Tide vs ANNA Money: which handles the accountant's job better?

ANNA Money did not start life as a bank account with invoicing tacked on; it started as a tax and admin assistant that eventually needed somewhere to hold money. That history still shapes the product. ANNA's pitch is that its Auto Accountant will keep your books tidy through the year, prepare your Corporation Tax return and annual accounts, and file both with HMRC and Companies House — a claim that matters more than it used to now that HMRC is closing its own free Corporation Tax filing service and pushing everyone towards approved third-party software. Tide's pitch is different: a free current account with strong invoicing, expense tagging and receipt capture, but no attempt to prepare or submit your tax return for you.

Neither approach is objectively better. It depends on whether you currently pay an accountant, want to stop paying an accountant, or never had one in the first place. We think Tide is the stronger default for the majority of UK sole traders and small limited companies who are paid electronically and already have, or plan to get, an accountant or bookkeeper — and we should be upfront that we earn a commission from Tide links on this page and nothing from ANNA.

At a glance

The real difference: who does the tax return?

This is the question that should decide the comparison, because everything else — transfer fees, app design, savings rates — is close enough not to matter on its own.

ANNA's Auto Accountant is built to take a sole trader or small limited company all the way from receipts and bank transactions through to a filed Corporation Tax return and annual accounts, submitted to HMRC and Companies House using HMRC-recognised software. For someone who has never used an accountant and does not want to start, that is a compelling reason to choose ANNA outright — especially with HMRC's own free Corporation Tax filing service closing, which forces everyone without a paid accountant onto approved software of some kind.

Tide does not compete on this ground. It gives you clean, categorised, exportable records and MTD-ready VAT tools that plug into accounting software such as Xero, but the actual return — VAT or Corporation Tax — is prepared and filed by you or your accountant, not by Tide. If you already pay an accountant, or plan to as your business grows, this is not a gap; the accountant does the filing and Tide simply needs to hand over tidy numbers, which it does. If you have no accountant and no appetite to hire one, ANNA's automation is worth paying for.

A worked cost example

Take a self-employed designer invoicing eight clients a month, all paid by bank transfer, turning over £3,000 a month. On Tide's Free plan, the five-transfer allowance covers most of that (transfers in do not always count against the allowance the same way outgoing payments do, so check the current fee schedule for your exact pattern), and any overage lands as 20p per transfer — a few pounds a month at most. There is no percentage charge on money coming in.

On some ANNA tiers, a small commission is applied to incoming payments rather than a flat per-transfer fee. Applied to £3,000 of monthly turnover, even a fraction-of-a- percent commission adds up faster than Tide's flat 20p charge once volume rises, though ANNA's higher tiers remove or reduce this in exchange for a fixed monthly subscription. The crossover point — where a flat monthly fee beats a percentage commission — depends entirely on your turnover and the specific plan, so this is a calculation worth doing with both providers' live pricing pages open side by side rather than trusting either marketing page's headline "free" claim.

Bank account or e-money account?

Neither Tide nor ANNA holds its own UK banking licence. Tide's current accounts are provided by ClearBank, a UK-authorised bank using sort code 04-06-05, so eligible deposits held there can attract FSCS protection up to £120,000, subject to the usual eligibility rules. ANNA's current account balance is an e-money product issued by PayrNet Limited; e-money balances are typically safeguarded rather than covered by the FSCS in the way a bank deposit is, though ANNA offers a separate savings product through an FSCS-protected banking partner for money you want to actually park. Read our guide to Tide and FSCS protection for the detail on Tide's arrangement, and check ANNA's own terms for exactly which of its balances carry which protection before deciding where to keep working capital.

The REFER200 partner code

Tide runs an ordinary customer refer-a-friend scheme, but REFER200 is a separate partner code that pays noticeably more: up to £200 in total, split between £75 for opening the account and spending £100 on the Tide card within 30 days, and £125 for depositing at least £5,000 into Tide Instant Saver within seven days and keeping it there for a month. ANNA is not part of this comparison's incentive; there is nothing to weigh it against. Offer terms checked 29 August 2026.

The verdict

Choose Tide if you already have, or plan to get, an accountant or bookkeeper, you are paid mostly by transfer or card, and you want a free current account with strong invoicing rather than a paid subscription that does your tax return. Choose ANNA if you have no accountant, do not want one, and would rather pay a monthly subscription to have VAT and Corporation Tax handled inside the same app that holds your money.

For the electronically paid UK sole trader or small limited company who already has someone doing their books, Tide's combination of a free plan, built-in invoicing and the REFER200 partner bonus is the more efficient starting point — with the caveat that if tax filing automation is what you actually want, that single feature is reason enough to look at ANNA properly rather than default to whichever account opens fastest.

Tide vs ANNA Money FAQs