How we compare accounting software
We list 10 accounting tools sold to UK businesses, and a published rate card exists for 10 providers. Where a vendor quotes instead of publishing, we show that it quotes rather than putting an invented figure against it.
The calculator asks for invoices per month, employees, users and whether you are VAT registered, because those are the axes the vendors in this table actually price on. The VAT toggle is not cosmetic: Xero sells its lowest rung only to businesses that are not VAT registered, so a plan that looks like the obvious answer disappears the moment you tick the box. Ranking is arithmetic on the published rate at the inputs you enter. Commission never moves a provider, we do not sell prominence, and the order is whatever the maths produces.
Prices are what each vendor publishes to a UK buyer, shown on the basis the vendor itself uses, which for UK software is normally before VAT. Some figures are true monthly prices and some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment, which is why the billing basis matters as much as the number.
Making Tax Digital, and what your accounting software has to file
Making Tax Digital is the single biggest reason a UK business shops for this category, and it is worth being precise about what it demands.
For VAT, the obligation is already live: a VAT-registered business has to keep its records digitally and submit its VAT returns through software that HMRC recognises, rather than typing figures into a web form. For Income Tax Self Assessment, the same digital record keeping and quarterly updates are being phased in for sole traders and landlords, working down by income threshold over several stages. HMRC publishes the list of recognised software, and a product either appears on it or it does not.
The practical effect here is that MTD for VAT is close to universal, so it separates almost nothing. Income Tax does.
VAT filing straight to HMRC is the baseline. Xero lists VAT returns as Yes, Sage as Yes, QuickFile as Yes and Zoho Books as Yes.
Income Tax is where the table splits. FreeAgent lists Income Tax filing as Yes, QuickBooks as Yes, Pandle as Yes (Pro) and ANNA as Yes. FreshBooks lists No, which matters a great deal to a sole trader and not at all to a limited company.
Filing the return is not the same as being ready to file it. Read the Self Assessment row next to the Income Tax one. FreeAgent lists Self Assessment as Yes and QuickBooks as Yes, while Xero lists No and Sage No. Those last two are built for the limited company market, where the personal return is your accountant's job and Corporation Tax and Companies House are the deadlines that bite.
If you are a sole trader who currently does the return yourself in January, the Income Tax and Self Assessment rows are the two that decide this purchase for you. If you run a company with an accountant, they are close to irrelevant.
Your bank can decide what accounting software costs you
This mechanism barely exists outside the UK, and it produces one of the largest price differences on the page, so check it before you read a single rate card.
FreeAgent lists its free tier as Yes (with NatWest/RBS), and that is a full licence rather than a trial, given to qualifying business banking customers of the banks named in that row. The published rate card starts at £19/mo (Sole Trader) for everyone else. Same software, and the difference is which bank you opened an account with.
ANNA comes at the same idea from the other direction: the business account is the product and the bookkeeping is inside it. Its entry tier is Free (Pay As You Go), its bank feeds are Native account because the account and the ledger are one thing, and it files VAT at Yes.
Two things to weigh before you let the bank decide:
A bundled licence is tied to the account. If the banking relationship ends, so does the free software, and you are then on the rate card with several years of records inside it. That is not a reason to refuse a free licence, it is a reason to know the exit price before you accept one.
Free is not the same as suitable. The bundled option still has to handle your VAT scheme, your legal structure and your payroll. Check those rows before the price.
Bank feeds themselves are a smaller version of the same trap. Most of this table includes them, but QuickFile lists bank feeds as Add-on (£15/yr) and Crunch as Yes (Plus). A ledger without a feed is a ledger you type in from a statement.
Free accounting software in the UK, and where the free tier stops
The UK has a genuinely free end to this market, which is not true everywhere. It is worth knowing where it stops rather than assuming it is a trial.
Pandle lists a free tier of Yes (core) with users at Unlimited and bank feeds at Yes. QuickFile lists Yes with users at Unlimited. Crunch lists Yes (with ads), and Zoho Books Yes (under revenue cap).
Read those rows together and the pattern is clear. Free plans here are rarely crippled on features. They are capped on how much business you do, and they stop at the filing.
The cap is on volume, not capability. A ledger threshold, an annual revenue figure or an invoice allowance is what moves you onto a paid tier. You cross it on a good year, not a bad one.
