bexio or Crésus, the decision turns on constraints, not on features

An online service on one side, file-based software on the other

bexio is online management software, published by bexio AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobilière since 2018. Everything lives in the account: contacts, quotes, invoices, accounting, VAT and payroll, and the subscription also carries hosting and updates. The vendor's release of 18 February 2026 announces one hundred thousand customers, the widest installed base claimed in Switzerland for this kind of tool.

Crésus, published by Epsitec SA, follows another logic. It is a modular suite installed on the machine, under Windows, macOS, Linux or Windows Server, where Accounting, Invoicing and Payroll are bought separately and chain together. A single licence handles several client files, which explains its place among French-speaking Swiss fiduciaries. Crésus Cloud exists, but the vendor describes it as a remote virtual desktop giving access to the desktop software, charged CHF 26.00 per month before tax and per simultaneous access.

The number of people entering data at once decides more than the price

The first fact concerns simultaneous writing. Epsitec's documentation indicates that only one employee can modify a client file at a time, accounting, payroll or invoicing, the others accessing it read-only. Additional licences exist, at half price, but the per-file lock remains, and it also persists in Crésus Cloud. For an office where one person keeps the books and the others consult them, this constraint is never met in daily work. For a team of three entering data in parallel, it structures the whole organisation.

At bexio the reasoning is the reverse. Each package embeds a number of users, one for Basic, two for Advanced, five for Optima, twenty-five for Ultimate, and the additional user is charged CHF 21.00 per month on Advanced, CHF 13.80 on Optima. Simultaneous work is therefore priced into the package. Before looking at anything else, count the people who have to write into the accounts on a Tuesday morning at closing.

Two vendors that publish their prices, and two ways of counting them

Both vendors publish their rates, which allows costing a comparison without going through a quote. Crésus is paid module by module, rented from CHF 20.00 per month before tax for Accounting or Facturation Débiteurs, from CHF 15.00 for Payroll in a licence of five salaries, or purchased from CHF 600.00 before tax for Accounting, completed by the Crésus+ subscription at CHF 120.00 per year. The price list read carries the mention as of 12 December 2025.

bexio is paid by package, CHF 35.00 per month before tax on annual invoicing for Basic, CHF 45.00 on monthly invoicing, then CHF 42.00, CHF 69.00 and CHF 119.00 for Advanced, Optima and Ultimate. According to the vendor's help, the Starter, Pro and Pro+ packages gave way to this grid on 1 March 2026. The complete comparison adds, on the Crésus side, the modules really needed and any Cloud access, and on the bexio side, the package, the additional users and the optional modules.

QR-bill and certified payroll on both sides, eBill takes two different roads

On the base, both products hold. The QR-bill is generated natively by bexio as by Crésus Facturation, and the official Swissdec register lists both payroll modules, bexio Lohnbuchhaltung under certificate 1142.24 and Crésus Salaires of Epsitec SA under certificate 1034.23. An SME looking first to issue its invoices correctly and declare its salaries will find no ground for separation here.

The divergence appears on eBill. Epsitec SA itself appears in the list of eBill network partners published by SIX, and sending leaves directly from Crésus Facturation, at twenty centimes per dispatch before tax, after entry in the commercial register, activation of a QR-IBAN and twenty francs of registration fees. The vendor's documentation specifies, however, that Crésus Facturation cannot receive eBill invoices.

On the bexio side, the vendor points to an application of its Marketplace, the eBill of iomarket AG, charged on top. The connection therefore exists, but it goes through a third party and one more contract. If your SME issues a few hundred invoices a year to customers who expect them in their e-banking, this route becomes a first-rank criterion. If eBill has never come out of a conversation at your company, it weighs nothing.

What another program can read in your data, and by what route

bexio publishes a publicly documented REST programming interface, with authentication through OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, personal access tokens for server-to-server exchanges, granular scopes and pagination up to five hundred items per request. No section devoted to webhooks appears in the public documentation read on 23 August 2026, which means a synchronisation with a trade tool is built as periodic polling rather than event-driven.

Crésus takes another road. No public interface intended for third-party developers appears in the vendor's documentation, the API mentions there designating outbound channels to PostFinance or tilbago. Exchanges go through configurable import and export templates, in tab-separated text files and semicolon CSV, completed by the ISO 20022 banking standards, pain.001 and pain.002 for orders, camt.053 and camt.054 for movements and QR receipts.

