What is better for online tax filing?

• TurboTax is the market leader in tax preparation but comes with a premium price.
• TaxSlayer is a smaller tax prep service that offers a similar product at a lower cost.
• TurboTax is best for those who need more help, while TaxSlayer is great for those who are familiar with taxes.
• See Personal Finance Insider’s picks for the best tax software »

TurboTax and TaxSlayer both offer popular online products for doing your taxes. While TurboTax is a recognized market leader, it isn’t the cheapest option and may not be perfect for everyone.

After doing my personal taxes with Credit Karma, TurboTax, H&R Block over the last few years, I decided I’d try TaxSlayer as a low-cost option that I’ve seen recommended when browsing online forums on taxes and other financial topics. I also like doing my taxes twice to make sure the results match, which they should regardless of which tax software you use.

Here’s how TurboTax and TaxSlayer compare on costs, user experience, and refund or tax bill results.

If your focus is on doing your taxes as quickly and efficiently as possible with the smoothest user experience, TurboTax is definitely a better choice. For those who don’t mind doing a little more manual entry to save money on their tax return, TaxSlayer does the job just fine.

Before trying both platforms, I expected a fairly similar user experience. I was surprised to find that TurboTax did save me quite a bit of time compared to TaxSlayer due to document upload capabilities and its connections to banks and investment companies.

I found the TurboTax experience superior enough that I would be willing to pay more for it than TaxSlayer. But, if cost is your top concern, TaxSlayer is the winner.

The first software I tried was market leader TurboTax. I’ve used this software myself and typically find it to offer a great overall experience. I have had some less-than-stellar experiences with the low-level customer service and some less-common parts of preparing my tax return as a small business owner with an S-Corp. Overall, however, I would still recommend it to family or friends without hesitation.

TurboTax is made by Intuit, a giant in financial software. Intuit also owns Mint and QuickBooks, among other offerings. It processed over 40 million tax returns in 2020 for the 2019 tax year.

Outside of regular do-it-yourself tax prep, TurboTax recently added a new feature called TurboTax Live. With TurboTax Live, you can upgrade to get live access to a tax professional or even hand off your tax return completely to have someone else do it for you. It’s not the cheapest option, but its sleek online interface and reputation are hard to beat.

The first place I saw serious recommendations of TaxSlayer was on a personal-finance forum on Reddit. Several well-reasoned people explained that they recently switched to TaxSlayer to save money compared to higher-priced competitors. They all said the experience was practically flawless.

The tax code is identical regardless of what software or accountant you use, so you should get a result that’s within a few dollars (it could vary a little due to rounding) no matter where you do your taxes. TaxSlayer is cheaper than most others for the same thing.

While it’s a smaller tax software provider than the titan Intuit, it has been around for more than 50 years and has plenty of experience handling tax returns. TaxSlayer completed more than 10 million returns in 2020.

TurboTax vs. TaxSlayer: costs and fees