Coconut Review UK 2026: In-Depth Analysis

Coconut is a UK-built, mobile-first bookkeeping and tax app aimed at sole traders, freelancers, CIS subcontractors and individual landlords. It is one of a small group of HMRC-recognised products that has positioned itself almost entirely around Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment, rather than treating MTD ITSA as a bolt-on to a wider small-business accounting platform. The headline pitch is simple: connect your bank, let the app categorise income and expenses against the Self Assessment categories, and file either a Self Assessment return or quarterly MTD updates from your phone.

This review covers what Coconut does well, where it falls short for anything beyond a sole trader or landlord, and which UK self-employed users should pick it over rivals such as FreeAgent, Hammock, Pandle and the bank-bundled options like ANNA Money or Tide.

If you want the short version: Coconut is one of the most focused MTD for Income Tax apps on the UK market right now, with a clean mobile experience and an honest annual price. It is not a substitute for Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage if you run a limited company, employ staff or need stock and project accounting.

Quick verdict

• Best for: UK sole traders, freelancers, contractors outside IR35 working as sole traders, CIS subcontractors and individual landlords with one or a small handful of properties who want a phone-first record-keeping tool that files Self Assessment or MTD for Income Tax directly.
• Not for: Limited companies needing Corporation Tax filing, businesses that employ staff and need payroll, multi-property landlord portfolios held inside a company, or accounting firms running a full client base.
• Headline price: £99.99 per year for the Bookkeeping plan, £129.99 per year for either the MTD filing plan or the +Self Assessment plan, and £159.99 per year for the Full plan that combines both filing routes. Monthly billing is available on the Bookkeeping plan from £16.99.
• MTD status: HMRC-recognised for both Making Tax Digital for VAT alternatives at the Self Assessment level and, more importantly, for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment, with quarterly updates and end-of-period statements built in.
• Built in: United Kingdom, by Coconut Platform Ltd.
• Deployment: Mobile-first iOS and Android apps with a parallel web interface.

What is Coconut?

Coconut is a London-based fintech that started life around 2017 as a current account aimed at the self-employed, with bookkeeping baked in. Over the last few years the product has narrowed and sharpened: the proprietary current account has been wound down, and the business now sits squarely as a software product. It connects to the user’s existing UK bank accounts via Open Banking and turns the transactions into Self Assessment-ready bookkeeping records.

The platform is operated by Coconut Platform Ltd in the United Kingdom and is FCA-authorised as an Account Information Service Provider, which is the regulatory permission needed to read transactions from a customer’s bank under Open Banking rules. Data is held in the UK and protected with bank-level encryption in transit and at rest.

The target user is narrow and intentional. Coconut is for individuals who file a personal Self Assessment return, particularly those with self-employment income on SA103 or property income on SA105. It works well for freelancers, contractors trading as sole traders, CIS-registered subcontractors, taxi and delivery drivers, hairdressers and trades, and small landlords. It is not built for limited companies, partnerships filing on SA800, employers running PAYE, or VAT-registered businesses with complex VAT schemes.

That focus matters because Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment is the largest compliance change facing UK sole traders and landlords in years. From April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000 must keep digital records and file quarterly updates to HMRC, with the threshold falling to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. Coconut has positioned the entire product around that change, which is what separates it from generic small-business accounting apps.

Pricing breakdown

Coconut publishes four annual plans and one monthly plan. All prices are inclusive figures published on getcoconut.com at the time of review.

Plan	Annual price	Monthly equivalent	What you get
Bookkeeping	£99.99 per year	£16.99 per month	Bank feeds, automatic categorisation, receipt storage, invoicing, profit and loss reports, accountant access, mobile app, SA103 self-employment estimate, SA105 property income preparation
MTD filing	£129.99 per year	Annual only	Everything in Bookkeeping plus quarterly MTD for Income Tax updates to HMRC, end-of-period statements, dedicated MTD support, multiple income streams and in-year tax estimates
+Self Assessment	£129.99 per year	Annual only	Everything in Bookkeeping plus direct Self Assessment submission across SA100 to SA109, tax-saving suggestions and full SA form support
Full	£159.99 per year	Annual only	Everything in Bookkeeping, MTD filing and +Self Assessment combined

A 14-day free trial is available with no card details. There is also a long-running partnership with Zempler Bank under which a Zempler current account holder can access Coconut free for two years.

Worked example

A self-employed graphic designer turning over £55,000 with no property income, who needs to file MTD for Income Tax from April 2026 and also wants to submit the existing Self Assessment return through Coconut for 2025/26, would take the Full plan at £159.99 a year. That works out at around £13.33 a month, which compares favourably with FreeAgent at £19 a month plus VAT after introductory pricing for sole traders, and with QuickBooks Online Self-Employed style plans where MTD ITSA functionality typically sits on a higher tier.

