Checked against GOV.UK on 14 August 2026 · every price read on the provider's own page on 8 September 2026 · Applies from 6 April 2026 onwards.
“having done the HMRC's own questionnaire to filter the best software for my circumstances there were zero free options. Is paying really the only option?”
We hear this most. a sole trader who had already tried the official tool, MoneySavingExpert forum, 9 September 2025 — someone in the same position as you.
Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored. All three answers are printed below whether you use this or not.
● On what you have told us, this is the one.
The products at £0 in the table cover what you have describedHere is what they leave out. On the free plans VAT, payroll and extra users are the paid extras; one caps you at 200 ledger entries and charges separately for bank feeds (quickfile.co.uk, read 8 September 2026); two are free only for as long as you hold a particular bank account. None of that stops you sending four quarterly updates and a final declaration.
This is published pricing, not advice about your affairs.
● On what you have told us, this is the one.
A bridging tool keeps your spreadsheetYou keep the sheet you already have and the tool sends the totals out of it. The cheapest bridging price we verified on a provider's own page is £30 plus VAT a year (vitaltax.uk, read 8 September 2026), and one product in the table does bridging at no charge. What you give up is what a spreadsheet has always lacked: bank feeds, receipt capture, invoicing.
This is published pricing, not advice about your affairs.
● On what you have told us, this is the one.
Full accounting software — more than Making Tax Digital asks of youOn the prices in the table below, full accounting software runs from £10 a month, or £100 a year (freeagent.com), up to £159.99 a year (getcoconut.com), both read 8 September 2026. What the extra buys is bookkeeping, not compliance: bank feeds, invoicing, receipt capture and an accountant's login. VAT registration and more than one business are the two answers that most often take a free tier away — but not always, so read the condition column before you assume it.
This is published pricing, not advice about your affairs.
Free or paid, the software has to hit these dates and no others. Your next quarterly update is due 7 November 2026, and because updates are cumulative it covers 6 April to 5 October 2026 — so it also catches up 7 August 2026 if you missed it. Your tax return for 2026 to 2027 is due 31 January 2028, and that one is still in the points system. And from September 2026 HMRC has been signing people up itself, in stages, if they had not signed up.
You are not alone, and this is the measured version of that sentence. HMRC put 864,000 sole traders and landlords in scope for this tax year (HMRC, 5 February 2026), and reported on 12 August 2026 that 436,000 had sent a first quarterly update and 570,000 had signed up. We have not subtracted one from the other to make a "how many are behind" headline — they were published six months apart and count different things — but you can see the size of the room you are standing in.
twenty minutes, tonight, and the answer at the end of it may be nothing at all
None of those three steps costs money. Anyone charging you to do them is selling you something HMRC gives away.
Where these come from, on GOV.UK: quarterly updates and their deadlines · the tax return · who has to use MTD, and when · working out qualifying income · the recognised-software finder · what to do if HMRC signed you up.
HMRC publishes the official list of software recognised for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, and its own guidance says plainly that “free products are available for those with simple tax affairs”. We drove that finder ourselves on 1 September 2026 and it returns recognised products costing £0 — for sole traders and for landlords, including bridging tools that submit straight from a spreadsheet you already keep. We take no commission from any of them, we rank none of them, and this site carries no affiliate links.
HMRC's official software finder (gov.uk) · how bridging software works · the free two-number check · your own four dates
Signing up for Making Tax Digital is free at GOV.UK. So is the checker on this page, and so is every answer on this site.
Free MTD software exists, and the products that offer it are on HMRC's own recognised list. Each one is free under a condition — a bank account, a single business, no VAT, a cap on how much you can put through it — and the condition is the part that does not make it into the headline. This page prints it beside the price, with the provider page we read it on and the time we read it.
We read the price on the provider's own page for ten HMRC-recognised products on 8 September 2026. Eight of them have a version that costs £0, and three of those eight say on their own page that they cover a let abroad as well as one in the UK. Every product here came from HMRC's own recognised-software finder rather than from anyone's marketing.
No product on this page paid to be here, and none was asked to. We take no commission and we rank no product: the table is ordered by what it costs and by nothing else. Every price on it was read on the provider's own page at the time shown beside it, and every product on it came from HMRC's own recognised-software finder rather than from anyone's marketing. If that ever changes, this paragraph changes first, and the date it changed stays on the page.
