Cheapest MTD Software: An Honest Look at What You Pay

Why MTD software suddenly matters to your budget

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax brings a running cost that Self Assessment never did. Under the old system you could keep your records in a notebook or a free spreadsheet and file one return a year for nothing. From April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000 must keep digital records and send HMRC four quarterly updates through compatible software. The threshold falls to £30,000 from April 2027 and to £20,000 from April 2028, so the number of people who need to pay for a tool is growing every year.

Qualifying income is measured on gross turnover before expenses, not on profit, which catches more people than they expect. A sole trader turning over £55,000 and taking home £28,000 is still in the first wave. Once you are in, filing through software stops being optional, so the sensible question is not whether to pay but how little you can sensibly pay for a tool that does the job properly.

The tools marketed most loudly are full accounting packages built for small companies. The genuinely cheap options are usually bridging tools that still expect you to do your own spreadsheet work. Knowing which camp a product sits in matters far more than the headline figure.

What the cheapest MTD software really costs in 2026

Here are the ongoing standard prices for the tools people compare most often, taken from each provider's own pricing in mid 2026. Intro discounts come and go, so these are the rates you settle into after any offer ends.

A few clusters stand out. The full accounting suites sit at roughly £12 to £17 a month, which is £144 to £204 a year, and do far more than a sole trader who just needs to file will ever use. GoSimpleTax, the closest honest peer, is an established recognised tool at £59 to £70 a year. The genuinely cheap options are bridging tools at £20 to £36 a year, where you still keep your own spreadsheet and do the manual work. At £49 a year, Quarterly Filer sits below GoSimpleTax and well below the suites, while asking less of you than a bridging tool.

Where Quarterly Filer fits, and where it does not

Quarterly Filer costs £49 a year, one payment that covers your whole tax year: your four quarterly updates and the year-end final declaration. If you only need to file once, there is a £18 one-off single submission instead. Your first quarterly update is free and there are no setup fees. It is a single plan with no tiers to compare, so the price you see is the price you pay.

At £49 a year, Quarterly Filer sits below GoSimpleTax, the established recognised tool at £59 to £70 a year, and far below the £144-plus you would pay each year for a full accounting suite. It costs less than a tenth of what Xero can charge over a year. If your instinct is that a simple filing tool should cost a fraction of a full accounting app, that instinct is right.

We will be straight about the other end of the table. If the single thing you care about is the lowest possible number, a bridging tool such as 123 Sheets at around £30 a year is cheaper than £49 a year, and no honest comparison should hide that. What you give up for that lower price is the end to end experience. With a bridging tool you keep your own spreadsheet, maintain the formulas, and manage the link to HMRC yourself. Quarterly Filer does the filing for you: you connect to HMRC, import your figures, and file each quarterly update from one place, with reminders and a record of everything you have sent.

Cheapest MTD software is not always the right choice

Chasing the lowest price works when two products do the same job. It works less well here, because the cheap options ask more of you in return. A few pounds a year for bridging software looks like a bargain until you count the hours spent keeping a spreadsheet accurate across four submission deadlines and a final declaration. If your records slip, a bridging tool cannot save you, because it only moves whatever you have already typed.

There is also a quieter cost in getting it wrong. MTD runs on a points-based penalty system for late submissions. Miss enough quarterly deadlines and a financial penalty follows. A tool that tracks your periods and prompts you before each one is worth more than the small saving from a product that leaves the reminders to you. For most sole traders the true comparison is not £30 a year against £49 a year. It is the time, stress and penalty risk of doing it yourself against paying a fair price for something that stays on top of it for you.

Weigh it against your own situation. If you already keep tidy digital records, enjoy working in a spreadsheet, and never miss a deadline, a bridging tool may genuinely be the right, cheapest answer for you. If you would rather not think about the mechanics at all, a slightly higher price for a tool that files on your behalf usually pays for itself in the first quarter you would otherwise have spent worrying.

What you actually get for £49 a year

Quarterly Filer keeps its feature list short on purpose, because a smaller tool that does the essential job well is easier to trust than a sprawling suite you use a tenth of. Here is exactly what is included, with nothing dressed up.

You will notice what is not on the list. There are no bank feeds, no invoicing, no automatic expense scanning and no tax estimates. Those belong to the fuller accounting suites, and they are part of why those tools cost more. Quarterly Filer is built to do one thing cleanly: get your figures to HMRC on time, every quarter, and roll them into your final declaration at the end of the year. Quarterly Filer is built to HMRC's Making Tax Digital specification, and we are completing HMRC's recognition process.

Common questions about cheap MTD software