Filing is the usual paywall. Pandle files VAT at Yes (Pro) and Crunch at Yes (Plus). If you are VAT registered, the free plan is often not the plan you will actually be on.
Ads and support are the other trade. Crunch lists support as In-app chat and QuickFile as Community forum, against UK phone support elsewhere in the table. That is a fair swap at nothing per month, and a poor one on the day a VAT return will not submit.
If you are not VAT registered, below the volume caps and comfortable working things out yourself, the honest answer is that you probably do not need to pay for this yet. Paid plans in this category buy filing, feeds and someone to ring.
Sole trader or limited company: accounting software priced by legal structure
Most software prices on seats. A meaningful part of this table prices on what you are instead, because a sole trader, a partnership and a limited company file different things.
FreeAgent is the clearest example, with rungs named for the structure they serve: £19/mo (Sole Trader), then £27/mo (Partnership), then £33/mo (Limited Company). You are not buying more software as you move up that ladder, you are buying the returns your structure obliges you to file.
Elsewhere the axis really is seats, and the difference is stark. Xero includes Unlimited, as do QuickFile at Unlimited and Pandle at Unlimited. FreshBooks includes 1, QuickBooks 1 (Simple Start) and Sage 1 (Start). A two-director company on a single-seat plan is an upgrade waiting to happen.
Your accountant is the seat people forget to count. Xero lists accountant access as Yes (free), FreeAgent as Yes (free) and Sage as Yes (free), while Crunch lists Add-on (£25+VAT) and ANNA Limited. If you already have an accountant, ask which of these they work in daily before you choose, because the tool they know saves you more in their time than the difference in subscription.
What payroll adds to an accounting software bill
Payroll is the most common reason a UK accounting bill turns out to be larger than the price column suggested, and it is the row buyers most often read as a simple yes.
Part of this table runs PAYE inside the accounting product itself, and those that do charge for it in different shapes. FreeAgent lists payroll as Yes (included) at Included. Xero lists Yes at ~£1.50/emp. QuickBooks lists Yes (add-on) at £5/mo + £1.50/emp, and Sage Yes (bundled) at Bundled + £1.85/emp/mo.
Read those rows as shapes rather than as prices. An included module does not move with headcount at all. A per-employee charge grows with every hire. A flat fee plus a per-employee charge starts higher and then climbs at the same rate. A bundled allowance costs nothing until the allowance runs out, and behaves like a per-employee charge from that point on. Enter your real headcount in the calculator rather than reading the entry price, because headcount is the input the whole difference lives on.
The rest of the table does not run payroll at all. FreshBooks lists N/A, Pandle N/A, QuickFile N/A and Zoho Books No (add-on). ANNA lists Limited, which covers a single director and no more.
None of that means the payroll-free options are wrong. Plenty of UK businesses run payroll on dedicated software and want their accounting package to do bookkeeping and VAT only. It does mean the comparison has to be like for like: if payroll is not in the accounting bill it is in a second one, and our payroll comparison covers what that second bill looks like and what it has to file.
CIS, multi-currency and the UK jobs some accounting software cannot do
Three jobs cut this table down faster than price does, and each is a single row.
CIS, if you are in construction. Deducting and reporting under the Construction Industry Scheme is either built in or it is manual work every month. FreeAgent lists CIS as Yes, QuickBooks as Yes, Sage as Yes (Standard) and Xero as Yes (add-on). Pandle lists No and QuickFile No, which is the more common answer in this table. If you are a contractor or a subcontractor, that one row decides most of this page for you.
Multi-currency, if you invoice or buy outside the UK. This is usually gated to a higher rung rather than excluded. QuickBooks lists multi-currency as Yes (Essentials), Xero as Yes (Comprehensive), Sage as Yes (Plus) and Zoho Books as Yes (Professional). QuickFile lists Yes. FreeAgent lists Limited and FreshBooks Limited, which is enough to raise an invoice in euros and not enough to run a foreign currency bank account properly.
Stock, if you sell physical goods. Xero lists inventory as Limited, QuickBooks as Yes (Plus), Sage as Yes (Plus) and Zoho Books as Yes (Professional). Basic item tracking in a ledger is not stock control, and if you are counting things across locations you are shopping in a different category.
Work through those three rows, then the Income Tax row, then the payroll shape, and the table in front of you is usually down to a shortlist before price has been considered at all. That is the right order. Nothing here is expensive enough that a saving of a few pounds a month is worth filing your returns by hand for.