A landlord with a single buy-to-let generating £18,000 a year in rent, below the MTD ITSA threshold, would only need the Bookkeeping plan at £99.99 a year for the SA105 preparation, or the +Self Assessment plan at £129.99 to file the personal return as well. There is no scenario in which a non-VAT, non-employer sole trader pays more than £159.99 a year for the entire stack, which is unusual in the UK market.

Core features in depth

Mobile bank feeds and Open Banking

Coconut connects to more than 25 UK financial providers using Open Banking, including the major high street banks (Barclays, NatWest, HSBC, Lloyds), the digital banks most popular with the self-employed (Monzo, Starling, Revolut), and several SME-focused providers. PayPal and American Express are also supported as imports. The connection is read-only, governed by FCA AISP rules, and re-authorisation is required every 90 days, in line with the strong customer authentication regime.

Once connected, transactions appear in the app within minutes of clearing in the bank account. The user is presented with a swipeable feed and asked to confirm or recategorise each item. Categorisation is the differentiator: where general accounting software uses chart of accounts categories that an accountant understands, Coconut’s categories map directly onto the boxes on the SA103 self-employment supplementary page and SA105 property income page. That means a transaction marked as “vehicle costs” goes straight to the right box on the tax return without further mapping.

Expense capture and receipt storage

Receipts are captured by photo from the mobile app and attached to a matched transaction, with the image held in encrypted storage. Multiple receipts can be attached to a single transaction. A separate “out-of-pocket” entry is available for cash expenses or anything paid from a personal card not connected to the app, which is important for sole traders who run business expenses through personal accounts.

There is no full machine-read OCR extraction of receipt totals into editable fields in the way Dext or Hubdoc handle bills, but for the volume of receipts a typical sole trader produces this is rarely a constraint.

Invoicing

Unlimited invoicing is included on every plan. Invoices can be drafted from the mobile app or web, sent by email, marked paid manually or matched against an incoming bank transaction. Recurring invoices, payment reminders and basic branding are supported. There is no integrated card payment processing on the invoice itself, which is a gap if the user wants clients to pay by card from the invoice link, the way Stripe and GoCardless integrate with FreeAgent or Xero.

Self Assessment preparation and filing

The +Self Assessment and Full plans give the user direct submission to HMRC across the full Self Assessment family of forms, SA100 to SA109. That means a sole trader with self-employment income on SA103, property income on SA105, employment income on SA102 or capital gains on SA108 can prepare and submit the entire return inside Coconut. The app prompts the user with tax-saving suggestions, including allowable expenses commonly missed by sole traders and reminders about trading allowance and property allowance thresholds.

MTD for Income Tax preparation

This is where Coconut differentiates from almost every general small-business product. The MTD filing plan handles the four quarterly updates required under MTD ITSA, the end-of-period statement for each business or property, and the final declaration that replaces the current Self Assessment return. The app prompts the user as each quarterly deadline approaches, presents a summary of the period’s income and expenses for review, and then submits to HMRC.

For users who already use Coconut for day-to-day bookkeeping, the quarterly submission is largely a confirmation exercise rather than a new piece of work. The in-year tax estimate updates after each submission to give the user a running view of their probable bill.

Reporting

Reporting is deliberately limited compared with Xero or QuickBooks Online. Coconut produces a profit and loss summary, a cash position view, an income and expenses breakdown by category, and the SA103 and SA105 working schedules. There is no full balance sheet, no aged debtors report and no project profitability reporting. For the target user, who is preparing a personal tax return rather than statutory accounts, that is generally enough.

MTD and HMRC compliance

Coconut is HMRC-recognised software for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment. It appears on the official list of MTD ITSA-compatible products, and has been used in the HMRC MTD ITSA pilot programme for several tax years. That recognition covers digital record-keeping, quarterly update submissions and the end-of-period statement.

For the avoidance of doubt, Coconut is not aimed at MTD for VAT in the way Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting or Pandle are. The product can support the small subset of sole traders who are VAT-registered through a manual workflow, but a VAT-registered business is not the typical user. If the sole trader is VAT-registered, a general bookkeeping platform with first-class MTD VAT support will almost always be a better fit.

The MTD plan includes dedicated MTD expert help, which in practice means UK-based support agents who can walk a user through the quarterly submission process. That matters because MTD ITSA is genuinely new for most sole traders, and the volume of “what do I do now” support questions in the first year of the regime is going to be large.

Self Assessment submissions on the +Self Assessment and Full plans are made directly to HMRC through the official APIs, and Coconut is registered as a software supplier for that channel.

