Best Expense Apps for 1099 Contractors

For a 1099 contractor, "best expense app" usually comes down to one question: how much of your deduction is mileage versus everything else? The IRS set the 2026 standard business mileage rate at 72.5 cents a mile for January through June, then raised it mid-year to 76 cents a mile from July 1 onward, according to the IRS's own announcement — which means a contractor who drives 8,000 business miles a year is sitting on close to $6,000 in deductions that only get captured if the trips are logged. The four apps below all take mileage seriously to different degrees; a fifth, Expensorr, deliberately doesn't track it at all.

Which app fits your situation

Stride, if mileage is the deduction and free is the requirement

Stride's own site states plainly that the app is free and will stay that way, with the company funded by commissions from helping members find health insurance rather than by charging for the tracking tools. It auto-detects driving in the background, prompts you to tag each trip as business or personal, and turns logged mileage and expenses into an IRS-ready report you can hand to an accountant or import into TurboTax. There's no paid tier to upgrade into — what you see is the whole product.

If your deductions are mostly miles behind the wheel — rideshare, delivery, home visits — and you don't want a subscription for that alone, Stride is the strongest free option here.

Everlance, if you want automatic mileage plus a filing add-on

Everlance's own pricing page lists three tiers. Basic is free and includes 30 automatically detected trips a month plus unlimited manual trip entry and receipt-backed expense tracking. Starter, at $8.99 a month or $69.99 a year, removes the automatic-detection cap and adds custom IRS-compliant reporting. Professional, at $99.99 a year (no separate monthly price is listed), adds automatic expense tracking, an AI deduction finder, "all-inclusive 1099 tax filing," and $1 million in audit defense.

If you'd rather pay a small monthly fee for uncapped automatic mileage than manage manual entries past 30 trips, Everlance's Starter plan is the cheapest way to get there, and Professional is the only app on this page that bundles the filing itself.

Hurdlr, if you want live tax estimates alongside mileage

Hurdlr's free plan, per its own help center, includes semi-automatic mileage tracking, manual income and expense logging, real-time tax estimates, and report exports. Premium, at $9.99 a month or $100 a year, switches mileage and expense tracking to fully automatic, adds AI-suggested expense and mileage rules, speed tagging, detailed tax calculations, and tracking of estimated tax payments already made.

Hurdlr doesn't file anything — its tax numbers are estimates to plan around, not a submission — which makes it a fit for a contractor who wants to see a running total of what they'll owe without paying for a filing service they may already have elsewhere.

QuickBooks Solopreneur, if you want bookkeeping and filing help together

Intuit's Solopreneur page lists a free plan capped at 5 mileage trips, 2 receipt uploads, and 2 invoices a month, with the ability to manage one contractor. The paid tier is $20 a month, discounted to $10 a month for the first three months, and removes those caps entirely — unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage — while adding management for up to three contractors, automated bill pay, automated sales tax handling, and Expert Assisted Tax powered by TurboTax.

This is the only app on this page that also connects to a bank account automatically and doubles as invoicing software, which matters if you bill clients directly rather than just logging expenses against income that arrives another way.

Where Expensorr fits instead

Expensorr isn't built around mileage at all, and a 1099 contractor for whom driving is the main deduction should pick one of the four apps above instead. What it does well: photographing a receipt returns the merchant, date, total, and a suggested category as a draft you confirm, and speaking a transaction gets parsed the same way. Labels tag a transaction by client or project, wallets keep business and personal balances separate, existing history imports from CSV, XLSX, or XLS, and every feature is free apart from a 20-scan-a-month AI allowance. Best receipt scanner apps covers that capture side in more depth.

What it doesn't do matters just as much here: no mileage tracking of any kind, no bank connection at any tier, and no tax filing or deduction calculation — it keeps records for you or your accountant to use. For a contractor whose deductions are mostly software subscriptions, materials, and client-related purchases rather than miles driven, that narrower job can be a better fit than paying for mileage features you won't use. Expense tracking for freelancers covers the day-to-day routine, and QuickBooks Self-Employed alternatives covers the wider migration if you're moving off a discontinued product.

What to check before you commit

Choosing in one line

Pick Stride if mileage is your main deduction and you want it tracked for free forever; pick Everlance if you want uncapped automatic mileage for under $10 a month with an optional filing add-on; pick Hurdlr if live tax estimates alongside automatic tracking matter more than filing; pick QuickBooks Solopreneur if you also need invoicing and a bank feed in the same subscription; and pick Expensorr if your deductions are mostly receipts and software rather than driving, and a bank connection isn't something you want at any price. Best expense tracker apps for freelancers and best expense apps without a bank connection cover the wider field if neither mileage nor filing is your deciding factor.

Sources, all checked on 19 September 2026: IRS 2026 standard mileage rate announcement; Stride's own site; Everlance's pricing page; Hurdlr's help center on Premium pricing; and QuickBooks Solopreneur's product page. Prices and features change — verify on the vendor's own page before you subscribe.