Sage

Sage Accounting's entry Start plan is £20/mo (Accounting Start), the Standard plan is £43/mo (Standard), and the top Plus plan is £59/mo (Plus), all excl. VAT. Sage frequently runs an introductory discount (currently 90% off for 6 months) on top of these list prices, so the discounted headline on the pricing page is lower than the standard rate quoted here.

Yes. Sage now bundles PAYE/RTI payroll into every Accounting plan rather than selling it as a separate product: Start and Standard include 1 employee free, Plus includes 5, then £1.85/emp/mo per additional employee. Sage also sells a standalone Sage Payroll product for businesses that want payroll without the accounting subscription.

Yes. Sage Accounting is HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital, supports direct VAT return filing, and includes Construction Industry Scheme support from the Standard plan, making it a credible choice for contractors and subcontractors as well as general small businesses.

The Start plan includes 1 (Start). Standard steps up to 3 users, and Plus is unlimited, which suits a growing team without an extra per-seat charge.

Sage is a credible established choice for UK small businesses that want unlimited invoicing from the entry plan, a built-in AI assistant (Sage Copilot), and payroll bundled into the same subscription. Its app ecosystem is thinner than Xero or QuickBooks, and inventory and multi-currency are reserved for the Plus plan.

Both now bundle payroll into every plan. Xero has unlimited users on every tier and a larger third-party app ecosystem; Sage is UK-headquartered with strong reporting heritage and a lower entry price once introductory discounts are applied. For most small UK businesses the choice comes down to app ecosystem versus price, since compliance coverage (VAT, CIS, payroll) is now comparable between the two.

Sage's entry-level payroll pricing starts from £12/mo (Essentials, 5 emp). Beyond the employees included at that tier, an extra £2.40/emp/mo applies per additional employee. This tiered structure is predictable for small teams with steady headcount, though the fee scales up as a growing business adds employees.

Yes. Sage is on HMRC's recognised payroll software list and submits Full Payment Submissions (FPS) under Real Time Information (RTI) for every pay run. It also handles auto-enrolment into a workplace pension, syncing with NEST and other major pension providers so contributions are calculated and reported automatically.

Yes. Sage includes CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) support on its Standard plan, handling contractor deductions and monthly HMRC returns for businesses paying subcontractors. This sits alongside standard PAYE payroll, so a construction business can run employee payroll and CIS subcontractor payments from the same subscription.

Sage includes Sage Copilot natively, an AI assistant built into the platform for surfacing payroll insights and answering questions about pay runs. Beyond the native tool, third-party community integrations connect Sage to broader AI and automation workflows via MCP (Model Context Protocol), though this is not an official Sage-built connector.

Sage suits small UK businesses through to around 150 employees that want established, HMRC-recognised payroll alongside broader Sage accounting. Rated 4.1 out of 5 on Capterra from 614 reviews, it is a long-standing name in UK payroll with UK phone and online support, suiting businesses that value a known brand.

Yes. Sage calculates statutory sick pay, statutory maternity and paternity pay, and other statutory leave payments automatically within each pay run, and it issues P60s at year end and P45s when an employee leaves. These are core UK payroll compliance requirements handled as standard, not as paid add-ons.