How much does Sage Accounting software cost in 2026?

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Sage Accounting: 90% off for 10 months

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Sage 50 Accounts: 90% off for 10 months

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Sage Intacct: For Over 50 Employees

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We have completed a new round of analysis into seven top accounting software platforms, testing them on 1,512 areas of investigation to assess their full functionality. Sage stood out due to its tailored solutions for your finances and strong brand customisation. But how much does Sage cost? Its prices range from £18 per month to £59 per month.

Sage keeps its pricing simple with three plans aimed at sole traders, small business owners, and more advanced small businesses, respectively. Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Sage has done an impressive job of giving its US-based competitors a run for their money as one of the best accounting software platforms for small businesses.

Sage is particularly adept at streamlining your day-to-day workflow, but is it worth your money? We’ll explore which plan is right for you and how much it costs below.

How much is sage accounting software?

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	Plan	Cost	Features
Accounting Start	Accounting Standard	Accounting Plus
£18/month (+ VAT) 90% off for three months	£39/month (+ VAT) 90% off for three months	£59/month (+ VAT) 90% off for three months
Create and send unlimited sales invoices Submit VAT returns 24/7 support	Advanced reporting capabilities Unlimited users Cash flow statements	Support for multiple currencies Inventory management

Compare Sage plans and see what's best for you Visit Sage

Sage’s pricing is pretty simple. There are only three plans to choose from, and there’s no contract to sign and no hidden fees.

• Sage’s cheapest plan, Accounting Start, will cost you £18 per month (plus VAT).
• The mid-level Accounting Standard is over double that price at £39 per month (plus VAT).
• The most expensive plan is Accounting Plus, which will run you £59 per month (plus VAT).

While Sage might have fewer plan options when compared to rivals like Xero or QuickBooks, the overall range of features is highly comparable, so you won’t be missing out. It’s also reasonably clear to understand which plan would work best for you.

While Sage isn’t the most budget-friendly accounting software, you should be on the lookout for deals and discounts. For example, right now you can get 90% off the first three months of any of its three plans.

Sage Accounting Start: price and plan breakdown

Sage Accounting Start: £18 per month + VAT Special offer: 90% off for the first three months

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• Number of users: One billable user

• Prepare, track, and submit tax for Making Tax Digital VAT
• Unlimited sales invoices
• Sage Copilot, the AI-powered accounting assistant

Summary The Accounting Start plan is geared towards sole traders and solopreneurs who are registered for VAT, but any enterprise larger than a micro-business will need to upgrade to Accounting Standard.

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Accounting Start is primarily for sole traders, the self-employed who are registered for VAT (as it happens, Sage also ranked on our list of the best accounting software for the self-employed), and small business owners who deal in cash accounting and just need the absolute basics.

With Accounting Start, you can:

• Send unlimited sales invoices a year
• Track your invoices so you can see when they were created, sent, viewed, or paid
• Calculate and submit VAT and be fully MTD (Making Tax Digital) compliant
• Get automated bank reconciliations to help simplify your records
• Use Sage Copilot (but only one user can do so)

Sage Accounting Start can do the basics that you’d expect from any decent software. Overall, the workflow for quoting and invoicing stood out as being clear and easy to use, particularly the customisable templates for invoices.

The customisability of Sage’s external documents is one of its biggest strengths. Source: Startups.co.uk

This customisation is where Sage really stands out. Invoices, quotes, and reports can all be heavily customised, with a range of options for changing the style, colour, and CTAs, and adding in your own bespoke logo. Just note that these options are more limited on the basic Start plan.

It’s also certainly worth mentioning that Sage also includes payroll functionality at this plan level, which is something very few other accounting software platforms provide.

However, it’s worth noting that there’s no built-in time tracking functionality on any of the plans. It can be somewhat rare for a small business to need this feature though, so it’s not what we’d call a dealbreaker.

What is Sage Copilot?

Sage Copilot is Sage’s AI-powered accounting assistant. It can help you improve your workflow by providing actionable insights, flagging potential risks, and automating tasks for you.

Sage Accounting Standard: price and plan breakdown

Sage Accounting Standard: £39 per month + VAT Special offer: 90% off for the first three months

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• Number of users: Three billable users

• Submit monthly Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) returns to HMRC
• AI-captured receipts and invoices
• Advanced reporting

Summary Accounting Standard will be the plan most growing small businesses will require. If you're a small business on the grow, working with suppliers, or in accrual accounting, then this will be the plan for you.

