Dext vs AutoEntry UK: Which Is Right for Bookkeepers? | Receiptflow
Dext vs AutoEntry: Which Is Right for UK Bookkeepers in 2026?
Tanvir Alam•Jul 8, 2026•14 min read•Comparisons
Dext suits practices that want an all-in-one tool and can absorb per-client costs; AutoEntry suits lower-volume firms who prefer paying per document; Receiptflow offers a flat practice fee starting at £150/month for up to 50 clients, which works out significantly cheaper for most independent UK bookkeepers.
Most articles comparing Dext and AutoEntry were written before two significant things happened: Dext was acquired by IRIS Software Group in December 2024, and AutoEntry has been operating under Sage ownership since 2019. Both tools have changed. The market has changed. And the pricing structures that made each tool attractive at different practice sizes look quite different now.
If you are a UK bookkeeper or accountant searching for an honest comparison in 2026, you deserve one that uses current pricing, acknowledges what has shifted, and does not pretend the decision is simpler than it is. That is what this post gives you.
We will compare Dext and AutoEntry directly on pricing, extraction quality, integrations, and fit. We will also introduce Receiptflow, a flat-fee alternative that a growing number of independent UK practices are switching to and explain exactly who it is and is not right for.
Feature
Dext
AutoEntry
Receiptflow
Pricing model
Per client
Per document (credits)
Flat practice fee
50-client cost
£391/month
Varies by volume
£150/month
150-client cost
£894.15/month
Varies by volume
£275/month
Unlimited clients
No
Yes
Yes (within tier)
All features included
Yes
Yes
Yes
Xero, QuickBooks, Sage
Yes
Yes
Yes
FreeAgent
No
No
Yes
MTD-ready
Yes
Yes
Yes
Mileage tracking
Yes
No
No
Expense management
Yes
No
No
Predictable monthly cost
Yes
No
Yes
What Is Dext?
Dext, founded in 2010 as Receipt Bank, is the market leader in receipt scanning and bookkeeping automation for UK accounting practices. It was the first tool of its kind to let clients submit receipts digitally for accountants to process, and it has spent the past fifteen years building on that foundation.
More than 700,000 businesses and 12,000 accounting firms now use Dext globally. The product uses OCR and AI to extract data from invoices, receipts, and bank statements, then pushes that data into Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, and over 30 other accounting platforms. Over time, it has added mileage tracking, expense claim management, multi-currency support, WhatsApp document submission, bank feeds, and a multi-client activity dashboard for practice managers.
In December 2024, Dext was acquired by IRIS Software Group. The product continues to operate under the Dext name, and no major pricing or feature changes have been announced at time of writing, but it is worth factoring ownership into a long-term software decision.
Dext Pricing for UK Practices (verified June 2026, ex-VAT)
50 clients: £391/month
150 clients: £894.15/month
300 clients: £1,541.10/month
Pricing sourced from dext.com/uk/partner/build-plan. Dext pricing changes regularly. Verify the current figure before committing.
The per-client model means the software bill scales directly with your practice. A new client is not just a new revenue relationship; it is an automatic increase in your monthly software cost. For firms with a stable, large client base, that predictability works. For growing practices, it can feel like a tax on growth.
What Is AutoEntry?
AutoEntry was founded in 2016 with a clear aim: eliminate manual data entry for accountants. Sage acquired the business in September 2019, and it now operates as AutoEntry by Sage. The product continues to support Xero and QuickBooks alongside the Sage ecosystem, though product development has slowed noticeably since the acquisition.
AutoEntry does one thing: it extracts data from financial documents and pushes it to your accounting software. It does not offer mileage tracking, expense management, or multi-currency workflows. For practices that want a clean, focused data capture tool without paying for features they will never use, that narrower scope is a genuine advantage.
The pricing model is built around credits. Each month you buy a credit allowance, and each document type you process consumes a set number:
Standard invoice or expense receipt: 1 credit
Invoice with line item extraction: 2 credits
Supplier statement: 2 credits
Bank or credit card statement: 3 credits per page
AutoEntry Pricing (verified July 2026 from autoentry.com, ex-VAT)
Bronze: £14/month (50 credits)
Silver: £25/month (100 credits)
Gold: £47/month (200 credits)
Platinum: £108/month (500 credits)
Diamond: £300/month (1,500 credits)
Sapphire: £469/month (2,500 credits)
All plans include unlimited users, unlimited client companies, and all features from day one. Unused credits roll over for up to 90 days. If you exceed your monthly allowance, AutoEntry charges overage at up to 200% of your credit limit, with a 10% surcharge added to your next invoice.
