TapTax vs Landlord Studio
The only product that charges by the filing
Landlord Studio meters MTD at around £5 a submission on its free Go plan. Nobody else in the market prices it that way, and for a light user it is one of the cheapest routes to a filed year. Here is the honest side-by-side.
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.
Almost every MTD product answers the pricing question the same way: pick a tier, pay every month, file as often as you like. Landlord Studio is the one that does not. On its free Go plan you pay by the submission, at roughly £5 a time as checked in August 2026.
That is worth taking seriously rather than filing under gimmick, because for a landlord with one or two properties it is arithmetically one of the cheapest legal routes through a tax year, and because it makes the real cost of MTD unusually visible. Four quarterly updates and a final declaration is five submissions. Five submissions is about £25. Most of the market charges more than that and calls it a discount.
- Landlord Studio is the only product in this set that meters MTD by the submission, at around £5 a time on the free Go plan, as checked in August 2026.
- Pro at £12 a month or £144 a year includes MTD submissions with no per-filing charge; Pro Plus is £24 a month.
- HMRC lists the product twice, as Landlord Studio and as Nexus by Landlord Studio. Both are graded 0 of the 16 tax-return items, and neither has any item in development.
- Both listings cover UK property only. Sole trader and foreign property income are graded not included.
- HMRC records no mobile app against either listing, while the vendor ships iOS and Android apps. That is a listing inconsistency, not evidence there is no app.
The two directory listings
HMRC's find-MTD-software service carries Landlord Studio twice. We scraped all 127 listings on 9 August 2026 and both entries were present.
Landlord Studio
£5 per MTD submission on Go, or £12/mo(checked August 2026)
- Free version: no
- No mobile app listed: no
- Sole trader income: no
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: no
- Keeps digital records: yes
0/16 tax-return items ready.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
Go covers three units and meters MTD per submission. Pro is £12 a month or £144 a year with submissions included. Pro Plus is £24 a month.
Nexus by Landlord Studio
- Free version: no
- No mobile app listed: no
- Sole trader income: no
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: no
- Keeps digital records: yes
0/16 tax-return items ready.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
The same vendor's second listing. Graded ready for calendar update periods, which the other Landlord Studio entry is not.
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.
| Product | Free | Digital records | Bridging | Calendar quarters | UK property | Foreign property | Mobile app | Return items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landlord Studio | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | Not included | Not listed | 0/16 |
| Nexus by Landlord Studio | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Not listed | 0/16 |
The rows are nearly identical, and the one meaningful divergence is calendar update periods. Nexus is graded ready for them and the Landlord Studio entry is not, so if you want your quarters to run 1 April to 31 March rather than HMRC's 6 April to 5 April, that is a question to put to the vendor rather than an answer to read off a table. 23 of 127 (18%) cannot do calendar quarters at all. TapTax can.
The other thing worth noting is that both listings are graded not included on a free version, even though the Go plan is free to use. That is arguably correct rather than an error, because the thing HMRC's directory is about is filing, and filing on Go costs £5 a time. It is a neat illustration of why the free column is a poor shopping filter.
The mobile inconsistency
HMRC records no mobile app against either Landlord Studio listing. Our own pricing research in August 2026 found iOS and Android apps for the product.
Mobile platform data on the directory is vendor-declared, which means HMRC publishes what the vendor supplied and does not test it. Incomplete rows are common in both directions, and we have seen the reverse case too, where an app is declared for a product that appears to be web-only. The responsible reading here is that the listing is incomplete, not that Landlord Studio lacks an app. Check the app stores before you decide on this axis.
What the 0 of 16 means, and what it does not
Both listings are graded ready on none of the 16 tax-return items, and unlike several of its landlord competitors, neither carries any item as in development.
- 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, today, complete those items.
Take the two halves of that separately, because they carry different weight.
A zero on ready items says nothing about how good Landlord Studio is at the thing it was built for, which is replacing a landlord's spreadsheet with rent tracking, expense capture and per-property reporting. It says a great deal about where your year ends. If your income is UK rent and nothing else, the quarterly updates plus a final declaration on that income may be your entire obligation, and the zero never bites. If you have employment income, dividends, a pension or a capital gain, it bites in January.
89of 127 (70%)cannot complete a single tax-return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026The empty in-development column is the sharper signal. Some landlord platforms on this directory have most or all of the return committed for the 2026-27 return: Hammock carries 15 items in development and Lendlord carries all 16. Landlord Studio carries none, on either listing. In development is a stated intention rather than a shipped capability, so it is not worth much on its own, but the difference between committing to the whole return and committing to none of it is a real difference in posture, and it is the fairest comparison the dataset supports.
