Crunch Review UK 2026: In-Depth Analysis

Crunch is a Brighton-based online accountancy service that bundles cloud accounting software with a qualified UK accountant for a single monthly fee. It targets contractors, freelancers, sole traders and small limited companies, particularly single-director firms, where the owner wants the convenience of self-serve bookkeeping but does not want to engage a separate high-street accountant for year-end filings, VAT returns or tax advice. The proposition is unusual in the UK market because most competitors sell either software (Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent) or accountant services (a local practice), but Crunch sells both as one product.

This review covers the 2026 plan structure, the software in detail, MTD compliance status, integrations, the strengths and limitations of the bundled accountant model, and the specific scenarios where Crunch is and is not the right choice.

Quick verdict

• Who it suits: single-director limited companies, contractors inside or outside IR35, and self-employed freelancers who want a fixed monthly cost that covers software plus year-end filings and unlimited accountant questions.
• Who it does not suit: product businesses with stock, VAT-registered traders on the standard scheme who want a deep ecosystem of third-party apps, and companies with multiple shareholders or complex group structures.
• Headline price: sole trader plans from £27 + VAT per month, limited company plans from £90 + VAT per month, with a 20% discount for the first three months at the time of writing.
• MTD status: HMRC-recognised for VAT and listed for MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment. The sole trader plans bundle MTD ITSA software at no extra cost.
• Deployment: browser-based, with a companion mobile app for invoicing and expense capture.

What is Crunch?

Crunch was founded in 2009 in Brighton by Darren Fell, an entrepreneur who had been frustrated by the opaque pricing and slow turnaround of traditional UK accountancy practices. The original idea was to combine an in-house accountant team with proprietary software, charge a flat monthly fee, and remove hourly billing entirely. The company has grown to serve tens of thousands of UK clients, primarily contractors, freelancers and small limited companies, and has expanded its offer to include payroll, IR35 support, registered office services, company formation and bookkeeping.

Two characteristics distinguish Crunch from a pure software vendor like Xero or QuickBooks Online. First, every paid plan includes named human accountants, and clients can ask unlimited questions through the in-app messaging system or by phone. Second, Crunch handles statutory submissions on behalf of the client; VAT returns, Confirmation Statements, annual accounts and Corporation Tax computations are prepared and filed by the Crunch team, not the user. The software is the bookkeeping engine that sits underneath that service.

The target user is therefore not the accounting professional choosing software for clients (that audience uses Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage). It is the small business owner or contractor who wants to do basic bookkeeping themselves but offload everything compliance-related to a qualified team for a predictable monthly fee.

Pricing breakdown

Crunch publishes its pricing openly on the website and offers an instant quote tool that lets prospective clients build a package by adding optional services. Prices below are quoted exclusive of VAT and reflect the standard monthly fee outside the introductory discount window.

Sole trader plans

Plan	Price	What is included
Sole Trader Pro	From £27 + VAT per month	MTD ITSA-ready software, Self Assessment filing, tax optimisation review, unlimited accountant support

Sole trader plans bundle MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment software at no extra cost, which matters from April 2026 when traders with qualifying income above £50,000 enter the regime. The plan also includes the actual filing of the Self Assessment return by the accountant team, rather than leaving the user to file it themselves.

Limited company plans

Plan	Price	What is included
Limited Company Pro	From £90 + VAT per month	Bookkeeping software, year-end accounts, Corporation Tax filing, Confirmation Statement, VAT filing, real-time tax dashboard, unlimited accountant support, payroll for up to 2 directors below NI threshold
Limited Company Premium	From around £124 + VAT per month (consultation required)	Everything in Pro plus dedicated client manager, additional advisory time, faster response targets

Self Assessment filing for directors is not included in the headline Limited Company Pro price; it is sold as an add-on at around £200 + VAT, or bundled into a higher tier. This is a common point of confusion for new clients and is worth checking against the live quote before signing up.

Add-ons

The instant quote builder lets you bolt on:

• Registered office address (around £8 + VAT per month)
• Company formation (£100 one-time)
• Director payroll above the NI threshold (£18 + VAT per month)
• Employee payroll (£18 to £28 + VAT per month, depending on headcount)
• IR35 contract review and status determination
• Monthly bookkeeping with a dedicated UK bookkeeper
• Multi-currency support
• Financial healthcheck (around £85 + VAT)

Worked example

Consider a single-director limited company with one employee on payroll, VAT-registered on the standard scheme, and the director needing a personal Self Assessment filed each January. On Limited Company Pro the standing cost is £90 + VAT per month. Add £18 + VAT per month for employee payroll and £200 + VAT per year for the director’s Self Assessment, and the total annual cost is roughly £1,496 + VAT, or about £125 + VAT per month equivalent. That figure covers the software, all VAT returns, statutory accounts, Corporation Tax, payroll, the Confirmation Statement and unlimited accountant support.

