Ad / affiliate disclosure: Fizoral is funded by affiliate commission. When we are a member of a vendor’s affiliate programme, links to that vendor are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Where we are not in a vendor’s programme, our links are ordinary links and we earn nothing. Commission never changes our recommendations, and we tell you below exactly where each product beats the ones we earn from. Read the full disclosure.
Xero advertises £3.20 a month. QuickBooks advertises £1. Neither is a price — they are six-month new-customer hooks that expire on your seventh bill. Fizoral prices UK accounting software over a full 24 months, after the introductory discount has gone, and prints the arithmetic so you can check it. All figures ex VAT, taken from each vendor’s own UK pricing pages, verified 31 July 2026.
Entry plans, ex VAT, monthly billing. Promotional months at the promotional rate, then full list price to month twenty-four. Every total below is the multiplication printed next to it — redo it on your phone if you like.
Verified 31 July 2026 · UK pricing, ex VAT · promotions change roughly monthly
| Entry plan | Months 1–6 (promo) | Months 7–24 (list) | 24-month total, ex VAT | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Sole Trader Cheapest paid plan | 6 × £1.00 = £6 | 18 × £10 = £180 | £186 | Cannot file MTD VAT returns. The moment you register for VAT this plan is off the table. |
| Xero Ignite | 6 × £3.20 = £19.20 | 18 × £16 = £288 | £307.20 | Capped at 20 invoices a month. Cross it and you are on Grow at £710.40 over 24 months. |
| Sage Accounting Start | (3 × £0) + (3 × £18) = £54 | 18 × £18 = £324 | £378 | Sage quotes £18+VAT, not ex VAT — that is £21.60 a month, £453.60 inc VAT. One user only. |
| FreeAgent Sole Trader | 6 × £9.50 = £57 | 18 × £19 = £342 | £399 | The most expensive on this list at list price — and £0 for anyone banking with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle. |
| Two £0 routes that beat all of the above | FreeAgent — free for the life of the account with a NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank or Mettle business account. Sage Sole Trader Free — permanently free, capped at 5 invoices a month, cannot file VAT. |
£0 | Conditional, not universal. Both are genuine products at £0, not trials. Neither pays us anything. | |
How to read this. The cheapest paid entry plan over 24 months is QuickBooks Sole Trader at £186 — £121.20 less than Xero Ignite — and we are highlighting it even though it is not the product most likely to pay us. But cheapest is not the same as right: QuickBooks Sole Trader cannot file a VAT return, so for a VAT-registered business the real comparison is Xero Ignite £307.20 against Sage Accounting Start £378, which Xero wins by £70.80. If you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster or Mettle, none of these numbers apply to you: FreeAgent is £0. Sage’s advertised prices carry a +VAT suffix where Xero’s are ex VAT; every Sage figure here is normalised to ex VAT with the inc-VAT equivalent noted. Prices verified 31 July 2026 from each vendor’s own UK pricing page; promotional offers in this category are revised roughly monthly and are for new customers only.
Every page states who should not buy the winner, and names the alternative. Where the honest answer costs us money, it still goes in the opening screen.
Comparison 01
QuickBooks £186 · Xero £307.20
QuickBooks is cheaper by £121.20 over 24 months — but its Sole Trader plan cannot file a VAT return. Register for VAT and the gap collapses to £9.60 across two years, at which point the decision stops being about price at all.
Read the full comparison →
Comparison 02
Xero £307.20 · FreeAgent £399 · or £0
Xero is £91.80 cheaper on entry plans — unless you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle, in which case FreeAgent is free for good. It also flips for landlords (FreeAgent Landlord £210) and for limited companies needing payroll (£693 against Xero’s £960).
Read the full comparison →
Comparison 03
Xero £307.20 · Sage £378 · or £0
Sage has a genuinely free tier — and quotes its paid prices +VAT, which understates them by 20%. Sage Sole Trader Free is £0 forever at up to 5 invoices a month. Normalised ex VAT, Xero Ignite beats Accounting Start by £70.80 — until you pass 20 invoices a month, when Sage wins by £332.40.
