RunwayDue vs Wave

The short answer

Is bookkeeping the job? Categorising the bank feed, reconciling, handing clean books to an accountant, running payroll. Then use Wave. Its Starter plan is free and Pro is $19/month (checked August 2026), it has done this for over a decade, and nothing here beats that.

If the hard question is what is coming rather than what happened, use RunwayDue. You signed a contract in March that pays in June, three proposals are out and you do not know which will land, and some months you invoice nothing at all. Wave has no view of a signed contract that has not been invoiced yet, because as far as an accounting ledger is concerned, nothing has happened yet.

That is the whole comparison. The rest is detail.

At a glance

Wave prices checked 25 September 2026 on Wave's own pricing page.

Who each one is built for

Wave is a bookkeeping product with invoicing attached. Its centre of gravity is the transaction list: money moved, put it in the right account, produce a profit and loss at the end of it. Wave describes its own engine as real double-entry accounting, and it is. That shape suits steady, transactional revenue: a shop, a consultancy on monthly retainers, anyone whose January looks roughly like their February. The category question underneath this one, and how to test a tool against it, is in how to choose invoicing software when your revenue is not monthly.

RunwayDue is built for the opposite shape. Its centre of gravity is the document chain (proposal, then contract, then invoice) because in project work the money is decided months before it moves. A quiet quarter is not a failure state here; it is Tuesday.

Wave records what happened. RunwayDue also counts what is committed.

RunwayDue keeps revenue in four layers, in descending order of certainty: collected (money that landed), outstanding (billed, unpaid), committed (signed contracts with billing dates not yet invoiced), and pipeline (open proposals, weighted by the win probability you set on each).

They are never summed into one headline figure, because that is how people talk themselves into revenue that does not exist. They sit side by side, and the six-month forecast stacks them so the uncertain part stays visually distinct from the certain part.

Neither of the last two layers shows up in Wave. A signed contract with a payment schedule is not a transaction and not an invoice, so Wave's ledger has nothing to record. Neither is a proposal sitting at 60% likely. Wave is not failing at this; it is correctly declining to invent entries for money that has not moved. That is structural rather than a gap either product happens to have today.

Out of the same engine come the numbers a lumpy business needs: how many months of average collections are already secured by outstanding plus committed work, how many of the last twelve collected nothing at all, and what share of collections comes from your largest client.

The document that comes before the invoice

Wave has estimates, and they convert to invoices. That covers a lot of businesses.

What Wave does not offer is e-signature. It appears on none of Wave's own pricing, Pro, invoicing or accounting pages (checked August 2026), and the workaround is bolting a separate e-signature tool on through Zapier: a second subscription, a second audit trail, and a document your billing cannot see.

RunwayDue signs where it bills. Each recipient gets their own private link, so everything done on it is recorded against the person it was sent to; a forwarded link still works for whoever holds it, because below Business, where you can add an access code, nothing beyond the link checks who is signing. Nothing is stamped into the PDF until every signer has finished, the audit trail is append-only, and the finished PDF carries a certificate of completion: each signer's name, email, timestamp, network address, their recorded consent to sign electronically, and the SHA-256 fingerprint of the original file.

What free covers, and what it does not

Wave's Starter plan really is free; the money is in the $19/month Pro plan, payment processing, payroll and add-ons. Checked August 2026 on Wave's own pricing page: card processing is 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction (3.4% + $0.60 for Amex), with Pro dropping the per-transaction fee on the first ten each month. US payroll starts at $40 a month plus $6 per active employee or contractor. Receipt capture is an add-on on Starter, $8 a month or $72 a year in the US ($11 or $96 in Canada), and is included in Pro (rechecked 25 September 2026). None of it is hidden, and for many businesses it is a fair deal.

What is worth knowing is what the free tier excludes: automatic bank import, auto-categorisation and extra admin, editor or viewer users are Pro features, and on Starter automated late-payment reminders only run once online payments are switched on (rechecked 25 September 2026). Starter still includes unlimited invoices, estimates and bookkeeping records, and invoicing from the mobile app, so free Wave in 2026 is a capable invoicing and bookkeeping product; what it does not do is bring bank transactions in by itself.

So compare at the paid tier, where it is a clean trade:

Neither column is a clean win. They are different products that cost about the same.

One thing they genuinely agree on: neither takes your records away when you stop paying. Dropping to RunwayDue's free plan keeps every invoice, proposal, contract and signed PDF exactly where it is, still openable and still sendable. You can still record the payments that come in against them. A plan mostly limits what you can start, though a lapse also pauses some things you set up: bills and expenses already recorded stay readable but cannot be edited or paid, reports and automatic reminders stop, and recurring schedules raise nothing until you move back up. Nothing on Wave's pages suggests it takes your books away either.