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Accounting Standard is the mid-level plan, and it’s aimed at small businesses that work with suppliers, need to submit CIS tax, or want to work in accrual mode accounting (as opposed to on a cash basis). So with this plan, you can keep a record of who you owe what to.

So if you’re a limited company, you’ll almost certainly have to start with the Accounting Standard plan. While there are workarounds for this on the Start plan (only if you have limited expenses), it’s less than ideal, so Accounting Standard will be the best choice.

You’ll get everything included in Accounting Start, but Accounting Standard also lets you:

• Submit CIS tax directly to HMRC, with automatic CIS deductions and calculations
• Keep track of how much you owe your suppliers with purchase invoice management, and AI can assist with uploading
• Send out quotes to customers and convert quotes to invoices with a single click
• Get customisable profit and loss statements, giving you clarity and control over your finances with analysis types and tags
• Save time by snapping and uploading receipt photos
• Automatically capture, manage, and classify invoices and receipts with AI (up to 30 captures included, then 20p per additional capture)
• Use Sage Copilot (one user included)

With Accounting Standard, you’ll also get more advanced reporting tools, including a cash flow projection widget that factors in your expected outgoings and income, and predicts your bank balance.

While solopreneurs and sole traders will get by with Accounting Start, anything larger than a microbusiness would benefit from Accounting Standard’s tools.

Sage Accounting Plus: price and plan breakdown

Sage Accounting Plus: £59 per month + VAT Special offer: 90% off for the first three months

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• Number of users: Unlimited

• Multi-currency invoicing
• Inventory management
• Create and manage financial budgets and future forecasts

Summary Accounting Plus is aimed small to medium sized businesses, especially those in retail who need to manage an inventory of products. It's also for those operating internationally, as it provides multi-currency support.

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Accounting Plus is the highest tier of Sage accounting pricing designed for small businesses that conduct business overseas or have stock or an inventory of products to manage.

That’s because the key features of this plan are:

• Inventory and stock management: Tailor prices to your business, including purchase, sales, trade, or wholesale.
• Out-of-stock warnings and stock limits: Get a warning when you’re running low and set stock re-order levels.
• Multi-currency invoicing and automatically updated exchange rates: Receive payments in a range of currencies.
• Exchange rate reports: Track gains and losses made from currency exchange rates.
• AI receipt and invoice capture: Automatically extract, manage, and classify up to 100 captures (then it’s 20p per additional capture).
• Sage Copilot: Unlimited users can use the AI assistant.

Beyond this, you’ll also get access to tools needed for more sophisticated businesses, like the ability to create and manage yearly financial budgets.

With Accounting Plus, you can create a budget with your financial year data, and you can track budget performance with the “Profit and loss – actual vs budget report” tool.

Is there a free plan?

Outside of the standard Sage Accounting software range of plans, the Individual Free plan is aimed sole traders not registered for VAT.

This software is for self-employed sole traders who need to be ready for MTD, and the free plan lets you:

• Create and send five sales invoices each month
• Manage income and expenses information
• Provides a self-employed income tax summary
• Manually record your cash expenses

You can then upgrade to the Individual paid plan for £7 plus VAT per month. You’ll get everything included in the free plan, as well as:

• AI-powered expense auto-categorisation 
• Snap your receipts for bulk upload
• Connect up to 10 bank accounts
• Human webchat support
• 10GB of storage for invoices, bank statements and receipts

Just keep in mind that the free plan is for self-employed sole traders only. You can also jump over to our breakdown of the best free accounting software for small businesses for our recommendations on no-cost plans.

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Is Sage worth the money?

In short, yes, Sage is worth the money, especially if you’re in the market for a fast, simple, and more traditional accounting software interface.

We’d recommend Sage in particular if you want to prioritise:

• Built-in payroll functionality
• No limits on usage or transaction caps
• The reliability of an established brand name in accounting software

The pros

What makes Sage worth the financial investment is being able to seamlessly integrate the accounting software with Sage’s payroll and HR tools, which is helpful for small businesses that want to manage everything from a single ecosystem.

The customisability of Sage is a key consideration when discussing value for money. It has built-in templates for income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets, but you can also create custom reports that can be tailored to your business’s specific financial needs. Though keep in mind that you’ll need to pay for at least the Accounting Standard plan to unlock the potential of the reporting features.

I found the quoting system with Sage to be reassuringly simple during my testing. Source: Startups.co.uk

I was also impressed with the range of Sage’s help and support. You can get support via:

• Phone: Available from 8 AM to 8 PM on weekdays.
• Live chat with a real person: Available 8 AM to 6 PM on weekdays and 9 AM to 5 PM on weekends.
• Live chat with a bot 24/7
• Community forum
• Knowledge centre
• Online materials, such as video tutorials and webinars

The cons

While the software can import and export using CSV, attempting to upload an existing client list during my testing proved to be difficult; many of our testers failed to do it successfully.

