Free business bank accounts can cost a shop £649 a year

Business bank accounts advertised with no monthly fee can cost a small shop up to £649.20 a year, according to Bank Solutions, which priced every UK business current account plan in its dataset against three ways a business uses its account.

Fourteen of the 31 plans publish a £0 monthly fee. For a shop paying in £2,000 of cash a month over eight deposits, plus four cheques, the seven £0 plans that publish every fee needed to price that use cost between £96 and £649.20 a year, with a median of £432. The nine plans that charge a monthly fee cost between £274.80 and £1,113.48, with a median of £602.40.

NatWest's Start-up Business Account and Business Current Account, both with no monthly fee, cost the shop £649.20 a year each, more than eight of the nine fee-charging plans. The cheapest plan of all for the shop is also free: the Co-operative Bank's FSB account, at £96 a year for members of the Federation of Small Businesses.

Free works if you never touch cash

For a mostly digital sole trader making 15 payments out and 10 in a month, seven of the ten £0 plans that can be priced cost nothing at all. The difference is cash: paying in notes and coins is the largest part of the shop's yearly cost on 13 of the 16 plans priced, and the whole of it on three £0 plans (the Co-operative Bank FSB account, Starling Bank and Virgin Money's M Account for Business).

Sam Allcock, editor of Bank Solutions, said: "No monthly fee is not the same as free. For a business that never handles cash, several of these accounts genuinely cost nothing. For a shop or a cafe, the charges for paying in the takings can add up to more than a paid account would cost. The only way to know is to price your own pattern of banking."

Businesses can price every account against their own use with the Bank Solutions cost calculator. The full report is at banksolutions.uk/reports/real-cost-of-free-business-banking-2026.

Notes to editors

• Dates. Every tariff was read from the provider's own published document on 5 September 2026 and re-checked on 30 September 2026, when none of the 31 plans had changed.
• Method. Yearly ongoing cost from each plan's published tariff for a fixed pattern of use, excluding any introductory free period. The shop pattern: £2,000 of cash over eight deposits and four cheques a month. The sole trader pattern: 15 electronic payments out and 10 in a month, no cash.
• Coverage. 16 plans publish every fee needed to price the shop pattern; plans that do not are left out rather than estimated.
• Credit. Source: Bank Solutions analysis of providers' published tariffs (banksolutions.uk). Online, please link to the page the figure came from.
• About Bank Solutions. An independent UK business banking comparison published by Domain Farm Ltd (company number 13544286). No bank or provider pays for or sees a figure before publication. Bank Solutions earns referral fees from some providers, which never affect a figure or a ranking.
• Contact: Sam Allcock, editor, editor@banksolutions.uk