On December 27, 2024, Bench shut down without warning and locked ~11,000 clients out of their own financial records days before tax season. It was acquired by Employer.com and relaunched in January 2025 — but the episode is the single most important fact when choosing between these two.
| Data ownership | Post-2024 track record | |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot | runs on QuickBooks Online — your data, fully portable | operationally stable through 2024–2026; built a Bench-migration onboarding flow |
| Bench (Employer.com) | proprietary platform — you cannot export to QuickBooks | reviews cite slower support and delayed closes vs pre-shutdown |
Pilot keeps your books in [QuickBooks](/entry/quickbooks-vs-xero-vs-wave-for-a-solo-business-2026) Online, which you own and can take with you if the relationship ends — the exact thing Bench clients couldn't do. It's a human-first service (real accountants, software underneath) built for venture-backed startups that need accrual accounting, R&D tax-credit support and CFO-grade books, with optional tax and CFO add-ons. It has been stable throughout the period that Bench imploded, and it explicitly courts Bench refugees.
Bench under Employer.com is cheaper and can produce clean cash-basis books for a solopreneur or small service business — but you're trusting a company that already demonstrated it will pull the plug abruptly, on a platform you can't export from, with post-acquisition reviews reporting slower service.
For most businesses comparing these in 2026: Pilot — the data portability alone justifies it, and the reliability difference is real. Consider Bench only if price is the deciding factor, you keep independent backups of your books, and you can tolerate the reliability risk. Whatever you choose, keep your own copy of the books.