FreeAgent vs QuickBooks Self Employed: Stop Paying for Features You'll Never Use
FreeAgent vs QuickBooks Self Employed: a no-nonsense cost and feature breakdown for UK sole traders who just need MTD compliance without the bloat.
Two subscription fees. Dozens of features built for someone else's business. And a quarterly MTD deadline that doesn't care which one you chose.
If you're a sole trader comparing FreeAgent vs QuickBooks Self Employed, the honest question isn't which one does more. It's which one stops charging you for things you'll never touch.
- FreeAgent is priced at £19/month (inc. VAT) for most sole traders, rising to £29/month; QuickBooks Self Employed starts at £10/month but the MTD-ready tier costs more.
- Neither product was designed first and foremost for UK sole traders doing MTD quarterly submissions.
- FreeAgent's free tier via NatWest/RBS/Mettle only applies if you bank with those providers.
- QuickBooks Self Employed lacks double-entry accounting, which limits its usefulness if your business grows beyond basic invoicing.
- For sole traders who only need MTD compliance and expense tracking, both products carry features that inflate cost without adding value.
The Products in Plain English
- QuickBooks Self Employed
- A stripped-back version of QuickBooks Online sold specifically to freelancers and sole traders in the UK. It handles income/expense tracking, mileage logging, and Self Assessment filing but uses a simplified (non-double-entry) bookkeeping system. It is HMRC-recognised for MTD for Income Tax.
FreeAgent is a full accounting platform originally built for freelancers and small agencies. It launched in Edinburgh in 2007, was acquired by NatWest Group in 2018, and now sits inside the RBS/NatWest/Mettle banking ecosystem. QuickBooks Self Employed is Intuit's entry-level UK product, a deliberate downgrade from QuickBooks Online designed to feel less intimidating.
Both are on HMRC's list of compatible software for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD ITSA). Both will let you file your quarterly updates and end-of-period statement when mandation kicks in. That's where a lot of the similarity ends.
What You Actually Pay
FreeAgent's pricing in 2025 sits at £19/month (inc. VAT) for sole traders on monthly billing, or roughly £190/year if you pay annually. That sounds reasonable until you realise it is free if you hold a business account with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, or Mettle. If you don't bank with any of them, you are paying £190 to £228 a year for the privilege of not switching banks.
QuickBooks Self Employed starts at £10/month (inc. VAT). But the plan that actually includes MTD for Income Tax quarterly submissions and the Self Assessment filing feature is the £15/month tier. Intuit runs promotional pricing aggressively, sometimes 50% off for the first six months, so your first renewal can feel like a price hike. That £180/year starting point can easily become £180 for the first year and then £216 after the promotional period ends.
Neither company makes it especially easy to find this out before you've handed over your card details, which is its own commentary on how the accounting software market works.
Features: What You Get and What You're Subsidising
FreeAgent
FreeAgent is genuinely full-featured. You get invoicing, expense management, bank feeds, time tracking, project management, payroll for up to ten employees, VAT returns, Corporation Tax filing if you ever incorporate, and Self Assessment. For a sole trader earning £60,000 a year who invoices clients, tracks mileage, and wants everything in one place, it is a coherent product.
The problem is the payroll module, the project management tools, and the Corporation Tax functionality are entirely irrelevant to most sole traders. You are not paying for them directly, but you are paying for the infrastructure that maintains them. FreeAgent's pricing reflects a product designed for small agencies and limited companies that sole traders happen to also use.
The bank feed integration is strong. FreeAgent connects to most major UK banks via open banking and categorises transactions reasonably well. The mobile app is functional if not elegant.
QuickBooks Self Employed
QuickBooks Self Employed takes the opposite philosophy: strip everything out and make it approachable. You get income and expense tracking, mileage logging via GPS, basic invoicing, tax estimates, and the ability to separate business and personal spending on one bank account (a feature that serves people who haven't opened a business account, which is not best practice).
What it lacks is meaningful depth. There is no double-entry accounting, which means it cannot produce a proper balance sheet or profit and loss statement that an accountant would recognise as reliable. If you ever want to apply for a mortgage as a sole trader and need to prove your income, QuickBooks Self Employed's reports may not satisfy a lender's requirements. FreeAgent's reports, by contrast, are built on proper double-entry principles.
The mileage tracking is genuinely useful for tradespeople who drive between jobs. An electrician doing ten job sites a week can log thousands of miles annually, and HMRC allows 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles. At that rate, accurate mileage logging is worth real money: 8,000 business miles equals £3,600 in allowable expenses, saving roughly £720 in tax at the basic rate. QuickBooks Self Employed's automatic GPS mileage tracking is one of the few features where it has a practical edge over its rivals for a tradesperson.
