TapTax vs DIY Tax
Two free tiers, two different ceilings
DIY Tax is one of very few listed products combining a free version, all three income sources and a mobile app. Its free edition is also one of the most tightly capped in the market. Both facts are true and this page reads them together.
Estimate your self-employed tax in seconds
See what you would owe for the year, then file the real figures with TapTax in a couple of taps.
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.
DIY Tax is a more serious competitor to TapTax than its profile suggests, and the reason is a combination almost nobody else on HMRC's directory has: a free version, all three business income sources, native digital record-keeping and, on its listing at least, apps on both mobile platforms.
3of 127 (2%)are free, on both app stores, keep digital records and cover all three income sourcesHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026That is the whole field for products meeting every one of those conditions, and DIY Tax is in it. So this page is a genuine head-to-head rather than a comparison between two different categories of product, which makes the specific gaps on both sides worth being precise about.
The gaps turn out to be a hard cap on one side and a directory listing on the other.
- DIY Tax's free edition covers one business or property, 30 invoices and expenses, around 1MB of storage, and MTD for VAT or Income Tax but not both, as checked in August 2026.
- Paid is £7 plus VAT a month or £75 plus VAT a year, so £84 plus VAT if you pay monthly and £75 plus VAT if you pay yearly.
- HMRC grades DIY Tax ready on 3 of the 16 tax-return items, with 13 more in development. TapTax is at roughly six to eight today.
- DIY Tax is graded not included on calendar update periods, so quarters must run 6 April to 5 April.
- It is graded ready on sole trader, UK property and foreign property, which is a genuinely uncommon combination.
How HMRC's directory grades DIY Tax
These are HMRC's grades from its find-MTD-software service, scraped across all 127 listings on 9 August 2026.
DIY Tax
£0 capped, or £7 + VAT/mo, or £75 + VAT/yr(checked August 2026)
- Free version: yes
- Android; Apple iOS: yes
- Sole trader income: yes
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: yes
- Keeps digital records: yes
3/16 tax-return items ready, 13 more in development.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
The free edition is capped at one business or property, 30 invoices and expenses, around 1MB of storage, and MTD for VAT or Income Tax but not both. Calendar update periods are graded not included.
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 9 August 2026.
Read across that card and the strong grades are the income sources. Sole trader, UK property and foreign property are all ready, and foreign property in particular is a serious gap in most of the market.
59of 127 (46%)handle all three income sourcesHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026DIY Tax is one of them, and TapTax covers the same three sources without being on the directory to be counted among them. Several far better-known listed products do not, including QuickBooks, FreeAgent, Clear Books and Sage's sole trader and landlord products, all of which are graded not included on foreign property.
The two capped free tiers, side by side
Both products have a free tier. Neither is unlimited, and the shape of the limit is the whole comparison.
DIY Tax's free edition is capped four ways: one business or property, 30 invoices and expenses, around 1MB of storage, and a choice between MTD for VAT and MTD for Income Tax rather than both. That last one is unusual in this market and worth checking against your own circumstances, because a VAT-registered sole trader who is also in scope for MTD for Income Tax would be picking one obligation and solving the other elsewhere.
The 30-item cap is the one most people will meet first. Thirty invoices and expenses across a whole tax year is a genuinely small business: about two and a half transactions a month. A landlord with one flat, rent in and a handful of costs out, might live inside it comfortably. A sole trader with a van, fuel, materials and a few dozen client invoices will not.
TapTax's free tier is capped differently. There is no property or business cap and no transaction cap, and it includes the filing. What it does not include is the automation and depth on the paid tiers at £4.99 and £9.99 a month.
Caps are the most honest form of free, and both of these are declared rather than buried. The five ways free tends not to be free, which include bank-account deals, metered submissions and trials that cannot file, are set out in full on our genuinely free MTD software page. Neither of these two uses any of them.
