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Here’s a tradition we could set our watch by: another year, another Xero price increase, and another wave of frustrated customers on LinkedIn.
We’ve written about this almost every single year — and this time, the criticism is coming from an unusually awkward source: Xero’s own former chief product officer. Let’s talk about it.
Same Time, Every Year
If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll know this is well-trodden ground for us. Back in 2022 we wrote “Xero Prices Increase By $2 Again But No New Features – Are They Desperate for Cash?” when the company raised prices with, as far as anyone could tell, no meaningful new features to justify it.
Then in 2025 we returned to the topic with “Another price increase from Xero – 4 straight years of price increases sends social media mad?” — noting just how negative the sentiment had become across LinkedIn and Facebook, and comparing the situation to the Black Mirror episode “Common People,” where users have no real choice but to keep paying more and more:
And here we are again in 2026. By Xero’s own count, this is the sixth time in six years that prices have changed.
At this point it’s not a series of one-off adjustments — it’s the business model.
What’s Changed This Time
The 2026 increases, which took effect from 1 July, hit most tiers: the Grow plan rose from $75 to $78 a month, Comprehensive from $100 to $107, and Ultimate 10 from $130 to $143. Xero also announced plans to remove the discount for businesses running more than one account — a quiet but meaningful extra cost for anyone managing multiple entities.
Similar increases and the same removal of the multi-organisation discount are rolling out to the UK and US in September and October.
Xero’s defence, from CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, is the same one the company reaches for every year: they’re adding more value to the product each year, and the increases are modest — in her words, less than the cost of a cup of coffee. She also pointed out the increases are single-digit percentages now, compared to the double-digit rises of a few years ago.
Why This Year’s Criticism Stings More
Every year Xero says the price rise is justified by new features. But this year, that argument ran into an inconvenient obstacle: one of the people best placed to judge said the features aren’t there.
Angus Norton, who was Xero’s chief product officer until 2016, said the increases were frustrating because the product looks broadly similar to what it did when he was still at the company — even noting there are features missing that were on the roadmap 12 years ago.
When your own former product chief says that publicly, the “we’re adding so much value” message gets a lot harder to sell.
There’s a financial backdrop too. The price rises come at a time of investor unhappiness, a share price that has slid substantially, and a CEO who has sold her Xero shares while the chairman tries to win support for significantly higher executive pay.
Critics have connected these dots uncharitably — suggesting the increases are less about customer value and more about propping up the numbers. One New Zealand technology investor pointed out that price increases only really work when a company is “quietly winning,” which — with a halved share price and executive incentive dramas — is not obviously the situation here.
To be fair to Xero, they have been investing: new capabilities for Melio (their acquired bill-payments suite), and expanded powers for their AI tool JAX, which can now chase clients for unpaid invoices. Whether that justifies the sixth increase in six years is exactly the debate playing out online.
The Bigger Lesson: Pricing Is a Feature Too
There’s a genuinely useful insight buried in the industry commentary around this. One analyst noted that at this level of the market, pricing is as much a feature as any new function or automation — and warned that while Xero successfully took on MYOB years ago, it may not have learned the lesson it once taught its rival. Small businesses want bang for their buck, and if the value equation tips too far, customers do eventually move.
That’s the tension in a nutshell. Xero is betting that switching is too painful for most businesses to bother — and for now, they’re mostly right. As we’ve said before, this is the software subscription playbook: get customers deeply embedded, then raise prices knowing the cost of leaving feels higher than the cost of staying. It’s the same pattern we explored in our piece on how tech companies hook you with low prices and then escalate them.
What This Means for You
If you’re a business owner, this is your annual reminder to check whether you’re on the right plan — Xero’s tiers step up mainly on payroll capacity, so it’s worth confirming you’re not paying for headroom you don’t use.
Since payroll and automated super are now included across all business plans, some businesses can actually optimise their spend with a careful review.
If you’re a bookkeeper or studying to become one, here’s the reassuring part: none of this dents the value of your skills. In fact, it strengthens it. When businesses are frustrated about paying more for software, the person who can help them use it fully, choose the right plan, and get genuine value from every dollar becomes more valuable, not less. And crucially — a bookkeeper who knows Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks isn’t captive to any one vendor’s pricing decisions. That’s real leverage.
This is exactly why our Bookkeeping Academy training course package covers all the major platforms rather than betting on one.
We’ll no doubt be writing this same article again next year. The prices will have gone up, the features debate will rage on, and the smartest response will still be the same one: own transferable skills that no software company can put a subscription price on.
Sources include reporting on Xero’s 2026 price increase and comments from Xero CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and former chief product officer Angus Norton. This article is general commentary only.
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