Pricing in detail, checked August 2026
| TapTax Free | TapTax Starter | Landlord Studio Go | Landlord Studio Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headline cost | £0 | £4.99/mo | £0 plan, £5 per MTD submission | £12/mo or £144/yr |
| Approx. cost of a filed year | £0 | £49 | Around £25 for five filings | £144 |
| Unit cap | None | None | 3 units | Higher |
| MTD filing included | Yes | Yes | Metered per submission | Yes |
| Sole trader income | Yes | Yes | Not included (HMRC grade) | Not included |
| UK property | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) | Ready |
| Foreign property | Yes | Yes | Not included (HMRC grade) | Not included |
| Return items ready | 6 to 8 of 16 | 6 to 8 of 16 | 0 of 16, none in development | 0 of 16, none in development |
| Mobile app | iOS and Android | iOS and Android | Not recorded by HMRC | Not recorded by HMRC |
| HMRC directory status | Not listed; recognition in progress | Not listed; recognition in progress | Listed | Listed |
Landlord Studio prices are its published pricing as checked in August 2026. Feature grades in the Landlord Studio columns are HMRC's, from the 9 August 2026 scrape. TapTax pricing is our own published pricing. The TapTax annual figures are its published annual-plan prices, £49 for Starter and £99 for Pro, rather than twelve times the monthly rate.
The £25 figure is the interesting one. It is the total cost of filing a year on the free Go plan at five submissions, and it beats almost every subscription in the category. Our full breakdown of what MTD software costs puts that number in the context of a market where the same legal obligation ranges from nothing to several hundred pounds a year.
Where metering stops being cheap is when the submission count rises. Each income source carries its own quarterly updates, and amendments and resubmissions are submissions. If you are close to the crossover, Pro at £144 removes the arithmetic entirely, and that is presumably the point of the design.
Metered filing is the only pricing model in this market that tells you the truth about what MTD costs: five submissions a year, priced individually, with nothing bundled to hide the number.
Where Landlord Studio genuinely wins
It replaces a spreadsheet properly. Rent tracking, arrears, per-unit expense capture, tenant records and portfolio reporting are the product, and they are mature. For a landlord whose actual daily problem is remembering who has paid and chasing who has not, that is worth more than any return-item grade.
It is listed with HMRC today, on two entries, with agent software graded ready on both, so an accountant can work alongside you.
And the free Go plan is a genuinely usable free plan for up to three units, with the filing priced separately and transparently rather than withheld. Plenty of free tiers in this market are free at everything except the one action HMRC obliges you to take, and then charge a subscription for it. Landlord Studio charges £5 and tells you so.
Where TapTax fits better
Income that is not UK rent. Landlord Studio is graded not included on both sole trader and foreign property income. TapTax covers all three sources. Only 59 of 127 (46%) listed products are graded ready on all three, so it is a scarce combination in the market generally. If you have a trade alongside the rentals, or a flat abroad, this comparison ends here.
Finishing more of the return. TapTax is mid-pack rather than strong on return items, 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, and pensions income, Construction Industry Scheme, capital gains and partnership income not there yet. That is honest mid-pack, and it is more than zero.
Filing at no marginal cost. TapTax's free tier includes submissions with no per-filing charge and no unit cap, so an amendment does not cost £5.
A phone-first workflow you can rely on. Open banking import, AI categorisation and receipt capture on iOS and Android, with the quarterly update as a review step rather than a data-entry session.
Work out what the tax actually is before you shop for software: the rental income tax calculator applies the finance-cost restriction that caps mortgage interest relief at a 20% credit.
Who should choose which
Up to three UK units, tenancies to track, cost-conscious. Landlord Studio Go and pay the £5s. It is a good deal and the tenancy tooling is real.
A portfolio big enough that Pro pays for itself. Landlord Studio Pro at £144 a year, assuming UK rent is your only income source.
Rental income plus self-employment. TapTax. Landlord Studio cannot report the trade at all.
An overseas property. Not Landlord Studio, on either listing. Our foreign property landlord guide covers the much shorter list of products that can.
A return with dividends, pensions, employment income or capital gains. Neither of these finishes it today. Plan for a second product or an accountant, and read the full directory analysis for which products are on the complete side of that line.
You need to file this month. Landlord Studio is listed. TapTax is MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process, which is a real difference right now.
The bottom line
Landlord Studio has the most interesting pricing in the category and one of the more limited tax stories. Both of those are true at once, and neither cancels the other. If your income is UK rent, you have a handful of units and you want the cheapest honest route to a filed year, the metered Go plan is hard to beat at around £25.
TapTax is the better fit the moment your income stops being only UK rent, or when you want the filing itself to cost nothing. The caveat we put on every page still applies: TapTax is MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process, and Landlord Studio is listed today.
Every HMRC grade quoted here is filterable yourself on the MTD software directory. TapTax's own return-item figure is our estimate, not an HMRC grade, because it has no row on that list yet.
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