A cap you can measure is worth more than a free tier you cannot. Thirty transactions is a limit you will discover in March, not the following January.
Return items: three, thirteen and the honest gap
- Tax-return items (MTD ITSA)
- The 16 categories HMRC grades separately on its software directory, covering everything outside your quarterly business updates: UK interest, employment (PAYE), UK dividends, state and private pension income, partnership income, foreign dividends and interest, pension contributions, Construction Industry Scheme, charitable giving, capital gains, student loan, marriage allowance, voluntary Class 2 National Insurance and the High Income Child Benefit Charge. A product graded at zero can still file quarterly updates. It cannot finish the return around them.
DIY Tax is graded ready on three: UK interest, UK dividends and Marriage Allowance. Thirteen more are registered as in development, which means the vendor has committed to them for the 2026-27 return without having shipped, and partnership income is not registered at all.
Three is a modest number in isolation and a respectable one in context.
89of 127 (70%)cannot complete a single tax-return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026Most of the directory cannot complete a single item, so DIY Tax is already past the cliff most products are still standing on. It is also well short of the top.
27of 127 (21%)have 9 or more of the 16 return items readyHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026TapTax sits between those two points, at roughly six to eight of the 16 today, with interest, dividends, charitable giving, the High Income Child Benefit Charge and voluntary Class 2 National Insurance among the ones handled, while pensions income, Construction Industry Scheme, capital gains and partnership income are not there yet. That is ahead of DIY Tax on this axis and behind the 15-of-16 cohort, and we would rather write both halves of that sentence than only the flattering one.
The calendar quarters gap
DIY Tax is graded not included on calendar update periods.
23of 127 (18%)cannot do calendar update periodsHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026That means your MTD quarters have to run on HMRC's standard basis, 6 April to 5 April, rather than the calendar basis of 1 April to 31 March. Most people never think about this until they try to reconcile a quarterly update against bookkeeping that runs to month ends, at which point the five-day offset turns into apportionment work four times a year. TapTax supports both bases. Our standard versus calendar quarters guide explains which one is likely to suit your records.
The mobile question, in the opposite direction
HMRC records Android and Apple iOS for DIY Tax. Our own pricing research in August 2026 described the product as responsive web.
We are flagging that rather than resolving it. Mobile platform data on the directory is vendor-declared and HMRC does not verify it, and we have seen the error run both ways in this dataset: elsewhere in this comparison cluster, Landlord Studio ships real iOS and Android apps while its directory listings record none at all. A vendor-declared field that is wrong in both directions is not a field to buy on.
49of 127 (39%)list apps on both iOS and AndroidHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026If mobile is what decides this for you, install both and judge for yourself. That is the only test that survives contact with the data.
Pricing in detail, checked August 2026
| TapTax Free | TapTax Starter | TapTax Pro | DIY Tax free edition | DIY Tax paid | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | £0 | £4.99/mo | £9.99/mo | £0 | £7 + VAT/mo or £75 + VAT/yr |
| Approx. annual cost | £0 | £49 | £99 | £0 | £84 + VAT, or £75 + VAT |
| Business or property cap | None | None | None | 1 business or property | None stated |
| Transaction cap | None | None | None | 30 invoices and expenses | None stated |
| VAT and Income Tax together | n/a | n/a | n/a | One or the other, not both | Both |
| MTD filing included | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sole trader income | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) | Ready |
| UK property | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) | Ready |
| Foreign property | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) | Ready |
| Calendar quarters | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not included (HMRC grade) | Not included |
| Return items ready | 6 to 8 of 16 | 6 to 8 of 16 | 6 to 8 of 16 | 3 of 16, 13 in development | 3 of 16, 13 in development |
| HMRC directory status | Not listed; recognition in progress | Not listed; recognition in progress | Not listed; recognition in progress | Listed | Listed |
DIY Tax prices are its published pricing as checked in August 2026 and are quoted plus VAT, which is how DIY Tax quotes them. Feature grades in the DIY Tax columns are HMRC's, from the 9 August 2026 scrape. TapTax pricing is our own published pricing and includes VAT. The TapTax annual figures are its published annual-plan prices, £49 for Starter and £99 for Pro, rather than twelve times the monthly rate.