Integrations

Coconut’s integration ecosystem is small and Open Banking-led, which is the right architectural choice for the target user but a constraint for anyone wanting a deep app stack.

• Bank feeds: 25-plus UK financial providers via Open Banking, including Barclays, NatWest, HSBC, Lloyds, Santander, TSB, Nationwide, Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Tide, Mettle, Cashplus, Zempler and several others. PayPal and American Express are imported as separate connections.
• HMRC: Direct API connections for both Self Assessment and MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment.
• Accountant access: The Coconut Accountant Portal lets a registered accountant connect to a client’s data without manual document exchange.
• Third-party apps: There is no general app marketplace in the style of Xero or QuickBooks Online. There is no Zapier connector at the time of review.
• Card processing on invoices: Not natively integrated, although clients can be paid by bank transfer using sort code and account number on the invoice.

For most sole traders this minimal stack is fine. For a freelancer who relies on a CRM, project tool, time tracker and invoicing in one connected workflow, Coconut will feel light.

Pros

• HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment, with a multi-year track record in the HMRC pilot programme.
• Genuinely mobile-first product, designed for the user to do bookkeeping from a phone in spare moments rather than at a desk in the evening.
• Pricing is transparent, annual and capped at £159.99 a year for the full stack including MTD ITSA submissions and Self Assessment filing across all SA forms.
• UK-built, UK-supported and UK data residency, with FCA AISP authorisation for Open Banking access.
• Categorisation maps directly to Self Assessment boxes on SA103 and SA105, removing the translation step that general accounting software requires.
• Accountant Portal gives an agent real-time access to the client’s records without manual exports.
• Strong fit for the SA105 landlord workflow, with property income separated from self-employment income from the start.
• Free trial does not require card details, and a long-running Zempler bank account partnership offers two years free for new bank customers.

Cons

• No support for limited company accounts, Corporation Tax or company-level reporting. A sole trader who incorporates will need to migrate to a different platform.
• No integrated payroll. Sole traders who hire an employee will need separate payroll software, or to move to a fuller product such as FreeAgent or Sage Accounting.
• Limited MTD for VAT capability. VAT-registered users will be better served by Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting, Pandle or Bokio.
• No deep app marketplace and no Zapier connector. Workflow integrations beyond bank feeds are minimal.
• Reporting is shallow compared with general accounting platforms. There is no balance sheet, no aged debtors, no project profitability and no inventory tracking.
• Receipt capture is photo-and-attach rather than full OCR line extraction.
• Card payment on invoices is not built in, so a freelancer wanting Stripe or GoCardless on the invoice link will need a workaround.
• Aimed at one-business or single-property scenarios. Landlords with a sizable property portfolio held personally are supported but will find a specialist landlord product more comfortable.

When to pick Coconut

Pick Coconut if you are a UK sole trader, freelancer, contractor working outside IR35 as a sole trader, CIS subcontractor or self-employed trades professional whose income is approaching, at, or above the Making Tax Digital for Income Tax thresholds (£50,000 from April 2026, £30,000 from April 2027, £20,000 from April 2028) and who wants a single product that handles day-to-day bookkeeping and quarterly HMRC submissions from a phone.

Pick Coconut if you are an individual landlord with one or a small number of properties held personally, you file SA105 every year, and you want the property income workflow built in from the first transaction rather than bolted on at year end.

Pick Coconut if cost certainty matters and you want an annual fee in the £100 to £160 range that includes everything from bank feeds to direct HMRC filing, with no per-client uplifts and no surprise add-on tiers.

Pick Coconut if you want to give your accountant read-only access to your records without emailing spreadsheets, and you do not need a full app stack of CRM, project management or e-commerce integrations.

When NOT to pick Coconut

Do not pick Coconut if you run a limited company. Coconut does not produce statutory accounts, file Corporation Tax or handle company-level dividend and director loan workflows. A sole trader-friendly limited company product such as FreeAgent is a better fit, particularly because FreeAgent is free for personal and business banking customers of NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank and Mettle.

Do not pick Coconut if you are a serious landlord with a portfolio held personally and you want property-level reporting, mortgage interest tracking against Section 24, deposit protection logging and tenancy management. Hammock is purpose-built for that use case and integrates these features in a way Coconut deliberately does not.

Do not pick Coconut if you are VAT-registered and need MTD for VAT as a primary feature. Pandle, Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage Accounting will all serve a VAT-registered business better.

Do not pick Coconut if you employ staff or pay subcontractors through CIS as a contractor, rather than as a subcontractor. You will need a product with built-in payroll and CIS contractor functionality, which Coconut does not provide.

