How much does Sage Accounting software cost in 2025?

1 of 3

Sage Accounting: Get 1 Month Free

Discover Sage AI

2 of 3

Sage 50 Accounts: Try Free for 30 Days

Discover Sage AI

3 of 3

Sage Intacct: For Over 50 Employees

Discover Sage AI

In January 2025, we completed a new round of research and testing on seven top accounting software platforms, covering 1,512 areas of investigation, with Sage standing 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 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?

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

	Plan	Cost	Features
Accounting Start	Accounting Standard	Accounting Plus
£18 per month (excl. VAT) 50% off for three months	£39 per month (excl. VAT) 50% off for three months	£59 per month (excl. VAT) 50% off for three months
Create and send 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 it is more limited in plan options compared to rivals like Xero or QuickBooks, it’s very much what you see is what you get, and it’s 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 50% 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: 50% off for the first three months

Visit Sage

• 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.

Show moreless

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.

Keep in mind that Sage can’t send automated payment reminders to clients with outstanding bills. There’s also no built-in time tracking functionality on any of the plans, which is a pretty big oversight.

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: 50% off for the first three months

Visit Sage

• 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.

Show moreless

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).

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 (up to three users)

With Accounting Standard, you’ll also get more advanced reporting tools, mainly cash flow projection tools that factor in both your outgoings and income. You can use the cash flow forecast tool to estimate how much money you will have, or require, in the future.

While solopreneurs and sole traders will get by with Accounting Start, anything larger than a micro-business (roughly more than nine employees) will need Accounting Standard’s tools.

Sage Accounting Plus: price and plan breakdown

Sage Accounting Plus: £59 per month + VAT Special offer: 50% off for the first three months

Visit Sage

• 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.

Show moreless

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?

Unfortunately, Sage doesn’t offer a free plan, but you can try any of its plans free of charge for three months. You can also jump over to our breakdown of the best free accounting software for small businesses.

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

Free trial available

Try Sage

Is Sage worth the money?

Sage is worth the money if you want to prioritise strong brand authority and want bespoke financial reports. However, it’s not the cheapest solution, and there are competitor plans that can offer similar features for a lower cost.

The pros

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

What also 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.

I was also reasonably 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 a pain; many of our testers failed to do it successfully.

You have to use Sage’s specific template (and from my experience, it didn’t automatically convert the data), which could be very time-consuming for a large client list. Considering the price point, omissions like these can be quite frustrating.

When I tested Sage, I appreciated the modern-looking interface. It has the look and feel of a 2025 accounting software. Source: Startups.co.uk

Locating important functions and features was occasionally more frustrating than it should have been, and expense reporting also could have been made a lot smoother. Overall, I’d argue that for Sage’s price, established businesses might find it lacking in depth for their needs.

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 sole trader with very basic needs, you’d be better off going with Zoho Books’ free plan. Or, as of this year, Clear Books also provides a free MTD software for the self-employed, sole traders, and landlords.

I’d advise that more established businesses with high sales volumes will find that Sage lacks the more sophisticated financial management tools they’ll need. 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.

With just three plans, what Sage offers in simplicity, it lacks in scalability. Competitors like QuickBooks and Zoho Books have a wider range of more nuanced plans that can support your business as it grows.

However, Sage does beat 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 £165 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:

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

		Rating	Price From	BEST FOR	Free Trial
FEATURED PROVIDER	BEST OVERALL
Xero	Zoho Books	QuickBooks	FreeAgent	Sage	FreshBooks	Clear Books
4.3	4.8	4.5	4.5	4.2	4.1	4.0
£16 per month (excl. VAT)	Free	£10 per month (excl. VAT) £5 per month (excl. VAT) for the first six months	£10 per month (excl. VAT) £5 per month for the first six months (excl. VAT)	£18 per month (excl. VAT) 50% off the first three months	£15 per month 50% off for three months	Free
Best for more experienced accountants and established businesses that need more than just the basics	Best for managing your inventory and sales, and for those who need an on-the-go software for real-time financial management	Best if you need sophisticated financial insights and advanced customisation	Best choice for budget-conscious businesses seeking simple yet effective tax forecasting and scenario prediction tools	Best for businesses seeking tailored financial solutions and strong brand representation	Best for new businesses that need affordable software with the reassurance of all-hours support	Best if you need MTD-compliant tax support for VAT returns, including a wide range of tax types
Try Xero	Compare Deals	Try QuickBooks	Compare Deals	Try Sage	Compare Deals	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.

You do have the option of adding Sage Payroll if you need it. Each plan covers five employees, with the option to add more for an additional fee:

• Payroll Essentials is £10 per month plus VAT. It allows you to do essential HR admin, including managing payroll and HR for up to 150 employees.
• Payroll Standard is £20 per month plus VAT. It unlocks a personalised portal to help onboard staff and has automated approval workflows and actions.
• Payroll Premium plan starts from £30 per month plus VAT. It has advanced HR features like shift scheduling and timesheet status reports.

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

Free trial available

Try Sage

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, just be aware that Sage might be lacking the advanced functionality needed by more sophisticated SMEs with large client bases and high turnovers, even on the highest tier.

Read next: our comprehensive review of QuickBooks.

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

Free trial available

Try Sage

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.