The Cheapest Accounting Software Platforms

ZohoBooks and FreeAgent offer the cheapest accounting software since both providers have free plans, and paid plans that start at just £10, lower than competitors.

A close third is QuickBooks, which, although doesn’t offer a free plan, has a starting plan that costs just £10 per month and is designed for sole traders. Clear Books and FreshBooks bring up the rear, with plans that start at £13.50 and £15 respectively.

Cheap accounting software for small businesses is often aimed at sole traders and micro businesses, and most starter plans offered by providers are designed with these businesses in mind. We’ll go over what you can get with each of these cheap accounting software providers, what it’s like using their platforms, and who we recommend them to.

The Cheapest Accounting Software: At a Glance

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of the cheapest accounting software platforms:

1. FreeAgent: Best Value for Money

Like ZohoBooks, FreeAgent has a free plan, and its paid plans start from £10 per month. However, FreeAgent’s peculiarity is that all its plans can be free to use for businesses that meet certain criteria. If you don’t, FreeAgent’s plans generally cost less than the competition, while still providing you with advanced features, making it the best value-for-money accounting software.

Why we recommend FreeAgent

If you meet the criteria to get a free FreeAgent plan, then using them is pretty much a no-brainer. If not, then FreeAgent’s average cost of £22.50 per month still makes it the cheapest option around, and you’ll still get access to financial planning tools and a full set of basic accounting tools, including unlimited invoices and expenses on all plans, something not offered by ZohoBooks or FreshBooks.

Included in all FreeAgent plans, including its £10 Landlord plan, is a cashflow projection tool and built-in tools for tax forecasting and planning. Cashflow projection is also available from £10 with QuickBooks, but all other competitors only offer it on more expensive plans. FreeAgent is also the only accounting platform on this list to offer tax forecasting.

FreeAgent is also easy to use for beginners. Its invoicing tool includes a timeline feature, guiding us through the process, and the platform comes with tax reminders and pre-built end-of-year reports, available on all plans. Tax reminders are only available from £16 with QuickBooks.

Payroll software is also included at no extra cost on all FreeAgent plans, except the £10 Landlord plan. This is extremely rare in the industry, making FreeAgent the cheapest option for integrating accounting and payroll. For comparison, QuickBooks offers payroll as a £5 to £10 add-on, and Clear Books offers it from £2.70 per employee per month.

Our experience using FreeAgent

We found FreeAgent generally quite easy to use when we tested it, although not quite as easy as ZohoBooks, which earns the top spot for ease of use.

Creating invoices and estimates was a breeze thanks to FreeAgent’s clear, pre-built templates. The invoicing tool’s timeline feature also made it it easy to know how far along in the process we were, and is a great tool for novice users. FreeAgent’s comprehensive end-of-year reports and tax reminders were also particularly suited to accounting beginners since they were clear and simple.

However, we had difficulty locating features like payment reminders, customisation options for invoice reminders, and currency settings, since they were located in places we didn’t find very obvious. The search bar also didn’t produce any results to help us find these features when we tested them.

What are the downsides to using FreeAgent?

There aren’t any downsides to FreeAgent when it comes to price, however, there are a few missing tools that could slow down productivity.

For example, FreeAgent was one of the few platforms we tested that didn’t suggest options for frequently entered data. This slowed down the data process and is a feature most competitors such as QuickBooks include.

It’s also not possible to assign multiple delivery addresses to clients, which could pose issues for businesses that sell physical products. This is allowed with ZohoBooks, making it a better option for managing product sales.

2. ZohoBooks: Cheap and Easy to Use

ZohoBooks offers a completely free accounting software plan that’s highly functional and suitable for sole traders and micro businesses. Scaling up also doesn’t cost much, since ZohoBooks’ starter plan, the £10 per Standard plan costs less than the average starter plan.

