Our Top 10 Accounting Software Picks for UK Businesses

We’ve selected our Top 10 accounting software choices for businesses in the UK, and entered our review ratings into the table below to make it easier to compare the results.

What accounting software is best for UK businesses?

The ongoing introduction of Making Tax Digital, along with other requirements around Open Banking, has seen some accounting software providers drop out of the UK market.

Making Tax Digital, or MTD for short, makes it mandatory to keep digital records and use special software for reporting information to HMRC. The rules are fully in place for VAT registered businesses, with the next phase (MTD Income Tax) coming into force for some businesses from April 2026.

With that in mind, we thought we’d wade through the field and pick out those which are still appropriate for use by UK businesses, without the need for additional bridging software or workarounds.

How did we choose our top 10?

We’ve reviewed a wide range of software options based on ease of use, features, pricing, and compliance with UK tax regulations and scored these against the needs of typical businesses to find our top 10 favourites from the list.

Our review criteria is based on pretty strict requirements, but the real benefit of any software will depend on what you need. Click into each review to see the details behind the scoring, as well as comments submitted to us by software users.

You might notice that our Top 10 consists exclusively of cloud-based accounting software. Following our own extensive testing, and feedback from a variety of users, we’ve determined this to be the most versatile and cost-effective option in most cases. Rather than downloading software (and keeping it up-to-date to minimise security issues), you can manage your accounts online either through an app or web browser.

Software	Features	Overall	Read Review
Pandle Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read Pandle Review
FreeAgent Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read FreeAgent Review
Sage Business Cloud Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read Sage Business Cloud Review
FreshBooks review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read FreshBooks review
QuickBooks Online Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read QuickBooks Online Review
Clear Books Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read Clear Books Review
QuickFile Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read QuickFile Review
Zoho Books Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read Zoho Books Review
Xero Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read Xero Review
KashFlow Review	Ease of use Speed Features Support Price User Experience		Read KashFlow Review