When I tested Sage, I appreciated the modern-looking interface. It has the look of a 2026 accounting software. Source: Startups.co.uk

Locating important functions and features was occasionally more frustrating than I would have liked, and expense reporting also could have been made smoother.

Sage is more a traditional bookkeeping experience, which can be good for some established businesses, but users new to accounting software might prefer some of the unique ways of working in the recently updated Xero (though this does ultimately come down to preference).

How expensive is Sage compared to its rivals?

Sage’s cheaper plan is similarly priced to competitors, but its more advanced tiers are expensive.

If you’re a microbusiness with very basic needs, you’d be better off going with Zoho Books’ free plan.

For businesses with high transaction numbers Sage could lack the more sophisticated financial management tools they might want. Xero’s Ultimate plan, while more expensive than Sage’s Accounting Plus at £65 per month, is better suited to fast-growth businesses that have complex financial needs.

However, Sage does beat many of its competitors in terms of user numbers, as you can have unlimited users on the Accounting Plus plan. This is pretty impressive when you consider that on QuickBooks’ most expensive plan (at £123 plus VAT per month), you only get a maximum of 25 users, and Zoho Books’ Ultimate plan (at £199 plus VAT per month) is limited to a mere 15 users.

You can use our helpful comparison table below to see how Sage stacks up against competitors:

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		Rating	Price From	BEST FOR	Free Trial
FEATURED PROVIDER	BEST OVERALL
Xero	Zoho Books	QuickBooks	FreeAgent	Sage	FreshBooks
4.3	4.8	4.5	4.5	4.2	4.1
£7/month (+ VAT) Get 90% off for 6 months	Free	£10/month (+ VAT) Get 90% off  QuickBooks for a year	£10/month (+ VAT) £5/month for 6 months (+ VAT)	£18/month (+ VAT) 90% off the first three months	£15 per month 50% off for three months
Best for expanding businesses that need a software that can grow alongside them	Best overall accounting software	Best for managing your finances on the move, thanks to an excellent mobile app	Best if you bank with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank or Mettle	Best for if you prefer a more traditional bookkeeping software experience	Best for service based business that need affordable time tracking tools
Try Xero	Compare Deals	Try QuickBooks	Compare Deals	Try Sage	Compare Deals

Are there any hidden costs?

There are no hidden costs or fees associated with Sage. What you see is what you get, and there’ll be no unpleasant surprises taking an unexpected bite out of your budget.

However, we would just highlight: don’t get caught out on the limit on receipt captures. With Standard you get 30 approved captures, and 100 in Plus. After this you’ll need to pay 20p per capture.

Sage Payroll used to have a separate charge, but is now built-in to all plans. It’s just that now some add-ons have an additional cost, like shift scheduling and performance management.

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The verdict: Should I purchase Sage Accounting?

The positives are that Sage has a nice, super-clear, modern design, and it’s easy to navigate. Its invoicing and quoting workflow works pretty seamlessly. If you want customisable document templates, this could be worth the moderate price tag. 

The efficient workflow for invoicing and quoting makes Sage Accounting a good fit for service-based businesses, such as builders, contractors, handymen, catering services, personal trainers, and more. Essentially, anyone who needs to manage lots of quotes regularly and needs an easy-to-manage invoicing system will probably get their money’s worth from Sage.

Sage gives you a summary of all your key metrics. Source: Startups.co.uk

However, if you’re dealing with a high volume of transactions, or you need to plug in various other apps, you might find there are better software solutions for your needs.

Overall though, Sage is reliable and comes with a proven brand name. It does have a slightly premium price point for its features, but its safe choice and a solid “all-rounder”.

Read next: our comprehensive review of QuickBooks.

Take control of invoicing, cash flow, taxes, payments, and more—anytime, from any device

Free trial available

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Our methodology

At Startups, our recommendations are the result of a rigorous and thorough testing process carried out by our own dedicated research department.

Sage was one of seven different accounting software platforms that we tested. Our testing process was comprised of industry-based insights and actual, hands-on user testing spread across 1,512 total areas of investigation.

To ensure you’re getting your money’s worth, for this page, we specifically focused on pricing, investigating:

• Exit fees
• Contracts
• Set-up fees or one-time charges
• Hidden costs
• Free trials or plans

After a total of 57 hours of testing, we are confident in the recommendations we make about accounting software.