On price these are close, though not as close as the headline suggests. DIY Tax's annual plan is £75 plus VAT, which is £90 to a sole trader who cannot reclaim it, against £49 for TapTax Starter paid annually. That is a £41 gap, and both are still well below the middle of a market where the same obligation ranges from nothing to several hundred pounds a year. Our breakdown of what MTD software actually costs puts the whole curve in one place.
Where DIY Tax genuinely wins
It is listed with HMRC today. That is the single biggest thing it has that TapTax does not, and if you need to file a live submission this month it settles the question on its own.
It covers MTD for VAT as well as MTD for Income Tax on the paid plan, which TapTax does not. A VAT-registered sole trader wanting one product for both obligations has a real reason to choose it.
Its free edition includes the filing rather than withholding it, which puts it ahead of a large part of the free category regardless of how tight the caps are.
And the caps are published rather than discovered. That deserves credit in a market where several products describe a bank acquisition deal as a free tier.
Where TapTax fits better
Anything with volume. Thirty invoices and expenses is the constraint that will decide this for most working sole traders, and past it you are comparing DIY Tax's paid plan with TapTax's free one.
More than one income source at £0. A sole trader who also lets a property is outside DIY Tax's free edition and inside TapTax's free tier.
Calendar quarters, if your records run to month ends.
More of the return today, at roughly six to eight items against three.
And the automation. Open banking pulls transactions in, AI categorisation sorts them, and receipt capture and CSV import cover what the feed misses, so the quarterly update is a review step. That is what the £4.99 and £9.99 tiers are actually for, and it is the thing a 30-transaction cap makes irrelevant in one direction and essential in the other.
If property is part of the picture, the rental income tax calculator applies the finance-cost restriction that limits mortgage interest relief to a 20% credit, which is worth knowing before you shop for software at all.
Who should choose which
One rental, a handful of transactions, wants a listed product at £0. DIY Tax free edition. It fits inside the caps and it is listed today.
VAT-registered and in scope for MTD for Income Tax. DIY Tax paid, since it covers both obligations and TapTax does not.
A working sole trader with real transaction volume. TapTax. The 30-item cap ends the conversation, and TapTax's free tier does not have one.
Both self-employment and property income at zero cost. TapTax, because DIY Tax's free edition covers one business or property.
Bookkeeping that runs to calendar month ends. TapTax, since DIY Tax cannot do calendar quarters.
A return with pensions, CIS or capital gains in it. Neither of these finishes it today, though DIY Tax has 13 items in development. Look at the complete end of the directory, which our analysis of all 127 HMRC-listed tools sets out.
Filing a live submission this month. DIY Tax is listed. TapTax is MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process, and that is the honest position.
The bottom line
DIY Tax earns its place in a very short list of products that are free, cover all three income sources and keep records natively. Its free edition is real, its paid plan is cheap, it handles VAT as well, and it is listed with HMRC today.
Its ceiling is low. Thirty transactions and one business or property is a starter tier rather than a working one, calendar quarters are not available, and three of 16 return items means the year still finishes somewhere else for most people.
TapTax is ahead on the free tier's ceiling, on calendar quarters and on return items, and behind on the one thing that cannot be argued around: DIY Tax is on HMRC's directory and TapTax is MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process.
Compare DIY Tax, and every other listed product, against the live data on the MTD software directory rather than against any vendor's marketing. TapTax has no row there yet.
People also ask
Frequently asked questions
Other comparisons
Tap. File. Done.
TapTax connects to your bank, categorises expenses automatically and submits quarterly updates to HMRC. Free plan, no card required.