Is Cone or DATEV better?

Neither clearly leads. Cone starts at On request and DATEV at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Cone or DATEV?

Cone starts at On request and DATEV at On request.

Does Cone or DATEV run on more platforms?

Cone runs on Web. DATEV runs on Windows, Web.

What is Cone best used for?

Cone is most often used for a bookkeeping practice moving clients from ad hoc invoicing onto signed recurring fee agreements, an accountancy firm that needs engagement letter wording attached to every proposal for compliance reasons, a practice losing revenue to out of scope work that is never billed because nobody notices it, standardising pricing across a firm so that partners stop quoting the same service at different rates. Of those, a bookkeeping practice moving clients from ad hoc invoicing onto signed recurring fee agreements and an accountancy firm that needs engagement letter wording attached to every proposal for compliance reasons are not what DATEV is typically brought in for.

What can Cone do that DATEV cannot?

Cone covers Engagement letters, Electronic signature, Recurring billing, Direct debit collection. DATEV covers Unternehmen online, Lohn und Gehalt, Rechnungswesen, Jahresabschluss.

Proposals · head to head

Cone vs DATEV

Cone

Proposals

Proposal to payment software for accounting and bookkeeping firms, with engagement letters and direct debit

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

DATEV

Accounting

German accounting, payroll and tax software built around the tax adviser rather than the business

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Cone the product is shaped around accountancy engagements, so a freelancer or agency outside professional services pays for engagement letter and compliance features they will never open.; DATEV dATEV does not publish transparent per-customer pricing the way a SaaS vendor does; your real cost is buried in your tax adviser's fee note, so comparing it against Lexware or sevdesk on price is genuinely hard.
They diverge on capability: Cone covers Engagement letters, DATEV covers Unternehmen online.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cone and DATEV actually diverge.

Attributes where Cone and DATEV differ
Attribute	Cone	DATEV
Platforms	Web	Windows, Web
Category	Proposals	Accounting

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cone

Engagement letters
Electronic signature
Recurring billing
Direct debit collection
Scope creep flagging
Service line templates
Client onboarding tasks

Only in DATEV

Unternehmen online
Lohn und Gehalt
Rechnungswesen
Jahresabschluss
DATEV DMS
Meine Steuern
DATEV-Schnittstelle

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cone

A bookkeeping practice moving clients from ad hoc invoicing onto signed recurring fee agreementsnot DATEV
An accountancy firm that needs engagement letter wording attached to every proposal for compliance reasonsnot DATEV
A practice losing revenue to out of scope work that is never billed because nobody notices itnot DATEV
Standardising pricing across a firm so that partners stop quoting the same service at different ratesnot DATEV

DATEV

A German GmbH that wants its Steuerberater to keep doing the books but wants receipts to stop travelling in a shoeboxnot Cone
A payroll department that must file social insurance and wage tax returns to German statutory deadlines without an external bureaunot Cone
An SME preparing an e-Bilanz and audit-ready GoBD document archivenot Cone
A tax firm standardising dozens of client engagements on one chart of accounts and one document workflownot Cone

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cone

The product is shaped around accountancy engagements, so a freelancer or agency outside professional services pays for engagement letter and compliance features they will never open.
Recurring collection depends on which payment rails are supported in your country, and direct debit coverage varies enough that the headline benefit may not apply to your client base.
Practice management integration is shallower than the incumbents, so client records often exist in two systems and have to be reconciled.
Pricing is not published, which makes it hard to compare against a general proposal tool without entering a sales process first.
As a younger vendor in a market that consolidates through acquisition, roadmap continuity carries more risk than choosing an established practice software supplier.