What Does AutoEntry Actually Cost a Typical Practice?
The credit model is harder to evaluate than a flat monthly fee, so here is a worked example.
Assume you have 20 clients. Each generates an average of 15 purchase invoices and 2 bank statement pages per month. At 1 credit per invoice and 3 credits per bank statement page, that is:
20 clients x 15 invoices = 300 credits
20 clients x 2 pages x 3 credits = 120 credits
Total: 420 credits per month
At 420 credits, you sit between the Gold plan (200 credits, £47/month) and the Platinum plan (500 credits, £108/month). So in practice, a 20-client firm with average document volumes lands on Platinum at £108/month.
Now add a client who provides monthly bank statements with 10 pages. That single client adds 30 credits per month. A handful of high-volume clients, or any back-catalogue processing when onboarding a new client, can move you up a plan tier quickly. That unpredictability is AutoEntry's main structural weakness.
If your practice has more than 20 clients, a flat monthly fee almost certainly works out cheaper than what you are paying now. See Receiptflow's pricing at receiptflow.co and run the numbers yourself. Free trial, no card required.
What Is Receiptflow?
Receiptflow is a receipt scanning and bookkeeping automation tool built for independent UK accounting and bookkeeping practices. It integrates with Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent, and is designed around the needs of the typical independent practice: a clean interface, fast onboarding for clients, and a pricing model that does not penalise growth.
Within each tier, adding a new client costs you nothing extra in software terms. You pay the same monthly fee whether you have 10 clients or 50. When you grow beyond a tier threshold, you move to the next plan, but you are never charged per client within it. For practices that price their bookkeeping packages in advance, that predictability matters.
The pricing difference is significant.
At 50 clients, Receiptflow at £150/month compares to Dext at £391/month, a saving of £241 per month, or nearly £2,900 per year.
At 150 clients, the gap widens: £275/month against £894.15/month, a difference of over £7,400 annually. Those figures are not rounding errors.
For most independent practices, that is a material line in the budget.
Receiptflow's other strengths reflect where independent practices feel let down by larger tools: a UI that clients pick up without a tutorial, no feature bloat from enterprise functionality that typical bookkeeping practices never use, and EU-based data storage that keeps GDPR compliance straightforward.
Dext vs AutoEntry: Where Each Tool Wins
Pricing Model: Two Different Bets on Practice Shape
Dext and AutoEntry are built on fundamentally different assumptions about how a UK practice works.
Dext charges per client, regardless of document volume. A client who sends you one receipt a month costs the same as a client who sends two hundred. If your practice is large, stable, and consistent in client mix, that model is predictable. If you are growing, or if your clients vary widely in how much they generate, the bill scales with your headcount whether or not the revenue justifies it.
AutoEntry charges per document. A low-activity client costs almost nothing. A high-volume client costs more. In theory, this is fairer. In practice, it introduces unpredictability. Months with a lot of bank statement processing, or a spike in new client onboarding, can push you up a plan tier without warning.
Receiptflow charges a fixed monthly fee within each tier. The cost does not change based on document volume or client activity. Only the number of clients you have determines which tier you are on. That model suits practices with mixed client volumes, or any practice that wants predictable software costs without per-client or per-document charges.
Extraction Accuracy
All three tools use OCR and machine learning to extract data from financial documents. Dext and AutoEntry both claim accuracy above 99% for standard invoice formats, and both improve over time as they learn your suppliers and nominal codes.
In practice, user reviews on Capterra and G2 show variation by document type. Dext scores consistently well for standard UK receipts and mobile-captured images. AutoEntry receives strong marks for bank statement processing and supplier invoices in well-formatted PDFs, though some reviewers report inconsistencies with non-standard or handwritten layouts. HMRC data indicates UK businesses submit approximately 890 million expense claims annually. The sheer volume of documents moving through these platforms means accuracy at scale is a real operational concern, not just a spec sheet claim.
For any tool, the meaningful question is not headline accuracy but how well it handles the specific document mix your clients generate. A trial period with your actual client documents is the only reliable test.
