Nickel vs. Forwardly

Forwardly is an AP and AR platform with a $0 subscription and unlimited users. You pay vendor bills and collect customer invoices from one dashboard, choosing a speed for each payment: standard ACH (3 to 5 business days), next-day, same-day, or instant over the RTP and FedNow rails when the receiving bank supports them. Cards are 2.99% plus a $0.25 settlement fee. It syncs with QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks, and Zoho Books, with Sage Intacct, NetSuite, and Dynamics 365 on the Enterprise tier.

Pricing is pay-as-you-go, and speed is where the fees live. Instant is the default whenever the receiving bank supports it, at 1% with a $1 minimum, capped at $30; next-day and same-day are 1% capped at $10 and $20. Standard ACH, the free option, applies when instant is unavailable, and every account includes 10 of those a month (5 sent, 5 received), then $0.50 each. Email support comes with the free tier; phone and video support are reserved for paid tiers. Forwardly serves US businesses only.

Nickel is a cashflow platform with AR and AP on one account. You send invoices and payment links, your customers pay by ACH, card, or check, and the money lands in your bank or in Nickel Balance. You pay any business or 1099 contractor by ACH, card, wire, or check, with vendor onboarding and approval routing built in, and everything syncs with QuickBooks Online and Desktop.

ACH is unlimited and free on every plan, including the $0 Core plan, and there is no separate price for speed: transfers funded from Nickel Balance arrive instantly where the receiving bank supports RTP or FedNow and same day where it doesn't, at no charge. Core includes 3 users and a $25,000 per-transaction limit; Plus ($35/month) raises the limit to $1M per transfer and adds recurring invoices, autopay, and approval workflows. Live chat and email support are included for every customer.

Only as a fallback. Forwardly routes a payment over the instant rails whenever the receiving bank supports them, and instant costs 1%. The free option applies when instant is unavailable, which for most US banks it isn't. Forwardly built its name on free same-day ACH, but on November 1, 2025 it phased that out too: free accounts now get 10 standard-speed ACH transfers a month, and same-day, next-day, and instant payments all follow the 1% fee schedule. As of this writing, forwardly.com still carries pages titled "Fast, Free Same-Day ACH Payments" whose fine print reads "We cover your transfer fees for the first 30 days; after that, it's just 1% per transfer."

In practice, "free" means a 30-day trial, then 10 standard ACH a month for the payments that don't go instant. Everything else is a per-payment fee on speed. That is the trade Forwardly makes: no subscription, unlimited users, and 1% on the default path. Nickel makes the opposite trade: ACH is free at every speed, and the paid plans buy higher limits and workflow, not transfers. Our guide to Melio alternatives compares both against eight other platforms.

On ACH, yes, and the gap is wider than the "free" label suggests. A business sending 60 ACH payments a month averaging $5,000 pays Forwardly 1% capped at $30 on every payment that goes instant, which is most of them: $1,800 a month. Choosing same-day or next-day instead brings that to $1,200 or $600. Forcing every payment to standard speed gets it down to $27.50 (5 free, then $0.50), at the cost of 3-to-5-day delivery. On Nickel the same 60 payments cost $0 on any plan, and instant delivery through Nickel Balance is free. Cards are close: 2.9% on Nickel versus 2.99% plus $0.25 per settlement on Forwardly.

Forwardly wins on a few lines worth knowing: unlimited users at $0 (Nickel includes 3 on Core, with more on paid plans), phone and video support for paying customers, and Xero, FreshBooks, and Zoho sync today, where Nickel is QuickBooks-first with Xero on the roadmap. Full details are on our pricing page. Forwardly's are on forwardly.com/pricing, and every Forwardly figure on this page was checked against it on August 28, 2026. We also compare Nickel with Melio and Bill.com.