TapTax vs Dext
A receipt capture engine for your books, or capture inside your tax app

Dext began as Receipt Bank and is still, at heart, a capture engine. You photograph or forward receipts, bills and invoices; Dext reads them and publishes the data to your accounting software. Many UK accountants put their clients on it, because it feeds their own books cleanly.

TapTax reads receipts and bills too, but it is not feeding someone else's software. It keeps the records itself, sends your invoices, and files your Making Tax Digital quarterly updates. So the real question is not which reads a receipt better, it is where your records live.

Two different jobs

Dext's job is capture for bookkeeping. It extracts the supplier, date, amount and tax from each document, holds the image, and publishes the result into the accounting software you or your accountant already use. Its business plan does not keep a ledger of its own and does not file anything to HMRC.

TapTax's job is your tax. It reads the same documents, then keeps them in your records alongside your income, checks them against your bank statement, and sends your quarterly update. It also sends your sales invoices, which Dext does not do at all.

Publishing

Dext's term for sending the data it has read from a receipt or bill into your accounting software, where it becomes a transaction or a bill.

Side by side

Sources: Dext business pricing, Dext receipts app, Dext Solo, Dext Precision and Solo pricing and HMRC's find software service, all checked 7 October 2026.

Pricing, read closely

Dext's business plan is priced for small teams: £290 a year excluding VAT, £348 including VAT, for 250 documents a month and five users. Above the document limit, Dext stores uploads but does not read them until your next bill date. Line-item extraction, which pulls each line off an invoice rather than just the totals, is an add-on from £16.50 a month or 40p a document. It includes a handful of free credits for bank statements and supplier statements.

TapTax's allowance is lower but everything is included. Starter reads 50 receipts and bills a month for £4.99, Pro reads 500 for £9.99, and the free plan reads 5. Line items are read on every plan, at no extra cost.

Accuracy, honestly

Dext says its models, trained on over 2 billion accounting documents, read supplier, date, amount, tax and line items with "over 99% accuracy". That is Dext's claim and we have not tested it.

TapTax takes a different approach to trust. Every field it reads comes with a confidence, and the figures are checked before you see them: net plus VAT must equal the total, the VAT rate must be a UK rate, and the date must make sense. Anything that fails or reads with low confidence is put in front of you in a review queue, beside the original document. You can try the reader without an account on our free invoice parser and receipt to CSV converter.

Where Dext genuinely wins

If your accountant runs your books in Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, Dext is the better capture tool. It publishes straight into their software, supports more than 36 platforms, handles five users and is what many practices already use.

Dext Solo is also a real MTD option, if your accountant offers it. At £2.50 per client a month it is inexpensive, and HMRC lists it for quarterly updates on sole trader and UK property income. It is not something you can buy on your own, and HMRC's listing on 7 October 2026 did not include the end-of-year tax return.

Where TapTax fits better

TapTax fits better if you do your own books. You get capture, your records, sales invoicing and your quarterly updates in one app, for £49 a year on Starter, without paying for an accounting package for Dext to publish into. It matches each receipt and bill to its payment on your CSV bank statement, flags likely duplicates, keeps a "No receipt yet" list of payments still missing their evidence, and exports a CSV in Xero or QuickBooks format if your accountant wants one.

What a year costs

For a sole trader with around 40 receipts and bills a month who files their own MTD updates:

• Dext Business plus accounting software that files: £290 a year excluding VAT, plus line items if you want them, plus the accounting software. Xero Simple was £7 a month excluding VAT on 7 October 2026.
• TapTax Starter: £49 a year, with 50 reads a month, line items, invoicing and every quarterly update.

Moving your receipts from Dext

If you are leaving Dext to keep your own books, your past documents do not need to come with you into TapTax. They already sit in the accounting software Dext published them to, and that is your record for those years. Download a copy of the images before you close the Dext account, because you must keep business records for at least 5 years after the 31 January deadline for the tax year. From the switch onwards, photograph or upload new receipts and bills in TapTax, import your bank statement for the current tax year as a CSV, and use the "No receipt yet" list to see which payments still need their evidence.

Who should choose which

A sole trader whose accountant runs their books in Xero

Dext, or Dext Solo if your accountant offers it. Your documents flow into the software your accountant already works in.

A self-employed builder who does their own bookkeeping

TapTax. Snap receipts on site, have them read and matched to your bank statement, invoice clients from the same app and file your quarterly update. See which of your costs are allowable in the expenses guide.

A small team of three or four people submitting expenses

Dext Business. Five users and 250 documents a month suit a team; TapTax is built for one person's tax.

The bottom line

“Dext captures documents for someone else's books. TapTax captures them for your own tax return.”

Dext is the stronger capture tool for anyone whose books live in accounting software run by an accountant. For a sole trader who keeps their own records, TapTax reads receipts and bills with line items included, invoices clients and files Making Tax Digital for a sixth of Dext's business price.

People also ask

Is Dext the same as Receipt Bank?

Yes. Receipt Bank renamed itself Dext. The product still captures receipts, bills and invoices and publishes them to accounting software.

Can I buy Dext Solo myself?

Dext sells Solo to accountants, priced per client with a five-client minimum, per its pricing page on 7 October 2026. Ask your accountant whether they offer it.

Does TapTax read line items on receipts and invoices?

Yes, on every plan and at no extra cost: each line’s description, quantity and amount, alongside the supplier, date, VAT and total.

Can TapTax export receipts to Xero or QuickBooks?

Yes, as a CSV in Xero or QuickBooks format, or a plain CSV for any spreadsheet, from the receipts and bills screen.