Xero vs QuickBooks UK 2026: the price after month 6

Every Xero vs QuickBooks UK comparison I can find opens with a wall of feature ticks. For a sole trader the feature list is not the thing that decides it. Two things decide it. The price you’re paying in month seven, and one number buried in Xero’s cheapest plan: twenty invoices.

Both providers are running 90% off for six months right now. That means the headline you see on the pricing page, £1.80 for Xero and £1 for QuickBooks, is not the price you’ll be paying next summer. I’ve put both providers’ real post-offer numbers in a table below, ex-VAT and inc-VAT, and then run a full two-year cost for someone sending 25 invoices a month.

The plans a sole trader actually gets offered

Xero sells five UK plans. Simple at £7, Ignite at £18, Grow at £39, Comprehensive at £55 and Ultimate at £70, all per month and all excluding VAT.

There’s a detail on that page worth knowing before you shop. Above the plan cards sits a toggle marked “VAT registered” and “Non-VAT registered”. The £7 Simple plan only appears once you flip it to Non-VAT registered. If you land on the default view you’ll never see Xero’s cheapest plan at all, and you’ll assume Ignite at £18 is the entry point. Simple gives you quotes plus 10 invoices, receipt capture only, and no VAT returns. Xero’s own description is blunt about who it’s for: “For non-VAT registered businesses.”

QuickBooks starts lower and with less hedging. Sole Trader Plus is £10 a month ex-VAT, then Simple Start at £16, Essentials at £38, Plus at £56 and Advanced at £123. Sole Trader Plus covers one user, MTD for Income Tax, receipt capture, mileage tracking, invoicing and payments, CIS calculations and Self Assessment preparation. There is no plain “Sole Trader” tier any more. Intuit’s UK pricing page now lists Sole Trader Plus as the floor.

One more thing on the Xero numbers, because they moved recently. Xero raised UK prices on 1 September 2026: Ignite went from £16 to £18, Grow from £37 to £39, Comprehensive from £50 to £55 and Ultimate from £65 to £70. Simple stayed at £7. Any comparison written before September that quotes £16 for Ignite is now two pounds a month out, which is £24 a year before VAT.

Xero vs QuickBooks on price once the offer ends

Here is the bit the pricing pages don’t lay out for you. Both discounts run for exactly six months, then the regular price starts. Month seven is where the bill jumps, and it jumps by a factor of ten.

Two caveats on those discounts, both from the providers’ own small print.

Xero’s offer applies to UK customers buying their first organisation on xero.com under code DC9062619UK, and it covers the base plan only. Add-ons, usage charges and payment fees are excluded and stay at full price through the discount period. So if you take Ignite and run payroll for one person at £1.50, that £1.50 is not discounted. Your month-one invoice is £3.30 ex-VAT, not £1.80.

Second, you can’t stack the discount with a free trial. Xero offers either 90% off for six months or one month free, and QuickBooks offers either 90% off for six months or 30 days free. Taking the trial means paying full price from day 31, so on Grow that’s £39 rather than £3.90. For anyone who is going to stick with the software, the six-month discount is the better arithmetic by a wide margin.

The 20-invoice cap is what decides this

Xero Ignite’s feature line reads “Send quotes and 20 invoices”. Not unlimited invoices. Twenty. Xero Simple is tighter still at 10. On the Ignite plan page Xero spells out the consequence in one sentence: “For more than 20 invoices, see the Grow plan.”

There’s a footnote under that line most people scroll straight past. It says transactions initiated by app partners may automatically contribute to your Ignite invoice limit. If you’ve connected a booking system, a shop or a payment app that pushes invoices into Xero, those count against your twenty. You can be nowhere near twenty invoices by hand and still hit the ceiling.

QuickBooks publishes no invoice cap on Sole Trader Plus. The plan card lists “Invoice and payments” with no number attached, and the same is true of Simple Start. That single difference is worth more than every AI feature on either page, because it’s the thing that quietly moves you from an £18 plan to a £39 one.

Ignite also caps bills at 10 a month. If you’re a sole trader with a handful of suppliers that’s fine. If you’re a builder logging materials invoices, it isn’t.

Worked example: 25 invoices a month

Take a freelance designer turning over about £4,500 a month, sending 25 client invoices, not VAT registered, tracking business mileage, one user, no payroll. That’s a real profile and it’s the one the 20-invoice cap bites hardest.

Because she sends 25 invoices, Ignite is out. Xero’s answer is Grow.

Xero Grow, year one. Months 1 to 6 at £3.90 = £23.40. Months 7 to 12 at £39 = £234. Year one total £257.40 ex-VAT, which is £308.88 including VAT at 20%.

Xero Grow, year two. No discount left. 12 × £39 = £468 ex-VAT, or £561.60 inc-VAT.

QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus, year one. Months 1 to 6 at £1 = £6. Months 7 to 12 at £10 = £60. Year one total £66 ex-VAT, or £79.20 inc-VAT.

QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus, year two. 12 × £10 = £120 ex-VAT, or £144 inc-VAT.

Across two years that’s £725.40 on Xero against £186 on QuickBooks, both ex-VAT. A gap of £539.40. Including VAT the gap is £647.28. She is not getting £539 of extra value from Grow for this workload, because the things Grow adds over Ignite are bill automation, payroll for one person, a 60-day cash flow forecast and performance dashboards, and she uses none of them.

Now change one number. Drop her to 18 invoices a month and Ignite is back in play: £1.80 × 6 plus £18 × 6 = £118.80 in year one, then £216 in year two. That’s £334.80 over two years against QuickBooks’ £186. The gap shrinks to £148.80, which is a defensible premium if you prefer how Xero handles bank reconciliation.

