Turbotax vs H&R Block vs Freetaxusa: Best Pick by Situation

A $200 Difference for the Same Return: Why Self-Employed Filers Pay 12x More With TurboTax

Think of tax software pricing like airline seats. Everyone lands in the same place — an accepted e-file at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — but the fare depends entirely on which cabin you booked. The twist in tax software is that you don't choose the cabin. Your tax situation chooses it for you.

Recommended: E-file.com — File your federal and state taxes online

The moment you have freelance income, TurboTax routes you into Premium. Add one state return, and your total lands around $203 (turbotax.intuit.com). H&R Block's Self-Employed tier plus a state runs roughly $122–$126 (hrblock.com). FreeTaxUSA files the identical Schedule C federally for free; you pay only for the state.

Data as of July 2026. Prices reflect tax-year 2024 products (the 2025 filing season). Tax software resets its tiers every year and often raises them as the April deadline nears, so confirm current-year pricing on each site before you file.

Here's what that looks like in practice. Say you're a freelance designer in Georgia with $60,000 of 1099 income, some home-office expenses, and a solo 401(k) contribution — a retirement account built for self-employed people with no employees. Nothing exotic; a bread-and-butter Schedule C. TurboTax will walk you through it with the smoothest interview in the business, then charge you about $203. FreeTaxUSA asks the same questions with less polish and charges you the price of two sandwiches.

The software isn't doing $187 more work. TurboTax Premium and FreeTaxUSA generate the identical Schedule C and e-file to the same IRS servers — the return, and your refund, come out the same. What you're paying for at the top of the market is interface polish, brand comfort, and the option to summon a credentialed preparer mid-return — real things, but worth pricing honestly.

That's the thesis of this comparison: the question isn't "which software is best?" It's "how much hand-holding are you actually buying, and is it worth 12x?" For most filers, the answer is no.

TurboTax's Pricing Tiers: What You Pay For — and What "Free" Actually Covers

TurboTax markets itself as the #1 best-selling tax software, based on aggregated sales data for tax year 2024 products (turbotax.intuit.com) — and the product mostly deserves its reputation. The interview flow is the cleanest in the category, document import is strong, and the Live tiers put a credentialed preparer a click away.

The pricing is where thoughtful readers should slow down.

Free Edition ($0 federal, $0 state) handles simple Form 1040 returns only — W-2 income, standard deduction, limited credits. By TurboTax's own disclosure, only about 37% of taxpayers qualify (TurboTax Free Edition terms). If you itemize, sold stock, or earned a single dollar of freelance income, you're getting upgraded whether you like it or not.

Deluxe runs $79 federal plus $64 per state — call it $143 for a typical one-state itemizer (turbotax.intuit.com). Premium, required for investors and the self-employed, is $139 federal plus that same $64 state fee.

Want a human? Live Assisted ranges from $89 to $209 federal plus $49–$59 per state, depending on complexity. Live Full Service — where an expert prepares the whole return — starts at $200 federal plus $59 per state and climbs from there.

Two things to watch. First, the $64-per-state fee is the highest of the three and it's easy to miss when you start a return in January. Second, tax software prices are not fixed for the season — early-filer pricing has historically been lower than what the same tier costs as the April deadline approaches, so the number you see in a February ad may not be the number you pay in April.

Who should not use TurboTax: anyone with a Schedule C, D, or E who doesn't plan to buy expert help. You'd be paying the highest sticker price in the market for forms FreeTaxUSA includes at $0.

H&R Block's Middle Path: A $35 Federal Base Plus In-Person Backup

H&R Block's online product sits deliberately between the other two, and its structure rewards a specific kind of filer.

Free Online covers simple returns at $0 federal and state. Deluxe is where the value shows: $35 federal plus $37 per state — about $72 total for a one-state itemizer (hrblock.com). That undercuts TurboTax Deluxe by roughly half. Premium and Self-Employed tiers run $85–$89 federal plus the same $37 state fee, landing a self-employed filer at $122–$126.

