Dext Pricing and MTD ITSA: What It Actually Costs in 2026
MTD for Income Tax (MTD ITSA) came into effect for self-employed individuals and landlords earning above £50,000 from April 2026, with the threshold dropping to £30,000 from April 2027. That's pulling an estimated 780,000 UK sole traders and landlords into scope across the first two waves, and a lot of practices are handling that shift by adding Dext Solo on top of their existing Dext Prepare plan.
Dext pricing in the UK is not a flat monthly fee to begin with. It scales per client, which means the question 'how much does Dext cost?' already has a different answer depending on how many clients are on your account. Layer MTD ITSA compliance on top, and the real number a practice pays gets harder to see in one place.
This post breaks down the real numbers at 10, 25, and 50 clients: not the headline rate, but the per-client unit cost, the annual total, and what MTD-related add-ons like Dext Solo change about that calculation.
If you are an independent UK practice currently on Dext, or weighing up how MTD ITSA affects your software costs, these are the figures worth knowing before you commit.
If you are an independent UK practice currently on Dext, or evaluating it for the first time, these are the figures worth knowing before you commit.
How Dext's Per-Client Pricing Works
Dext moved all UK practices to per-client pricing in August 2023, when it eliminated its unlimited practice plans. Practices that had been on flat fees at that point saw their costs increase by 200 to 400 per cent at renewal, as widely reported on AccountingWEB. The per-client model has been the standard ever since.
Under this structure, your monthly cost is determined by the number of client companies on your account. There is no fixed ceiling within a tier at which growth becomes cost-neutral. Every client you add adds cost.
Dext does publish its UK practice rates on a build-a-plan page, so the figures are available without a sales call but you need to input your exact client count to see what applies to you.
What Dext Costs at 10, 25, and 50 Clients
These figures are based on Dext's published UK practice pricing as of June 2026, ex-VAT. Monthly figures use standard billing terms.
At 10 clients
At 10 client companies, Dext's practice plan pricing sits in the range of £190 to £240 per month, depending on billing frequency and any promotional rate applied at sign-up. Using the midpoint of £215 per month as a working figure:
- Monthly cost: ~£215
- Annual cost: ~£2,580
- Per-client cost: ~£21.50 per client per month
For a sole practitioner or a very small practice, this is not an insignificant overhead. At 10 clients, you are spending roughly £258 per client per year on receipt management software alone.
At 25 clients
At 25 clients, the per-client rate remains consistent with Dext's model, each additional client adds to the base cost. Based on the published pricing trajectory:
- Monthly cost: ~£300 to £320
- Annual cost: ~£3,600 to £3,840
- Per-client cost: ~£12 to £13 per client per month
At this stage, the per-client unit rate begins to fall slightly as volume increases. But the total monthly spend is now material for a practice that may be billing each of those 25 clients between £500 and £1,500 a year.
At 50 clients
At 50 clients, Dext's published UK practice plan rate is £391 per month, ex-VAT (June 2026).
- Monthly cost: £391
- Annual cost: £4,692
- Per-client cost: £7.82 per client per month
This is Dext's most-quoted figure for mid-size independent practices. It is also the point at which the comparison with flat-rate alternatives becomes most stark.
Thinking about switching? Receiptflow's Essential plan covers up to 50 clients at £150/month, no per-client fees, no surprises at renewal. Compare Receiptflow pricing. Flat rate, no per-client fees.
The Add-On Costs That Change the Calculation
The base plan figures above cover Dext Prepare, the core receipt capture and pre-accounting workflow. They do not include everything a practice might need.
Dext Precision
Dext Precision is a separate product that provides bookkeeping health checks, coding consistency reports, and error-spotting across your client files. It is not included in Dext Prepare plans and carries an additional monthly cost. Practices that use both products pay for them separately.
If you are comparing Dext's all-in cost against a simpler alternative, Precision is a line item worth including in your calculation.
Dext Commerce
Dext Commerce handles e-commerce data ingestion. Pulling transaction-level data from platforms like Shopify, Amazon, and Stripe into your accounting software. Again, this is a separate product from Dext Prepare, with its own pricing.
Practices with e-commerce clients may find themselves running two or three Dext products simultaneously. The headline practice plan rate covers one of them.
MTD and Dext Solo
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT) came into effect for self-employed individuals and landlords with income above £50,000 from April 2026. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027, pulling in an estimated 780,000 UK sole traders and landlords in the first two waves alone.
Dext Solo is Dext's MTD IT solution, designed for accountants managing self-employed and landlord clients under the new regime. It operates within the Dext Practice platform and handles digital record-keeping and quarterly submission requirements.
The cost of Dext Solo is separate from your standard Dext Prepare practice plan. Pricing varies depending on client volume and is not publicly listed. Contact Dext directly for exact figures. But if you have a meaningful number of sole trader or landlord clients coming into scope for MTD IT, this is an additional line in your software budget that did not exist before April 2026.
The Cumulative Picture
At 50 clients, a practice running Dext Prepare as its core receipt tool pays £4,692 per year at published rates. Add Dext Precision for bookkeeping health checks and you are looking at a materially higher annual spend. Add Dext Solo for MTD clients on top, and the combined cost across all three products can reach a figure that is difficult to justify against what the tools actually deliver for a standard independent practice.
None of this is hidden. Dext publishes what it can. But the full cost rarely appears in a single place, and practices often arrive at the real number only when they sit down to do a proper review.
Receiptflow vs Dext: The Pricing Side by Side
Receiptflow prices by client tier, not per client. The monthly rate is fixed within each tier. Adding clients does not increase your bill until you cross a tier threshold.
| Practice size | Dext (per month, ex-VAT) | Receiptflow (per month, ex-VAT) | Annual saving | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 clients | ~£215 | £150 | ~£780 | ✅ Receiptflow |
| 25 clients | ~£310 | £150 | ~£1,920 | ✅ Receiptflow |
| 50 clients | £391 | £150 | £2,892 | ✅ Receiptflow |
The Receiptflow Essential plan at £150/month covers up to 50 clients. A 10-client practice and a 49-client practice pay the same rate. There are no per-client fees, no add-on tiers for core functionality, and no cost increase as the practice grows within the tier.
For practices that use receipt capture, OCR extraction, and accounting software integration which covers the core workflow for the majority of independent UK firms. Receiptflow delivers the same essential output at a significantly lower cost.
What This Means in Practice
Dext is a capable product, particularly for practices that use its full feature set: Precision, Commerce, expense management, mileage tracking, and now Solo for MTD clients. If those features are actively used, the per-client cost is easier to justify.
But for practices that primarily need clean receipt capture, reliable OCR, and seamless pushes to Xero or QuickBooks, the question is whether the full Dext cost is proportionate to what the practice actually uses.
At 10 clients, you are spending roughly £2,580 a year. At 25, somewhere between £3,600 and £3,840. At 50, £4,692. In each case, Receiptflow's flat £150/month comes in below those figures and the gap grows as client numbers rise.
The maths is not complicated. Whether it is worth acting on depends on your feature requirements, your client mix, and how much the MTD add-on changes the overall calculation for your specific practice.
Pricing on its own understates the effect. Modelled over three years, per-client billing compounds in a way an annual review rarely surfaces. If that changes your thinking, the roundup of Dext alternatives for UK practices covers what else is available.
Compare Receiptflow pricing. Flat rate, no per-client fees. See our plans.
What the flat fee includes: receipt capture, data extraction, a client submission portal and export to your accounting software.