Read the full comparison →
The cheapest plan on the table above is the wrong plan for most people reading it. Five business types, five different answers — all of them priced over 24 months, ex VAT.
What best describes you?
Sole trader, not VAT-registered: start with the free and near-free tiers. Sage Sole Trader Free is £0 permanently if you send five invoices a month or fewer; past that, Sage Sole Trader at £7+VAT is £147 over 24 months, beating Xero Ignite’s £307.20 by £160.20. If you want a fuller product, QuickBooks Sole Trader is £186. See Xero vs Sage and Xero vs QuickBooks.
Sole trader, VAT-registered: QuickBooks Sole Trader and both Sage Sole Trader tiers are out — none of them file an MTD VAT return. The real comparison is Xero Ignite £307.20 against Sage Accounting Start £378 ex VAT (£453.60 inc VAT). Xero wins by £70.80 — unless you send more than 20 invoices a month, when Xero Ignite’s cap pushes you to Grow at £710.40 and Sage wins by £332.40. See Xero vs Sage.
Landlord: FreeAgent Landlord at £10 a month is £210 over 24 months against Xero Ignite’s £307.20, and it is built for per-property tracking rather than adapted to it. See Xero vs FreeAgent.
Limited company: the decision is payroll. FreeAgent Limited Company includes payroll at £33 a month — £693 over 24 months — where Xero needs Comprehensive at £50, which is £960. Without payroll, Xero Grow is £710.40. See Xero vs FreeAgent.
Banking with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank or Mettle: stop comparing. FreeAgent is £0 for as long as you hold the account — not a trial, not a discount — against £307.20 for Xero Ignite. We earn nothing from this route and it is still the right answer. See Xero vs FreeAgent.
All five answers are shown above without JavaScript — the buttons only narrow the list, they never reveal anything you could not otherwise read. Figures are 24-month totals, ex VAT, verified 31 July 2026 from each vendor’s own UK pricing page. Promotional rates are for new customers only and change roughly monthly. This is general information, not tax advice; confirm current pricing and Making Tax Digital status with the provider before you subscribe.
You should not have to take a comparison site’s word for anything. Here is everything you need to audit ours — including the part where we tell you exactly how we get paid.
Methodology
Where every price comes from, how the 24-month model is built, what we refuse to do, and how corrections are handled. Sourcing rules in full, with the arithmetic shown on every page.
Who we are
Who owns us (no software vendor), who pays us, what we cover and what we deliberately do not. Includes why this site is brand-authored rather than carrying an invented founder byline.
The money
Exactly how commission works here, which links carry rel="sponsored nofollow" and why, which vendor programmes we are and are not in, and the conflict of interest we are not going to pretend away.
Where we stand today. Fizoral is a new publication and we are in the process of applying to the affiliate programmes of the vendors we cover. At the time of writing we may not yet be accepted into any of them — in which case the links on this site earn us nothing at all today. Our disclosure is written to be accurate now and to stay accurate as programmes are granted or declined, so that nothing on this site ever needs to quietly change meaning.
The vendor links on this page go to each company’s plain public UK site: Xero UK, QuickBooks UK, FreeAgent and Sage UK. They carry rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" already, so that the markup does not have to change — and the disclosure does not have to be rewritten — if a programme is later approved.
Most of what makes a comparison site untrustworthy is a design decision, not an accident. These are ours, and they are not negotiable for a commission.
The test we hold ourselves to. If a cheaper or better-fitting product exists for the reader in front of us, we say so by name, in the first screen of the page — even when we earn nothing from it, and even when it costs us the sale. Concretely, and today: QuickBooks is cheaper than Xero over 24 months on entry plans. FreeAgent is free forever if you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle. Sage has a genuinely free tier for sole traders. All three of those facts cost us money, and all three are printed above the fold on the relevant pages — and on this one.