Why we recommend ZohoBooks

ZohoBooks’ free plan is more than just a ploy to get you to upgrade to a paid plan. It can actually be used for day-to-day accounting since users get access to features such as 1,000 invoices a year, 1,000 expenses, integration with multiple banks, and VAT tracking, filing, and returns. By contrast, QuickBooks’ cheapest paid plan, the £10 Sole Trader, doesn’t even allow for VAT submissions.

The free plan also comes with features you wouldn’t expect from a free tool, such as a client portal, the ability to set up recurring invoices and payment reminders, and mileage tracking and receipt scanning for expenses. Clear Books, for example, only allows for mileage tracking and employee expense claims on its most expensive plan, the £36 per month Large.

Upgrading to ZohoBooks’ £10 per month Standard plan increases invoices and expenses to 5,000 per year respectively, allows for three account users instead of one, and allows users to create 10 custom reports. £10 is still less than the average starting price for accounting software, and with its increased invoicing and user limit, ZohoBooks Standard is a great tool for micro-businesses.

The next two plans up cost £20 and £25 per month respectively, which is less than what it costs to upgrade with all competitors on this page except FreeAgent. Upgrading gives you access to more users and much higher limits for invoices and expenses and gives businesses access to stock-level tracking and cash flow projection tools.

You need to pay £47 per month for stock tracking with QuickBooks, although it offers cash flow projection from its £10 plan, so ZohoBooks is better value for businesses that sell physical products.

Our experience using ZohoBooks

ZohoBooks was the easiest-to-use accounting platform that we tested, making it a great option for small businesses that aren’t accounting experts.

We found the sidebar dropdown menus easy to interpret thanks to great signposting, and the layout of quotes and invoices was email-inspired, making them easy to edit. We also liked that the system gave us prompts when an error was detected.

We did encounter some usability issues when it came to customising reminders for clients since we couldn’t send out bulk reminders. The search function on ZohoBooks also wasn’t great, since it required an exact match to come up with search results.

What are the downsides to using ZohoBooks?

There are a few downsides to using ZohoBooks. The most glaring is that its top-tier plans cost £85 and £165 per month respectively, making them the most expensive top plans of any provider we researched. Useful tools such as multi-currency selling and advanced analytics are also reserved for the top plans.

If you sell internationally, you can get multi-currency selling for £36 with Clear Books and £33 with QuickBooks. QuickBooks also offers advanced analytics for £115 per month compared to ZohoBooks’ £165.

ZohoBooks also only integrates with around 12 third-party apps, and is mainly designed for businesses who plan on using Zoho’s ecosystem of software. If you already use software and want to keep it, we recommend QuickBooks, since it integrates with 750 apps.

3. QuickBooks: Access Financial Planning Tools for a Low Cost

QuickBooks might not have free accounting software plans like FreeAgent and ZohoBooks, but its £10 Sole Trader starting plan costs the same as these two competitors’ cheapest paid plans.

Additionally, QuickBooks offers a deal where businesses can get their first six months for just £1 when paying monthly, or a whole first year for just £10.80 when paying annually.

Why we recommend QuickBooks

On QuickBooks’ £10 per month Sole Trader plan, businesses can send unlimited invoices, run custom reports, and generate cash flow projections, to name a few features. These aren’t tools that are included in ZohoBooks’ £10 plan, and FreeAgent doesn’t offer custom report building on any of its plans. This makes QuickBooks the best accounting software for businesses looking for advanced reporting tools at a low cost.

We were particularly impressed by QuickBooks’ cash flow projection tool. Not only does it provide clear estimates, but it can also alert businesses about potential cash shortfalls or surpluses, something none of the competitors on this list do. We also liked QuickBooks’ data dashboard, which highlights overdue payments and other key metrics in the form of graphs and is available on all plans. ZohoBooks offers a similar dashboard, but we found that QuickBooks’ version offered a better summary of key stats.

On the practical side, QuickBooks also improves efficiency thanks to pre-populated fields and email previews streamlining. Converting quotes into invoices was also very smooth, regardless of what plan you’re on, thanks to a button on each quote.

