Which Is Better for bookkeeping-automated solo businesses?
For bookkeeping-automated solo businesses, ANNA wins on the workflow but Revolut wins on protection. If your business is GBP-only and you’d rather not pay for separate accounting software, ANNA’s built-in tax dashboard and invoicing do the Xero job inside the bank app.
Photograph a Pret receipt on the bus and ANNA categorises the expense, tracks the VAT, and updates the HMRC liability estimate before you’re back at your desk. No exports, no Sunday-evening spreadsheet. Revolut doesn’t replicate that. It feeds Xero.
The trade-off: ANNA’s spending balance isn’t FSCS-protected. For a sole trader holding under £5,000 working capital, that gap is manageable.
For anyone holding more, the new Revolut PRA licence tips the balance, FSCS cover on the transactional balance plus optional accounting integration.
For most readers landing on this page, the answer depends on how much cash you hold and whether you bill abroad.
GBP-only with light reserves: ANNA. Multi-currency or holding meaningful working capital: Revolut. Either way, the choice is between built-in bookkeeping and regulated protection, not pricing.
Revolut vs ANNA Fees and Charges
Revolut Basic is £10 a month, no minimum balance. Grow is £25, Scale is £100, paid tiers buy bigger FX allowances and more free transfers. On Basic, beyond the £10, the fee you’ll see is FX once the allowance is gone.
ANNA’s Pay As You Go account is free to open and free to hold, with per-transaction fees on payments in and out. A sole trader sending six invoices a quarter pays pennies. A Shopify seller running 400 card payments a month is a different conversation.
ANNA also runs paid tiers (Plus, Pro, Business) bundling fixed transaction allowances and added features like spend-rule cards. Verify the current price on ANNA’s pricing page before you commit, they restructure these tiers occasionally. We checked both providers in May 2026.
Neither account has a high fixed entry cost. Practical cost depends on transaction volume. Revolut Basic doesn’t charge for a quiet August. ANNA Pay As You Go doesn’t either, until transactions add up, we’d rather see pricing tied to use than a flat monthly hit.
| Cost | Revolut Basic | Revolut Grow (£30/mo) | ANNA Pay As You Go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | £10 | £25 | £0 (per-transaction fees apply) |
| Domestic transfers | Free within allowance | Free within allowance | Per-transaction fee |
| Multi-currency accounts | Yes (25+ currencies) | Yes (25+ currencies) | No (GBP only) |
| FSCS protection | Yes for new accounts from 11 Mar 2026 (PRA bank licence) | Yes for new accounts from 11 Mar 2026 | No on spending; Yes on Savings (Griffin Bank) |
Revolut vs ANNA Features and Tools
Beyond pricing, the two accounts diverge most on what the app actually does for you. Revolut leans on third-party integrations, Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent feed off the transaction stream. ANNA leans the other way: invoicing, receipt capture, and tax dashboard live inside the bank app itself.
For team cards, Revolut wins. Virtual and physical cards with spend rules and category limits on the paid tiers. ANNA offers cards too, but team-controls depth isn’t at parity. Four people all needing expense cards? Revolut.
For invoicing, ANNA wins outright. Raise an invoice inside the app, automated reminders chase clients who haven’t paid at the seven-day mark, and the moment money lands it’s reconciled.
Revolut doesn’t offer native invoicing, you handle that through whichever accounting package you’ve connected.
Both offer GBP account numbers and sort codes, both support Direct Debit setup, both have mobile apps that don’t make you want to throw the phone across the room. Revolut’s app is the more polished of the two for daily banking; ANNA’s shines on the bookkeeping side.
Revolut vs ANNA International Payments
Invoice in euros on Monday, payment lands Thursday lunchtime, Revolut lets you hold the EUR rather than convert at whatever rate the day throws up. 25+ currency wallets, near-interbank rates inside allowance. ANNA can’t do any of that.
ANNA is sterling-only. No currency wallets, no SWIFT outbound, no foreign-currency invoicing. You can receive inbound foreign payments via GBP, but the conversion happens at the receiving bank’s rate. Fine for UK-only traders; a hard ceiling for anyone selling abroad.
The point isn’t that ANNA is worse at multi-currency. ANNA isn’t in that game. If your business touches a foreign currency more than once or twice a year, Revolut isn’t a nice-to-have , it’s a different product category.
