Where trust accounting actually sits
Clio, MyCase and PracticePanther all start at about $49 per user and all three say trust accounting is included. The entry price tells you almost nothing. What matters is whether the reconciliation your state asks for is in it.
Prices and feature placement below were read from each vendor’s own pricing page on October 7, 2026. They change, so the date matters more than usual. Figures circulating in comparison articles did not match the vendor pages when we checked, which is the reason this article exists.
What each vendor publishes
| Entry tier | Price per user / month | Trust accounting at that tier |
|---|---|---|
| Clio Starter | From $49, basis not stated [1] Clio Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans View source ↗ | Trust account management, trust account reporting, and trust and operating reconciliation, all marked as included on every tier [1] Clio Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans View source ↗ |
| MyCase Basic | $50 annual, $60 monthly [2] MyCase MyCase Plans View source ↗ | Listed as “Time Entry, Invoicing and Trust Accounting” [2] MyCase MyCase Plans View source ↗ |
| PracticePanther Solo | $49 annual, $59 monthly [3] PracticePanther PracticePanther Pricing View source ↗ | “Trust Account Ledger & Reconciliation”, marked included on all four tiers [3] PracticePanther PracticePanther Pricing View source ↗ |
One structural difference is worth noting before the features. MyCase and PracticePanther publish every tier and both billing bases. Clio publishes one figure, for Starter, and routes Core, Signature and Elite to “Get pricing”. [1] Clio Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans View source ↗ Any article quoting specific numbers for Clio’s upper tiers is not quoting Clio.
The question the entry price hides
Illinois requires firms to “prepare and maintain three-way reconciliation reports of all client trust accounts on at least a quarterly basis.” [4] Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission Client Trust Account Handbook View source ↗ Three-way means the bank statement, the trust register and the total of the individual client ledgers agree on the same date. Other states word it differently, and the frequency differs, but the report is the common deliverable.
So “trust accounting included” is not the useful question. Whether that report comes out of the entry tier is. On that, the three line-ups differ, and the differences are not where the comparison articles say they are.
Read the feature grid, not the tier card
MyCase lists “Trust Accounting” in Basic, and separately sells MyCase Accounting at $39 per user per month, available only on the Pro and Advanced plans, whose stated benefit includes “Compliance with three way trust reconciliations.” [2] MyCase MyCase Plans View source ↗ PracticePanther marks “Trust Account Ledger & Reconciliation” as included on Solo, and reserves a separate “Enhanced Reconciliation Process” for Business Pro at $114 annual. [3] PracticePanther PracticePanther Pricing View source ↗ Clio marks trust and operating reconciliation as included from Starter, but withholds accounting integrations and trust balance notifications from that tier. [1] Clio Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans View source ↗
None of those three facts is visible on a tier card or in a price comparison. Each one is a line in a feature grid, and each one changes what the entry price buys. We cannot tell you from a vendor page whether a given product’s reconciliation output satisfies your state’s rule, and neither can the vendor’s marketing. That is the question to ask in a demo, with your own bar’s wording in front of you.
The feature a small firm is most likely to miss
Clio’s grid marks trust balance notifications as not included on Starter. [1] Clio Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans View source ↗ A notification when an individual client’s trust balance goes negative is the single most useful alert in this whole area, because a negative client balance means that matter has been funded by other clients’ money while the account total still looks correct. A firm choosing the cheapest tier should know it is opting out of that.
What to ask in the demo
- Produce a three-way reconciliation on my tier, now, with sample data. Not a description of one.
- Show me what happens when I try to disburse more than a client’s ledger holds. Does it refuse, warn, or allow it?
- Which of these functions are in my tier and which are an add-on or an upgrade? Ask for it in writing.
- How are card processing fees settled, and can they ever come out of the trust account?
- What does migration move, and what does it leave behind?
Our read
For a firm whose main concern is trust handling and which wants the fewest moving parts, Clio’s position is the simplest to reason about, because accounting is stated as part of every subscription rather than a separate purchase. [1] Clio Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans View source ↗ The cost of that simplicity is that only one of its four prices is public, so the budget conversation happens on a call.
MyCase and PracticePanther are easier to budget because every tier and both billing bases are published, and both are cheaper than Clio at the top of their published ranges. The trade is that each sells a higher grade of reconciliation separately, so the real number for a trust-heavy firm is not the entry price.
We do not resell any of the three and have no referral relationship with them, which is the only reason this comparison can end without a winner. The honest answer is that at these prices the differences in trust handling matter more than the differences in cost, and a firm that picks on the headline figure is optimizing the smaller variable.
What this article is not
We describe what the vendors publish and what the published rules ask for. Whether a particular product satisfies your firm’s obligations is a legal question for your own counsel and for your state’s own rules, which differ. We do not make that determination, and a vendor telling you a product makes you compliant is telling you something it is not in a position to know.
If you are running trust accounting in QuickBooks today and weighing whether to move, we cover the account structure, the per-client sub-ledger and the reconciliation in trust accounting in QuickBooks.
References and Standards
- [1] Clio, Clio Legal AI Software Pricing & Plans, Clio. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://www.clio.com/pricing/
- [2] MyCase, MyCase Plans, MyCase. Accessed October 23, 2026. https://www.mycase.com/pricing/
- [3] PracticePanther, PracticePanther Pricing, PracticePanther. Accessed October 23, 2026. https://www.practicepanther.com/pricing/
- [4] Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, Client Trust Account Handbook. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://iardc.org/Files/ClientTrustAccountHandbook.pdf
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