But price isn't H&R Block's trump card — FreeTaxUSA beats it on every paid tier. The genuine differentiator is that H&R Block operates thousands of retail offices. If your DIY return goes sideways in March — a confusing K-1 shows up, or the IRS sends a letter — you can escalate to a human being at a desk. Neither TurboTax nor FreeTaxUSA can hand you a chair and a cup of bad coffee.

The trap to model is state fees at scale. Consider a filer who moved from Illinois to Texas mid-year but also kept rental income in Wisconsin — three state-level filings (two part-year, one non-resident). At TurboTax's $64 per state, that's $192 in state fees alone before the federal charge. H&R Block's $37 rate totals $111. FreeTaxUSA's ~$15 rate: about $45. Multi-state situations are exactly where per-state pricing quietly doubles your bill, and almost nobody checks that line before starting.

Who should not use H&R Block: complex filers who are confident self-filers (FreeTaxUSA does the same job for ~$100 less) and anyone who'd never actually visit an office — because the office network is most of what the premium buys.

FreeTaxUSA Charges by State, Not by Complexity — Which Is Why It's Free for Landlords and Freelancers

FreeTaxUSA inverts the industry's business model, and understanding the inversion explains everything. TurboTax and H&R Block price by complexity: the more schedules your life generates, the more you pay. FreeTaxUSA prices by jurisdiction: federal is free for everyone, and each state return costs $14.99–$15.99 (freetaxusa.com).

That means Schedule C self-employment income, Schedule D capital gains, Schedule E rental property, and education credits all cost $0 federally — the exact forms that trigger $85–$139 upgrades elsewhere (cnbc.com). A landlord with three properties pays the same $0 federal as a single W-2 filer.

Recommended: The Book on Rental Property Investing — Create wealth and passive income through real estate

The add-ons are similarly modest. Deluxe ($7.99) buys priority support, live chat, and audit assistance. Pro Support ($64.99) gets you an actual tax professional by phone and screen share. Audit Defense ($19.99) provides representation if the IRS comes calling. You could buy every add-on plus a state return and still spend less than H&R Block Deluxe.

So what's the catch? Honestly: polish and import. The interface looks a generation older than TurboTax's, and moving your history takes real effort. If you're switching from TurboTax, you'll typically import a prior-year PDF — which reliably carries the basics like prior-year adjusted gross income (AGI) — but you should manually verify that capital-loss carryforwards and depreciation schedules made the trip. For Schedule C and E filers, that depreciation continuity is the real switching cost: budget an extra hour the first year to key in asset histories and check the carryover amounts against last year's return. After year one, the friction is gone — and the savings repeat annually.

Skip FreeTaxUSA only if you want the work done for you (there's no full-service prep) or if a smoother interview is genuinely worth $100-plus to you. For everyone else, the older interface is the only thing standing between you and the lowest bill in the market.

Best Pick by Situation: Match the Software to Your Return, Not the Ads

Here's the decision, segment by segment.

Simple W-2 return, standard deduction, no state income tax. Any of the three works at $0. TurboTax and H&R Block offer the most polish for a first-time filer; there's no reason to overthink this. But check one thing first: if your AGI is $89,000 or under, the IRS Free File program partners with commercial providers to offer genuinely free federal filing — and with the IRS Direct File program discontinued for the 2026 season, Free File is the government-adjacent option most comparison articles skip.

Simple W-2 return, but you need a state filing. FreeTaxUSA, narrowly — if you don't fit the big two's free-tier definitions, ~$15 total beats $72 or $143. If you do qualify for TurboTax or H&R Block's free tiers (state included), take the free polish.

Itemizers and investors. FreeTaxUSA, clearly. A filer with mortgage interest, charitable deductions, and a brokerage account gets pushed to TurboTax Premium territory (~$203 with a state) for forms FreeTaxUSA handles at ~$16. Run the numbers on a couple with $18,000 in itemized deductions and $12,000 in realized capital gains: identical refund, ~$187 difference in prep cost. That's a year of index-fund expense ratios on a six-figure portfolio, spent on software.