Integrations
All three tools connect to Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage. All are MTD-ready and compatible with HMRC's digital record-keeping requirements.
Dext has the broadest ecosystem, connecting with over 11,500 banks, platforms, and systems including Amazon, Shopify, Stripe, and PayPal. If you have clients running e-commerce operations or multi-platform businesses, Dext's integration depth is a genuine advantage that neither AutoEntry nor Receiptflow currently matches.
AutoEntry's integration list is narrower and focused on accounting platforms. There is no API or Zapier connector, which limits custom workflow options for practices building automation outside the standard stack.
Receiptflow adds FreeAgent to the standard trio, which makes it the only option here with native FreeAgent support. For practices with a significant FreeAgent client base, that difference is decisive.
Feature Scope
Dext is the most complete tool of the three. Beyond document capture, it includes mileage tracking via GPS, multi-currency expense management, WhatsApp document submission, approval workflows, and a multi-client activity dashboard. If you want a single tool to handle the full receipt-to-reconciliation workflow including employee expenses, Dext covers more ground.
AutoEntry and Receiptflow are both focused on document capture and data extraction. Neither offers mileage tracking or expense management. For practices that handle expenses through their accounting platform directly, this gap does not matter. For practices that need those workflows in their receipt tool, Dext is the only option of the three.
Support Model
Dext has an established UK support infrastructure with a partner portal, onboarding resources, and live chat and email support.
AutoEntry offers live chat and phone support for all users. Reviews since the Sage acquisition are mixed. Many users describe support as responsive and helpful. Others flag longer resolution times and limited new feature development since 2019, a pattern common when an independent product is absorbed into a larger corporate structure.
Receiptflow is built for independent practices and its support reflects that: direct access without enterprise ticketing layers.
Full Head-to-Head Comparison
| Feature | Receiptflow | Dext | AutoEntry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat practice fee | Per client | Per document (credits) |
| Price for 50 clients | £150/month | £391/month | Varies by volume |
| Price for 150 clients | £275/month | £894.15/month | Varies by volume |
| Price for 300 clients | £500/month | £1,541.10/month | Varies by volume |
| Best for | Independent UK practices, flat-fee predictability | Feature-heavy requirements, large or e-commerce practices | Lower-volume firms, per-document flexibility |
Who Should Choose Receiptflow
Receiptflow is the right fit for independent UK bookkeeping and accounting practices that want reliable receipt and invoice processing at a predictable monthly cost.
It works particularly well for practices with 10 to 150 clients who are currently on Dext and feel the per-client pricing has stopped making sense as their client list has grown. The flat fee means every new client you onboard goes straight to margin. There are no incremental software costs to factor into how you price your packages.
If your practice runs on Xero, QuickBooks, or FreeAgent, Receiptflow integrates cleanly. If you want a tool your clients can pick up without a walkthrough, the interface is built for exactly that. And if you want predictable software costs as a foundation for your pricing model, flat-fee software makes the maths straightforward.
Receiptflow is also worth a look for practices considering AutoEntry but concerned about credit volatility. The tiered monthly fee removes per-document unpredictability. You know your cost for the month regardless of how many documents your clients submit.
Who Should Stick with Dext
Dext makes sense for practices that need its broader feature set and can absorb the per-client cost. If clients require mileage tracking, multi-currency expense management, or WhatsApp document submission, Dext is the only option in this comparison that covers those workflows.
Large practices with 200 or more clients using complex supplier rules, approval chains, and e-commerce integrations (Shopify, Amazon, Stripe) will find Dext's ecosystem hard to replicate elsewhere. If your workflows are built deeply around Dext's activity dashboard and client health scoring, switching carries a real operational cost that should factor into any decision.
Dext is also the most widely recognised name in the category. If client trust or firm positioning depends on using a tool clients have encountered before, that brand recognition has value.
Who Should Consider AutoEntry
AutoEntry is a reasonable choice for practices with lower, more predictable document volumes and no need for expense management features. If your clients generate a steady flow of standard purchase invoices and your practice runs primarily on Sage, AutoEntry integrates well and offers genuine flexibility at lower price points.
At the Bronze level, a small practice processing 40 to 50 simple invoices a month pays £14. No other tool in this comparison gets close to that at low volumes. For sole practitioners or very small practices with a handful of clients, that entry-level pricing is hard to beat.
