Which Is Better for UK sole traders and small limited companies choosing between free domestic banking and multi-currency fintech?
If you are a UK sole trader, this one ends before the price list. Mettle wins on eligibility, not on cost, because Revolut Business will not have you. Revolut’s own eligibility rules take limited companies, LLPs and partnerships, and stop there.
Revolut’s freelancer FAQ names the markets where a sole trader can open a business account, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and a dozen more. The UK is absent from that list. What you get offered here instead is Revolut Pro.
Revolut Pro is a separate account that lives inside the personal Revolut app, with no subscription fee. We would not call it a business current account, and it is not the product this page compares. Useful, but not the thing you came to price.
Nothing on the pricing page flags this. A sole trader can read three tiers, weigh £10 a month against Mettle’s nothing, settle on a plan, and only meet the wall at the company-number field. That is an evening spent on a decision that was never yours to make.
So we will say it early rather than bury it in an eligibility footnote: check your entity type before you compare a single fee. A price you cannot pay is not a price.
If you run a small limited company with one or two owners and bill in sterling, Mettle still wins, and now it wins on cost. Free, NatWest-backed, FreeAgent bundled. There is no feature on Revolut Basic at £10/month you would actually miss.
If you need 25+ multi-currency wallets, team cards with spend controls, or API access for programmatic payments, choose Revolut Business. Grow, at £35/month billed monthly (£30/month if paid annually), is the entry point for international invoicing.
A sole trader sending five UK invoices a month and wanting everything free should start with Mettle: it is structurally cheaper than Revolut Basic at £10/month, and there’s no feature you’d actually miss.
If your structure is a partnership, LLP, charity, or limited company with 3+ owners, Mettle excludes you outright. Revolut Business accepts broader structures, including LLPs.
Revolut vs Mettle Fees and Charges
You pay nothing for Mettle on the monthly fee, nothing on UK Faster Payments in or out, and FreeAgent accounting software comes bundled free provided you make at least one transaction per month.
Revolut Basic is £10/month flat, no annual option. Grow is £35/month billed monthly, or £30/month if paid annually. Scale is £125/month billed monthly, or £90/month if paid annually. The catch is real. Most new customers pay the higher monthly-billing figure, not the annual-equivalent rate.
On cash deposits, neither account offers a free UK cash channel. For a market trader banking Saturday takings on Monday morning, Mettle doesn’t support cash deposits at all, and Revolut routes cash via partner channels with its own limits and fees.
ATM withdrawals cost on both sides, though the shape of the charge differs. Mettle takes a flat £1 every time you draw cash at a UK machine, whatever the amount. Revolut Business charges 2% on every withdrawal, with no fee-free allowance.
That 2% only undercuts Mettle’s flat £1 on withdrawals below £50. Draw more than that and the flat fee is the cheaper deal.
The daily limits (£3,000 Basic, £5,000 Grow, £10,000 Scale) cap how much you can take out. They don’t buy free withdrawals, that’s the catch.
For card spending overseas, Revolut charges near-interbank FX within plan allowance, 0.6% over it. Mettle’s overseas card fee follows NatWest’s published debit card tariff, confirm rates directly with Mettle.
For high-volume FX above £10,000/month, pair either account with Wise Business at mid-market rates from 0.33%. Neither Revolut nor Mettle beats Wise on sustained currency volume.
| Cost | Mettle | Revolut Basic | Revolut Grow | Revolut Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK sole traders | Accepted | Not accepted² | Not accepted² | Not accepted² |
| Monthly fee | £0 | £10 | £35 billed monthly (£30 if paid annually) | £125 billed monthly (£90 if paid annually) |
| UK transfers | Free | Free within allowance | Free within allowance | Free within allowance |
| Included FX allowance | N/A (GBP-only) | £1,000 | £15,000 | £60,000 |
| ATM withdrawal fee | £1 flat (UK) | 2% flat, every withdrawal | 2% flat, every withdrawal | 2% flat, every withdrawal |
| FreeAgent included | Yes (1+ tx/month) | Integration only | Integration only | Integration only |
| Business API | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| FSCS protection | Yes (via NatWest since 2018) | Usually yes for new accounts¹ | Usually yes for new accounts¹ | Usually yes for new accounts¹ |
| Representative costs verified from provider websites, May 2026. ¹Revolut Bank UK Ltd launched as a fully authorised UK bank on 11 March 2026 (FRN 981170); some new signups may still be onboarded to the older e-money entity temporarily during the phased rollout. ²Revolut Business accepts limited companies, LLPs and partnerships. UK sole traders are directed to Revolut Pro, a separate no-subscription account in the personal Revolut app. | ||||
Revolut vs Mettle Features and Tools
You get FreeAgent included free with Mettle, saving up to £150/year. We rate this as the cleanest MTD-compliant setup for UK sole traders, and NatWest’s ownership of FreeAgent gives the integration real depth.