A comparable arrangement with FreeAgent at £19 + VAT per month plus a separate high-street accountant on a typical £900 to £1,500 + VAT annual fixed fee for a small limited company sits in roughly the same range, often slightly cheaper if the chosen accountant charges at the lower end. Crunch’s argument is convenience and predictability rather than raw cost saving.

Core features in depth

Invoicing and CrunchPay

Invoicing is straightforward. Users create branded invoices from a template, set payment terms, schedule recurring invoices, and send them by email directly from the platform. CrunchPay, the integrated payment option, lets clients pay invoices by card, with funds settling to the user’s bank account. Late-payment reminders can be automated. The invoicing module is competent rather than market-leading; it does not match the level of customisation found in Xero or the project tracking layered on top of QuickBooks Online’s invoicing.

Expenses

Expenses can be entered manually, imported from bank feeds, or captured by photographing receipts in the mobile app. Categories map to standard UK chart-of-accounts codes. Mileage claims are calculated using HMRC-approved rates. Personal expenses paid for by the company can be flagged so they appear in the director’s loan account or are reimbursed.

Bank feeds and reconciliation

Crunch uses Open Banking connections with the major UK banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Santander, Starling, Monzo, Revolut and others). Transactions appear in the bookkeeping ledger, are categorised either manually or by rule, and reconciled against invoices and bills. Reconciliation is solid for the contractor and freelancer use case, though high-volume e-commerce traders with hundreds of transactions a day will find the workflow slower than a dedicated tool like A2X feeding into Xero.

Dividends, board minutes and director records

For limited company users, Crunch automates the paperwork around dividends. The dashboard shows the available distributable reserves in real time, and when a director takes a dividend the platform generates the dividend voucher and the corresponding board minute. This is one of the most genuinely useful features for single-director limited companies, where the compliance paperwork is otherwise easy to forget.

Payroll

Payroll is a paid add-on but is well-integrated. Users can run payroll for up to two directors at the NI threshold without an extra charge, with director or employee payroll above that priced per head. Crunch handles RTI submissions to HMRC, generates payslips, calculates PAYE and NI, and supports auto-enrolment pension contributions through integrations with major workplace pension providers.

Self Assessment filing

On limited company plans, Self Assessment is an add-on. On sole trader plans, it is bundled. In both cases the actual filing is handled by the Crunch accountant team, not left to the user. This is a meaningful difference from a pure software product, where the user files the return themselves through the HMRC personal tax account or the software’s filing module.

Corporation tax and year-end accounts

For limited company clients, Crunch prepares the statutory accounts in iXBRL format, files them at Companies House, prepares the Corporation Tax computation, and files the CT600 with HMRC. The user reviews and approves the figures in the platform before submission. Year-end work is one of the strongest justifications for the fee; doing this through a separate accountant typically costs £500 to £1,200 in itself.

Accountant chat and support

The named accountant is reachable through in-app chat, email and phone. Response times are advertised as same-day for chat questions and within a few hours for email. In practice user reviews report a wider range, with some clients delighted by responsiveness and others reporting longer waits during busy periods around January and the corporation tax peak. Public Trustpilot sentiment across more than 1,200 reviews skews positive for the sector.

MTD and HMRC compliance

Crunch is HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital for VAT, which has been mandatory for VAT-registered businesses since April 2022. VAT returns are prepared inside the platform from the underlying transaction data and submitted directly to HMRC by either the user or the Crunch accountant team, depending on the plan.

Crunch is also listed by HMRC for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment, which expanded in April 2026 to cover sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000, and which extends to those above £30,000 from April 2027. The sole trader plans bundle MTD ITSA software at no additional cost, which is a sensible commercial move because the affected population overlaps almost exactly with Crunch’s freelancer and contractor user base. Quarterly updates and the end-of-period statement are filed through the platform.

For limited companies, Crunch handles Corporation Tax computations and CT600 filings as part of the year-end service. There is no client-facing tax software for the user to operate; the accountants do the work and the user approves the output.

