Felix vs Bench
Bench paired you with human bookkeepers for a few hundred dollars a month — until it shut down and its customers were left racing to get their own financial records out. Felix is the opposite architecture: your books live in a format you hold and can verify yourself, at any moment, for a fraction of the price. A bookkeeping service should never be able to take your books with it.
Bench's risk was concentration — your books lived with them. Felix's books are yours, portable, and self-proving.
Bench's collapse was a wake-up call: never let your books live somewhere you can't verify or retrieve them. Felix is done-for-you bookkeeping you actually hold.
Felix vs Bench, feature by feature
- Where your books live: Felix — With you — complete export anytime, verifiable at /verify. Bench — With the provider.
- If the company disappears: Felix — You already hold complete, self-verifying books. Bench — Bench customers had to scramble to retrieve theirs.
- Turnaround: Felix — Live — books update as statements come in. Bench — Monthly, after a human catches up.
- Verify the numbers yourself: Felix — Drop the export at /verify: integrity + balance + figures re-derive. Bench — Trust the bookkeeper.
- Back taxes / catch-up years: Felix — 2016–2026, each year under that year's law. Bench — Catch-up offered at added cost.
- Price: Felix — $29–39/mo. Bench — Historically ~$299+/mo.