MTD Compliance: The Only Feature That Is Actually Mandatory
From April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000 must file quarterly updates to HMRC through MTD-compatible software. (If you want the precise mechanics of what triggers mandation, The £50,000 MTD Threshold: What It Actually Triggers walks through it in detail.)
Both FreeAgent and QuickBooks Self Employed are on HMRC's approved software list for MTD for Income Tax. Both will submit your quarterly updates directly to HMRC's API. On paper, both pass the compliance test.
In practice, the experience differs. FreeAgent's MTD workflow is built into the existing Self Assessment process, which means if you have already been using it for annual filing, the quarterly submission sits naturally in the same dashboard. QuickBooks Self Employed has integrated MTD functionality, but some users report the interface for locating and submitting quarterly updates is less intuitive than the rest of the product.
For anyone currently using bridging software to connect spreadsheets to HMRC, both represent a genuine upgrade. If you are thinking about that transition, MTD Bridging Software: A Stopgap or a Trap? covers why bridging is probably not a long-term solution.
The Accountant Question
If you use an accountant, this comparison shifts considerably. FreeAgent is the preferred platform for a significant number of UK accountants, particularly those who work with freelancers and contractors. The NatWest acquisition did not diminish that preference; if anything, the free tier for NatWest customers has expanded the FreeAgent user base, making it more likely that your accountant already knows it.
QuickBooks Online (the full version, not Self Employed) is also widely used by accountants, but QuickBooks Self Employed is deliberately walled off from accountant access in the way that QuickBooks Online is not. An accountant cannot log into your QuickBooks Self Employed account through the accountant portal the way they can with QuickBooks Online. They can receive exported data, but collaborative real-time access is limited.
If your accountant already uses FreeAgent and you bank with NatWest, Mettle, or RBS, the decision is effectively made for you: FreeAgent is free and your accountant can work directly in it. That is a genuinely strong proposition.
Who Each Product Actually Serves
FreeAgent is probably the better choice if:
- You bank with NatWest, RBS, or Mettle (it's free)
- You invoice clients and want professional-looking invoices with payment tracking
- Your accountant already uses FreeAgent
- You want proper double-entry accounts that grow with you if you ever incorporate
- You are a freelancer or consultant with recurring clients rather than cash-in-hand jobs
QuickBooks Self Employed is probably the better choice if:
- You drive heavily for work and want effortless GPS mileage logging
- You are on a genuinely tight budget and the £10-15/month entry price is meaningful
- Your needs are simple: categorise income, record expenses, file Self Assessment
- You do not use an accountant and prefer a very simple interface
Neither is a great choice if:
- You are a cash-based tradesperson (plumber, builder, handyman) doing straightforward work with minimal invoicing
- You resent paying for features you will never use
- You want the lowest-friction path to MTD compliance without a learning curve
That last category is worth pausing on. A sole trader plumber earning £65,000 a year in 2026 does not need payroll, project management, or a balance sheet. They need to log income and expenses, submit four quarterly updates to HMRC, and file their annual return. The software overhead of either FreeAgent or QuickBooks Self Employed is real, and neither company has a strong incentive to tell you that a simpler product exists.
For a broader context on whether you are buying more software than you actually need, MTD Software for Self Employed: Are You Buying Too Much? addresses exactly this question.
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The Honest Bottom Line
FreeAgent wins on breadth, accountant compatibility, and value if the free bank deal applies to you. QuickBooks Self Employed wins on simplicity and mileage tracking, but its non-double-entry architecture is a ceiling that limits its usefulness as your income grows.
Neither product was engineered from the ground up for a sole trader whose primary obligation is quarterly MTD submissions and an annual Self Assessment. Both carry overhead that you will pay for and probably never use. That is not a personal failing on your part; it is a structural feature of how accounting software is monetised.
You opened this article asking which one to choose. The more useful question is whether either one is actually the right fit. If your needs are MTD compliance, basic expense tracking, and a clean record of your income, the bloat built into both platforms is a cost that does not need to exist.
If you bank with NatWest or Mettle, take FreeAgent for free and use it well. If you don't, and you drive a lot for work, QuickBooks Self Employed at £10-15/month is defensible. If neither fits, take ten minutes to look at whether a purpose-built MTD tool designed specifically for sole traders might cost less and ask less of your time. You can compare your options and check your tax position using the TapTax calculator before committing to a subscription.
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