When your team needs spend controls across 5-50 employees, Revolut Business has the deeper per-employee card programme. Mettle doesn’t support multi-user team card programmes at the same depth.
Both do invoicing, whatever you have read elsewhere. We checked both. Mettle’s lives inside the bundled free FreeAgent subscription, tightly integrated for anyone already running FreeAgent for the bookkeeping.
Revolut Business also supports invoice creation, recurring invoices, and automatic reminders on every plan. Bank transfer needs no setup; card or Apple Pay/Google Pay/Revolut Pay payment needs a separate Merchant account first.
For payment infrastructure, Revolut offers a published Business API on the Grow and Scale plans (not Basic) for programmatic supplier payments, batch processing, and ledger sync. Mettle doesn’t offer a public business API at any tier.
You get crypto access at Revolut Business on paid tiers, with no equivalent at Mettle. For businesses that need crypto rails, Revolut is the only option of the two.
Revolut vs Mettle International Payments
You can’t hold foreign currency at Mettle natively, it’s a GBP-only account. International payments route through NatWest’s standard SWIFT/FX infrastructure, at NatWest’s fees.
When you convert £50,000 in EUR a month, Revolut Scale’s £60,000 included FX allowance covers it at near-interbank rates. Grow’s allowance is only £15,000, so on Grow, £35,000 of that volume would sit above the allowance at a 0.6% markup.
At Mettle, international conversion follows NatWest’s high-street card-and-FX tariff regardless of volume, there’s no allowance tier to climb.
For receiving foreign currency, Revolut Business provides local multi-currency wallets across 25+ currencies. Mettle has no native multi-currency support.
For sustained cross-border FX, pair either account with Wise Business. Wise’s mid-market FX from 0.33% beats both Revolut and Mettle on currency conversion volume. Cheaper is cheaper.
Revolut vs Mettle Customer Reviews and Reputation
On scale, the two aren’t comparable. Revolut Business serves millions of UK customers across personal and business accounts; Mettle serves a smaller, dedicated sole-trader and small-Ltd base.
Mettle reviews praise the genuinely free model, the FreeAgent integration, and the NatWest-backed licence. The complaints land on eligibility: sole traders and Ltds with two owners max. That narrow door is the catch.
Revolut reviews praise the FX rates, app polish, and feature breadth for the price.
Complaints cluster around account freezes during compliance reviews: a flagged transfer can lock the account during a Friday afternoon payroll run, before support has caught up.
Support model splits sharply. Revolut offers 24/7 in-app chat to business customers. Mettle offers in-app and email support during business hours, plus phone for verification. That matters if a payment fails on a Sunday: Revolut answers, and Mettle leaves you waiting until the next working day.
Revolut vs Mettle for Free Banking with FreeAgent vs Multi-Currency and Team Cards
For free PRA-licensed UK banking with FreeAgent included, Mettle wins outright. We rate Mettle as the cleanest, cheapest route to FSCS-protected, MTD-compliant sole-trader banking, and for a sole trader it is the only route of the two: Revolut Business is closed to you.
Eligibility cuts both ways here, and we would settle it before you weigh a single feature: work out which side of the line your entity type puts you on, then read the rest.
When you’re a partnership, LLP, charity, or Ltd with 3+ owners, Mettle excludes you. Revolut Business accepts these structures, subject to compliance checks.
You can’t hold foreign currency at Mettle. If you receive in EUR, USD, or any non-GBP currency, Revolut Business is the only real choice of the two.