DATEV

DATEV does not publish transparent per-customer pricing the way a SaaS vendor does; your real cost is buried in your tax adviser's fee note, so comparing it against Lexware or sevdesk on price is genuinely hard.
The board has decided to wind down the Austria-specific portfolio: existing products remain usable to 31 December 2028, are free of charge during 2029, and cannot be used after 31 December 2029, so any Austrian entity on DATEV has a forced migration dated in advance.
It is built for German statutory practice, so a group with subsidiaries outside the DACH region will run DATEV for Germany and something else everywhere else, with a consolidation step in between.
Large parts of the suite are still Windows desktop software installed on a workstation or terminal server, which means IT overhead most companies no longer budget for when they think they are buying cloud accounting.
The lock-in is social as well as technical: because your adviser holds the installation and the history, changing accounting software usually forces you to change or retrain your adviser, which is a far bigger decision than a software migration.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cone

On request

Cone$undefined/year
- Proposals and engagement letters
- Electronic signature
- Recurring billing and direct debit mandates

DATEV

On request

DATEV Unternehmen online$undefined/month
- Receipt and bank data exchange with your tax adviser
- Cash book and master data modules
- Ordered and usually rebilled through the adviser
DATEV Mittelstand$undefined/month
- In-house financial accounting and invoicing
- Payroll modules licensed separately
- Per-workplace licensing
Lohn und Gehalt$undefined/month
- German payroll runs and statutory electronic filings
- Priced by number of payslips
- Typically operated by the adviser on the client's behalf

Which should you pick?

Choose Cone if

You need engagement letters.
You also want electronic signature.

Cone review

Choose DATEV if

You need unternehmen online.
You work on Windows, Web.
You also want lohn und gehalt.

DATEV review

Questions people ask

Is Cone or DATEV better?: Neither clearly leads. Cone starts at On request and DATEV at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cone or DATEV?: Cone starts at On request and DATEV at On request.
Does Cone or DATEV run on more platforms?: Cone runs on Web. DATEV runs on Windows, Web.
What is Cone best used for?: Cone is most often used for a bookkeeping practice moving clients from ad hoc invoicing onto signed recurring fee agreements, an accountancy firm that needs engagement letter wording attached to every proposal for compliance reasons, a practice losing revenue to out of scope work that is never billed because nobody notices it, standardising pricing across a firm so that partners stop quoting the same service at different rates. Of those, a bookkeeping practice moving clients from ad hoc invoicing onto signed recurring fee agreements and an accountancy firm that needs engagement letter wording attached to every proposal for compliance reasons are not what DATEV is typically brought in for.
What can Cone do that DATEV cannot?: Cone covers Engagement letters, Electronic signature, Recurring billing, Direct debit collection. DATEV covers Unternehmen online, Lohn und Gehalt, Rechnungswesen, Jahresabschluss.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cone: Is this only for accountants?

It is designed for accounting and bookkeeping firms. Other professional services firms use it, but general freelancers will find most of it irrelevant.

DATEV: Can I buy DATEV directly without a tax adviser?

In practice, no for most of the range. Membership of the cooperative is restricted to the tax and legal professions, and companies get access through their adviser or as a client of one.

Cone: Does it handle recurring fees?

Yes, and that is the main reason firms adopt it. Acceptance creates the fee schedule and the collection mandate together.

DATEV: Is DATEV usable outside Germany?

It operates in Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, but the depth is German. The Austrian product line is being discontinued with a hard end date of 31 December 2029.

Cone: How are payments collected?

Through supported card and direct debit providers, whose processing fees apply on top of the subscription.

DATEV: What is the DATEV-Schnittstelle everyone mentions?

It is the standard export format German invoicing and ERP tools produce so bookkeeping data can be handed to a DATEV-based adviser. Supporting it is effectively a requirement to sell accounting-adjacent software in Germany.

Cone: What is scope creep flagging?

It compares work performed against the scope agreed in the proposal and surfaces the difference so it can be billed rather than absorbed.

DATEV: Does DATEV handle e-invoicing under the German B2B mandate?

Yes, the accounting and invoicing modules were extended for the XRechnung and ZUGFeRD formats that the German B2B e-invoicing rules require.

Cone: Is pricing published?

Not in a form that can be quoted reliably. Expect a sales conversation before you can compare it on cost.

Cone vs DATEV

Cone

DATEV

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Cone

Only in DATEV

What people use each for

Cone

DATEV

Where each one falls short

Cone

DATEV

Pricing, plan by plan

Cone

DATEV

Which should you pick?

Choose Cone if

Choose DATEV if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Cone

More on DATEV

Keep looking

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