Xero Pricing: Monthly Costs and Hidden Fees Compared

Xero’s pricing plans start from £16 per month and go up to £65 per month, offering a suite of options tailored to businesses at different stages. With four premium plans – Ignite, Grow, Comprehensive, and Ultimate – Xero has a clear and affordable upgrade path as your business needs become more complex.

We’d argue Xero can deliver excellent value for money through its strong core features and extensive integrations that cater to a diverse range of accounting requirements.

Still, if you are seeking a low-cost solution, we do think other top accountancy providers may be better value than Xero. As your feature demands for payroll or project integration grow, however, Xero is tough to beat and makes for a long-term, scalable solution.

How Much Does Xero Cost? Pricing Plan Comparison

There are four Xero plans to consider: Ignite, Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate.

We’ll review each plan to help you decide which is right for you. For a quick overview, click the arrows to scroll through the table and compare all the price plans and features.

1. Xero Ignite: £16 per month

• What is it? Xero’s entry-level plan with basic accounting tools to simplify daily admin
• Who is it for? Small businesses and sole traders with simple invoicing and limited transactions
• Why should you use it? It covers core tasks like invoicing, bank reconciliation, and VAT returns – perfect for keeping simple business finances organised
• How much does it cost? £16 per month

The Xero Ignite plan is the best plan for those starting out in digital accounting. For £16 per month, you’ll get all the core tools to handle basic financial admin online. However, this plan comes with limits, such as 20 invoices/quotes and 10 bills per month, making it ideal for businesses with lower transaction volumes.

Xero Ignite: Features

• Send up to 20 invoices/quotes
• Accept online invoice payments
• Enter 10 bills per month
• Bank reconciliation, VAT returns, and Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) automation
• 30-day cashflow forecast
• Optional bill payments at £0.20 each
• Automated subcontractor CIS calculations and reports

Xero Ignite: Who is it for?

Xero Ignire is best suited for sole traders, consultants, or small businesses who invoice a handful of clients each month. It keeps you VAT-compliant and offers a good snapshot of cashflow, but has tight limits on transactions – so ideal for start-ups or seasonal businesses.

2. Xero Grow: £37 per month

• What is it? A scalable plan for businesses needing unlimited invoicing, basic payroll, and expense claims
• Who is it for? Small businesses expanding operations or managing their first employee
• Why should you use it? It removes transaction limits and adds payroll and expense tracking
• How much does it cost? £37 per month

Xero Grow is designed for growing businesses ready to handle more volume. Unlimited invoicing and bills, combined with payroll and expenses for one user, make this plan a good fit for small businesses scaling up.

Xero Grow: Upgraded features vs Ignite

• Unlimited invoices and bills
• Payroll for one person (add £1 per extra person)
• Expenses for one user
• Five free bill payments per month
• Customisable performance dashboards
• 60-day cashflow forecast

Xero Grow: Who is it for?

Xero Grow is ideal for small retailers or growing service businesses hiring staff. If you’re expanding your client base, this plan removes invoicing barriers while introducing basic payroll and expense tracking.

3. Xero Comprehensive: £50 per month

• What is it? A robust plan for businesses handling staff payroll, managing expenses, and dealing with multiple currencies
• Who is it for? Established businesses with teams, supplier payments, and international dealings
• Why should you use it? It adds multi-currency, advanced cashflow predictions, and more inclusive payroll and expenses support
• How much does it cost? £50 per month

Xero Comprehensive is for businesses managing staff and multi-currency clients. It includes 10 free bill payments, payroll for up to five, and expenses for five – perfect for teams or agencies.

Xero Comprehensive: Upgraded features vs Grow

• 10 free bill payments per month
• Payroll for five people (add £1 per extra person)
• Expenses for five users
• Multi-currency support
• Advanced cashflow insights (e.g. tailored financial health scorecards)
• Make international online bill payments
• 90-day cashflow forecast

Xero Comprehensive: Who is it for?

Xero Comprehensive is ideal for growing SMEs working with overseas clients (thereby requiring multi-currency support) or needing a better handle on cashflow. Perfect for agencies, consultancies, or businesses scaling up payroll and supplier management.

4. Xero Ultimate: £65 per month

• What is it? Xero’s most advanced plan is designed for complex businesses managing large teams and multiple projects
• Who is it for? Mid-sized businesses or fast-growing firms needing advanced financial control and project tracking
• Why should you use it? Offers the most inclusive payroll and project tracking with deeper cashflow insights
• How much does it cost? £65 per month

Xero Ultimate delivers full-scale accounting, with the capacity to run large payrolls and manage multiple projects efficiently.

Xero Ultimate: Upgraded Features vs Comprehensive

• 15 free bill payments per month
• Payroll for 10 people (add £1 per extra person)
• Track projects for 10 users (add £5 per extra user)
• Analyse KPIs and ratios
• Expenses for ten users
• 180-day cashflow forecast

Xero Ultimate: Who is it for?