Connecting bexio to an online shop, a site tool or a CRM is conceived in scheduled calls. Connecting Crésus to the rest of the house is conceived in files deposited, taken over and checked on a calendar. Both approaches work, but they call for neither the same skills nor the same supervision, and that is a point to settle before signing.

Where the files live, and what you take away on the day you leave

bexio writes in its privacy policy that the personal data of its clients stored in the software is kept and processed exclusively in Switzerland, on servers located in Switzerland. The help articles describe exports in PDF and Excel from the screens concerned. A complete export of the database as a single file does not appear in the public sources read on 23 August 2026.

With Crésus, the file stays with you, which is an advantage and a responsibility. The vendor indicates that its files must not be stored on Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, iCloud, kDrive or ownCloud, these services not handling database synchronisation, with a risk of corruption and liability declined. An SME already settled on Microsoft 365 therefore has to plan another architecture, Crésus Cloud, a remote access or a server, before buying.

Crésus Cloud is hosted at Silicom, on servers in Switzerland, with daily backups on redundant servers in Lausanne and at a remote site in Switzerland. In both cases a solution hosted in Switzerland exists, but one sells you a service that includes the backup, the other leaves you the choice of location and the burden of keeping those files over time.

Six questions that decide faster than a comparison table

In the dossiers we frame, the decision almost always turns on a small number of concrete constraints, and each attaches to a fact published by one of the two vendors.

• How many people have to write at the same time: a Crésus client file is modified by one person at a time
• Do you send eBill: Epsitec SA is a SIX network partner, bexio reaches it through a Marketplace application
• Does a trade tool need connecting: bexio publishes a REST interface, Crésus documents file templates
• Do your documents live on SharePoint or OneDrive: the vendor of Crésus rules out these services for its files
• How many employees to pay: Crésus Salaires is licensed in brackets of five, up to five hundred
• Who keeps the books with you: bexio publishes a directory of fiduciaries, Crésus a directory of resellers, fiduciaries and training institutes

Where these answers come from

Every fact on this page can be checked at the source. The links open directly the website of the vendor or body concerned.

• bexio, plans and pricesPackages Basic 35.00, Advanced 42.00, Optima 69.00 and Ultimate 119.00 per month before tax on annual invoicing, users included and price per additional user, read on 23.08.2026
• Crésus, official price listRental from CHF 20.00 per month before tax for Accounting or Facturation Débiteurs, Payroll from CHF 15.00, purchase from CHF 600.00 with Crésus+ at CHF 120.00 per year and Crésus+ services including eBill and eTVA, as of 12.12.2025
• Crésus CloudVirtual desktop at CHF 26.00 per month before tax and per simultaneous access, Silicom hosting in Switzerland, daily backups in Lausanne and at a remote site
• Swissdec, certified softwarebexio Lohnbuchhaltung certificate 1142.24 for ELM 5.0, 5.1 and 5.3, Crésus Salaires of Epsitec SA certificate 1034.23 in Swissdec certified basic with self-validated versions 5.1 and 5.3
• SIX, eBill network partners, Epsitec SAEpsitec SA appears as an eBill network partner for issuing invoices
• Crésus Facturation, eBill manualeBill sending via the SIX network, twenty centimes per dispatch, QR-IBAN and commercial register entry required, receiving eBill invoices not possible
• bexio, electronic invoicingeBill sending from bexio goes through the eBill application of iomarket AG, available on the Marketplace and charged on top
• bexio interface documentationREST and JSON interface, OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, personal access tokens, scopes, pagination at five hundred items, no webhooks section read on 23.08.2026
• Crésus and synchronisation servicesThe vendor rules out Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, iCloud, kDrive and ownCloud for storing Crésus files, risk of corruption flagged
• Crésus Facturation, technical sheetPlatforms Windows, macOS, Linux, Cloud and Windows Server, single-user operation for writing, multi-client management, multilingual and multi-currency options
• Crésus Salaires, technical sheetLicence in brackets of five salaries, up to five hundred salaries per licence, Swissdec certification, payslips and salary certificates
• bexio, privacy policyClients' personal data kept and processed exclusively in Switzerland, servers located in Switzerland

SURVEY OF 23.08.2026

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