Integrations

Crunch’s integration ecosystem is narrower than Xero’s or QuickBooks Online’s, which is the natural trade-off for a tightly bundled service. The main connections are:

• Open Banking feeds with all major UK banks and the main fintech challenger banks (Starling, Monzo, Revolut Business, Tide).
• CrunchPay for in-invoice card payments.
• Stripe and GoCardless for direct payment collection.
• Workplace pension providers (NEST, Smart Pension, The People’s Pension) for auto-enrolment contributions through the payroll module.
• Receipt capture through the Crunch mobile app and via email forwarding.

There is no large third-party app marketplace in the style of the Xero App Store. For users who need a single integrated tool covering invoicing, expenses, bookkeeping, payroll and tax, this is rarely a problem. For users who need to plug in inventory management, project costing, time tracking, e-commerce sales channels or industry-specific tools, Crunch will feel constrained and a Xero or QuickBooks Online stack is a better fit.

Pros

• A qualified UK accountant is included in every paid plan, with unlimited chat and call support, removing the need to engage a separate practice.
• All statutory filings (VAT, Confirmation Statement, statutory accounts, Corporation Tax) are prepared and submitted by Crunch, not left to the user.
• Self Assessment filing is bundled into the sole trader plans and available as a paid add-on for limited company directors.
• Dividend vouchers, board minutes and the director’s loan account are automated, which is genuinely useful paperwork relief for single-director companies.
• HMRC-recognised for both MTD for VAT and MTD for ITSA, with MTD ITSA software included free in the sole trader tier.
• Pricing is transparent, fixed and published on the website, with an instant quote tool that calculates the full bundle before sign-up.
• UK-built and UK-only, with all support staff based in the UK and no time-zone issues.
• A long-established business (founded 2009) with strong public review scores in the 4.3 to 4.6 range across more than 1,200 Trustpilot reviews.

Cons

• More expensive than software-only competitors. A user who already has an accountant they trust pays for a service they do not need.
• Self Assessment filing is not included in the headline Limited Company Pro price; the £200 + VAT add-on is easy to overlook when comparing against bundled alternatives.
• Accountant response times can stretch during peak periods (January Self Assessment season, October VAT, end of Corporation Tax accounting periods), and some Trustpilot reviewers report delays of several days during these windows.
• Smaller third-party integration library than Xero or QuickBooks Online; no equivalent of the Xero App Store.
• Account closure and data export experiences are reported in some reviews as slow, with one cited case taking over 20 weeks against an advertised 12-week target.
• Complex limited companies with multiple shareholders, share schemes, R&D claims or group structures will outgrow Crunch’s standard service and need a specialist practice.
• The bookkeeping interface is functional rather than polished; users coming from Xero will find it less refined.

When to pick Crunch

Crunch is the right choice when the buyer fits one or more of these profiles:

• A single-director limited company contractor working through a personal service company who wants software, payroll, year-end accounts, VAT and Confirmation Statement handled in one fee.
• A freelancer or self-employed sole trader who wants their Self Assessment filed by a qualified accountant rather than tackled themselves through HMRC’s portal, particularly with MTD ITSA now in force above £50,000.
• A first-time limited company director who has never run a company before, has no relationship with an accountant, and wants the reassurance of named human support without negotiating a quote.
• A user who values predictable fixed monthly billing over hourly billing and is willing to pay a small premium for that predictability.
• A user who needs IR35 contract reviews and status determinations alongside their bookkeeping and is happy to buy them as a Crunch add-on.

When NOT to pick Crunch

Crunch is the wrong choice when:

• You already have a high-street or independent accountant you trust. In that case, FreeAgent at £19 + VAT per month (or free with a NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland or Mettle business account) plus your existing accountant is almost always cheaper and gives you more flexibility.
• You run a product or e-commerce business with stock, multi-channel sales, and a need for inventory and warehouse management. Xero or QuickBooks Online with specialist add-ons (Dext, A2X, Unleashed) is a better fit.
• You want a wide third-party app ecosystem to plug in industry tools. Xero is the market leader on integration breadth in the UK.
• You are an established small to mid-sized SME with employees, multiple shareholders or complex tax planning needs. A dedicated independent accountant working in Xero or QuickBooks Online will deliver more strategic value than the Crunch standard service.
• You want a fully software-only experience with no human service layer. Ember, FreeAgent or Coconut all sit at lower price points without the bundled accountant.