And if she sends 10 invoices a month or fewer and stays under the £90,000 VAT registration threshold, Xero Simple flips the whole result. £0.70 × 6 plus £7 × 6 is £46.20 in year one, then £84 in year two. £130.20 over two years, against QuickBooks’ £186. Xero wins, on the plan most comparisons never mention because it’s hidden behind a toggle.

MTD for Income Tax and what each one can file

Both are on HMRC’s list. I checked the official software finder on 11 September 2026 and it returned 92 products. Xero appears as “Xero” and QuickBooks appears as “QuickBooks (Intuit)”. Both are classed as all-in-one software that creates digital records, and both are listed for quarterly updates and the tax return.

One difference in those listings matters if you have rental income abroad. Xero is listed for sole trader, UK property and foreign property. QuickBooks (Intuit) is listed for sole trader and UK property only. If you have a flat in Spain going through your return, check that before you commit.

HMRC’s own wording on the results page is worth repeating, because both providers market themselves as “HMRC recognised” and people read more into that than is there: “All software has passed HMRC’s recognition process. HMRC does not recommend any specific product.”

On timing, the thresholds are set. Qualifying income over £50,000 for 2024 to 2025 meant starting from 6 April 2026. Over £30,000 for 2025 to 2026 means starting from 6 April 2027. Over £20,000 for 2026 to 2027 means 6 April 2028. Our guide to MTD for Income Tax for sole traders goes through what a quarterly update actually contains, and the HMRC recognised software list covers the cheaper options if neither of these two suits you. If you want to see what the tax bill behind all this looks like, the free UK tax calculator will give you a figure in about a minute.

Where each one loses

QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus cannot submit VAT. Intuit says so on its own pricing page: the VAT error checker and direct VAT submission to HMRC are not available with Sole Trader Plus. VAT submission starts at Simple Start, £16 a month ex-VAT. So the moment you register for VAT, your QuickBooks bill goes from £10 to £16, and the comparison changes: Simple Start at £16 against Xero Ignite at £18, which is near enough a tie on price.

Xero Ignite loses on expenses. “Claim expenses and mileage for 1 user” is a Grow feature, not an Ignite one. QuickBooks includes mileage tracking on the £10 plan. With the rate at 55p a mile for the first 10,000 miles from 6 April 2026, a sole trader doing 6,000 business miles a year is claiming £3,300. Having that tracked in the same app as everything else is not a small convenience, and on Xero you’re paying £39 to get it.

Xero Ignite also gives you a 30-day cash flow forecast and basic graphs only. Grow takes that to 60 days. QuickBooks puts cash flow planning on every plan from Sole Trader Plus up.

Against all that, Xero has the deeper accountant network in the UK and a larger app marketplace, and if your accountant works in Xero all day the switching friction is real. If you’re weighing that up, our note on switching accounting software covers what actually transfers and what doesn’t. It’s also worth seeing how Xero stacks up against the bank-linked option in FreeAgent vs Xero, because FreeAgent is free with some business accounts and that changes the maths again.

A note on how I reached this. This verdict rests on each provider’s published UK pricing and feature pages and on HMRC’s software finder, not on months of use. Every figure above came off those pages on 11 September 2026. If you want the habit side rather than the software side, the Digital Bookkeeping System course walks through setting records up so quarterly updates take twenty minutes instead of a weekend.

Where to sign up

Quick answers

Is Xero or QuickBooks cheaper for a sole trader in the UK?

QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus at £10 a month ex-VAT is cheaper than Xero Ignite at £18 and far cheaper than Xero Grow at £39. The exception is Xero Simple at £7, which wins on price but limits you to 10 invoices a month and is only sold to businesses that aren’t VAT registered.

What happens when you hit Xero’s 20-invoice limit?

Xero’s Ignite plan page points you at the Grow plan, which has no invoice cap, at £39 a month ex-VAT. Xero also warns that invoices created by connected apps count towards the Ignite limit, so the number can run down faster than you expect.

Are Xero and QuickBooks both approved for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax?

Yes. Both appear on HMRC’s software finder for MTD for Income Tax, listed for quarterly updates and the tax return, checked 11 September 2026. Xero also covers foreign property income, QuickBooks currently does not.

If you’re deciding this week

• Count the invoices you sent last month, including any raised automatically by a booking or shop app. If the number is over 20, Xero Ignite is not an option and the real comparison is Grow at £39 against QuickBooks at £10.
• Decide whether you’ll be VAT registered within the next year. If yes, compare Xero Ignite at £18 with QuickBooks Simple Start at £16, not with Sole Trader Plus.
• On Xero’s pricing page, switch the toggle to Non-VAT registered before you compare anything, so the £7 Simple plan is actually visible.
• Take the 90% six-month discount rather than the free trial if you intend to keep the software, and put a calendar note for month six so the full price isn’t a surprise.
• Check your income source on HMRC’s software finder if you have foreign property, because QuickBooks is not listed for it.
• Ask your accountant which one they actually work in before you commit, then price the winner over two years, not six months.

Sources

• Xero: Pricing plans for UK small businesses
• Xero: Pricing update (UK prices from 1 September 2026)
• Xero: Ignite pricing plan detail
• QuickBooks UK: Plans and pricing
• QuickBooks UK: Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
• GOV.UK: Find software that works with Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
• HMRC: Making Tax Digital for Income Tax software finder
• GOV.UK: Check if you’re eligible for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax

Figures checked against xero.com, quickbooks.intuit.com and HMRC’s Making Tax Digital software finder on 11 September 2026. This is general information, not financial or tax advice.

Read next

• FreeAgent vs Xero for sole traders: which one, and why
• HMRC Recognised MTD Software: The Two Lists