Providers
SST CSP comparison: all six providers side by side
Simplify Sales Tax. Last updated 2026-09-01. Sources last verified 2026-08-19.
Six providers are certified by the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, and five of them currently offer free CSP services. One publishes complete pricing, one publishes part of it, and three publish none. This comparison produces no overall winner, because the provider that discloses the most about price isn’t the one with the widest cart coverage or the deepest ERP catalog.
A Certified Service Provider (CSP) is an agent certified under the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement to perform a seller’s sales and use tax functions, other than the seller’s obligation to remit tax on its own purchases. Six companies hold that certification. The table below runs all six down the same seven dimensions, so you can rule one out on the dimension that actually decides your evaluation, and see plainly where each of them publishes nothing.
Every cell comes from that provider’s own public materials or from the Governing Board’s listing for it. Where a provider publishes nothing on a dimension, the cell reads Not published with the date checked, and that standard applies to all six. The same sources sit behind the six certified provider profiles.
The comparison table
Checked August 19, 2026. Pricing fetched 2026-08-18 and re-checked 2026-08-19.
Table: the six providers certified by the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, compared on all seven dimensions: free CSP services, published pricing, pricing model, integration approach, support model, company scope, and who each one is best for. Every cell is from that provider’s own public materials or the Board listing. Checked August 19, 2026.
| Provider | Free CSP services | Published pricing | Pricing model | Integration approach | Support model | Company scope | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avalara | Yes, to qualifying sellers | Yes, complete tiers | Per state per month or per year. $69 per state per month on the SST tier, $79 on Core Compliance, both for sellers under $50M revenue. Custom above $50M | Broadest published catalog. Names NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Stripe, and QuickBooks, plus a documented API | Three tiers. Included tier is online case submission, weekdays, 24 hour response target. Phone, chat, 24/7 and a technical account manager sit on paid tiers with no published price | Global. 190 plus countries, sales tax, VAT, e-invoicing, excise, communications, property, licenses, 1099 and W-9. SST is one slice | An enterprise or upper mid-market company whose obligations reach past US sales tax and that wants one platform across several tax types. Under $50M in revenue it can also get a published price before a sales call |
| TaxCloud | Yes, to qualifying sellers | Yes, two plans | Subscription priced by order volume from $199 a year on Starter and $799 on Premium, plus a separate filing plan from $399 a year for 12 returns, both required. Audit support from $99 per month | Carts and billing. Published directory names BigCommerce, Shopify, Stripe, WooCommerce, Odoo, QuickBooks, Chargebee, Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce, and a REST API. No SAP or Microsoft Dynamics | Phone and email on both tiers, described as US based. Dedicated success manager and custom onboarding listed as Premium extras. No published response-time commitment or service level agreement | United States sales and use tax, plus limited Canada. Single market, single tax type | A mid-market US ecommerce or SaaS brand with nexus in five or more states, on mainstream carts, that’s content to let Shopify Tax or Stripe Tax calculate at checkout |
| Sovos | Yes, to qualifying sellers, under SST Model 1 | Not published, checked 2026-08-19 | Not published. Custom quote. States compensate Sovos for qualifying Model 1 sellers; the customer pays for non-SST states, states where criteria are not met, and add-ons | ERP first. Standard adaptors for Magento, SAP, Oracle NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Shopify, and Microsoft Dynamics, plus an API. Connector marketplace is ERP, procurement, and e-invoicing led | A dedicated Sovos tax professional oversees monthly filings and is the primary contact for state communications and audits. No published hours, response times, or service levels | Global. Indirect tax, VAT and GST, e-invoicing, information reporting and withholding, unclaimed property, insurance and beverage alcohol | A larger organization with an in-house tax function, on SAP, NetSuite, or Dynamics, that wants one vendor across US sales tax, VAT, e-invoicing, and information reporting |
