How Much Does an Accountant Cost? UK Prices 2026

A UK accountant costs anywhere from £10 a month to £185 a month, or £49 to £599 a year if you pay a fixed annual fee for company accounts. The spread is not about quality. It is about your legal structure, your turnover, and how much of the bookkeeping you hand over rather than do yourself. This guide breaks down verified 2026 pricing from six UK accountancy firms so you can see what your business is likely to pay before you speak to anyone.

Every figure below was read off each firm’s own live pricing page in August 2026. Where a firm publishes only a headline “from” price and puts the real rate behind a quote tool, we say so rather than presenting the teaser as a package price. Where a firm does not state whether its prices include VAT, we flag that too, because on a £45 monthly fee that ambiguity is worth £108 a year.

How Much Does an Accountant Cost in the UK?

UK accountancy fees fall into two pricing models. Online accountants charge a monthly retainer, typically £24.50 to £60 a month for a sole trader and from £39.50 a month for a limited company, covering year-end accounts, a tax return and ongoing support. Budget fixed-fee firms instead charge once a year for a defined job: £150 to £500 for limited company accounts and a Corporation Tax return, banded by turnover. A dormant company can be filed for £49 to £99. At the upper end, Crunch’s Premier limited company service starts at £185 plus VAT a month for businesses wanting closer advisory support. Add-ons sit outside all of these: expect £29 to £30 per VAT return and roughly £5 per payslip for payroll.

The monthly and annual models are not directly comparable. A £250 annual fixed fee buys one filing job. A £45 monthly retainer costs £540 a year but usually includes unlimited questions throughout the year, which is where most of the value sits if you are unsure what you can claim.

Monthly Online Accountant Fees Compared

These are the published monthly rates from four UK online accountants, checked in August 2026. Two of them publish a full rate card; two publish only an entry price and generate the real quote from your business details.

Fixed Annual Fees by Turnover

Budget fixed-fee accountants price limited company work by turnover band rather than by month. This is the cheapest route if you keep your own books and only need the year-end filing done. Cheaper Accountant charges £150 a year at up to £10,000 turnover, £250 up to £75,000, £375 up to £150,000 and £500 above £250,000. Taxez bands differently, from £199 under £1,000 turnover to £599 above £250,000, with a £349 band sitting just under the VAT threshold.

Neither firm states VAT status on its fee table. Both charge separately for payroll and VAT returns, so the headline band is the floor of your total cost, not the ceiling.

The two firms band turnover differently, which is why the rows above do not line up exactly. Taxez splits at £45,000 and £90,000; Cheaper Accountant splits at £10,000, £75,000 and £100,000. If your turnover sits near one of those lines, the cheaper firm can flip depending on which side you fall.

What Sole Traders Pay

A sole trader needs one main filing: a Self Assessment tax return. The current tax year runs 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026, with an online filing deadline of 31 January 2027 and the same date for payment. At the cheapest end, a basic Self Assessment can be filed from £50 a year, or from £59 at Taxez, and a fuller sole trader service starts at £150 a year. If you would rather pay monthly and have someone available year-round, The Accountancy Partnership starts at £24.50 a month and Mazuma runs from £38 plus VAT for Basic to £60 plus VAT for Premium. Landlords filing property income are quoted separately, from £125 a year.

The practical decision is not price, it is whether you want a one-off filing or a relationship. A £50 return is genuinely cheaper than £294 a year at £24.50 a month, but it buys you a submitted form, not someone to ask in October whether a purchase is deductible.

What Limited Companies Pay

Limited companies pay more than sole traders because there is more to file: annual accounts, a Corporation Tax return, and a confirmation statement. Monthly services start from £39.50 at The Accountancy Partnership, around £15 a month above its sole trader rate. Directors usually need their own Self Assessment on top, charged there at £10 plus VAT per month for the first two directors and £10 plus VAT for each additional director. On the annual fixed-fee model, company accounts and a Corporation Tax return run £150 to £500 at Cheaper Accountant and £199 to £599 at Taxez, banded by turnover. A confirmation statement is charged separately, at £39 or £85 depending on the firm.

Corporation Tax itself is a separate cost from your accountant’s fee. The small profits rate is 19% on profits of £50,000 or less and the main rate is 25% on profits above £250,000, with Marginal Relief giving an effective rate in between. Those thresholds are reduced proportionately for short accounting periods and if your company has associated companies.

What Is Usually Not Included

Most headline prices cover accounts and a tax return. These common jobs are typically charged on top, and they are where an apparently cheap package becomes an average-priced one:

• VAT returns – £29 per return at Taxez, £30 at Cheaper Accountant. Filed quarterly, that is £116 to £120 a year.
• Payroll – around £5 per payslip or £5 a month. A three-person payroll run monthly is roughly £180 a year.
• Confirmation statement – £39 to £85 a year, plus the Companies House filing fee.
• Director Self Assessment – £10 plus VAT per month per director at The Accountancy Partnership.
• Rush work – Cheaper Accountant charges £150 extra for same-day turnaround.

What Drives the Price Up or Down

Four things move an accountancy quote more than anything else. Legal structure comes first: a limited company costs roughly £15 a month more than a sole trader at the same firm because of the extra filings. Turnover comes second, and it is the axis budget firms price on directly, with £350 a year between the lowest and highest band at Cheaper Accountant. VAT registration is third, and it is a step change rather than a slope, because crossing the £90,000 taxable turnover threshold adds quarterly filing. Payroll is fourth: every employee adds a monthly payslip charge.

Bookkeeping quality sits underneath all of it. A year of unsorted receipts costs more to process than a clean set of records, and that difference is usually quoted as a one-off clean-up fee rather than shown on any rate card.

If you already run payroll in-house, our guides to payroll software costs and payroll bureau versus software cover that side separately, since accountants and payroll providers price it very differently.

How to Pay Less for an Accountant

• Do your own bookkeeping – the annual fixed-fee firms assume you arrive with clean records, which is why they can charge £250 rather than £540.
• Check which turnover band you fall into – the two budget firms split bands at different points, so £5,000 of turnover either side of a line can change which is cheaper.
• Unbundle the add-ons – if you only need one VAT return checked rather than four filed, ask for it priced separately.
• Confirm VAT status in writing – a quote that omits it can be 20% higher than the one you compared it against.
• Ask what happens in year two – introductory rates on monthly packages are common; the renewal rate is the one you will pay longest.

If cash flow rather than fee level is the real problem, invoice finance and a business line of credit solve a different question than a cheaper accountant does. And if your bookkeeping is the bottleneck, spend management tools reduce the receipt-chasing that drives clean-up fees.

Clara Wenslow

Finance & Business Services Editor

Clara analyses SME finance and procurement markets, covering business loans, invoice finance, payroll, and related B2B services. She ensures each comparison and guide is transparent and data-driven.

Reviewed by

Sarah Mitchell

B2B Commerce & Finance Reviewer