Branch visits stopped being the deciding factor
High street names still hold most business deposits, but the comparison now happens in app stores as much as on the local parade. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Santander generally charge between £8.50 and £10 a month, with first-year waivers aimed at startups and switchers. Starling, Tide, Mettle, Monzo and Wise lead with £0 entry plans and earn their margin from transactions instead. Neither model is better in the abstract. The difference shows up in how your money arrives.
A monthly charge is the easiest number to compare and usually the least useful one. A consultant paid by Faster Payments can run a £0 account almost cost-free. A café banking £4,000 in notes each week pays far more through deposit fees than through any subscription. Per-item charges sit in the small print: cash handling, Bacs credits, overseas card use, international transfers.
Reporting requirements have also moved into the decision. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax now covers sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000, who send quarterly updates through compatible software. If your bank does not connect to Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, those figures get typed twice. That is an hour a month you will not get back.
Verification is the fourth snag, and the one that catches people out. A director missing from Companies House records, a trading name that differs from the registered one, or a company with no invoices yet can stall an application for weeks. Applying with clean documents in the right order avoids most of it.
Compare the main options side by side
| Provider | Monthly charge | Cash deposits | UK payments | Accounting links | Best fit | Watch for |
|---|
| Starling Bank (Business Current Account) | £0 | 0.7% at Post Office, £3 minimum | No charge | Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, Sage | Owners who want bookkeeping in the same app | No branch network; regular cash deposits add up |
| Tide (entry plan) | £0, paid plans add tools | Varies by plan | Per-transfer charges on some plans | Xero, QuickBooks, Sage | New businesses needing invoicing extras | Itemised fees need reading line by line |
| Mettle from NatWest | £0; Mettle+ £4 | Check before relying on notes | Standard electronic payments | FreeAgent | Straightforward limited companies | App-only support, lighter feature set |
| Barclays Business Account | £8.50 after year one, about £102 annually | Branch and cash machine | Electronic UK payments at no charge | Xero, QuickBooks, Sage | Firms wanting a branch and a lending relationship | £15 international sends; 2.75% on non-sterling ATM use |
| HSBC Business Banking | £0 or £10, up to about £120 annually | Branch | UK payments at no charge | Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent | Businesses with overseas suppliers | £17 international sends |
| Lloyds Business Account | £8.50 after year one | Branch | First 100 payments, then £0.20 each | Xero, QuickBooks, Sage | Established firms with predictable volumes | Per-item charges once the allowance runs out |
| Santander Business Current Account | £9.99, waived for 12 months for startups and switchers | Branch | Standard electronic payments | Xero, QuickBooks | Startups in their first year | Roughly £120 a year from year two |
| Revolut Business | £10 to £90 | Limited cash handling | Multi-currency transfers | Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent | Freelancers and traders billing in several currencies | Confirm which protection scheme applies to your balance |
| Wise Business | £0 Essential; £50 one-off for Advanced | Not built for notes | Low-cost currency conversion | Xero, QuickBooks | Receiving euros or dollars regularly | Not a full relationship bank for lending |
Read the table by column rather than by row. Cash handling and currency needs decide more UK cases than the headline subscription ever does.
The charges that never make the advert
Picture a two-director design studio in Bristol, billing one EU client monthly and paying a UK supplier weekly. On a high street account, the international transfer fee plus the exchange spread quietly outweighed twelve months of subscription. Moving the receiving side to a multi-currency provider and keeping the main account for payroll cut the annual cost without changing how invoices were raised. Rates shift constantly, so the studio rechecks the spread each quarter rather than trusting last time's number.
Cash-heavy trades face a different pattern. Starling's Post Office arrangement charges 0.7% with a £3 floor, which is reasonable for occasional takings and noticeable for daily ones. Branch-based banks often include deposits in the monthly charge but limit how many you can make before a fee applies. A market trader and a software consultant should not be reading the same review.
Protection deserves a paragraph of its own. The deposit guarantee now stands at £120,000 per eligible depositor per licensed firm, so a limited company's balance is covered to that figure at one bank. Above that, splitting across two separately licensed providers keeps the whole amount inside the scheme. Some app-based providers operate under an e-money licence rather than a full banking licence, which changes how client funds are held. The FCA register settles the question in two minutes, and it is worth those two minutes before a six-figure balance sits anywhere.
A sequence that avoids the usual mistakes
- Get the paperwork straight. Companies House number, registered address matching the application, and photo ID for every director who needs access.
- List what the account must do before comparing price: notes, foreign currency, invoicing, director cards, an overdraft facility for seasonal gaps.
- Work out annual cost, not monthly cost. Monthly charge, plus deposits, plus transfers, plus international sends, equals the real figure.
- Check the licence and the protection position on the FCA register.
- Move with the Current Account Switch Service if you already bank elsewhere. It carries no charge, redirects incoming payments for a period, and typically completes within seven working days.
A separate pot for tax is worth the extra ten minutes. Starling's Spaces, Monzo's Pots and Mettle's sub-accounts all let you ring-fence the VAT and corporation tax you have already collected but not yet paid. Come the January self assessment deadline, that habit is the difference between a calm week and a bad one.
Local support exists and most of it is underused. Post Office counters handle cash deposits for several app banks. Business Debtline offers no-cost guidance if a cash flow problem turns serious. Accountants who already work in Xero or FreeAgent will usually set up the bank feed for you, which removes the manual entry entirely.
Start with the two things that cannot be changed later: the licence behind the account and the way your money arrives. Then compare the monthly figures with the transaction charges beside them. A short list of two providers, tested against one real month of your own statements, will tell you more than any comparison table, including this one.
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