Upgrading to the £16 per month Simple Start plan lets businesses track VAT and submit VAT returns, and gives businesses access to QuickBooks’ payroll add-on. FreeAgent and ZohoBooks offer VAT from their £10 plans, making them better value for VAT-registered companies.

For advanced reporting functions and analytics, businesses need to upgrade to the £47 or £115 QuickBooks plans, which is less than the £85 to £165 you’d pay for the equivalent with ZohoBooks. Given that QuickBooks and ZohoBooks are the only two providers on this list to offer advanced reporting for medium-sized businesses, QuickBooks offers the best value for data-hungry businesses.

Our experience with QuickBooks

QuickBooks wasn’t the easiest platform to use, mainly because of unclear signposting and a cluttered menu, and the fact that a lot of core processes, like expenses and tax rates require manual set-up prior to launching into using the platform.

That said, the platform did offer helpful tooltips and a clear setup guide that made getting started easier, and we liked the fact that the menu could be customised to optimise efficiency.

What are the downsides to using QuickBooks?

One of QuickBooks’ main downsides is that VAT is only available from the £16 per month plan, and not its £10 per starter plan. This makes it more expensive than competitors FreeAgent and ZohoBooks for businesses that are VAT-registered.

QuickBooks is also the only platform on this list that doesn’t offer a time-tracking tool, which could be an issue for accountants looking to charge billable hours or small businesses who want to plan out time spent on accounting.

Lastly, QuickBooks’ most expensive plan, the £115 per month Advanced plan is more expensive than most competitors’ top plans, with the exception of ZohoBooks. Luckily, unlike ZohoBooks, the tools most businesses need are in QuickBooks’ cheaper plans, and the Advanced plan is aimed at medium-sized businesses with a budget for software.

4. Clear Books: Get Great Tax Support

At £13.50 per month, ClearBooks’ cheapest plan is only slightly pricier than the providers we’ve looked at so far. Plus, if you pay annually, the price per month goes down to £12.15 per month.

Why we recommend Clear Books

Clear Books £13.50 per month Small plan offers decent functionality. Unlike QuickBooks and ZohoBooks, the plan allows for an unlimited number of users, and businesses can send unlimited invoices. However, for key tools such as VAT submissions and expense management, you need to upgrade to Clear Books’ more expensive plans.

The one that provides the best value for money is the £29 Medium plan, which costs £26.10 when paid annually. That’s because this plan gives you access to Clear Book’s excellent tax support tools.

On the medium plan, businesses will get automatic tax calculations not just for VAT, but also for income, sales, and GST. No other provider supports as many tax types as Clear Books, making the £26.10 per month well worth it for businesses that deal with diverse goods or operate internationally.

Clear Books’ software is also capable of automatically updating tax on services and products when regulations change. Most other providers only give users a warning but require manual changes.

Finally, Clear Books is the only provider to offer a “Tax Projection” tool, available from the Medium plan, which gives guidance on upcoming tax payments and can help small businesses stay compliant. It’s also easy to submit VAT returns with Clear Books since it’s part of the Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative, so it integrates with HMRC’s portal. Most competitors offer this as well, but Clear Books offers more guidance than competitors.

Our experience with Clear Books

We found Clear Books slightly challenging to use, mainly because the navigation bar was confusing. There were naming inconsistencies, and it was quite cluttered, which made it hard to find the tools we needed.

That said, Clear Books has a great search bar, which actually offers results without an exact match, unlike many of its competitors. This helped a lot when locating tools. Creating a quote was also quite easy once we’d located where this tool was, although we found the customisation options quite limited.

Clear Books is suited to small businesses looking for a basic accounting tool, but only those willing to put in the work to learn how the platform works.

What are the downsides to using Clear Books?