Do not pick Coconut if you are an accounting firm looking for a practice-wide platform for multiple clients across mixed entity types. Practice-tier products such as Xero Partner, QuickBooks Online Accountant or a UK-focused all-in-one such as Capium will fit far better.

Comparable software

The closest comparison set for Coconut sits in two clusters: dedicated MTD for Income Tax and sole trader products on one side, and the bank-bundled bookkeeping apps on the other. FreeAgent is the most direct competitor for sole traders who want a fuller accounting platform with sole trader and limited company modes in the same product. Hammock is the natural alternative for landlord-first users. Pandle offers a free tier for the price-sensitive sole trader who is comfortable with desktop-first workflows. ANNA Money, Tide Accounting, Starling Business Toolkit and Countingup all bundle bookkeeping with a current account, which is a different proposition to Coconut’s pure software-on-top-of-existing-bank model. The cards below show the products you should weigh against Coconut before committing.

FAQs

Is Coconut HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax?

Yes. Coconut appears on the HMRC list of MTD ITSA-compatible software and has participated in the HMRC pilot programme. The MTD filing plan handles quarterly updates, end-of-period statements and the final declaration.

Can I use Coconut if I am a limited company director?

Not really. Coconut is built for personal Self Assessment workflows, including SA103 self-employment and SA105 property income. It does not produce statutory accounts or file Corporation Tax for a limited company. A director who also has a personal SA filing obligation could use Coconut for the personal return, but the company itself needs different software.

Does Coconut handle Self Assessment as well as MTD for Income Tax?

Yes, but they sit on different plans. The +Self Assessment plan at £129.99 a year covers direct submission of SA100 to SA109. The MTD filing plan at the same price covers quarterly MTD ITSA updates. The Full plan at £159.99 a year combines both.

Can my accountant access my Coconut records?

Yes. The Coconut Accountant Portal gives a registered agent real-time access to your data without you having to export and email anything. This is included on every paid plan.

Does Coconut connect to my UK bank account?

Yes, through Open Banking. Coconut is FCA-authorised as an Account Information Service Provider and connects to more than 25 UK banks and financial providers, including Barclays, NatWest, HSBC, Lloyds, Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Tide and Mettle, plus PayPal and American Express imports. Bank connections need to be re-authorised every 90 days, in line with strong customer authentication rules.

Is there a free version of Coconut?

There is no permanently free tier. There is a 14-day free trial with no card details required. New customers of Zempler Bank can get Coconut free for two years through that bank’s partnership.

How does Coconut compare with FreeAgent for a sole trader?

Coconut is narrower and cheaper. FreeAgent is a fuller accounting platform that handles both sole trader and limited company workflows and is free for personal and business banking customers of NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank and Mettle. If you bank with one of those, FreeAgent is hard to beat on price. If you do not, Coconut is often the cheaper paid option once MTD ITSA is in scope, and it is more focused on the SA103 and SA105 workflow.

Can I use Coconut for MTD for VAT?

Coconut is not the right product for a VAT-registered business that needs MTD for VAT as a core workflow. The product is built around MTD for Income Tax and Self Assessment. A VAT-registered sole trader should look at Pandle, Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage Accounting instead.

Does Coconut work for landlords?

Yes, the product is explicitly built for individual landlords with personal property income reported on SA105. There is a separate workflow for property income, and the Bookkeeping plan covers the SA105 preparation. For larger personal portfolios with multiple properties, mortgage interest tracking and tenancy management, Hammock is purpose-built and is usually a better fit.

What happens to my data if I cancel?

Coconut is FCA-regulated and stores data in the United Kingdom under UK GDPR. Users can export their records before cancelling. Bank feed connections are revoked from the bank’s side as well as Coconut’s side under Open Banking rules.

Final summary

Coconut is one of the most clearly positioned UK accounting products on the market in 2026. It is not trying to be Xero. It is not trying to be FreeAgent. It is a mobile-first, sole trader and landlord product built around the assumption that the user files a personal Self Assessment return and is now or will soon be in scope for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. Inside that scope it does the job cleanly, with HMRC-recognised filing, transparent annual pricing, FCA-authorised Open Banking and a UK support team that has been working with MTD ITSA in the HMRC pilot for years.

The honest verdict is that Coconut is the right choice for a specific user and the wrong choice for everyone else. If you are a sole trader, a freelancer, a CIS subcontractor or an individual landlord, and you want the simplest credible path to MTD for Income Tax compliance, Coconut deserves a place on your shortlist alongside FreeAgent, Hammock and Pandle. If you are a limited company, a VAT-registered business, an employer or an accounting firm, look elsewhere. The 14-day free trial requires no card details and is the most reliable way to find out which side of that line you sit on.