9 accounting firms for startups, with published prices

By Solomon Wiesen, editor. Updated October 2026. Editorial standards | How this site is funded

If your company is a Delaware C corporation that has raised venture money or plans to, hire an accounting firm that works on startups all day. If it’s an LLC or S corporation that lives on its own revenue, a local CPA will cost less and do the job well.

The difference shows up in two filings a generalist can miss. The first is the research credit. A company with gross receipts under $5 million and no gross receipts before the five-tax-year period ending with the current year can elect to apply up to $500,000 a year of its federal research credit against employer payroll tax. For a company with no income tax to offset, that is cash. The election goes on Form 6765 with a timely filed return, and the IRS says it “cannot be made with an amended return.” A preparer who doesn’t raise it before the filing deadline has cost you that year’s election.

The second is Delaware franchise tax. Under Delaware’s authorized shares method, a corporation with 10 million authorized shares owes $85,165. The assumed par value capital method has a $400 minimum, and the state’s instruction is to use whichever method gives the lower tax. A startup firm runs that calculation for every client, every year.

9 accounting firms that work with startups

The facts below come from each firm’s own website as of October 2026, except where a cell names another source. This list reflects no hands-on test of any firm. Prices are the starting figures the firms publish; your quote will depend on transaction volume and how many entities and states you have.

Pre-revenue: pay for the filings and little else

Before revenue the work is small: books a future investor can read, and one set of annual returns. Fondo is aimed at that customer. Its site says “Built for Delaware C-Corps,” and its annual bookkeeping plan starts at $950 a year. TaxPass, its tax product, covers Delaware franchise tax plus the federal and state corporate income tax returns.

Pilot’s Essentials plan is cheaper for the books alone at $99 a month. Read what you get for that: cash-basis bookkeeping run by software, a cap of $100,000 in monthly expenses, and support through in-app messaging. Pilot’s C corporation return starts at $2,450 a year and has to be bought with its bookkeeping. If you’d rather keep your own records for the first year and pay only for tax filings, start with the bookkeeping basics for startups.

I’d wait on Graphite, whose accounting starts at $1,500 a month, until you have more to account for.

Seed: a monthly close, and a hard look at the R&D fee

Once you have investors and a payroll, you want the books closed every month and a named person to ask when a number looks wrong. Four firms publish a starting price for that, which lets you compare before a sales call: Burkland from $495 a month, Zeni from $549, Kruze from $650, and indinero from $750. Kruze describes its ideal client as “seed/VC-backed Delaware C-Corps.” Burkland says it serves venture-backed startups “from pre-seed through growth stage” and counts more than 800 of them.

This is also the stage where the research credit starts to matter, and where the fee model deserves attention. Pilot and Zeni each charge 20 percent of the credit received. On a $60,000 credit that is $12,000. On a credit at the $500,000 payroll cap it would be $100,000. I think a percentage fee is a poor deal once the credit is large, because the study doesn’t take ten times the work when the payroll is ten times bigger. Kruze and Burkland publish no R&D price, so ask each for a flat quote and put it next to the 20 percent. Other credits and incentives are covered under tax breaks for startups.

Series A and later: you are buying a part-time CFO

After a priced round the board expects a budget and a forecast, and someone has to explain the variances each quarter. That is fractional CFO work, and the published starting prices as of October 2026 are close together: Zeni $1,599 a month plus a $2,000 setup fee, Burkland $1,600 a month, Pilot $1,750 a month billed annually, and Graphite $2,000 a month for its finance service. Burkland’s own comparison is a full-time CFO at more than $400,000 a year.

Countsy bundles accounting and CFO services with HR and publishes no prices. Its homepage lists no tax service, so budget for a separate tax preparer. Ledger Labs fits a narrower customer than the rest of this list: its site targets inventory-led ecommerce and consumer goods brands with $2 million to $50 million in annual revenue, which makes it a better match for a startup that ships product than for a software company.

When a local CPA is the better hire

An LLC or S corporation with no outside investors gets little from a venture specialist. Most of its tax work is state and local, the owner’s personal return is tied to the business, and nobody is asking for a 409A valuation. A CPA in your own city handles that every week and can meet you in person. If you’re in New York, where the city adds its own business taxes on top of the state’s, start with this list of accounting firms in New York City.

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