Xero Ultimate is best for agencies, consultancies, or project-based businesses needing full visibility across staff and job costs. If you’re managing large teams or multiple projects, this plan can keep you on top of everything with minimal manual effort.

Does Xero Have a Free Plan?

Unfortunately, Xero doesn’t have any free plans. However, instead of offering an ultra-limited cost-free version of its tool, Xero does let you use a 30-day free trial to test out its full functionality.

Does Xero Have Any Hidden Fees?

Xero is transparent about its pricing, with no setup fees or hidden costs. Each plan’s subscription cost covers all the core features such as invoicing, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting.

However, as explained, additional services like payroll, expenses, and projects may incur extra charges, depending on your specific plan.

Similarly, while you can add as many Xero organisations as you like to one account, if you want separate accounts for different companies, you’ll need to choose a pricing plan for each one. However, Xero does offer a discount for multiple organisations 

For most customers, Xero’s direct bank feeds (which automatically import transactions from your bank into the Xero hub) are available at no additional cost, too. However, some UK banks charge fees for bank feeds that Xero will then pass on to you. Handily, Xero has a guide for individual banks, so you can check.

Payment processing fees

Should you want to allow clients to make payments to you quickly and easily via Xero invoices, then Xero can be configured to allow just that. To do so, it uses third-party partners Stripe, for credit and debit cards, and GoCardless, for bank transfers. Here’s a quick comparison of both:

Debit and credit cards via Stripe

Card fees with Stripe vary depending on the card used to make a payment.

• 1.5% + £0.20 for standard UK domestic cards (including consumer cards issued by Visa and Mastercard, all cards issued by Discover, Diners Club, and UnionPay)
• 1.9% + £0.20 for premium UK domestic cards (including commercial, corporate, or business cards issued by Visa and Mastercard, and all cards issued by American Express)
• 2.5% + £0.20 for European Economic Area cards + 2% if currency conversion is required
• 3.25% + £0.20 for international cards + 2% if currency conversion is required

If you want “Instant Payouts” via Stripe, meaning you get the money in your bank account within seconds, then you’ll also be charged an additional 1% of the Instant Payouts volume or a minimum fee of £0.40.

Bank transfers via GoCardless

With GoCardless, you’ll face different fees depending on the type of GoCardless account you have.

Standard plan

• 1% + £0.20 per domestic transaction. Maximum price cap £4 per transaction +0.3% added to transactions over £2,000
• 2% +£0.20 for international payments

Advanced plan

• 1.25% + £0.20 per domestic transaction. Maximum price cap £5 per transaction +0.3% added to transactions over £2,000
• 2.25% +£0.20 for international payments

Pro plan

• 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction. Maximum price cap £5.60 per transaction +0.3% added to transactions over £2,000
• 2.4% +£0.20 for international payments

Does Xero Offer Discounts?

Yes, Xero does offer discounts fairly frequently, from our experience.

Currently, the provider is offering an 80% discount for new customers for the first six months. For example, the Ignite plan costs £3.20 per month for the first six months, before going up to £16 after that period has finished.

Xero also offers a discount for multiple organisations when you subscribe to more than one plan (as you’ll need to have separate plans for separate businesses) – although, it’s not clear how big this discount is.

To qualify for the discount, the organisations need to use the same subscriber email address. The discount is automatically applied when you use the same email address and the organisations use the same country edition of Xero. If an organisation uses a different country edition – for instance one business is in the UK and the other is in Australia – you can contact Xero Support so they can apply the discount manually.

What are the key features included in Xero?

• Invoicing: Create and send professional invoices with ease
• Bank reconciliation: Automatically import and categorize bank transactions
• Expense tracking: Monitor and manage expenses efficiently
• Financial reporting: Generate real-time reports to assess business performance
• Integrations: Connect with various third-party apps to enhance functionality

For a detailed review of Xero’s performance in our tests, read our Xero review.

Is Xero Good Value? Xero Pricing vs Competitors

Our analysis shows that Xero offers a comprehensive suite of accounting tools for the money, including invoicing, bank reconciliation, expense tracking, and financial reporting.

For businesses seeking robust accounting software with scalability, Xero provides good value too, since with each upgrade in price, its plans offer more functionality included by default, from invoices and bill payments to opportunities to integrate payroll and manage multiple projects (with multiple users) at once, with its Ultimate plan.

In other words, there is room to grow within Xero rather than a need to change providers.

However, upgrades might not be necessary if you are willing to integrate with other tools. There are arguably more ways to cut costs than any other accounting software provider in this sense because Xero offers more integration options (over 1,000) than other software we’ve researched.

For instance, if you are a small business that only needs the core accountancy tools of Xero’s Grow plan, but would like to manage them as separate projects, then you could search Xero’s app store for time-tracking and project tools to do the job rather than upgrade to Xero Ultimate.

