How we compare

What we compare

UK business current accounts and the business accounts of UK-regulated e-money institutions, open to new customers, for sole traders, partnerships and limited companies. Each distinct plan a provider sells is a separate row (a provider with three tiers has three rows), because the fees differ and the reader is choosing a plan, not a brand.

Where the figures come from

From the provider's own published tariff, pricing page or fees document - and nowhere else. Every row records the URL we read and the date we read it, and both are shown on the page. We do not take figures from other comparison sites, press coverage, forums or the provider's marketing copy when a tariff document exists.

Where a provider does not publish a figure, the cell shows "—" and the detail panel says "not published". We do not estimate, infer from a similar plan, or ask the provider for a number we then present as published.

Where a fee is not a clean number - "0.7% via the Post Office", "£0.90 per £100 deposited", "free for the first 12 months" - we copy the provider's wording rather than force it into a number that could mislead.

How often it is checked

Every row is re-read against its source at least monthly, and whenever we learn of a change. The date shown on each row is the last time a person read that provider's page - not the last time the site was rebuilt. If a source page moves or disappears, the row is flagged for review rather than left standing.

How the table is sorted

• The default order is monthly fee, lowest first, then provider name. Plans with no published monthly fee sort last.
• Introductory free periods are shown as a note ("after 12 months free") next to the ongoing fee. A plan is only "£0" if the provider publishes no ongoing monthly fee.
• Readers can re-sort by any sortable column and filter by eligibility, protection, cash handling, multi-currency and branch access. Filters remove rows; they never reorder by anything other than the published figures.
• No column is weighted, scored or star-rated. We have not found a weighting that is honest for every business, so we show the figures and let you weigh them.

Banks and e-money institutions

Both appear in the same table because businesses use them for the same job, but they are not the same thing and we mark the difference on every row. A UK-authorised bank's eligible deposits are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to the scheme limit. An e-money institution is not a bank: your money is "safeguarded" - held separately from the firm's own funds under the Electronic Money Regulations - but it is not FSCS-protected. We show what each provider itself says about protection and link to it.

What we deliberately do not score

• Service quality and app ratings. Store ratings are gameable and unrepresentative; we do not import them.
• Sign-up incentives that are not part of the published ongoing tariff.
• Overdraft rates and lending terms, which are set individually. We note whether an overdraft is available; we do not compare rates you may never be offered.
• Anything a provider tells us privately. If it is not published, it is not in the table.

What is excluded, and why

Providers whose published tariff we could not read - because the page is not public, is only shown after login, or was unavailable when we checked - are listed under "Not yet included" beneath the table with the reason, rather than silently left out. Accounts closed to new customers are excluded. We do not exclude a provider for commercial reasons.

Guides

Guides follow the same rules: every figure is sourced and dated, first-hand experience is labelled as such, and anything that needs regulated advice says so. Each guide lists its primary sources with the date each was accessed.

Changes to this methodology

This is version 1, published 5 September 2026. Changes are dated here, and a change that alters how the table sorts or what it includes is announced on the comparison page itself. Questions or challenges: editor@banksolutions.uk.