Where you are allowed to be

Wave is a North American product, and its help centre says so plainly: Wave "is only available to US and Canadian businesses" (checked 25 September 2026). Every price is quoted in US or Canadian dollars, and Wave Payroll runs in all fifty US states and in every Canadian province and territory except Quebec, and nowhere else. If you are in the UK, India or Australia, that settles it before any feature comparison starts.

RunwayDue is US-first, with Indian GST built in properly: your state against your client's decides CGST and SGST or IGST, and GSTINs are checksum-validated. In the US you set your sales-tax rate per line and it is applied. We do not look rates up by address and we do not check nexus, because a plausible wrong answer gets remitted. Nine further countries work generically, plus an "Other" option. There are no built-in VAT rules and no local filing formats, and the app says so.

When Wave is the better choice

Plainly, and with a real case. You run a six-person design studio in Chicago with two employees on payroll. Money comes in steadily, mostly by card, across a few dozen transactions a month. Your accountant wants a reconciled bank feed and a clean trial balance in January. Contracts get signed once a year.

Use Wave. RunwayDue would make you worse off in four concrete ways:

• Bank feeds. Wave Pro imports and auto-categorises transactions. RunwayDue has none, and there is no import of any kind: no bank feed, no CSV, nothing. Every expense is typed in by hand. At real transaction volume that is not a rough edge, it is a dealbreaker.
• Payroll. Wave files with the IRS, the states and the CRA. We do not do payroll, by decision: getting it slightly wrong costs somebody their filing.
• The depth of the ledger. Wave is full double-entry with a general ledger. RunwayDue's books run on a simplified ledger: chart of accounts, accrual or cash P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, aged receivables and payables, tax summary. Equity is derived rather than posted, and there are no hand-written journals. If you need statutory accounts, you need journals, and we say so on the balance sheet itself.
• Track record. Wave has been doing this for over a decade, with mobile apps, an integrations ecosystem and live support. RunwayDue launched in August 2026: no reviews, no community, no integrations, no Zapier, no public API. Cards work at our own checkout and nowhere else: there is no gateway on the invoices you send. If that disqualifies us for you, it should.

One more, since it is checkable: our signing legal note is written for the country your workspace is in, so a US buyer's certificate names the ESIGN Act and state electronic transactions law, and an Indian one names the IT Act's First Schedule.

So: which one

Wave if the books are the deliverable. RunwayDue if the forecast is. If invoicing rather than bookkeeping is the job, the FreshBooks comparison covers that end. Pick it when you need to see in one place the invoice due in nine days, the contract milestone due in March, and the proposal that decides your June.

Frequently asked questions

Is Wave really free?

Yes. Wave's Starter plan costs nothing and includes unlimited invoices, estimates and bookkeeping records, and Wave earns its money from Pro at $19 a month or $190 a year, card processing, payroll and add-ons such as receipt capture (checked 25 September 2026). RunwayDue's free plan is smaller: 3 clients, 5 invoices and 3 proposals or contracts a month for one person, with the books, reminders and recurring invoices on Pro.

What does Wave's free plan leave out?

Automatic bank import, auto-categorisation and extra admin, editor or viewer users are Wave Pro features, and on the free plan automated late-payment reminders only run once online payments are switched on (checked 25 September 2026). Invoicing from the mobile app is included free. RunwayDue has no bank feed or import on any plan, so if automatic import is what you need, Wave Pro is the better choice.

Does Wave have e-signature?

Not as checked on 25 September 2026: e-signature appears on none of Wave's pricing, Pro, invoicing or accounting pages, and the workaround is a separate e-signature tool connected through Zapier, which means a second subscription and a second audit trail. RunwayDue includes signing on Pro, with a certificate of completion bound into the signed PDF, and sells it by the document on Free.

Does Wave do payroll?

Yes, as an add-on in the US and Canada. In the US it costs $40 a month plus $6 per active employee and $6 per contractor paid, with tax payments and filings handled in all fifty states, and in Canada it runs in every province and territory except Quebec (checked 25 September 2026). RunwayDue does not do payroll, by decision: getting it slightly wrong costs somebody their filing.

Can Wave show revenue from a signed contract before it is invoiced?

No, and it is right not to. A signed contract with a payment schedule is not a transaction and not an invoice, so a ledger has nothing to record until money moves. RunwayDue keeps that money as a separate committed layer, beside collected, outstanding and weighted pipeline, and stacks all four in a six-month forecast.

Can I use Wave outside the US and Canada?

No. Wave's help centre says it "is only available to US and Canadian businesses", so a Wave business keeps its books in US or Canadian dollars, though it can invoice and record bills in other currencies (checked 29 September 2026). RunwayDue is US-first with Indian GST built in, and nine further countries work generically, with no built-in VAT rules and no local filing formats.