TurboTax Pricing 2026: What Each Tier Costs

TurboTax pricing for the 2025 tax year, checked on Intuit's own product pages in August 2026: Free Edition is $0 federal and $0 state for simple returns, Do It Yourself Deluxe is $79, Do It Yourself Premium is $139, Expert Assist runs $89 to $209, and Expert Full Service starts at $200. Business returns are priced separately, at $229 for a sole proprietor and $639 for an S corp or partnership. State filing is charged on top of every paid tier.

How much does TurboTax cost?

There is no single TurboTax price, which is exactly why the question gets asked 8,000 times a month. Intuit sells three ways: you do it yourself, an expert assists you, or an expert does the whole thing. Inside each of those there are tiers, and your return picks the tier for you based on which forms it needs.

Here is the full ladder as published in August 2026. Intuit labels these "anticipated final, undiscounted prices" for tax year 2025, which is the important caveat: the site discounts early in the season with banners like "File by 3/31 to save", so a January shopper often pays less than the figures below and an April filer usually pays them in full.

Read that table by finding your own row rather than the headline. Almost nobody pays "the TurboTax price". A single filer with one W-2 may genuinely pay nothing. A freelancer with one state pays $139 plus a state fee. An S corp owner pays $639 and then still has a personal return to file on top.

What does TurboTax Free Edition actually cover?

Free Edition is $0 for federal and $0 for state, and Intuit says roughly 37% of taxpayers qualify. The eligibility wording is narrow and worth reading closely: simple Form 1040 returns only, with no additional forms or schedules except those needed to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the student loan interest deduction, and Schedule 1-A.

In practice that means a W-2, maybe some bank interest, and the standard deduction. The moment your return grows a Schedule A for itemizing, a Schedule C for self-employment, a Schedule D for stock sales or a Schedule E for a rental, you are out of the free tier and into a paid one. This is the single biggest source of the "TurboTax said free and then charged me" complaint. Nothing deceptive has happened; the return simply outgrew the tier partway through the interview.

Which TurboTax version do I need?

Work from the forms your return needs, not from the marketing names. The tier is decided by your tax situation, so you can figure out your price before you start rather than discovering it at checkout.

Note how much lands in the $139 Premium row. Intuit merged the old Self-Employed product into Premium, so if you read an older guide telling you to buy "TurboTax Self-Employed", that product name no longer exists. Self-employment, investments and rentals now all sit in the same tier.

How much does TurboTax charge for a state return?

State filing is extra on every paid tier, and it is where the quoted price and the checkout total part company. Intuit lists state at $0 to $139 across the do-it-yourself range and up to $209 alongside Expert Assist. The state fee is charged per state, so anyone who moved during the year, or who lives in one state and works in another, pays it more than once.

Work the real total for a common case. A freelancer in one state on Do It Yourself Premium is at $139 federal plus a state fee, which is comfortably over $200 by the time they file. The same person filing two part-year state returns pays that state fee twice. If multiple states are in play, the guide to filing taxes in two states covers which return to prepare first.

Why is TurboTax more expensive than the price I was quoted?

Three things move the number between the ad and the receipt, and none of them are hidden, just easy to miss.

The tier changes underneath you. You start in Free Edition, enter a 1099-NEC in week two, and the software correctly tells you the return now needs Schedule C. That is an upgrade to $139, decided by your forms rather than by a sales prompt.

Season pricing rises. Intuit's own strikethrough pricing and "file by" banners tell you this openly: the listed figures are anticipated final undiscounted prices, and discounts shrink as April approaches. Filing in February is genuinely cheaper than filing on April 14.

Add-ons stack. State returns, expert review, audit-defense products and the option to pay your filing fee out of your refund each carry their own charge. That last one is worth avoiding on price alone: paying the fee from your refund usually costs an additional processing charge for what is effectively a very short loan.

TurboTax business pricing for an S corp or partnership

Business pricing is a different market, and the numbers are much larger. Expert Assist Business lists at $229 for a sole proprietor and $639 for an S corp or partnership filing Form 1120-S or Form 1065 with Schedule K-1s. Expert Full Service Business, where an expert prepares the whole thing, lists at $1,549 for the same entities. State is extra on both.

That $639 figure deserves a hard look, because it sits within $5 of what a human charges. The 2025 fee study from the National Association of Tax Professionals puts the average minimum fee for a business return at $634. So for an S corp, software with expert assistance and a CPA doing the return start at almost exactly the same price, and the CPA gives you a person who knows your business and can represent you before the IRS. For a sole proprietor, the calculation is the opposite: at $229 for assisted software against a CPA's $280 base fee plus $123 to $135 for the Schedule C, software wins clearly.

Either way, the return is only as good as the books behind it, and that is the work most owners underestimate. Before either a $639 product or a $634 accountant can start, someone has to get a full year of bank and card activity classified and closed. If your books live in QuickBooks, the fastest route is to convert each bank statement straight into a QuickBooks-ready file instead of keying a year of transactions by hand. Entity-by-entity guidance on which product you actually need is in the roundup of the best tax software for small business.

Is TurboTax worth it, or is something cheaper just as good?

TurboTax is polished and its interview is genuinely good at catching things a form-based product would let you skip. Whether that is worth the premium depends almost entirely on how complicated your return is. Here is the same self-employed federal return, one state, priced across the market with figures verified in 2026.

The honest summary: if your return is one W-2 and you want to pay nothing, TurboTax Free Edition or Cash App Taxes will serve you better than any paid product. If your return has a Schedule C, the gap between $139 plus state and $25 or $108 is real money for identical filing outcomes, and that is where switching pays. If you have an S corp, compare against a CPA rather than against other software, because at $639 you are already in accountant territory.

TaxFile prices flat: $39 for a simple federal return, $89 for self-employed, $199 for business, plus $19 per state. There is no free tier and no tier that moves when your second 1099 arrives, so the number you see before you start is the number you pay. You upload your W-2s and 1099s, the AI prepares the federal and state return and surfaces the deductions you qualify for, and nothing is e-filed until you have reviewed and approved every line.

For a side-by-side on features rather than price, see the TurboTax alternative comparison. Drivers and couriers should start with TurboTax for Uber drivers, which works the same math for a rideshare return. If you want the wider market including storefront preparers, what it costs to file taxes covers every route, and tax preparation fees has the full fee data.

Prices verified against Intuit's published product pages in August 2026 for tax year 2025 and are subject to change during the filing season. Not tax advice. Review your return before filing. For complex situations, consult a CPA or tax professional.