Comparable software

If Crunch’s bundled software-plus-accountant model appeals but you want to weigh alternatives, the closest direct comparison is Ember, which sells a similar package aimed at the same contractor and small limited company audience. FreeAgent is the obvious software-only alternative for the same user base, particularly when paired with an existing accountant. Xero and QuickBooks Online are the broader market leaders for businesses that will eventually need a richer ecosystem and the option to bring in an external accountant of their choice. Coconut is worth considering for self-employed sole traders who want a mobile-first experience built around a connected bank account rather than a desktop bookkeeping ledger.

FAQs

Is Crunch HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital?

Yes. Crunch is on HMRC’s recognised list for both MTD for VAT and MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment. VAT returns can be submitted directly to HMRC from the platform, and the sole trader plans bundle MTD ITSA software at no additional cost.

Does Crunch include a real accountant or just software?

Every paid Crunch plan includes a named UK-based accountant who can be contacted through in-app chat, email and phone. The accountant team prepares and files VAT returns, statutory accounts, Corporation Tax computations, the Confirmation Statement and (depending on plan) Self Assessment returns.

How much does Crunch cost for a limited company?

Limited Company Pro starts at £90 + VAT per month. Add-ons such as employee payroll, registered office address, IR35 contract review and Self Assessment filing are priced separately. A typical single-director limited company with one employee, monthly payroll and a director’s Self Assessment usually lands at around £125 + VAT per month all-in.

Is Self Assessment included in the limited company plans?

Self Assessment for directors is not included in the headline Limited Company Pro price. It is sold as an add-on at around £200 + VAT or bundled into the higher Premium tier. Sole trader plans, by contrast, include Self Assessment filing as standard.

Can I switch from Crunch to another accountant or software later?

Yes. Like any UK accountant, Crunch is required to release professional clearance and pass on records to a successor on request. Some users have reported the data export and account closure process taking longer than advertised, so it is worth allowing a comfortable lead time before any HMRC deadline if you plan to switch.

Does Crunch handle payroll for employees?

Yes, as an add-on. Director payroll for up to two directors at the NI threshold is included in Limited Company Pro at no extra cost. Above that threshold, or for any employees, payroll is priced from £18 + VAT per month, scaling with headcount. RTI submissions, payslips, PAYE and NI calculations and auto-enrolment pension contributions are all handled.

Is Crunch suitable for VAT-registered businesses?

Yes, for businesses on the standard or flat-rate VAT schemes. Crunch prepares VAT returns from the underlying bookkeeping data and submits them under MTD. The Cash Accounting Scheme is also supported. Businesses with very high transaction volumes, complex partial exemption calculations or non-standard VAT schemes (margin schemes, retail schemes) should clarify with Crunch’s onboarding team before signing up.

Does Crunch work for sole traders and landlords under MTD ITSA?

Yes. The sole trader plans include MTD ITSA software at no extra cost, and the accountant team handles the quarterly updates and end-of-period statement filings. From April 2026 this is mandatory for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000, expanding to £30,000 from April 2027.

Is the Crunch software available on mobile?

Yes. The Crunch mobile app is available on iOS and Android and supports invoice creation, expense capture by photo, mileage logging, and viewing the real-time tax dashboard. The full bookkeeping ledger and reconciliation workflows are best handled in the browser.

How does Crunch compare to FreeAgent?

FreeAgent is software only, priced at £19 + VAT per month (or free with a qualifying NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland or Mettle business account). Crunch is software plus a qualified accountant who handles your filings, priced from £27 + VAT (sole trader) or £90 + VAT (limited company). FreeAgent is the cheaper option for users who already have an accountant; Crunch is the cheaper option for users who would otherwise pay separately for both software and a high-street accountant.

Final summary

Crunch occupies a distinctive position in the UK accounting software market because it is not really an accounting software product; it is an accountancy service with proprietary software bundled in. For single-director limited companies, contractors and self-employed freelancers who want one fixed monthly fee covering bookkeeping software, year-end accounts, VAT returns, Corporation Tax, payroll and unlimited accountant support, the bundle is convenient, transparent and well executed. The dividend automation, MTD ITSA inclusion on sole trader plans, and the elimination of separate negotiations with a high-street practice are all genuine reasons to choose it.

For users who already have an accountant they trust, who run product or e-commerce businesses with stock, who need a wide third-party app ecosystem, or who run more complex limited companies with multiple shareholders, Crunch will be both more expensive and more constrained than pairing FreeAgent, Xero or QuickBooks Online with an independent accountant of their choice. Use the instant quote tool on the Crunch website to price your specific configuration before signing up, and check carefully whether Self Assessment is bundled in your chosen plan or sits as a £200 + VAT add-on.