A FreeAgent alternative for sole traders who keep their own books

If you have to send HMRC quarterly updates under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, want your Self Assessment return filed from your accounts, or bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle, FreeAgent is very likely the better choice, and for those banks’ customers it may cost nothing. Books suits someone who keeps their own books, files their return themselves or through an accountant, and wants the figures on their own computer: it does the bookkeeping, the VAT boxes and the SA103 and SA105 figures, and leaves the filing to you.

What FreeAgent is

FreeAgent is online accounting software for UK businesses, sold as a monthly subscription with plans by kind of business. FreeAgent says its plans meet Making Tax Digital’s requirements, that it fills in parts of the Self Employment and UK Property pages of the Self Assessment return from your accounts, and that it files the return directly with HMRC for a sole trader, a landlord who is not a company, or a company director. It also says a full account is free while you keep a business account with NatWest, RBS or Ulster Bank, or make at least one transaction a month through a Mettle account.

The books are kept on FreeAgent’s servers, with Open Banking feeds from your bank, payroll that FreeAgent describes as HMRC recognised, and a kind of user for an accountant, who can work in the same account.

Filing with HMRC, plainly

From 6 April 2026, a sole trader or landlord whose income from self-employment and property, before expenses, was over £50,000 on the previous year’s return has to keep digital records and send HMRC quarterly updates from software that works with Making Tax Digital, as GOV.UK sets out. VAT-registered businesses already send their VAT returns that way.

Books does not send anything to HMRC. Sending needs HMRC’s interface and a sign-in step run on a server, and Books has no server: everything happens in the browser tab. So:

• For VAT, Books works out the nine boxes and gives them to you as a CSV and a PDF; you submit them through HMRC-recognised bridging software, or on HMRC’s website if you are allowed to.
• For Income Tax, Books maps each account to its box on the SA103 or SA105 pages and shows the figures. That helps with a return; it is not a return, and it is not a quarterly update.
• If you are within Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, you need software that sends the quarterly updates, which Books is not. Use FreeAgent or another product HMRC lists, or check with your accountant what they will send for you.

Side by side

FreeAgent as it describes itself on its own pages, checked on 6 October 2026, and Books as it is. FreeAgent’s prices change, so none are given here; its pricing page is the place to check.

What Books does for a sole trader

• A chart made for the business. Start a sole trade, a partnership, a limited company or a rental; the chart of accounts starts from a UK default for that kind and is yours to rename and add to. The financial year can be the tax year or any other.
• The bank statement, explained. Import a CSV, OFX, QFX or QIF file, put each line to an account or match it to an invoice, and let rules do the regular ones. Drawings are an account like any other.
• Invoices and bills. Quotes, invoices and credit notes as PDFs, with or without VAT; bills with the receipt kept beside them; who owes you and whom you owe, by age.
• Simplified expenses. Business miles at 45p for the first 10,000 in a car or van and 25p after, 24p on a motorcycle, and use of home at HMRC’s monthly flat rates by hours worked. Where a date falls in a tax year the table does not cover yet, Books says so and claims nothing.
• The year end and the tax figures. Close the year into the capital account with drawings cleared, lock it, and see each SA103 or SA105 box with the figure the books give it, alongside the accountant’s pack.

Mileage and home rates were checked against GOV.UK on 5 October 2026.

What FreeAgent has that Books does not

• Filing. The Self Assessment return, the VAT return and, for those within it, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, sent from the software.
• Bank feeds, where Books needs a statement file from you each time.
• A price of nothing for some banks’ customers. If you qualify, Books costs you more.
• Your accountant in the books. Books keeps them in one browser for one person; an accountant gets the pack, the CSVs or the file.
• Payroll, with its submissions to HMRC. Books has none; wages go in as the payroll software’s figures.

What it costs

Books on its own is US$2 a month or US$19 a year; all of OBSCURA Pro is US$5 a month or US$48 a year. Each comes with 7 days free first. Pro also covers every other OBSCURA application. There is no free version of Books with features held back: without Pro, its page shows what it does and asks for a plan.

See it before you pay. Books’ page shows it at work on its demo company and says, first, what it does not do.