| AccurateTax | Yes, to qualifying sellers | Not published, checked 2026-08-19 | Not published. Quote by email, keyed to the number of orders, with filing and exemption certificate management as optional add-ons | Ecommerce carts only. Nine platforms: Ability Commerce, Adobe Commerce, Magento Open Source, Miva Merchant, osCommerce, Shopify, ShopSite, Stone Edge Order Manager, WooCommerce, plus an XML based API | Email around the clock, phone in business hours, do-it-yourself documentation. Priority support is a managed-tier feature. No time zone, response-time target, or service level agreement published | United States small business ecommerce. Single product line, TaxTools | A small business US ecommerce seller on one of its nine listed carts, at an order volume where a per-order model beats a per-state model |
| Avior | Yes, to qualifying sellers | Not published, checked 2026-08-19 | Not published on either domain. The single call to action is a contact form, with no trial length or terms stated and no self-service signup | Eight platforms: Adobe Magento, nopCommerce, Odoo, Oracle NetSuite, QuickBooks, Shopware, Spree Commerce, WooCommerce. No Shopify, BigCommerce, marketplace, or subscription billing connector | Named as a product feature and nothing further. No hours, response-time target, escalation path, ticketing system, or service level agreement published anywhere checked | United States. Sales and use tax is one of five lines alongside tobacco and vapor, motor fuel, beverage alcohol, and MSA and scan data | A US seller or distributor whose tax problem starts with excise, on NetSuite, Odoo, or QuickBooks, carrying obligations in tobacco, fuel, or alcohol alongside sales tax |
| Exactor | No | Not applicable | Not published. No price and no pricing model | Not published, checked 2026-08-19. No integration list or platform support statement | Not published, checked 2026-08-19. The Governing Board gives an Intuit email address and a link to Intuit’s QuickBooks sales tax page | Absorbed into QuickBooks. A subsidiary of Intuit since the Absorbed into QuickBooks, with no independent web presence | No seller profile can be identified from the published record, because there is no published scope, price, or support term to match a requirement against |
How to read this table
Providers appear in the order the Governing Board lists them. That order isn’t a ranking, and neither is anything else here.
A missing price is a finding, not an omission. Three of the six publish no pricing at all, and a fourth publishes only part of it. Nobody can complete a six-way cost comparison from the public record. Custom pricing is normal in this category, and a provider that quotes may well quote below one that publishes.
The dimensions disagree with each other, and that’s the point. Avalara publishes the widest connector catalog and the most about price, and also the narrowest included support tier, with phone and chat behind upgrades it doesn’t price. Sovos assigns a named human to your filings and publishes no price and no service level. TaxCloud publishes figures for filing and audit add-ons, none for its base subscription, and isn’t the calculation engine on two of the platforms it integrates with. No column ordering survives contact with the next column.
Certification isn’t part of the comparison. All six appear on the Board’s certified provider list, so it separates none of them. It’s a Governing Board designation attached to software and to a contract, not a rating, a quality mark, or a recommendation.
Free CSP services depend on you, not on the provider. Whichever of the five you pick, free CSP services apply only in the full member states where you meet the five CSP-compensated seller criteria. Run the CSP-compensated seller test first, before you shortlist on anything.
Where each one stops
Every provider gets at least one limitation, drawn from its own public materials or the Governing Board listing. None of them is a judgment about service quality.
Avalara. Published pricing covers sellers under $50M in annual revenue only. At $50M and above the tier is Custom, with no figure. Pricing runs per state per month, so your cost tracks state count rather than volume, and a state with a handful of orders costs the same as your largest. Avalara also confirms that per return fees apply for non-SST states without publishing a figure for them.
TaxCloud. It isn’t the calculation engine on the two largest platforms it supports. Its own integration pages say that on Shopify “Shopify Tax handles your calculations” and that on Stripe, Stripe Tax does the real-time sales tax calculation at checkout. There’s no deep ERP integration such as SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, it doesn’t file marketplace facilitator orders, and it stores and applies certificate details rather than running full exemption certificate lifecycle management. It publishes no base subscription figure, so a total cost takes a sales conversation.
