Genuinely Free MTD Software:
The Ones That Actually File

"Free MTD software" is now a crowded shelf, and most of what sits on it is not free in the way you would assume. Some products are free until you press submit. Some are free only if you open the right bank account. Some are free per year but metered per submission. And a few, genuinely, will take you from a bank transaction to a filed tax return for nothing at all.

This page separates them using HMRC's own grading rather than vendor marketing. Every count comes from the find-software directory as scraped on 17 October 2026, and every price is dated to the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026.

What a free version means here

HMRC grades Free version as Ready now when the vendor says a free version exists. That is not the same as filing the year for £0. A free version can still charge to submit, require a bank account, or stop before the final declaration. Prices on this page were last checked in August 2026. That date is separate from the 17 October 2026 directory scrape.

How many MTD products are actually free?

37of 159 (23%)list a free versionHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 17 October 2026

HMRC lists what each vendor declares. Feature flags, mobile-app support in particular, are vendor claims rather than verified facts, and listings change. Check with the vendor before you buy. Data: HMRC find-MTD-software service (tax.service.gov.uk), scraped 17 October 2026.

That number is real, and it is why "we have a free plan" stopped being a differentiator some time in 2026. A quarter of the directory now gives something away. The useful question is no longer whether a product has a free tier, but how far that free tier carries you.

There are three checkpoints on the way to compliance, and free products drop out at different ones:

1. Digital record keeping. Almost every free tool clears this.
2. Four quarterly updates. Most free tools clear this too, and it is what the marketing means by "free MTD filing".
3. The final declaration and the return itself. This is where free tiers thin out dramatically, and where HMRC's 16 tax-return items become the honest measure.

The 16 tax-return items

HMRC's directory grades every product against 16 components of a complete Self Assessment return, including employment income, UK and foreign dividends, UK and foreign interest, state and private pensions, Construction Industry Scheme, capital gains, Marriage Allowance, Student Loan and the High Income Child Benefit Charge. A product graded 'Ready now' on none of them can send quarterly updates but cannot complete your return.

The free products that can finish a return

Filter the free tier down to the products that can also complete most of a return, and this is what is left.

14of 159 (9%)list a free version AND have 9 or more of the 16 return items readyHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 17 October 2026

Free-version products graded ready on nine or more of HMRC's 16 tax-return items, as graded on 17 October 2026.

Product	Free	Sole trader	UK property	Foreign property	Mobile app	Return items
AATAX	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	16/16
FileThat!	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	16/16
FreeAgent for free with Mettle, NatWest & RBS	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	16/16
Quarterwise	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	16/16
TaxBridge UK MTD by Amelia GB	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	16/16
Clear Books Free	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	15/16
My Tax Digital (Free)	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	15/16
RentalBux Free	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	15/16
TaxHeaven	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	15/16
TaxUpdates	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not listed	15/16
Pandle	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	14/16
ANNA Self Assessment	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	12/16
Self Assessment Direct	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	9/16
Zoho	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	9/16

A few of these deserve their reputations, and a few come with conditions the directory cannot show you.

My Tax Digital (Open Answers) is free on principle. As of August 2026 there is no paid tier at all: MTD for VAT and Income Tax, bridging or full accounting, multiple businesses and agent access, at £0. The trade is the user experience and the absence of automation. It is web-only, which is the axis we pull apart in TapTax vs My Tax Digital.

TaxHeaven gives away the part everyone else charges for. Its free Angel plan covers quarterly updates and the final declaration for one business or income type, with paid Archangel at £58.80 a year (August 2026) unlocking more. The free plan limits AI assistance to three uses a month. Also web-only.

Clear Books Free is the most commercially serious free tier here, from an established UK accounting company that markets explicitly against the pattern this page describes, promising "no sneaky upgrade wall": forever free, no card, no transaction limits, including quarterly updates and the year-end final declaration, with paid tiers at £5 and £15 a month (August 2026) for VAT, multi-user and payroll. It also covers foreign property as of the 17 October 2026 scrape, which resolves a discrepancy that ran through early August: Clear Books' own pricing advertised a Foreign Property Free tier while the directory still graded the listing not included. HMRC's record has now caught up, so Clear Books Free covers all three income sources at £0.

Self Assessment Direct is unconditionally free with no tiers and no expiry, covering the self-employment, UK property and foreign property pages, and we compare it feature by feature in TapTax vs Self Assessment Direct. Note the mobile column carefully here: the directory records iOS and Android for it, while the vendor's own site presents a web-only product. Directory mobile flags are vendor-declared, and this is the clearest example of why to verify one before you rely on it.

RentalBux Free is, with Clear Books Free, the closest thing on the directory to free, mobile and complete at once. The conditions are real though: the free plan covers one property and, per RentalBux's own pricing in August 2026, runs free until March 2028. That window is not an accident, since it spans the entire MTD phase-in from £50,000 in 2026 down to £20,000 in 2028.

