CT600 software compared
There isn’t one best CT600 software. There are three kinds, and the right one depends on where your figures are and how complicated your return is. This page sets out the kinds, then six products and what each is suited to.
Information checked: 1 October 2026, against each maker’s own website. This isn’t a ranking, and the list isn’t every product on the market: GOV.UK publishes the full list of software HMRC accepts returns from.
Three kinds of CT600 software
Filing tools
You enter the year’s final figures, or import a trial balance, and the tool produces the return and files it. Quick and cheap for a company with simple affairs. The figures have to be right before they go in, because the tool doesn’t hold your books.
Practice suites
Separate modules for accounts production, tax, practice management and more, built for firms with many clients. They cover the widest range of returns and supplementary pages. They cost more and take longer to learn than a single company needs.
Books-to-filing products
The bookkeeping, the accounts and the return live in one product, so each is built from the one before. Nothing is typed across. The books have to be kept in the product, and the range of returns is narrower than a practice suite’s.
Six products, and what each suits
| Product | Kind | Suited to | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TinyTax | Filing tool | Micro-entities and dormant companies with the year’s figures to hand; small charities needing CT600E | From £20 a year (dormant) or £59 a year (one trading company), excluding VAT | Detail and sources |
| Easy Digital Filing | Filing tool | Small and micro companies paying per filing, including those with iXBRL accounts already prepared | From £80 + VAT per filing | Detail and sources |
| TaxCalc | Practice suite | Practices needing every supplementary page, on desktop software with separate accounts and tax modules | Limited Company from £142 a year; practice bands from £235 a year, excluding VAT | Detail and sources |
| Capium | Practice suite | Practices wanting practice management, payroll and self assessment in one cloud suite | Plans from £140 a month, excluding VAT, on a 12-month contract | Detail and sources |
| BTCSoftware | Practice suite | Practices whose clients’ books are in Xero, QuickBooks or Sage; now moving to BrightTax | Not stated on the pages we checked | Detail and sources |
| A4O Accounts | Books to filing | Companies and small practices wanting the books, accounts and CT600 in one place, with no supplementary page beyond CT600A and CT600L | £0 to get started | What it does |
A4O Accounts is ours. It’s free to get started, including filing; if we ever introduce paid plans, we’ll tell you at least 30 days before anything changes.
Free and paid
HMRC’s own free service closed on 31 March 2026, so there’s no longer a government option for the return. Among commercial products, look at what “free” covers: some let you prepare and preview a return free and charge to file it; some charge per filing; some charge a yearly or monthly subscription. A4O Accounts is free to get started, including filing.
Price is only one thing to weigh. A cheap filing tool is poor value if your return needs a supplementary page it doesn’t support, and a practice suite is poor value for one simple company.
Where A4O Accounts isn’t the right choice
Your return needs another supplementary page
Group relief (CT600C), charities (CT600E) and the rest aren’t supported. A practice suite, or a filing tool that covers your page, is the better fit.
Your accounts are already prepared
A4O Accounts builds the accounts from its own books. If you only need to file a return from finished accounts, a filing tool is quicker.
You run a larger practice
There’s no practice-wide deadline view, task management or HMRC agent sign-in yet.
You need group accounts
Consolidated accounts aren’t supported.
Read next
See whether A4O Accounts fits.
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