Clear Books

Clear Books Limited is a London private company, incorporated in 2008, and one of the few products here that is British from the ground up: the code, the support desk and the accountant network are all in the UK. HMRC lists Clear Books on the VAT list and both "Clear Books" and "Clear Books Free" on the Income Tax list, covering sole traders and UK and foreign property.

Prices are in pounds plus VAT, read on 8 September 2026, with 10 per cent off for a year paid upfront and 20 per cent off for two, 50 per cent off the first three months on new subscriptions, and a 30-day trial. The company ladder is Small at £16 a month (bank feeds with automated matching, invoicing, full reporting, integrations and API, journals, a dividends tool and user permissions), Medium at £34, which is the plan we score because it is where MTD VAT submissions arrive along with purchase orders, CIS reporting and submissions and unlimited budgets, and Large at £44 with project accounting, multi-currency, employee expense claims and fixed assets. Sole traders have their own ladder: a free plan built around MTD for Income Tax quarterly updates and year-end filing with no transaction limits, Sole Trader at £5 with bank feeds and invoicing, and Sole Trader Plus at £15 for the VAT-registered. Payroll is a bolt-on at £2.70 per employee a month with a two-employee minimum, RTI and auto-enrolment included; Instant Bank Payments lets customers pay invoices by open banking; Auto Bills captures supplier bills. Stripe, GoCardless and PayPal are integrated, and bank feeds run through Plaid.

Support is phone and email on every company plan, and the partner programme gives accountants a free practice licence, a client console, an account manager and weekly MTD webinars, with a claimed thousand-plus UK practices. Trustpilot is 3.9 on 382 invited reviews, 66 per cent five-star, with only two recent one-stars we could find, one about receipt photos and HMRC submissions that Clear Books disputed publicly, one saying "too expensive".

The limits are scale and reach. The app ecosystem is small next to Xero's or QuickBooks', the REST API is granted on request through a contact form rather than self-serve, there is no MCP server, we could not confirm data location or certifications, and the company plans do not state a user count. For a UK company that wants a UK supplier on the phone, CIS and VAT handled properly and a fair price, that may be a trade worth making.

Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, HMRC's software lists, vendor documentation and third-party reviews.