One of the most common questions we hear from new clients is some version of: “Am I being overcharged by my current accountant?” It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that small business accountant fees in the UK vary enormously — from a few hundred pounds a year for a straightforward sole trader to well over a thousand pounds a month for a complex limited company with full bookkeeping and payroll. That range is legitimate. But within it, there is also a lot of overpricing.

In our experience, many small businesses — particularly those in their first two or three years — end up paying monthly retainer fees for services they either do not need yet or could access for a fraction of the price elsewhere. This post is our honest take on what accountant costs should look like in 2026, what factors genuinely move the price, and how to tell whether you are getting fair value.

Industry figures for 2026 put the cost of a small business accountant broadly between £50 and £500 per month, depending on the service scope. That range is technically accurate but almost useless on its own. It is a bit like saying a car costs between £5,000 and £500,000 — true, but not especially helpful when you are trying to budget.

The more useful framing is to split by what you actually need:

• One-off annual filings — a self-assessment return for a sole trader typically costs between £150 and £400. A limited company accounts and corporation tax return tends to sit between £250 and £1,500 depending on complexity and the practice you use.
• Monthly packages — these bundle bookkeeping, VAT, payroll, and compliance into a recurring fee. Sole trader packages start around £25–£100 per month for basic work. A small limited company with proper monthly bookkeeping, VAT returns, and payroll will often land between £150 and £400 per month.
• Hourly rates — qualified accountants typically charge £50 to £150 per hour for advisory or ad-hoc work. London-based practices often sit at the higher end of that range.

Worth noting: if you only need annual compliance (accounts, tax return, confirmation statement) and your bookkeeping is already in reasonable order, you almost certainly do not need a monthly retainer. One-off fees can be a much more cost-effective route.

This is where we think a lot of small businesses get nudged in the wrong direction. Monthly packages are commercially attractive for accountancy firms — recurring revenue, predictable cashflow — but they are not always the right fit for the client paying them.

Our honest view: if you are a sole trader with straightforward income, or a small limited company that handles its own day-to-day bookkeeping using cloud software, a fixed-fee annual service will almost always cost you less and deliver everything you genuinely need. There is no shame in keeping it simple.

Monthly packages make sense when:

• You have ongoing bookkeeping that needs professional handling each month
• You run payroll and want that managed end-to-end
• You are VAT-registered and want your returns prepared and filed quarterly
• Your volume of transactions means monthly reconciliation is a real time cost

If you tick two or more of those boxes, a monthly arrangement probably makes sense and will likely save you time worth more than the fee. If you tick none of them, you are probably paying for convenience you do not need.

At Wings, our limited company accounts and tax return is a fixed £250 one-off fee. Our self-assessment return is £150. These are not teaser rates — they are the actual price, with no surprises.

Not all variation in accountant fees is unjustified. Some of it reflects real differences in the work involved. Here are the factors that legitimately affect the price — and a couple that probably should not.

Factors that rightly affect the fee

• Volume and complexity of transactions — a business processing 500 invoices a month needs more bookkeeping time than one processing 50. That difference should be reflected in the cost.
• Number of income sources — a director with employment income, dividends, rental income, and capital gains has a more complex self-assessment than someone with a single salary.
• VAT scheme and frequency — standard VAT with monthly returns is more work than annual accounting with quarterly returns.
• Payroll headcount — payroll cost scales roughly with the number of employees.
• Catchup or clean-up work — if records are behind or disorganised, there is a genuine one-off cost to bring everything current.

Factors that probably should not move the price as much as they do

• Location — a London postcode does not make accounts more complex. Online practices serve clients across the whole of the UK and should not carry a London premium.
• Firm size — larger practices often charge more simply due to overhead. A smaller, modern online firm can deliver the same qualified work at significantly lower cost.

This is a question worth addressing directly, because the instinct to treat price as a proxy for quality is understandable — but it is not always right.

The risk with a very cheap accountant is not the price itself; it is what the price signals. An unqualified bookkeeper filing accounts and corporation tax returns is technically cheaper, and technically more risky. Errors in statutory filings can result in HMRC penalties, Companies House fines, or — more expensively — a missed tax saving that a qualified eye would have caught.

But the assumption that expensive equals better does not hold either. In our experience, the mid-market pricing sweet spot for a small business is not hard to find: qualified accountants, transparent fixed fees, cloud-based delivery. You do not need to pay £400 a month for someone to file a straightforward set of limited company accounts once a year.

What you should look for: qualifications (ACA, ACCA, or equivalent), regulatory registration (HMRC AML supervised, ideally ACSP-registered with Companies House), and clear, published pricing. If a practice cannot tell you upfront what something costs, that is often a signal in itself.

We explore this in more depth in our guide on whether a cheap accountant is worth it.