Collective vs. Lettuce: A side-by-side comparison for businesses of one

Lettuce’s entry tiers do carry a lower sticker price — Grow at $49/mo undercuts Collective’s LLC tier at $199/mo, and Pro at $299/mo comes in under Collective’s S Corp tier at $349/mo. The gap closes once you look at what’s actually included at each price. Lettuce leads with a 24/7 AI assistant and a support team, and its pricing page does not list a dedicated account manager. Collective builds a dedicated account manager into the S Corp tier itself, so human support is included at $349/mo.

This is the core structural difference between the two. Lettuce’s automation runs through its own integrated business bank account. Transactions are categorized in real time because they all flow through a system Lettuce controls. That’s genuinely convenient if you’re starting fresh and don’t mind consolidating your banking into a new provider.

Collective works with the business bank account you already have (or we’ll help you open one if you don’t have one yet). Your bookkeeper syncs and categorizes transactions from your existing accounts and a human reviews the books, rather than leaving categorization entirely to software. If you’re attached to your current bank, have existing business relationships tied to it, or just don’t want your books contingent on staying inside one company’s banking product, that’s a meaningful difference.

Both platforms handle S Corp payroll, but the support around it looks different. Lettuce automates payroll processing through a built-in Gusto integration once your account is set up. Collective’s S Corp tier pairs payroll with support for setting your reasonable salary — the number the IRS actually scrutinizes — from a person who can talk through your specific role, industry, and income instead of leaving that judgment call to software alone. Employee payroll is included on Collective's S Corp plan, not the LLC plan.

Both companies file your annual Form 1120-S. Lettuce’s business return is included on Pro, with personal 1040 filing offered separately as an add on. Collective includes one return on each plan, prepared by tax professionals: the individual return on the LLC plan, and the annual business return on the S Corp plan. If your situation has any complexity- multiple income streams, a W-2-plus-1099 mix, prior-year cleanup- having a person actually look at the return before it’s filed is worth factoring in.

Lettuce leads with a 24/7 AI assistant plus a support team, and its pricing page does not list a dedicated account manager or strategy sessions. Collective pairs an embedded AI assistant with a human team by default, and a dedicated advisor is part of the S Corp tier rather than a top-tier upgrade. Neither approach is objectively wrong, it depends on whether you want software to be your first line of support or your accountant to be.