If you’re self-employed and wondering how much is an accountant for a sole trader, you’re not alone. It’s one of those questions that gets Googled at 11pm in January, usually by someone who’s just remembered their Self Assessment deadline is approaching and isn’t entirely sure what they’re doing.

The short answer: sole trader accountancy can cost anywhere from around £200 a year for a basic tax return, through to £100 or more per month for an ongoing relationship that includes bookkeeping, VAT, and regular financial reviews. Where you land in that range depends on what you actually need — and how much of the admin you’re doing yourself.

In this post, we’ll walk through what typically drives the cost, what you should expect to get at different price points, and our honest take on whether hiring an accountant makes financial sense for most sole traders.

Before we get to numbers, it helps to be clear about what you’re actually buying. Sole trader accountancy isn’t one-size-fits-all — the services you need depend on how complex your income is, whether you’re VAT-registered, and how comfortable you are managing your own records.

At the simpler end, many sole traders just need someone to prepare and file their annual Self Assessment tax return. If your income is straightforward — one income source, clear expenses, no VAT — that’s a contained piece of work and a relatively modest cost.

At the more involved end, you might want monthly bookkeeping so your records are always current, quarterly VAT returns if you’re registered, payroll if you employ anyone, and proactive advice when your circumstances change. That’s a proper ongoing relationship rather than an annual filing job.

Neither approach is wrong. It just depends on where you are. A sole trader turning over £25,000 a year with no employees has very different needs from a freelance consultant billing £90,000 who’s VAT-registered and considering whether to incorporate. Understanding what you actually need is the right starting point — and a good accountant will tell you honestly what level of support makes sense rather than upselling you on services you don’t need yet.

Here’s a realistic picture of what accountancy costs for sole traders in the UK currently look like.

Self Assessment only

If all you need is someone to prepare and file your annual Self Assessment tax return, you’re typically looking at somewhere in the region of £200 to £500 per year. The spread reflects complexity — a single employment income with a small side business sits at the lower end; multiple income streams, rental income, or business expenses that need careful categorisation push the cost up.

Self Assessment plus bookkeeping

Add in year-round bookkeeping and perhaps quarterly check-ins, and the cost rises to roughly £800 to £1,500 per year on an ad-hoc basis — or closer to £40 to £100 per month on a fixed monthly package. The monthly model suits most sole traders because costs are predictable and the work gets done consistently, rather than in a frantic catch-up every January.

VAT-registered sole traders

If you’re VAT-registered, you’ll need quarterly VAT returns filed on time. That typically adds to your annual cost, or it’s bundled into a higher monthly package. At DG Accountancy, our sole trader packages start from £41 per month — and our higher tier, which includes VAT filing, starts from £99 per month, with 50% off for the first three months for new clients.

Those figures sit competitively in the market and, in our view, represent solid value when you factor in the time and stress it saves.

There’s no single tariff for sole trader accountancy, and the variation in pricing reflects genuine differences in what’s involved. Here are the main factors.

Volume and complexity of transactions

A photographer who invoices ten clients a month and buys a few bits of equipment has a very different workload from a sole trader in construction who’s running CIS deductions, managing multiple subcontractors, and buying materials every week. More transactions, more complexity — and usually more cost.

Whether you’re VAT-registered

VAT registration adds quarterly filing obligations and the need to stay on top of Making Tax Digital requirements. It’s not a huge add-on in isolation, but it does increase the regularity of work your accountant needs to do on your behalf.

How tidy your records are

This one matters more than people realise. If you arrive with a year’s worth of receipts in a carrier bag and transactions that haven’t been categorised, your accountant will spend time cleaning that up before they can even start on your accounts. Good bookkeeping habits — or using a cloud tool like Xero — keep costs down because the underlying data is already organised.

Whether you want advice as well as compliance

Pure compliance (filing returns accurately and on time) is one thing. Proactive advice — tax planning, flagging opportunities to reduce your bill, discussing whether you should incorporate — is another layer of value. Accountants who offer genuine advisory support alongside compliance tend to cost a little more, but the return is usually worth it.

There’s a reasonable argument that specialist accountants — those who work primarily with sole traders in your particular field — tend to charge a premium. In our experience, that’s broadly true. A firm that specialises in freelancer and consultant accounting or works specifically with tradespeople will charge more than a high-volume generalist practice. But the gap in value is often larger than the gap in price.

A specialist understands the expenses that are legitimately claimable in your sector, knows the HMRC quirks that catch people out in your industry, and is likely to give you more relevant advice than someone who processes five hundred generic self-assessments a year and doesn’t know your business at all.

That said, specialism isn’t the only thing that matters. What we hear from clients who’ve switched to us is that responsiveness and clear communication often matter just as much as technical specialism. Knowing your accountant will actually answer your email within a day — and explain what they’re doing in plain English rather than sending you a wall of jargon — has real day-to-day value.

At DG Accountancy, Daniel has worked across airlines, construction, manufacturing, and entertainment over two decades, so there’s genuine breadth to draw on. Whether you’re a self-employed professional needing sole trader tax support or a trades business managing irregular income, the advice you get is grounded in practical experience rather than just textbook compliance.

This is the question underneath the question. Not just how much is an accountant for a sole trader, but whether the cost is justified.

In our view, the answer is almost always yes — for two reasons that often get overlooked.

First, the tax savings. A good accountant will make sure you’re claiming all the expenses you’re entitled to, structuring your income sensibly, and not paying more tax than you legally owe. For most sole traders, that alone covers the accountant’s fee — sometimes many times over. We’re not suggesting anything aggressive or artificial; simply that people doing their own tax returns routinely miss legitimate deductions because they don’t know what they don’t know.

Second, your time. If you’re spending three or four hours a month on bookkeeping, reconciling accounts, and trying to figure out whether something is an allowable expense — at whatever your effective hourly rate is — you’re almost certainly paying more for that time than a fixed monthly accountancy fee would cost. Your time is better spent on the work that actually generates income.

One of our clients, Steven, put it well in his review: getting someone to handle the books monthly meant he could stop worrying about the admin and focus on the work. The rates, he said, were extremely good compared with other accountants — and he got more for his money. That’s what a good accountancy relationship should feel like.