Free small-business accounting · comparison
Wave vs FeeGuard: free accounting basics vs paid-on-success audits
Searching for a Wave alternative usually means one thing: the job you hired Wave for is getting done, and the job nobody owns — money silently leaving through Stripe Connect refunds, fees, disputes and conversions — is not. Here is the honest, side-by-side picture, including where Wave genuinely wins.
What Wave does
free-tier accounting and invoicing for microbusinesses. Source: https://www.waveapps.com.
That is real capability in its lane — and the lanes below show precisely where it ends.
Side by side: FeeGuard vs Wave
Eight capabilities a Connect platform needs. No empty cells — every row states what each product actually does.
| Capability | FeeGuard | Wave |
|---|---|---|
| Unreversed-transfer detection | Yes — computed on every `charge.refunded` event: proportional expectation, rounding tolerance, ratio clamping | No — basics layer. |
| Application-fee leak detection | Yes — application fees tested against reversals via Net Platform Margin; zero- and three-decimal currencies handled | No — fees recorded basically. |
| Dispute-loss clawback support | Yes — recoverable figure computed on `dispute.closed` (transfer remainder, fee excluded); early warning on `created`; gated automation | No — disputes outside. |
| Cross-border FX monitoring | Yes — realised rates measured against same-day currency-pair baselines; directional loss flagging beyond 0.8% | No — fX minimal. |
| Runs on your live Stripe Connect account today | Yes — read-only restricted key, roughly ten minutes to first findings, revocable anytime | Depends on deployment |
| Performs recovery actions | One-click manual reversals (free tier); risk-gated automation with idempotency keys on Monitor Pro | Varies by product |
| Evidence & audit trail | Append-only trail on every action; finding-level evidence ids exportable as CSV | Varies by product |
| Pricing model | Detection free forever · success fee 20% of first $50k recovered, 15% above · no results, no fee | See vendor site |
Where Wave genuinely wins
- — Price point unbeaten in its niche.
- — Genuinely simple onboarding.
Why platforms choose FeeGuard over Wave
- Purpose-built for the leak. All four silent-loss vectors — unreversed transfers, kept fees, uncovered dispute losses, FX drag — are native detectors, not features imagined onto another product.
- Free before you pay anyone. Detection and the 90-day lookback cost nothing — measure your stranded dollars before committing to any vendor, including us.
- Ten-minute, read-only setup. One restricted key you create and revoke; no migration, no seller re-onboarding, no payment-path changes.
- Pay-for-results recovery. 20% of the first $50k recovered, 15% above — versus subscriptions, retainers and per-alert fees that bill regardless of outcomes.
- Evidence-grade trail. Append-only logs with finding-level arithmetic — ready for controllers, auditors and diligence teams.
Bottom line
Two free tools, different jobs: theirs records history; ours interrogates it. If your problem lives in free small-business accounting, Wave deserves its reputation. If your problem is a platform balance lower than your ledger predicts — refunds succeeding while transfers never come home — that problem has exactly one purpose-built answer, and you are reading it. Run the free audit; the number settles the debate faster than any comparison page can.
Common questions
Free vs free?
Different layers — books versus movement audits. Many micro-platforms use both.
Is FeeGuard a better choice than Wave?
For free small-business accounting, Wave is the specialist and we say so plainly. For detecting and recovering silent Stripe Connect losses — the four vectors above — FeeGuard is purpose-built and Wave does not perform that function. Most platforms comparing the two are feeling the second problem.
Can we run Wave and FeeGuard together?
Yes, commonly. They operate on different objects and different events; neither conflicts with the other’s workflow.
What does switching cost us?
Nothing upfront: read-only key, ten-minute setup, free detection. Recovery carries a success fee only on confirmed dollars — so trying FeeGuard risks no budget at all.