Why the branch visit stopped being part of the process
High street names now onboard digitally. Lloyds, Barclays and Santander all run online applications for start-ups, sole traders and limited companies, and the account itself arrives by post a few days later. Starling says more than 500,000 business owners bank with it, most of them signed up from a phone.
The obvious driver is the monthly fee. A business account charging £8.50 to £10 a month costs roughly £102 to £120 a year before you send a single payment overseas or pay in a bag of takings. For someone invoicing £30,000 annually, that's a noticeable slice of the admin budget. So searches for an online business bank account UK comparison tend to start with price and end with a spreadsheet.
Price is only the first filter, though. Owners who churn out of an account within a year usually cite one of three things: a fee they didn't spot in the small print, a co-director who couldn't get access to the app, or bookkeeping that never quite reconciled. All three are fixable at the shortlisting stage.
What each provider actually charges
The three costs that hide behind a headline number
Cash handling is the one that catches retail and hospitality hardest. Lloyds charges £0.85 for every £100 paid in at an Immediate Deposit Machine and £1.60 per £100 over the counter; CHAPS transfers cost £30 and a BACS file submission £5.50. Barclays sends an international payment for £15, or £0.35 within the SEPA area. Tide applies 2.5% plus £1.50 on foreign payments and 2% on cash deposits, with a £1 minimum.
The pattern is consistent: an account with no monthly charge is not the same as an account that costs nothing to run. If you handle cash twice a week, a paid high street account can be the cheaper option. If you invoice in euros monthly, a currency-focused provider usually wins.
| Provider | Monthly cost | Cash paying in | Foreign payments | Suits | Worth checking |
|---|
| Starling | None | 0.7% at Post Office, £3 minimum | Standard rates, multi-currency add-ons | Sole traders and small limited companies wanting a clean app | Cash costs add up for shops |
| Monzo Business | None on Lite, £5 for Pro | £1 per deposit at PayPoint or Post Office | Not a strength | Freelancers and micro-businesses | Pro tier needed for tax pots and accounting sync |
| Tide | No monthly plan, paid tiers around £9.99 and £29.99 | 2%, £1 minimum | 2.5% + £1.50 | Very new businesses testing the water | Transaction fees scale with volume |
| Mettle | None, £4 for Mettle+ | Charged per deposit | Limited | Sole traders and simple limited companies | Fewer features than paid rivals |
| Revolut Business | Plans spanning roughly £10 to £90 | Varies by plan | Broad currency coverage, 0.6% conversion above allowance | Importers, exporters, agencies billing abroad | Not a bank, so deposit protection works differently |
| Wise Business | One-off setup fee around £45 | Not supported | Conversions from 0.33% | Businesses paid in several currencies | No cash facility |
| Barclays | No fee for 12 months, then £8.50 | Free at Post Office and self-service points | £15 per send | Established firms wanting lending and a branch network | Fee returns after year one |
| Lloyds | No fee for 12 months, then £10 | £0.85 or £1.60 per £100 | Charged per payment | Businesses that need a relationship manager | Cash and CHAPS charges |
| Santander | £9.99, waived for 12 months for start-ups and switchers | Charged | Charged | Start-ups wanting a switcher incentive | Fee resumes after the introductory period |
Figures reflect published pricing at the time of writing and change without notice; confirm on the provider's own fee page before applying.
Matching the account to how money actually arrives
A Bristol café that lives on notes and coins
Tom and Ellie run a 28-cover café near Temple Meads. Their old account charged nothing monthly and then took a cut every time they banked the weekend take. Moving to a provider with transparent cash pricing cut the guessing, but the real gain came from switching to a Wednesday and Sunday paying-in routine so the £3 minimum fee applied once rather than four times. Their tip for anyone comparing: count your cash deposits over a month before you sign anything.
A Glasgow consultant with two EU clients
Priya is a sole trader in user research. Her old bank charged a flat currency markup she never questioned until an invoice for €4,000 cost her noticeably more than the mid-market rate suggested. An account built for multi-currency work brought that down to a conversion spread closer to the published rate. She keeps her domestic account for Direct Debits and runs foreign income through the second one. Two accounts, one purpose each.
A Manchester studio with two directors
Design studio Northbank has two directors and an accountant who needs read-only access. Both directors needed full app access, cards in their own names, and permissions that didn't require one person to approve every payment. That requirement alone ruled out several otherwise strong providers. This is the practical argument for a limited company business account with multi-director access, and it's worth testing during the application rather than after.
Accounting integrations matter more than they used to. From 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000 must keep digital records and send quarterly updates under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. Choosing a business bank account with accounting software integration means transactions flow into Xero, FreeAgent or QuickBooks rather than into a monthly spreadsheet session.
A shortlist you can build in an afternoon
- Print last month's statement and mark every transaction type: card takings, cash, transfers in, transfers out, anything in a foreign currency.
- Price those types against two or three providers using their published fee pages, not the marketing summary.
- Test the application as a real applicant. Most rejections in the app-only space come from mismatched addresses or business descriptions that don't match Companies House records.
- Confirm access levels for every director, plus your accountant, before you commit.
- Use the Current Account Switch Service if you're moving an existing account. It covers more than 99% of UK current accounts, is free to request, and the guarantee means any charges or lost interest from a failed switch are refunded.
- Keep the old account open for a month. Card subscriptions and payroll links are routinely missed.
- Read the deposit protection position. Eligible deposits at a UK-regulated bank are covered to £85,000 by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme; electronic money institutions like Revolut and Wise sit outside that scheme and hold customer funds in safeguarded accounts instead.
Local support is closer than it looks. Growth Hubs funded through local authorities run free one-to-one sessions for start-ups, Chambers of Commerce in most cities offer banking introductions, and the British Business Bank's finance hub explains the difference between a current account and a lending facility. HMRC's own Making Tax Digital guidance on gov.uk sets out what your records need to contain, which in turn tells you how much integration you need from your bank.
Start with the way money lands in your account, not with the monthly fee. Then run the numbers on a month of real transactions, apply to two providers at once so you're not held up by one slow review, and give the switch a full month before you close the old account. If you already bank somewhere, one hour of fee comparison before your next annual review is usually enough to know whether the current arrangement still fits. That's the cheapest audit your business will run this year.
研究の知恵