On the protection side, the regulator matters more than the app. Revolut got its PRA banking licence on 11 March 2026. New accounts from that date are FSCS-protected up to £120,000.
ANNA spending stays FCA-authorised e-money. Funds safeguarded, not FSCS-protected. Different statutory mechanism if either firm fails.
Revolut vs ANNA Customer Reviews and Reputation
When we checked Trustpilot in May 2026, Revolut Business sat at around 4.2 stars across 200,000+ reviews. ANNA sat at around 4.5 stars across a much smaller review base of 5,000-plus. Neither score is a red flag; ANNA’s edge reflects a smaller, more self-selecting customer base.
The themes diverge. Revolut customers praise the FX, app polish, and breadth of features for the price. Complaints cluster around account freezes during compliance reviews, a known fintech onboarding issue where a flagged transaction can lock the account for days while support catches up.
ANNA reviews skew toward sole traders and freelancers who love the tax tools and the invoice-chasing automation.
Complaints lean toward occasional outages on the payments rail and slower customer support than Revolut’s in-app chat. ANNA is also visibly less polished if you outgrow the sole-trader profile.
For support quality, Revolut has 24/7 in-app chat that responds in minutes for most queries. ANNA offers chat and email during business hours, with response times that vary by tier. If you’re on an entry tier and something goes wrong at 9pm on a Friday, Revolut will pick up first.
Revolut vs ANNA for AI Receipt Capture and Tax Automation
This is where ANNA earns its keep. The receipt capture, VAT tracking, and in-app invoicing the earlier sections describe all run automatically inside the bank rather than bolted on afterwards, saving a freelancer chasing a slow corporate client an afternoon of admin every fortnight.
Revolut’s answer is integration, not automation. Direct connections to Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent push transactions into whichever package you’re already paying for.
If your bookkeeper lives in Xero, that’s the workflow you want. If you don’t have a bookkeeper and don’t want one, ANNA is the better deal.
The real choice: bookkeeping inside the bank, or the bank feeding your accounting software? ANNA replaces Xero. Revolut feeds it.
For a sole trader doing self-assessment alone, ANNA’s running tax estimate is the workflow saving that matters. We verified both integration lists against provider documentation in May 2026.
Downsides of Revolut and ANNA
ANNA’s biggest weakness, in our view, is the lack of FSCS cover on the spending balance. Funds are safeguarded in segregated accounts , not protected by statute. If ANNA fails, you join a creditor pool against the safeguarded pot rather than an eight-day FSCS payout.
ANNA Savings is a separate Griffin Bank-backed product with FSCS cover to £120,000. That protection applies only to money moved into Savings, not the day-to-day spending balance. You can pair both, but it’s a setup decision, not the default.
Revolut’s biggest weakness is the account freeze risk. The compliance engine flags transactions and the account can lock for 24-72 hours. For a freelancer waiting on an invoice, that’s survivable. For a sole trader running weekly bills through the account, it’s a real operational risk.
Revolut also has no overdraft on the Business product. If your cash flow dips into the red at month-end, you’ll need a separate credit line or a high-street account alongside. ANNA doesn’t offer overdraft either, neither provider replaces a traditional bank for working capital lending.
Neither provider is a perfect substitute for a high-street business bank. No physical branches, no relationship managers in the traditional sense, no cheque deposits, limited cash handling. If your business needs any of those, pair either account with a Lloyds, Barclays, or NatWest current account.
Alternatives to Revolut and ANNA
Both Revolut and ANNA are worth considering, but they’re not the only options. Here are the four alternatives we’d weigh first depending on your priorities:
- Countingup, the other tax-automation business account in the UK market. Built-in bookkeeping, tax estimate, and accountant access. Pick this if you like the ANNA model but want to compare against a direct competitor.
- Starling Business, UK-only, FSCS-protected, free monthly account with a strong app and high-street feel. Pick this if you want a conservative banking relationship without giving up the digital-first experience.
- Tide, free UK business account with invoicing, expense cards, and accounting integrations built in. Pick this for a UK-focused SME that wants invoicing tools alongside named accounting integrations.
- Mettle by NatWest, free sole-trader and limited company account from a high-street bank. FSCS-protected. Pick this if you want NatWest’s backing without the legacy bank fees.