FreeAgent is free only if you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster or Mettle and use the account monthly. Without one of those, list pricing in August 2026 is £19 a month for sole traders and £10 a month for landlords, with promotional rates around half that. It belongs in the bank-gated category below as much as this one.

Zoho includes MTD for Income Tax across all Zoho Books plans, including the free plan, which is available below £35,000 turnover (August 2026). If you are under that ceiling and already in the Zoho ecosystem, it is a genuinely free route, and TapTax vs Zoho sets out where that ceiling starts to bite.

The five ways "free" is not free

Every pattern below is documented from the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026. None of these products is doing anything improper, and several are perfectly good buys. The point is that the word "free" on the shelf label means five different things.

1. Free records, paid filing

The most common pattern. You get bookkeeping at £0 and discover the submission itself is behind the paywall. Crunch runs a permanent free tier that does not submit MTD returns at all; the cheapest tier that files is Pro at £10 plus VAT a month. Lendlord offers a generous free plan with unlimited properties, bookkeeping and a deal analyser, but HMRC filing sits on Premium at £12 a month or £99 a year, which we cost out in TapTax vs Lendlord. PaTMa offers a free single-unit plan whose MTD status is genuinely ambiguous in its own materials, with the pricing page and the product page disagreeing.

2. Free with a bank account

Coconut Free is not a free tier, it is an acquisition deal: two years free with a new funded Zempler Bank account. Coconut's own MTD filing plan is £129.99 a year or £21.99 a month, and its ordinary 14-day trial cannot file. FreeAgent is free with a NatWest, RBS, Ulster or Mettle account and paid without one. Both are good products. Neither is free in the sense a search for "free MTD software" implies. Our TapTax vs Coconut and TapTax vs Crunch pages go deeper on both.

3. Metered per submission

Landlord Studio's free Go plan covers three units but charges roughly £5 for every MTD submission. Four quarterly updates plus a final declaration lands near £25 a year. That is cheap, and it is not zero, and it is the only per-submission meter in the market as of August 2026, which is why TapTax vs Landlord Studio works through what a heavier filing year does to that figure.

4. Capped until you outgrow it

Sage Sole Trader & Landlord has a real free tier, capped at five sales invoices a month, with the paid plan at £7 plus VAT a month (heavily discounted for the first six months). DIY Tax has a genuine free edition capped at one business or property, 30 invoices and expenses, and MTD for VAT or Income Tax but not both, and TapTax vs DIY Tax shows how quickly those caps arrive. Caps are the most honest form of free, because you find the ceiling early rather than at the filing deadline.

5. Free plan, trial that cannot file

Worth stating separately because it catches people evaluating on a deadline: a trial that cannot submit is not a trial of the thing you are buying. Coconut's 14-day trial cannot file. If you are testing software in the week before a quarterly deadline, confirm the trial submits before you invest an evening in it.

What about the free bank tools?

Monzo, Starling, Lloyds and Tide all now offer free MTD tools inside their business accounts, and ANNA offers free filing alongside its account. They are real, they cost nothing, and as of the 17 October 2026 scrape Monzo, Starling, Lloyds and Tide are each graded at zero of the 16 return items, while ANNA has moved to 12.

Free bank-provided MTD tools, as graded on 17 October 2026.

Product	Free	Sole trader	UK property	Foreign property	Mobile app	Return items
Monzo	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	0/16
Starling	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Not listed	0/16
Lloyds Bank	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Not listed	0/16
Tide Accounting	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	0/16
ANNA Self Assessment	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Not included	Android; Apple iOS	12/16

They are not alone in that, and it is the single most useful number on this page:

21of 159 (13%)list a free version but cannot complete a single return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 17 October 2026

That is not a criticism, it is a product decision: they are account features designed to keep quarterly updates flowing, not tax products designed to finish your return. If your affairs are one trade, one bank account and nothing else, that may be all you need. If you have dividends, a pension, a student loan or a CIS deduction, you will need something else at year end. We work through that trade-off in detail on bank free MTD tools compared.

One precision note on ANNA: its own pricing describes free MTD filing as permanent with no strings (August 2026), monetising through the account instead, and as of the 17 October 2026 scrape the directory flags a free version for it too, so the vendor and HMRC's record now agree.

The gap nobody has filled

Put the three filters together, free, a real mobile app, and all three income sources, and the directory empties out fast.

Products listing a free version, a mobile app, and sole trader, UK property and foreign property income, as graded on 17 October 2026.

