The best free MTD software for landlords (and what's free with a catch)

Every one of these searches turns up ten articles calling something “free MTD software,” and about half the time the small print tells a different story: free trial, free for 30 days, free until you actually need it to do anything useful. So let me be specific about what’s free with no catch, what’s free with one very particular catch, and what’s cheap but definitely not free, because those are three different things and this category blurs them constantly.

Genuinely free, no strings: Sage Sole Trader

This is the one actual permanently-free tier on the market from a recognised name. No trial period, no credit card, no bank requirement. The catch is a real cap, not a hidden one: five sales invoices and twenty-five categorised transactions a month. If your situation is one tidy property or a small trade with light volume, that cap probably never bites. If you’re managing several properties or anything transaction-heavy, you’ll blow through it most months, and then you’re looking at the £7 paid tier anyway.

Free, but only if your bank is right: FreeAgent

Here’s the one that catches people out in the other direction, because the free offer is real and generous, but entirely conditional. Hold a qualifying NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle business account and FreeAgent costs nothing, indefinitely, for a product that’s genuinely more capable than Sage’s free tier, no transaction caps to worry about. Don’t bank with one of those four and it’s a paid product, somewhere around £29 a month.

So the honest advice here is oddly specific: if you’re not already with NatWest Group, and free is your actual priority, opening one of those accounts specifically to get FreeAgent for free is a trade some landlords make deliberately. Worth doing the maths on whether switching banks is less hassle than paying £29 a month, because for some people it clearly is.

Free for small portfolios, with an asterisk: Landlord Studio

Landlord Studio’s GO plan is free for up to three properties, which covers a meaningful chunk of UK landlords outright, plenty of people in this market own exactly one or two. But here’s the asterisk, and I’d want someone to point it out to me: the free plan charges £5 per MTD submission. Four quarterly updates a year and that’s £20 before you’ve filed the final declaration. Still cheap, genuinely. Just not free the way the headline reads. The paid plan, roughly £9 a month, includes submissions. It’s built purely for property income though, so if you’ve got self-employment income alongside your properties, this alone won’t cover it.

And one to watch out for: untied gets listed as free in a few roundups, including places that should know better. Its free version is a 30-day trial, and actually filing anything needs a paid plan. Good product for mixed income, by all accounts. Not free, just patient.

Cheap, and worth mentioning even though it's not free: VitalTax

This one isn’t free, but it’s close enough, and different enough, to belong in this conversation. VitalTax is bridging software: it doesn’t replace your spreadsheet, it sits on top of one and handles the actual submission to HMRC. Individual pricing runs to roughly £30 a year, not a month, a year, which puts it below what most of the free-tier alternatives cost once you outgrow their caps. If you already keep tidy records in Excel and just need the compliance layer, this is the cheapest route to full compliance on the market, genuinely free tiers included, once you annualise the maths.

What none of the free tiers do

Notice the pattern across all four free-or-nearly-free options. None of them are full landlord-plus-self-employment platforms with no cap and no bank requirement. That combination doesn’t exist for free, and I’d be suspicious of anyone claiming otherwise. If your situation is genuinely simple, one property or one trade, modest volume, you can very plausibly pay nothing. The moment your situation has any real texture to it, multiple properties, mixed income, joint ownership, the free tiers stop fitting and you’re choosing between paying for one of the fuller platforms or running two free tools side by side and accepting the extra admin that comes with it.

Rather than read through this and try to match your own situation against four sets of small print, the selector asks about your properties and income directly and tells you which of these, if any, genuinely fits for free. The full comparison has every product's free-tier status marked plainly, no digging required.

Quick answers

Is there a completely free option with no conditions at all?

Sage Sole Trader is the closest thing, free with no bank requirement and no trial expiry, just a transaction cap. Everything else free on this list comes with a condition attached, a bank account, a property limit, or a per-submission charge.

I've got two properties and a side business. Is anything free for me?

Not cleanly. Landlord Studio's free tier covers your two properties (mind the £5-per-submission charge) but not the side business, and nothing else free covers both income types together. You're likely looking at a paid tier somewhere, or running two cheap tools side by side and accepting the extra admin.

Should I switch banks just to get free software?

It can be worth it if FreeAgent's paid price is the alternative and you're not attached to your current bank, but it's a decision about your banking relationship, not just your accounting software, so weigh it as that.