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freee is a Japanese software company that develops a cloud-based integrated management platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The company was established in July 2012 by Daisuke Sasaki and Ryu Yokoji and released its first product, the cloud accounting software "freee," in March 2013 after roughly nine months of development. Its stated vision is an integrated management platform that allows everyone to manage business freely, expressed in Japan under the mission of making small business the main character of the world.

Starting from accounting, the product line has expanded into HR, payroll, tax filing, expense reimbursement, electronic signature, invoicing and sales management, together with a third-party application store whose integrations include Rakuten, Amazon and Line. A central technical feature is automated linkage with bank and credit card accounts, which generates bookkeeping entries with limited manual input; the platform is reported to maintain more than 1,000 banking and financial integrations. In December 2025 freee added consolidation accounting and manual double-entry bookkeeping, and it has been rolling out AI-oriented features including automated receipt capture, a ChatGPT-based tax guidance mini-app, an AI website builder and a business-succession matching tool.

The company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market in December 2019 and trades under the code 4478. Its headquarters have been in the Gotanda area of Tokyo's Shinagawa ward, where it occupied nine floors of a building as of December 2021, with a planned move to Osaki in August 2022 roughly doubling floor area.

Founding story

Daisuke Sasaki studied data science at Hitotsubashi University and worked at Hakuhodo, a private equity fund (CLSA Capital Partners Japan) and as CFO and VP of product management at the startup ALBERT Inc. before joining Google in 2008, where he led SMB marketing for Japan and Asia-Pacific. Observing that technology expanded the options available to small business owners, and drawing on his own experience of repetitive manual back-office work as a startup CFO, he identified accounting as a high-value target for automation. He learned Ruby on Rails to build a prototype and recruited Ryu Yokoji, then a software developer at Sony, as co-founder. The company was established in July 2012 in Sasaki's living room; three people worked there for about nine months to launch the first service. Pre-launch interviews with prospective users were largely negative, but the founders proceeded on the basis of their own experience of the problem.

Business model

Subscription software-as-a-service sold to small and medium-sized businesses and sole proprietors, complemented by an application store of third-party integrations. Reported ARPU is roughly JPY 56,700 annually, described as about $30-40 per month, and the company is around GAAP breakeven with capitalized software costs.

Recurring subscription fees from paying business customers; revenue growth is driven by adding paying customers and by increases in average revenue per user.

Traction

About 300,000 business establishments used cloud accounting freee as of the March 2022 interview, against an estimated 6.5 million corporations and sole proprietors in Japan. Later reporting cites roughly 500,000 businesses on the platform and about 607,000 paying customers, up from 160,000 in 2019, with revenue compounding at a 39% CAGR since 2019 and monthly overall churn of 1.1% in 2025 (0.5% for corporate customers).

Latest developments

In December 2025 freee launched consolidation accounting and manual double-entry bookkeeping to close feature gaps, and accelerated AI product rollouts under newly appointed Chief AI Officer Ryu Yokoji, including automated receipt capture, a ChatGPT tax guidance mini-app, an AI website builder and a business-succession matching tool. Management has guided to 26% revenue growth for the current fiscal year, with long-term operating margin guidance of 30%.