The credit model becomes a disadvantage when client volumes are less predictable, when you have clients who generate a lot of bank statement pages, or when you are onboarding new clients with document backlogs. If you find yourself regularly monitoring your credit balance to avoid overage charges, the discipline required starts to outweigh the flexibility.
It is also worth noting that AutoEntry's development roadmap has been limited since the Sage acquisition in 2019. The product is stable but not actively evolving. Practices making a three-to-five-year software decision should factor that trajectory in.
Verdict
For most independent UK bookkeeping practices, the choice between Dext and AutoEntry comes down to two things: whether you need Dext's broader feature set, and which pricing model fits the shape of your practice.
Practices that genuinely need mileage tracking, expense management, or WhatsApp document submission will find Dext earns its price. The per-client cost is real, but it comes with feature depth that neither AutoEntry nor Receiptflow matches.
Practices that do not need those features are paying a premium for functionality sitting unused. At 50 clients, that premium is £241 per month over Receiptflow. At 150 clients, it rises to over £600. Across a full year, the difference is large enough that switching becomes a straightforward financial decision.
AutoEntry is the right choice for very low-volume practices that want per-document pricing and can manage the credit system. For most practices above 20 clients with mixed document types, the unpredictability of credit consumption makes it harder to recommend over a flat-fee alternative.
Receiptflow is the clearest option for independent UK practices that want solid extraction, Xero, QuickBooks, or FreeAgent integration, and a monthly cost that does not vary with document volume or client activity within their tier. The pricing is straightforward. The tool does what it says. And for most practices comparing these options, the numbers make the decision obvious.
The flat-fee model at £150/month for up to 50 clients is hard to argue with. Start your free Receiptflow trial at receiptflow.co. No card required, no commitment, and you can run it alongside your current tool while you evaluate.
FAQs
Common Questions with Clear Answers
How much does AutoEntry cost for a UK accounting practice in 2026?
AutoEntry uses a credit-based pricing model, starting at £14/month for 50 credits (Bronze) up to £469/month for 2,500 credits (Sapphire), all ex-VAT. Credits are consumed per document: 1 credit for a standard invoice or receipt, 2 for line-item extraction or supplier statements, and 3 per page for bank statements. Unused credits roll over for 90 days.
How much does Dext cost for a UK practice in 2026?
Dext charges per client on its practice plans. For 50 clients the cost is £391/month, for 150 clients it rises to £894.15/month, and for 300 clients to £1,541.10/month, all ex-VAT. Figures verified from dext.com/uk/partner/build-plan in June 2026. Dext pricing changes regularly, so verify before committing.
Does Receiptflow charge per client or a flat fee?
Receiptflow charges a flat monthly practice fee. The Essential plan is £150/month for up to 50 clients, Pro is £275/month for up to 150 clients, and Growth is £500/month for up to 300 clients, all ex-VAT. The cost does not increase as you add clients within your tier.
Is AutoEntry still independent after the Sage acquisition?
AutoEntry was acquired by Sage in September 2019 and now operates as AutoEntry by Sage. It continues to support Xero and QuickBooks alongside Sage products. Product development has slowed since the acquisition, with limited new features reported by users since 2019.
Is Dext still the same company after the IRIS acquisition?
Dext was acquired by IRIS Software Group in December 2024 and continues to operate under the Dext name. No major pricing or feature changes have been announced at time of writing, but it is worth factoring the ownership change into any long-term software decision.
Which receipt scanning tool is best for MTD compliance in the UK?
Dext, AutoEntry, and Receiptflow all integrate with HMRC-recognised platforms including Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage, and all support the digital record-keeping requirements of Making Tax Digital. None has a significant advantage over the others on MTD compliance specifically.
Can I switch from Dext or AutoEntry to Receiptflow easily?
Yes. Receiptflow integrates directly with Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent. Setup takes minutes, and you can run it alongside your current tool during a transition period, switching clients across at your own pace. No lengthy migration or data transfer is required.
What is a cheaper alternative to Dext for UK bookkeepers?
Receiptflow starts at £150/month for up to 50 clients, compared to Dext's £391/month at the same client count, a saving of £241 per month. AutoEntry can also be cheaper for low-volume practices. Both offer free trials with no card required.
