Genuinely Free MTD Software:
The Ones That Actually File
Thirty-one products on HMRC's directory list a free version. Far fewer can carry you all the way to a filed tax return without a card, a bank account or an upgrade prompt.
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Total turnover before expenses
Under £1,000 we use the trading allowance automatically
Estimated tax bill
£6,872
15.3% effective rate for 2026/27
- Income tax
- £5,286
- Class 4 NI
- £1,586
Take-home pay
£32,128
after tax, NI and expenses
This is an estimate using HMRC-confirmed rates for 2026/27, not your official tax calculation. TapTax is MTD-compatible, so you can connect to HMRC and file the real figures in a couple of taps.
"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 5 August 2026, and every price is dated to the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026.
- 31 of the 122 products on HMRC's directory list a free version, but a free version and a finished tax return are different things.
- The genuinely free products that can also complete most of the 16 return items are a small group, and almost all of them are web-only with no mobile app.
- Five fake-free patterns recur: paid filing, bank-gated free, metered per submission, hard usage caps, and trials that cannot file.
- Most free bank tools are graded at zero of 16 return items today, so they keep records and file quarterly updates but do not finish your year.
- TapTax has a permanent £0 tier and is MTD-compatible with HMRC recognition in progress; it is not on the directory as of the 5 August 2026 scrape.
How many MTD products are actually free?
31of 122 (25%)list a free versionHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 5 August 2026HMRC 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 5 August 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:
- Digital record keeping. Almost every free tool clears this.
- Four quarterly updates. Most free tools clear this too, and it is what the marketing means by "free MTD filing".
- 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.
10of 122 (8%)list a free version AND have 9 or more of the 16 return items readyHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 5 August 2026| Product | Free | Sole trader | UK property | Foreign property | Mobile app | Return items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abridge (MTD for Excel/Sheets) | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| Clear Books Free | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| FreeAgent | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | 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 |
| SimplifyMTD | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | Not listed | 14/16 |
| 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.
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. One thing to check yourself: Clear Books' own pricing advertises a Foreign Property Free tier, but the directory grades Clear Books Free as not covering foreign property as of the 5 August 2026 scrape. If you have overseas rental income, confirm that directly before you commit.
Self Assessment Direct is unconditionally free with no tiers and no expiry, covering the self-employment, UK property and foreign property pages. 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 the closest thing on the directory to free, mobile and complete at once, and it is the exception that proves the rule about free tools being web-only. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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 5 August 2026 scrape every one of them is graded at zero of the 16 return items.
| 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 | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Android; Apple iOS | 0/16 |
They are not alone in that, and it is the single most useful number on this page:
19of 122 (16%)list a free version but cannot complete a single return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 5 August 2026That 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, but the directory does not flag a free version for it as of the 5 August 2026 scrape. Where a vendor and the directory disagree, we show you both rather than pick one.
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.
| 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 |
| Abridge (MTD for Excel/Sheets) | 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 |
| DIY Tax | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 3/16 |
A very 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, and RentalBux Free is capped at one property and dated to March 2028. 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.
The same statutory outcome, four quarterly updates and a final declaration, is priced anywhere from £0 to roughly £348 a year depending on which shelf you take it from. 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 open-banking import, AI categorisation, receipt scanning and CSV import. 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 MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process. It does not appear on the find-software directory as of the 5 August 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 all 122 tools 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, with the foreign property caveat checked.
- 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, with 15 of 16 items ready.
- 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 recognition is in progress rather than complete.
- You want the cheapest paid certainty. MTD 4 Income Tax at £20 a year (August 2026) is graded on all 16 items, with no real mobile app.
The broader picture, including the paid options, is in our best MTD software for sole traders comparison.
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