Guide
Tax software pricing models explained
How Lacerte, ProSeries, Drake and CCH Axcess price their licences, and what stays behind a quote.
Tax software is licensed per tax year, and each publisher packages it differently: by number of returns, by user count, by package size, or as bundles that combine individual and business modules. That makes a price on one vendor’s page hard to compare with a price on another’s. This guide sets out what each of four products publishes, as of October 8, 2026, and what stays behind a quote request.
What each product publishes
| Product | How it is sold | Public prices | Not public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lacerte | An annual licence. One public price: the pay-per-return “Fast Path” licence, with each return charged on top. | $813 a year for Fast Path, shown struck through beside $599 on September 7, 2026 (the page labels neither figure as the list price) | Bundles and unlimited plans (“Create a custom plan”); hosting, a separate monthly add-on |
| ProSeries | Annual tax-year licences: pay-per-return, a Basic tier, and bundles that can combine individual and business modules. | From $539 a year (pay-per-return); from $729 (Basic, 20 1040 returns); $4,007 (1040 Essentials, unlimited 1040 and state returns); $5,602 (ProSeries Essentials, a bundle of individual and business returns; the page text says 200 or 400) | ProSeries Advanced (“Call for pricing”) |
| Drake Tax | An annual licence per tax year, priced by product, by how many returns it allows and by single-user or multi-user. | Drake Tax Pro $2,375, $2,695 or $3,145; Drake Tax 1040 $1,895, $2,075 or $2,325; Pay-Per-Return $379.99 (10 individual returns); Drake Tax Online $299.99 (first user) | Which price belongs to which variant is not confirmed, so the figures carry no variant labels |
| CCH Axcess | Annual packages in several sizes; the page shows its Basic packages as one range. | Tax Essentials Basic $2,814 to $5,264 a year (the low and high ends of one range; StackWatch does not have a confirmed price for each package size) | Core, Accelerate and Advantage (quote only); the full CCH Axcess Tax suite |
Prices read on October 8, 2026. See each product’s pricing page for the current figures and the notes on what they cover.
Five things that make tax software prices hard to compare
1. Different packaging. ProSeries and Drake price by the returns a licence allows, CCH Axcess by package size, and Lacerte offers one pay-per-return entry price with bundles by quote. A $2,814 package and a $4,007 bundle do not cover the same thing.
2. List prices and promotions share the page. Lacerte’s page, read on September 7, 2026, showed $813 struck through beside $599 without labelling either as the list price. ProSeries leads with promotional bundle prices ($2,605 and $3,641) and strikes through the higher list prices ($4,007 and $5,602). Drake shows a struck-through retail price beside the current price, with the footnote “Retail price effective Dec. 1”: the struck-through number is a future retail price.
3. Per-return charges come on top. Drake’s pay-per-return price of $379.99 covers 10 individual returns, with extra individual returns at $49.99 and business returns at $74.99. CCH Axcess lists $53.90 for a specialty return, $199 for a consolidated return and an $80 “PPR overage”, charged on top of the package price. Lacerte charges each return on top of its Fast Path licence.
4. Prices roll over each tax year. Drake labels its prices for tax year 2026, and the whole page rolls over each year. Check the tax-year label before quoting a price.
5. Much of the range is quote-only. Lacerte’s main offering, ProSeries Advanced and CCH Axcess’s Core, Accelerate and Advantage packages show no price, so the public figures are the entry end of each range and may not be what a given firm pays.
An example of the per-return arithmetic
On Drake’s pay-per-return plan, a firm filing 25 individual returns pays the $379.99 that covers the first 10, plus 15 × $49.99 = $749.85 for the rest: $1,129.84 in total, or $45.19 per return. The same arithmetic works with any vendor’s per-return charge, as long as you check what the base price already includes.
How StackWatch handles tax-software history
Tax-software prices are reported by several publishers that define a package differently, so StackWatch keeps one table per publisher and never subtracts a figure in one table from a figure in another. Dated figures and their sources are on the Lacerte, ProSeries, Drake Tax and CCH Axcess pages. The method page explains how each historical figure is checked.
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How is tax software priced?
Tax software is licensed per tax year. The price depends on the package: the number of returns, the number of users, or bundles that combine individual and business modules. Per-return charges, hosting and add-ons are often extra.
What does Lacerte cost?
Lacerte’s only public price is the pay-per-return “Fast Path” licence, shown as $813 a year struck through beside $599 on September 7, 2026; the page does not label which figure is the list price, and StackWatch does not pick one. Each return is charged on top, and bundles and unlimited plans are quote-only.
What does Drake Tax cost?
As of October 8, 2026, Drake’s page lists Drake Tax Pro at $2,375, $2,695 or $3,145 a year and Drake Tax 1040 at $1,895, $2,075 or $2,325 a year, depending on returns and users, plus Pay-Per-Return at $379.99 (10 individual returns) and Drake Tax Online at $299.99.
Why can’t I compare tax-software prices across vendors?
Each vendor packages its licences differently (by returns, users or package size), shows promotions beside list prices and charges per-return fees on top. StackWatch keeps one table per publisher and never subtracts a figure in one table from a figure in another.