Final Verdict: Revolut or ANNA?
For most UK sole traders billing in pounds, ANNA earns its place on the workflow. For multi-currency businesses or anyone holding more than a few thousand pounds of working capital, Revolut wins on FSCS cover and multi-currency breadth. The decision splits cleanly on those two axes.
Choose Revolut if you trade in more than one currency, full stop. 25+ currency wallets, interbank FX inside the Basic plan allowance. ANNA isn’t playing on this field. The same logic applies if you bill overseas clients, contract for foreign companies, or import stock.
Or choose Revolut if you want FSCS cover on the transactional balance. The PRA licence from 11 March 2026 puts new Revolut Business accounts at the £120,000 statutory limit.
ANNA’s spending account can’t match that. For a business holding meaningful working capital, that protection is the deciding factor.
Already in Xero, QuickBooks, or FreeAgent? Revolut is the cleaner pick. Named integrations push transactions straight in, so you’re not exporting CSVs at every month-end while your bookkeeper waits. For most SMEs paying for accounting software, that workflow saving is what decides it.
Choose ANNA if you bill in pounds and you’d rather not pay for separate accounting software. Receipt-scanning, expense categorisation, and live HMRC liability estimate do the Xero job inside the bank app. For a UK-only sole trader, that’s a real workflow saving.
Or choose ANNA if chasing late payers eats into your week. Native invoicing with automated reminders nudges clients at the seven-day mark without you opening Gmail at 9pm. Revolut doesn’t offer this natively. With 10-30 invoices a month, that automation pays for itself.
Want a running tax estimate visible all year, not a January surprise? ANNA. The dashboard updates projected HMRC liability with every transaction, so you know what to set aside before HMRC asks. Pair with ANNA Savings (Griffin Bank-backed, FSCS-covered) for cash reserves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does ANNA or Revolut integrate with Xero?
Revolut integrates directly with Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent. ANNA does not offer direct named integrations with these platforms. ANNA’s built-in tax and bookkeeping tools handle categorisation and tax prep within the app itself, without exporting to Xero or similar. If you already use Xero, Revolut is the more practical choice. We verified both integration lists from provider documentation in May 2026.
Can sole traders use both Revolut and ANNA?
Yes. Both Revolut and ANNA accept sole traders and there is no restriction on holding accounts with both providers. Some sole traders use Revolut for international transfers and FSCS-covered reserves, and ANNA for domestic invoicing and tax tracking. You would need to reconcile two accounts, but the combination covers both protected balances and built-in tax automation.
Which has better invoicing tools: Revolut or ANNA?
ANNA has the stronger invoicing tools. You can create and send invoices from inside the ANNA app, and the system sends automatic payment reminders to clients who have not paid. Revolut does not offer native invoicing. Revolut users typically manage invoicing through their accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, or FreeAgent) via the direct integration. We verified both feature sets from provider documentation in May 2026.
Is Revolut or ANNA FSCS-protected?
Revolut is a UK-licensed bank (PRA-authorised since 11 March 2026) for new accounts opened from that date, deposits are FSCS-protected up to £120,000 per eligible depositor. Existing Revolut customers may still be on the e-money arrangement until their account migrates to the bank entity.
ANNA’s spending account is an FCA-authorised e-money institution and is not FSCS-protected; funds are safeguarded in segregated accounts. ANNA Savings is a separate product backed by Griffin Bank with FSCS cover, that protection applies only to money moved into Savings, not the day-to-day spending balance.
For a primary UK current account with FSCS cover, Revolut now qualifies for new customers. ANNA is better positioned as a workflow tool for tax automation, paired with FSCS-protected reserves either in ANNA Savings or a separate bank account.
How we reviewed Revolut vs ANNA
Ranking criteria. We compared Revolut and Anna on pricing, fees, feature set, eligibility, and contract terms. We also verified regulatory status and deposit protection where applicable.
Data sources. Every provider’s pricing page, terms, and product docs were checked directly in May 2026. No comparison sites, no press releases, no affiliate material. FCA register cross-checked for regulatory status.
Update cadence. We re-verify every provider on this page at least monthly, and whenever a provider changes pricing, eligibility, or terms. The verification date on the page reflects the most recent full review. Some links on this page are affiliate links, see our editorial policy.
Related Pages
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