| Product | What it costs | The condition on the free version | UK property | Foreign property | Final declaration | Bridging or full | Where we read it, and when |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| My Tax Digital | Free | None disclosed on the page. | Yes | Yes — foreign property, SA106 | Not stated on the page | Bridging and full | mytaxdigital.co.uk read 8 September 2026, 22:26 BST |
| Clear Books Free | £0 for as long as you use it; paid plans from £5 a month | The free plan is the whole MTD job; VAT, payroll and extra users are on the paid plans. | Yes | Yes — UK and overseas residential lets | Yes — prepared from the four quarterly updates | Full | clearbooks.co.uk read 8 September 2026, 22:21 BST |
| Zoho Books Free | £0 a month; the Standard plan is £12 a month | Described on the page as free accounting software for solopreneurs and micro businesses. No turnover limit was printed on the pricing page the night we read it. | Yes | Not stated on the page | MTD for Income Tax is listed on the free plan | Full | zoho.com read 8 September 2026, 22:29 BST |
| Sage Sole Trader Free | Free — the page says completely free, no billing | Described on the page as ideal for non-VAT-registered sole traders. | A separate landlord edition is linked from the same page | Not stated on the page | Not stated on the page | Full | sage.com read 8 September 2026, 22:33 BST |
| QuickFile XS | Free; the next tier up is £60 plus VAT a year | Up to 200 ledger entries. Bank feeds are £15 plus VAT a year on top. | Yes, set up by hand | Not stated on the page | Listed on the page as MTD (ITSA) ready | Full | quickfile.co.uk read 8 September 2026, 22:29 BST |
| RentalBux | Free — the page says free until March 2028 | Joint-ownership splits and the advanced reporting are on paid plans, and the paid price is not shown on the page. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Full, built for landlords | rentalbux.com read 8 September 2026, 22:28 BST |
| FreeAgent, landlord edition | £10 a month, or £100 a year — or nothing at all | Free for as long as you hold a NatWest, RBS or Ulster Bank business account, or a Mettle account used at least once a month. The introductory rate on the page is £5 a month. | Yes | Not stated on the page | Yes | Full | freeagent.com read 8 September 2026, 22:26 BST |
| 123 Sheets | About £20 plus VAT a year — not verified at source: both of the vendor's pricing pages returned an error the night we read them, so this figure is second-hand and we say so rather than print it as ours | None. There is no free version. | Yes | Not stated on the page | Yes | Bridging, from Excel | 123sheets.com read 8 September 2026, 22:33 BST, pricing pages returning an error |
| VitalTax | £30 plus VAT a year for one National Insurance number, up to £198 plus VAT for an unlimited agent licence | The first quarterly submission is free, with no obligation or commitment. That is a trial, not a free tier. | Yes | Yes — UK and foreign property businesses | Yes | Bridging, an Excel add-in | vitaltax.uk read 8 September 2026, 22:28 BST |
| Coconut | Bridging £49.99 a year · filing £12.99 a month or £129.99 a year · the full plan £159.99 a year | Free for two years if you open a Zempler bank account from inside Coconut. | Yes, SA105 | Not stated on the page | Yes — the bridging plan charges £49.99 on top for it | Bridging and full | getcoconut.com read 8 September 2026, 22:27 BST |
How to read the table. What it costs is the price printed on the provider's own page on 8 September 2026, at the time in the last column. The condition is what that page attaches to the free version. Not stated on the page means exactly that — the provider did not say, and we have not guessed on their behalf. A free first submission is a trial and is recorded as one, not counted as a free version.
Every comparison table we read on this question — the vendor pages, the review sites and the accountancy guides — states its prices with no source and no read date, and not one of them has a foreign-property column. Both are in the table above. The foreign column matters because a let abroad is legally a separate property business with its own quarterly updates, so the real question is not "does this product handle foreign property" but "does it handle two property businesses in one account" — and no vendor comparison asks it.
The read time matters for the opposite reason: a price with no date is a price you cannot check. Ours can be checked in a minute, and if one has moved, tell us and we will correct it that day.
One three weeks before each of your four quarterly update deadlines — the dates are fixed and this site already works them out — and one when a price in this table changes, with what changed and the date we read it. No newsletter, no offers, no third parties, and one click unsubscribes.
Nothing on this page is behind that field. Written and sent by Andrew at Axion Labs; reply to any of them and one person reads it. We store the address and nothing else — no name, no figures, no tracking — and no email has been sent from this list yet: the sending step is not built, and we would rather say so than imply a welcome message that is not coming.
One reader on the MoneySavingExpert forum put it like this: having done the HMRC's own questionnaire to filter the best software for my circumstances there were zero free options. Is paying really the only option?
That is the ordinary experience of the official tool, and it is almost always one filter doing it rather than the market.
Drop the one filter that is not actually required of you, look again, and read the condition on whatever comes back. → HMRC's official software finder (gov.uk)
It is not one thing. On some products the free plan is the whole Making Tax Digital job and the paid plans add VAT, payroll or extra users. On others the price is nothing while you hold a particular bank account, and returns the day you close it. On one it is free until a stated date and the paid price is not published. A free first submission is a trial, not a free version, and it is recorded in the condition column as a trial rather than counted as free.
Free software is not the same as a free obligation. Signing up for Making Tax Digital is free on GOV.UK, the answers on this site are free, and none of the three steps above costs anything.
HMRC's own guidance says free products are available for those with simple tax affairs, and that there may be limits on how the product can be used — a limited number of transactions, for instance. It also states plainly that it does not recommend any product or software provider. Neither do we.
What MTD software should cost you → Keep your spreadsheet instead →
Yes. Of the ten HMRC-recognised products we priced on the provider's own page on 8 September 2026, eight had a version costing £0. Each one attaches a condition — a bank account, a single business, no VAT, or a cap on entries — and the condition is in the table on this page.
Usually one filter did it: VAT registration, an agent licence, or an income type the free tiers exclude, such as foreign property. Drop the filter that is not actually required of you and look again.
No. HMRC works with commercial software providers instead, and only a product on its recognised list can send anything to HMRC.
Andrew at Axion Labs
I priced this table myself, on each provider's own page, on one evening, and I wrote the time of every read next to it so you can check me rather than take my word. I take no commission from any of them and none of them paid to be here — which is why I can tell you plainly that a product's free tier leaves something out, and where. If a price on this page has moved since I read it, tell me and I'll fix it that day.
General information about UK tax rules, not tax advice. Your own circumstances and HMRC's official guidance govern your position. If you are unsure, speak to an accountant or contact HMRC. Tax rules change — if this page is more than a few months old, check the GOV.UK pages linked above. Found an error? Email hello@getaxionlabs.com and we will correct it.
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