One of the main downsides to Clear Books is its price. It’s not an expensive provider by any means, but in order to manage VAT you need to be at least on the £29 per month Medium plan. FreeAgent and ZohoBooks let you do this for free, and QuickBooks lets you do this for £16 per month.

Clear Books also doesn’t have great financial insights and prediction tools. For example, it is missing a cash flow projection tool, even on its most expensive plan, and it doesn’t allow for customised reporting, something you can access on QuickBooks’ £10 plan.

5. FreshBooks: Best for New Businesses

FreshBooks’s starting price is the most expensive on this list, at £15 per month for the Lite plan. However, with an average price of £25 per month, and price increases of only £10 between plans, FreshBooks is actually quite a good option for businesses looking to scale up cheaply.

You also get a discount if you pay for the year upfront, with the Lite plan going down to £13.50, not much more than Clear Books’ starting price.

Why we recommend FreshBooks

As we’ve noted, even though FreshBooks has the highest starting price of all the providers on this list, it only costs £10 more to upgrade to other plans. QuickBooks, on the other hand, has price jumps of a little under £20 between plans, while Clear Books has increases of around £15.

Besides being easily scalable, FreshBooks is a great option for new businesses that are beginners in accounting, since it’s easy to use and has great customer support.

FreshBooks has a phone line that’s open until 12 am even on weekends and a 24/7 chatbot. This means it’s easy to get help, even outside of traditional working hours. For comparison, QuickBooks’ phone lines are only open on weekdays, and you need to request a call online, you can’t call the support team yourself.

We also found FreshBooks’ knowledge centre to be particularly well stocked. Its self-help guides covered a wide range of topics and were clear and up to date, a stark contrast to competitors such as ClearBooks, whose selection of guides was rather sparse.

FreshBooks also offers decent accounting tools. VAT support and filing are available from the cheapest £15 per month Lite plan, unlike with ClearBooks, and the plan even includes budgeting tools for projects, something QuickBooks only lets you do from its £47 per month plan.

Our experience with FreshBooks

Part of what made FreshBooks easy to use was the layout of its quotes and invoices. We could edit settings directly on the page we were working on, and buttons for converting quotes to invoices were placed in highly visible spots. On other platforms, we had to go to a separate settings page, which was confusing.

The signposting and menu layout were also very clear, but we did think the term “estimates” to describe the quote creation tab was needlessly vague. We weren’t huge fans of FreshBook’s emailing tool. There was no clear button for sending messages to clients, and when testing we actually accidentally resent an invoice to a client since we couldn’t find another way to edit a personalised message.

What are the downsides to using FreshBooks?

FreshBooks, like Clear Books, doesn’t have a great selection of financial planning tools. For instance, it’s missing cash flow projection and budget-setting tools, and there’s no custom reporting available on any plans. Businesses looking for robust reporting and analytics tools should look at QuickBooks as an alternative.

FreshBooks’ mobile app also isn’t great for managing accounting on-the-go, since it can’t be used to view reports or process transactions. We recommend ZohoBooks for businesses that need a solid mobile app since it lets you do almost everything you can do from the desktop version.

Is Cheap Accounting Software Worth It?

Cheap accounting software can be worth it, especially for sole traders and micro businesses that need a basic accounting solution to help with bookkeeping and tax submissions.

“Cheap” software plans are often the entry-level, or starter plans, of accounting software providers. This means they come with fewer fancy features, like multi-currency invoicing and advanced financial projections, and are designed to help individuals or very small teams track their money in order to submit accurate reports to HMRC.

However, growing businesses require accounting software with more advanced features, like tax calculations, multi-currency support, batch invoicing, and financial planning and prospecting tools. These features aren’t usually included in starter plans, but the good news is that the same providers who offer cheap starter plans also offer more expensive plans with advanced tools.

If you’re looking for affordable providers to scale up with, we recommend FreeAgent and FreshBooks. Both providers have the lowest average price, with their most expensive plans costing £33 and £35 per month respectively.

Methodology: How We Test Accounting Software