Setu vs BUSY Accounting Software: Free Browser Tools or a Licence in 2026?

If you keep books in India and you have asked a dealer what to buy, two names come back: Tally and BUSY. BUSY has been sold through that dealer network for three decades, and for a distributor running real inventory billing it is a capable package. The question worth answering is narrower: at what point does a small business actually need that licence, and what can be done on free browser pages instead?

We build the free pages, so read this with that in mind. What follows is exact about what BUSY costs, and honest about the handful of jobs it does that a browser tool does not do at all.

What BUSY costs in October 2026

BUSY sells two differently shaped products, and that is where most buyers get confused. There is the classic desktop software — a licence you buy once, installed on a machine in your shop — and there is a newer subscription line billed per 360 days. The figures below are as publicly listed on BUSY's own pricing page in October 2026.

Three things the price list does not shout. All of it excludes GST, so add 18% to whatever number you were quoted. Additional users, additional companies, implementation and customisation are priced separately. And the one-time editions are the software, not the support — ongoing updates and dealer help are the thing you negotiate next, usually as a yearly contract. Check BUSY's own pricing page before you budget, because dealer quotes vary by city and by what they bundle, and get the five-year picture in writing rather than the sticker price.

What the Setu accounting tools are

They are browser pages. You open one, type into it, and print or export what comes out. There is no installation, no licence key, no seat count, and no signup wall. The set that matters here is a chain: you post entries in the journal, those entries build the general ledger account by account, the ledger totals into a trial balance, and the trial balance feeds a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet you can print to A4 or export to CSV. Billing sits alongside it in the invoice generator, with GST handled on the invoice itself.

What they are not is a database with your year in it. A browser tool holds the working set in front of you; it does not quietly accumulate three years of vouchers that a tax officer can be walked through. That distinction decides most of what follows.

Four jobs BUSY does that free pages do not

Statutory return filing from inside the software. A licensed package reads your vouchers and produces return-shaped output, with e-invoice and e-way bill generation wired in. Free tools produce documents and reports; the filing itself happens on the portal or at your accountant's desk.

Multi-user work on one set of books. Two billing counters and an accountant posting entries at the same time, against the same data, is exactly what a licence with a server is for.

Years of history in one place, auditable. If you are the size where an auditor asks for a voucher from nineteen months ago, you want a system of record, not a tab.

Inventory that moves with the billing. Batch, expiry, barcode-driven billing and stock that decrements as you invoice — a trading business doing hundreds of lines a day needs this, and the same argument applies to the retail ERPs we compared in Setu versus Marg ERP.

Four jobs where the licence is money you did not need to spend

You are pre-revenue or barely past it. A business issuing twenty invoices a month and reconciling one bank account does not have a software problem. It has a discipline problem, and a licence does not fix discipline.

Your accountant already runs the books. Thousands of small businesses pay a firm that keeps the ledgers in its own software. Buying a second copy for your desk duplicates the work. What you need is a clean monthly handover and reports you can actually read.

You need one statement, once. A bank wants a profit and loss statement for a loan application. That is an afternoon on a free page, not a purchase decision.

Services, not stock. A consultancy, clinic, agency or studio has no inventory to manage. Most of what you pay for in a trading-first package is the half you will never open.

The comparison that actually decides it

Doing the five-year arithmetic honestly

The sticker price is the smallest number in the decision. Take the edition you were quoted, add 18% GST, add the yearly support or maintenance figure the dealer names, add anything charged for extra users or extra companies, and add the one line nobody quotes: the days somebody spends getting your opening balances in. Then compare that total against what you are paying your accountant anyway, because for a lot of small businesses the honest answer is that the firm's own licence is already covering this and a second one buys nothing.

If the five-year total lands where the licence looks reasonable, buy it — a business that needs a system of record should have one, and a ₹16,500 licence against a crore of turnover is not the line item to agonise over. If it does not, the free pages will carry you until it does, and nothing you build in them is locked in: every report exports to CSV.

Six questions for the dealer before you sign

Licensed accounting software in India is sold through partners, which is a strength — somebody local will come and set it up — and a risk, because the quote you get is assembled rather than published. Ask these before money moves, and ask for the answers in the quote rather than on a call.

• Is this edition a one-time licence or a 360-day subscription, in writing?
• What does year two cost if I want updates and support?
• How many simultaneous users does this cover, and what does the next one cost?
• How many companies or GSTINs can I keep in it?
• Who enters my opening balances and last year's closing stock, and is that billed?
• If I stop paying support, does the software keep running, and what can I export?

That last one matters more than it sounds. The answer tells you whether you are buying an asset or renting access, and the two are worth very different money.

A sensible order of operations

1. Count your monthly invoices and your simultaneous users. Both under about thirty and one, respectively, and software is not your constraint.
2. Ask whether you file your own GST returns. If your accountant files them, you are buying a filing feature twice.
3. Check whether you need batch, expiry or barcode-driven billing. If yes, price the licence properly.
4. If you are still unsure, run one month on free pages first. You will learn more about what you actually need from that month than from any demo.

If what you want is the books kept, not the software bought

There is a third option people forget. You can skip the tooling decision entirely and have someone keep the books: entries posted, bank reconciled, GST data prepared, payroll run, and a monthly pack that tells you what happened. That is what our accounting and bookkeeping service does, and it is often cheaper than a licence plus the hours you will spend learning it. Tell us your invoice volume and who files your returns today, and we will say plainly which of the three routes fits.