Avalara and TaxJar are the two names sellers hear most often for sales-tax nexus monitoring, and both are real, capable platforms doing a genuinely different job from this page. This free tracker answers one question -- which states have I crossed a threshold in, right now, with the numbers I already have -- without an account, an integration, or a subscription. Here is exactly where each tool fits.
| Job | This tracker | Avalara / TaxJar (paid, ongoing) |
|---|---|---|
| How you check a threshold | Type in your trailing-12-month sales by state, by hand, whenever you want to check. | Connects to your sales channels via API and tallies your rolling totals automatically as orders come in. |
| How you find out you've crossed one | You re-run the check yourself and read the result. | Sends an automatic alert the moment a threshold is approached or crossed. |
| What happens after you've crossed a threshold | Nothing -- it names the states, and you take it from there. | Most plans can calculate and file the actual sales tax returns for you on an ongoing basis. |
| Cost | Free. | Ongoing subscription, priced by transaction volume or number of states. |
| Where your sales data goes | Nowhere -- stays in your browser's local storage, never uploaded. | Held on the platform's servers, which is what makes the continuous monitoring and filing possible. |
A paid platform connects directly to your sales channels (Shopify, Amazon, your payment processor) via API, continuously tallies your rolling sales by state as new orders come in, alerts you automatically the moment you approach or cross a threshold, and in most plans calculates and files the actual sales tax returns once you're registered. This tracker does none of the ongoing, connected, or filing parts -- it answers one question, once, with numbers you type in yourself.
A one-time or periodic check is enough for a seller who wants to know where they stand today, especially one not yet close to any threshold or selling into only a handful of states. An ongoing paid platform earns its subscription once you're registered in multiple states and need returns actually calculated and filed on a recurring deadline, or once your sales are large and volatile enough that a threshold could be crossed between the times you'd remember to check by hand.
No. Crossing a threshold is the start of a registration and filing process, not the end of one -- you still need to register with the state, determine what's taxable, calculate the tax, and file on that state's schedule. This tracker's job stops at telling you which states to look into next.
This tracker never uploads anything -- every number you enter stays in your browser's local storage and is never sent to a server, so there's no account to breach and no data of yours held anywhere. A connected paid platform necessarily holds your sales data on its servers in order to do the continuous monitoring and filing it's built for; that's a reasonable tradeoff for the functionality, but it is a tradeoff this tracker doesn't ask you to make.