Product	Free	Sole trader	UK property	Foreign property	Mobile app	Return items
RentalBux Free	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	15/16
Clear Books Free	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	15/16
Self Assessment Direct	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	9/16
Coconut Free	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	0/16
DIY Tax	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Ready now	Android; Apple iOS	3/16

A short table, and it gets shorter on inspection: Self Assessment Direct carries the vendor-declared mobile flag we flagged above, DIY Tax is capped at three of the 16 return items, Coconut Free is graded at zero of them, RentalBux Free is capped at one property and dated to March 2028. Clear Books Free is the strongest row here on HMRC's grading, at 15 of 16 return items with only partnership income outstanding. If you would rather keep your own records in a spreadsheet and bridge them, our free MTD spreadsheet template gives you the records side and prices the bridging side. The genuinely free products are overwhelmingly web-only, and the mobile-first products are overwhelmingly paid: Kletta at £228 to £348 a year list for its self-serve Solo and Duo plans, untied at £129.99 a year, Coconut at £129.99 a year, TaxZap at around £99 a year (all August 2026). Kletta's £49 a month Care plan sits above that range and buys something different, a human UK bookkeeper, so it is not a like-for-like comparison with software alone. If price rather than free-ness is what you are shopping on, how much MTD software costs walks the whole curve from £0 upwards and asks what the extra money buys.

“The same statutory outcome, four quarterly updates and a final declaration, is priced anywhere from £0 to roughly £348 a year of self-serve software, and higher again once a platform or a person is bundled in. Nothing about the obligation changes across that range.”

Where TapTax sits, honestly

TapTax has a permanent free tier at £0 a month, with paid tiers at £4.99 and £9.99 a month, and it is built mobile-first for iOS and Android with CSV bank-statement import, AI categorisation and receipt scanning, and direct bank connection coming soon. That combination, free plus a real app plus sole trader, UK property and foreign property, is the quadrant this page just showed to be nearly empty.

The honest caveats, both of which matter if you are choosing this week:

• TapTax is HMRC-recognised, with its directory listing pending. It does not appear on the find-software directory as of the 17 October 2026 scrape. Every product named above does. If a published HMRC listing before you commit is essential to you, choose from the listed free products here today.
• On the 16 return items, TapTax is mid-pack rather than top of the table. Interest, dividends, charitable giving, the High Income Child Benefit Charge and Class 2 and 4 National Insurance are handled; pensions income, Construction Industry Scheme, capital gains and partnership income are not there yet.

We would rather you read that here than discover it in January. If you want the full dataset behind this page, the MTD software directory is searchable and filterable, and our analysis of every tool explains how the completeness cliff formed.

Choosing in one minute

• You want free, complete, and you do not mind a browser. My Tax Digital or TaxHeaven's Angel plan.
• You want free, complete, and a company that will still be here in 2030. Clear Books Free, which now covers foreign property as well.
• You are a single-property landlord. RentalBux Free, with the one-property cap and the March 2028 date in your diary.
• You already bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster or Mettle. FreeAgent, free, and as of 17 October 2026 one of 15 products on the directory graded ready on all 16 return items. No foreign property, though.
• You want free plus a genuine mobile app. The listed field is thin. Shortlist RentalBux Free, and shortlist TapTax if you are comfortable that our directory listing is still pending.
• You want the cheapest paid certainty. MTD 4 Income Tax at £20 a year (August 2026) is graded on all 16 items; its directory row lists iOS and Android apps, but treat that flag as vendor-declared.

The broader picture, including the paid options, is in our best MTD software for sole traders comparison.

People also ask

Does HMRC provide free MTD software itself?

No. HMRC does not supply its own Making Tax Digital for Income Tax software. It publishes a find-software directory of third-party products that have passed its recognition process, which listed 159 products as of the 17 October 2026 scrape, and 37 of those listed a free version. HMRC's free online Self Assessment service is a separate, older route that does not satisfy the MTD digital record-keeping and quarterly update requirements once you are mandated.

Is free MTD software safe to use for something as important as tax?

Listing on HMRC's directory means a product has been through HMRC's recognition process and connects to the live MTD APIs, and that applies equally to the free and paid products on the list. Price is not a proxy for reliability here. The real risks with a free tier are commercial rather than technical: a product that withdraws its free plan, caps you mid-year, or is a side project without support. Prefer free tiers from companies with a paid product alongside them, since that is what funds the free one.

Can I switch MTD software part-way through a tax year?

Yes. Quarterly updates under MTD are cumulative, so a new product submits your year-to-date totals rather than just the quarter, which means a mid-year switch does not create a gap as long as you carry your figures across. Export your records from the old tool first, check the new one supports your income sources and update period, and reauthorise the HMRC connection. Switching after a first quarterly update is common precisely because people discover their free tier will not finish the year.

What is the cheapest way to be fully MTD compliant in 2026?

For most single-source sole traders, £0 is achievable with My Tax Digital, TaxHeaven Angel or Clear Books Free, all of which advertise quarterly updates plus the final declaration at no cost as of August 2026. Landlords with one property can add RentalBux Free until March 2028. If you want a paid product for support or automation, the floor is roughly £8 per taxpayer per year through bridging tools such as Absolute Excel Income Tax Filer, or £20 a year through MTD 4 Income Tax, against £129 to £348 a year at the premium end of self-serve software, and more again for portfolio platforms or a bundled bookkeeper.