Self-employed and side-hustlers. FreeTaxUSA, emphatically — this is the segment with the 12x gap. The only exception: your first year of self-employment, when questions like home-office eligibility and estimated payments are genuinely confusing. That year, either buy FreeTaxUSA's Pro Support at $64.99 (still cheaper than TurboTax's base Premium price) or pay once for expert help and switch the following season. Our guide to the best tax software for freelancers covers this segment in more depth.

Landlords and multi-state filers. FreeTaxUSA for the forms, and it's not close — Schedule E is free federally, and per-state pricing matters most when states multiply.

High earners with genuinely complex returns who want an expert. TurboTax Live Full Service or an H&R Block office. If you have equity compensation, a K-1 or two, and a five-figure sum riding on getting it right, paying $200+ for a professional's signature is rational insurance. Choose TurboTax Live for convenience, H&R Block if you want the conversation face-to-face.

One more factor the ads won't mention: lock-in. Once a provider holds your depreciation schedules and carryforwards, staying feels easier every year — which is precisely what premium pricing depends on. The switch costs you one careful hour, once. The loyalty costs you $100+ annually, forever.

The Verdict: FreeTaxUSA for Almost Everyone, With Two Clear Exceptions

For the overwhelming majority of filers — itemizers, investors, freelancers, and landlords alike — FreeTaxUSA is the pick. It files the same federal forms as its rivals for $0, charges ~$15 per state, and the only real cost is a plainer interface and an hour of first-year setup.

Two situations flip the recommendation. Choose H&R Block if you value a nearby office you can walk into when something breaks — its $72 Deluxe tier is the reasonable middle. Choose TurboTax Live Full Service if your return is genuinely complex and you want a professional to prepare and sign it. Outside those two cases, paying TurboTax's sticker price buys polish, not a bigger refund.

The FTC Ruling: Why "Free" Comes With a Footnote Now

If TurboTax's free-tier marketing feels more carefully worded lately, that's not voluntary. In January 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a final order barring Intuit from advertising TurboTax as "free" unless it's free for all consumers or the ads clearly disclose who actually qualifies (FTC, In re Intuit Inc., final order, Jan. 22, 2024). The commission found the long-running "free, free, free" campaigns deceptive because most filers who started in the free product ended up paying.

That order is why TurboTax's site now states plainly that only about a third of filers qualify for Free Edition. It's a useful consumer lesson in miniature: in tax software, "free" is a marketing tier, not a price — the real number is your federal tier plus your state fee, priced in April, for your actual forms.

FreeTaxUSA is the quiet beneficiary. Its federal product doesn't need an asterisk, because there's no upgrade wall to hit — the free tier is the product, for everyone.

How We Evaluated

Canopy Press doesn't file test returns through each product — we analyze published pricing and features, not hands-on trials. The tier prices, state fees, and add-on costs here come directly from each provider's own site (turbotax.intuit.com, hrblock.com, freetaxusa.com) for tax-year 2024 products, cross-checked against third-party reporting from CNBC Select for methodology and rankings. Because these prices change every year and often mid-season, we date every figure and link to the source so you can verify the current number before you file. We weighted three things: total out-the-door cost for realistic filer profiles (Schedule C, itemizer, multi-state), the honesty of each "free" tier, and the value of paid extras like expert help and in-person support. See our full how we evaluate methodology for how we score.

Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links. If you sign up through them, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. That relationship never changes our rankings — the recommendation above is the same one we'd make with no commission attached.

Found an error? At Canopy Press, accuracy comes first. If you spot a claim that needs checking, let us know at [email protected] — we'll verify and correct it immediately.

Sources

• TurboTax pricing and Free Edition terms — Intuit
• H&R Block online tax filing prices — H&R Block
• FreeTaxUSA pricing — FreeTaxUSA
• IRS Free File program — IRS
• FTC final order, In re Intuit Inc. (Jan. 22, 2024) — Federal Trade Commission
• Tax software rankings and methodology — CNBC Select

This article is informational, not financial or tax advice. Tax situations vary; consult a qualified tax professional or CPA before making filing decisions.

Some links are affiliate links — we may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products we've actually evaluated. See our editorial standards for more.

Found an error? At Canopy Press, accuracy comes first. If you spot a claim that needs checking, let us know at [email protected] — we'll verify and correct it immediately.