Sovos. It publishes no pricing anywhere, with no trial and no self-serve signup, so you can’t establish cost without a sales cycle. Model 1 requires both services: a seller selecting it as CSP “must use Sovos for both calculation and reporting/remittance,” so filing-only and calculation-only arrangements sit outside the program. Coverage outside certified states, CertManager, and Use Tax Manager are each described as separate purchases.
AccurateTax. It publishes no pricing of any kind and quotes by email only. It publishes no ERP connector and no subscription billing connector, and it doesn’t list BigCommerce, so your fallback is an XML based API. Notice response and audit response aren’t described as services it performs on any page checked on 2026-08-19, including its own Governing Board listing, although both sit on the Board’s certified free services list.
Avior. It publishes no pricing on either of its domains and no support commitment of any kind: no hours, no response-time target, no escalation path, no service level agreement. Its published integration list omits Shopify, BigCommerce, every marketplace, and every subscription billing system. State registration, nexus tracking, license management, and audit support appear on its Governing Board listing but not on its own SST page.
Exactor. It isn’t currently offering free services under the CSP program, per the Governing Board’s Exactor listing, which removes the reason most sellers seek out a certified provider in the first place. Beyond certification status and a contact route, the Board publishes nothing about it, and there’s no SST page, price, integration list, or support term to evaluate.
What this comparison cannot tell you
It can’t tell you which provider is cheapest. Half the pricing cells are empty because the providers publish nothing, and the two that publish figures aren’t selling the same scope. See what each certified provider charges for how far the arithmetic goes and where it stops.
It can’t tell you how any of them performs. Support quality, implementation reality, and what happens when a state opens an audit aren’t published by any of the six in a comparable form, and nothing here comes from a review aggregator or a data vendor. Use the table to build a shortlist, not to make the decision.
Frequently asked questions about this comparison
What does a Not published cell mean?
That the provider publishes nothing on that dimension, checked on the date the cell carries. It isn’t a zero, and it isn’t a figure held back here. The same standard applies to all six, so the blanks are comparable to each other: they tell you what each provider is willing to put in public before you speak to anyone. A dimension that reads Not published moves onto your call with the vendor rather than off your list.
Can you compare the two published prices directly?
Not usefully, because they’re priced on different units. Avalara prices per state per month, so its cost tracks how many states you’re registered in. TaxCloud prices a subscription by annual order volume and a filing plan by number of returns, and both are required. A lower headline figure on one unit can land above the other at your own footprint, so the comparable number is a quote at your state count and your volume rather than either published figure.
Where does the Best for column come from?
Each cell is drawn from that provider’s own published scope, not from a view this site holds about who should win. The six sort by the segment each one publishes for: small business ecommerce, mid-market ecommerce and SaaS, global enterprise across several tax types, an in-house tax function on a large ERP, and excise-first sellers, with the sixth absorbed into QuickBooks and publishing no scope to sort on. More than one of those can describe you at once. The cell tells you who a provider builds for, and nothing about who you should pick.
Does the integration column tell you a provider will handle your checkout?
No. It tells you the provider publishes a connector for that platform, which is a narrower claim than it looks. It doesn’t say which tier the connector sits on: Avalara’s pricing page attaches integrations to its Custom tier and names a shorter set on the two published tiers. It doesn’t say the provider does the calculation either, and on Shopify and Stripe, TaxCloud’s own pages hand the checkout math to Shopify Tax and to Stripe Tax. A missing platform has no workaround column: AccurateTax lists nine carts and no ERP connector, so anything outside them routes to its XML based API.
Which SST CSP is best?
There’s no single best one on the published record, and this page won’t manufacture one. Each of the six best-for lines above points at a different buyer profile, because the dimensions favor different providers. Pick the dimension that binds your own evaluation, usually integration fit or published cost, and shortlist on that one.
Comparison last checked: August 19, 2026. Built only from each provider’s own public materials and the Governing Board listings. Pages change, so confirm terms with the provider, and see the six certified provider profiles for the full record on each.