Still, it’s worth contextualising the costs described on this page further by comparing Xero’s pricing to that of other top accounting software providers. After all, ultimately, it will depend on the specific plan you go for, rather than a provider’s overall feature-set. Here’s a quick summary of the best competitors to Xero before we dive into some plan-specific comparisons below.

Xero vs QuickBooks

A key competitor of Xero is QuickBooks. Here’s a look at the cost of its plans in short:

If we compare its Simple Start plan with Xero’s Ignite plan, which both have an identical cost of £16 per month, we notice that the QuickBooks plan is arguably a better value for money.

QuickBooks Simple Start vs Xero Ignite

While both products have functionality like receipt capture and VAT to HMRC, there are certain areas where QuickBooks wins over Xeo. For example:

• Its Simple Start plan offers unlimited invoicing instead of the 20-per-month limit on Xero Ignite.
• Offers mileage tracking for all its plans, which Xero restricts to its £37 per month Grow plan, as well as tools like income tax estimates (not available on Xero at all).
• Offers phone and video customer support to help you with any queries, unlike Xero.

While it might seem like a slam dunk for QuickBooks here, there is one key consideration that could change things: QuickBooks Simple Start is only for one user (plus your accountant).

By contrast, all Xero plans can have unlimited user numbers. If you have a large team that all need access, this might be operationally challenging. Xero also has more ready-made integrations, although the difference is less stark (over 1,000 compared to over 750).

QuickBooks Essentials vs Xero Grow

In terms of accounting tools, things are a little more even between QuickBooks Essentials and Xero Grow. For example:

• QuickBooks allows you to do business in over 145 currencies, whereas multi-currency support isn’t available until Xero’s £50 per month Comprehensive plan and above.
• Xero Grow has tracking of inventory, which isn’t something QuickBooks supports until its £56 per month Plus plan.
• Xero offers mileage tracking at the Grow plan level, but it is limited to one user (and costs £2.50 per additional user), whereas QuickBooks Essentials allows up to three users.

All other features are pretty similar, though, aside from those aforementioned CIS return add-on costs with Xero and the improved customer support options with QuickBooks.

Xero vs Zoho Books

Another high-performing accounting platform, according to our research, is Zoho Books. Here are all its pricing plans at a glance:

Prices above are billed yearly (month-by-month costs are more expensive)

A notable difference between Xero and Zoho Books is that the latter has a free plan, which is great for micro-businesses and solopreneurs looking for entry-level software to get started with. Its cheapest paid plan is less than Xero’s cheapest plan, with the Standard plan costing just £10 per month.

However, like QuickBooks, each Zoho Books plan has user limits between one and 15. The free plan’s limit is set at one user (plus one accountant), Standard at three users, Professional at five users, Premium and Elite at 10 users, and Ultimate at 15 users. You can add users to any plan, though, which is handy, but it will cost £2 per user, per month. As stated, Xero allows for unlimited user numbers.

Zoho Books Professional vs Xero Ignite

While the pricing plans don’t exactly align, perhaps the fairest cost comparison is between the Zoho Books Professional plan (£20 per month) and the Xero Ignite plan (£16 per month).

Some notable differences include:

• Zoho Books Professional allows for 10,000 invoices per year, or around 833 per month, while Xero Ignire allows just 20 per month.
• Even Zoho Books’ cheapest plan (Standard) offers 5,000 per year and 1,000 per year on its a free plan.
• Zoho Books allows 10,000 expenses and bills combined per year, compared to Xero Ignite’s limit of 10 per month.
• Xero Ignite does not offer multi-currency support, whereas Zoho Books Professional includes multi-currency invoicing and transactions (for purchases only, not for customers).

In our testing of Zoho Books, we also found it an easier platform to use for accountancy beginners, since we found most tools were better signposted in the interface. In terms of value for money, Zoho Books is a better choice at the low-cost level (although it is hard to ignore those user limits, which means that if you have a large or growing team, Xero could make more sense).

Zoho Books Elite vs Xero Ultimate

How do each provider’s more advanced plans stack up?

First, we found that the cost for Zoho Books Elite is significantly higher – up to £85 from the £25 Premium plan below it, while Xero’s Ultimate plan is £65 (just £15 more than its £50 Comprehensive plan).

In other words, Xero might be a more scalable solution in the long run, as you could end up paying £165 per month with Zoho Books’ own Ultimate plan.

In terms of features, we’d say Xero Ultimate leads the way too – even more so considering that cost differential. It offers:

• Unlimited invoicing and bill entry – a substantial leap from its lower-tier plans, while Zoho Books Elite caps invoicing at 100,000 per year.
• Payroll integration for up to 10 employees (with extra charges for additional users), while Zoho Books Elite does not include built-in payroll functionality and requires a separate payroll integration.