Wave built its reputation on a simple promise: free accounting and invoicing for small businesses. For years that promise held up well, and plenty of freelancers still swear by it. But the landscape shifted after H&R Block acquired Wave, and the product feels different now — more ads, more upsells, and a continued web-only experience that breaks the moment your WiFi does.
Stintly takes a different path. It is a mobile-first iOS app for solo operators who want to track time, log expenses, and send invoices without signing up for anything, without paying anything, and without needing an internet connection. If you are weighing Stintly against Wave, this guide walks through where each one wins honestly.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Stintly | Wave |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever | Free core + paid payroll/payments |
| Works Offline | Yes, 100% offline | No, web-only |
| Account Required | No | Yes, email signup |
| Best For | Solo operators, field workers, freelancers | Small businesses needing full accounting on desktop |
| Platform | iOS (iPhone/iPad) | Web browser, limited mobile app |
| Key Features | Time tracking, invoicing, expenses, offline | Accounting, invoicing, receipt scanning, payroll add-on |
| Data Privacy | Stays on your device | Stored on Wave/H&R Block servers |
Pricing
Wave's headline is "free," and that is genuinely true for the core invoicing and accounting tools. You can send unlimited invoices, track expenses, and reconcile bank transactions without paying a cent. The catch is that Wave makes money on the add-ons: payment processing fees (2.9% + $0.60 per card transaction), payroll ($20–$40/month base depending on your state), and the optional bookkeeping advisor service. Since the H&R Block acquisition, the free tier also shows promotional content for tax services.
Stintly is genuinely free with no tiers, no upsells, no advertising, and no payment processing markup. You download it from the App Store, open it, and start working. There is no premium version because there is no business model that depends on extracting money from you later.
| Cost Over Time | Stintly | Wave (Core) | Wave + Payroll |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | $0 | ~$20–$40 |
| 1 Year | $0 | $0 | ~$240–$480 |
| 3 Years | $0 | $0 | ~$720–$1,440 |
| Payment Processing | None (you handle) | 2.9% + $0.60/txn | 2.9% + $0.60/txn |
For a solo freelancer who does not need payroll and prefers to invoice clients and accept payment by bank transfer or check, both apps cost zero. Where Stintly pulls ahead is that "free" actually means free of strings — no email harvest, no upsell prompts, no third-party data sharing.
Save money. Try Stintly free today. Download Stintly for Free — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
Wave is genuinely impressive for a free tool on the accounting side. You get double-entry bookkeeping, bank transaction imports, automated categorization, reconciliation, financial reports (P&L, balance sheet, cash flow), receipt scanning via mobile app, recurring invoices, and multi-currency support. For a sole proprietor running an actual S-corp or LLC who needs proper books for their CPA at tax time, Wave covers a lot of ground.
Stintly does not try to be a full accounting suite. It is laser-focused on what solo operators actually do every day:
- Time tracking — start/stop timers per client or project, log hours after the fact, see daily and weekly totals
- Invoicing — generate clean PDF invoices from your tracked time, send them however you want (email, AirDrop, text)
- Expenses — log expenses with photos of receipts, categorize for tax purposes
- Mileage — track business miles for the IRS deduction
- Clients & projects — organize work without overengineering it
If you run a service business that bills by the hour or by the job, Stintly's workflow is faster. You log a job on-site, the invoice writes itself, you send it before you leave the driveway. Wave's workflow assumes you sit down at a desktop later and reconcile everything in a browser. For trades-based work, the field-first design matters. Operators running adjacent businesses tend to pair their bookkeeping tool with a vertical-specific app — lawn care crews use LawnBook for route scheduling and client jobs, cleaning businesses use ShineBook for residential and commercial recurring services, and general contractors lean on TrestleBook for construction job costing.
Want to try Stintly for free? Download Stintly for Free — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
This is where the gap is widest. Wave is a cloud product. Everything runs through a browser, every action hits their servers, and your books live on infrastructure owned by H&R Block. If your internet drops, Wave drops with it. If you are at a job site with no signal, on a plane, or working from a coffee shop with sketchy WiFi, you cannot log an expense, start a timer, or pull up a client invoice.
Stintly stores everything on your device. No cloud sync required, no account to authenticate, no servers between you and your data. Start a timer in a basement with zero bars, log mileage in the middle of nowhere, generate an invoice on a transcontinental flight — it all works because it never needed the internet in the first place.
Privacy follows from that architecture. Wave's terms allow them to use aggregated data, share with H&R Block affiliates, and surface tax-prep promotions. None of that is illegal or even unusual for cloud SaaS, but it is a tradeoff. Stintly cannot see your data because Stintly is not connected to a server that could see it. Same for sister apps in the family — landlords using KeyLoft to track rent and tenant communications get the same offline-first, device-local design.
Who Should Use Wave
Wave is the right call if:
- You run an LLC or S-corp and need proper double-entry bookkeeping for your CPA
- You want bank-feed integration and automated transaction categorization
- You need to run payroll for employees or contractors with W-2/1099 generation
- You prefer working at a desktop and rarely need to log anything in the field
- You want to accept credit cards directly through your invoices without a separate Stripe account
- You file Schedule C and want generated financial statements rather than building them yourself
For a service business with $50K–$500K in annual revenue, multiple bank accounts, and quarterly tax obligations, Wave's accounting engine is real value. It would cost you $25–$50/month elsewhere.
Who Should Use Stintly
Stintly fits better if:
- You are a solo operator, freelancer, or one-person service business
- Most of your work happens away from a desk — client sites, job sites, on the road
- You bill by the hour or by the job and need fast time tracking
- You want simple invoicing without configuring chart of accounts or tax categories
- You value privacy and would rather not store financial data on a third-party server
- You hate signup forms, password resets, and "verify your email" workflows
- Your internet is unreliable or your work takes you to places with no signal
- You file Schedule C and just need clean records of income, expenses, and mileage
For most freelancers in their first few years — consultants, writers, designers, photographers, tradespeople, tutors — Stintly covers the actual tax-relevant data without the overhead of full bookkeeping. You can always export and hand things to a CPA at year end.
The Bottom Line
Wave and Stintly are aimed at different people who happen to overlap in the "free invoicing" search results. Wave is a free accounting suite for desk-based small business owners who want bookkeeping, financial reports, and the option to add payroll. Stintly is a free time-and-expense tracker for mobile solo operators who want to log work, invoice clients, and keep records for taxes — without an account, without a subscription, and without an internet connection.
If you sit at a desk all day running an established LLC, install Wave. If you do real work in the world and need a tool that keeps up, install Stintly. Neither costs anything, so the honest answer is: try both, keep the one that matches how you actually work.
The one thing Stintly will never do is start showing you ads, raise prices on a tier you depend on, or get acquired by a tax-prep giant. It is a tool, it stays a tool, and it stays on your phone.
Ready to switch? Download Stintly for Free — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.