And if you run a team that needs expense cards with per-employee spend controls, that infrastructure sits on Revolut’s paid tiers. Mettle has no equivalent at any price point. Not the same account, not the same job.
Downsides of Revolut and Mettle
- Mettle: hard eligibility wall. Sole traders and limited companies with up to 2 owners only, and only 1 can access the account. Partnerships, LLPs, charities, CICs, and Ltds with 3+ owners are locked out entirely.
- Mettle: GBP-only. No multi-currency wallets, no foreign-currency invoicing. International payments route through NatWest’s standard SWIFT/FX infrastructure at NatWest’s rates.
- Mettle: no team cards, no API, no crypto. The whole positioning is simple free GBP banking, not a full fintech platform.
- Revolut: UK sole traders are locked out. Revolut Business accepts limited companies, LLPs and partnerships. UK sole traders are not eligible and are pointed at Revolut Pro in the personal app instead, a different product with different limits. Mettle takes sole traders without a quibble.
- Revolut: compliance-freeze risk. Flagged transactions can lock the account for a day or more while support catches up, a real operational risk if payroll is due.
- Revolut: no overdraft. The Business product has no overdraft at any plan tier.
- Revolut: ATM fee. A flat 2% on every withdrawal, at any tier, with no fee-free allowance.
- Both: no free UK cash channel. Mettle doesn’t take cash at all. Revolut routes cash via partner channels, with its own limits and fees.
Alternatives to Revolut and Mettle
You don’t have to choose between Revolut and Mettle alone. We compared several adjacent UK business accounts that solve specific problems better than either.
- Starling Business, free PRA-licensed banking with overdraft access and broader eligibility, LLPs accepted. Pick this if Mettle’s two-owner ceiling rules you out and you still want a free FSCS-protected account.
- Allica Business Rewards, a full PRA bank paying cashback and interest on deposits, up to 1.5% cashback and 4.08% AER for £50k+ deposit businesses. Pick this if you want your balance to earn while it sits.
- Wise Business, mid-market FX from 0.33%, the cheapest cross-border option for UK SMEs. Pick this if your FX volume is what actually drives the decision, not the current account itself.
- Equals Money, 38 multi-currency IBANs with vertical industry support. It’s an FCA e-money institution rather than an FSCS bank, but the currency depth beats Revolut. Pick this if international breadth matters more than deposit protection.
Final Verdict: Revolut or Mettle?
If you are a UK sole trader, take Mettle. Revolut Business was never an option: it does not accept UK sole traders, and no amount of FX wallet depth changes an application it will not process.
If you run a small limited company with one or two owners, Mettle still wins, and here it wins on the money. We rate it the cleanest free FSCS-protected setup for the smallest UK businesses: £0/month, FreeAgent included, NatWest behind it.
Choose Revolut Business if you need 25+ multi-currency wallets, team card programmes, API access, or you operate as an LLP, partnership, or larger limited company. Grow, at £35/month billed monthly (£30/month if paid annually), is the value pick once you need any of that.
When your business is GBP-only and structurally simple, Mettle wins on cost. When you need international or team-spend features, Revolut wins on capability.
Either way, pair the account with Wise Business if you sustain £10,000+/month in FX. Wise’s mid-market rate from 0.33% beats both on currency volume.
Who Should Choose Mettle?
- You’re a UK sole trader. Revolut Business will not open an account for you at all, so Mettle is the only one of the two you can actually have. Full PRA-licensed banking, FSCS to £120,000, FreeAgent bundled free.
- You’re a small Ltd with 1-2 owners. Same free account, and for a purely domestic setup Revolut Basic’s £10/month buys you nothing you would notice.
- You want the simplest free UK banking. £0/month, £0 UK transfers. Revolut Basic costs £10/month for the same domestic use case.
- You never invoice or get paid in a foreign currency. Mettle’s GBP-only design is not a gap if your business never touches non-GBP money.
Who Should Choose Revolut?
- You’re incorporated. Everything below assumes a limited company, LLP or partnership. A UK sole trader cannot open Revolut Business, so none of it applies to you.
- You trade in more than one currency. 25+ currency wallets and near-interbank FX inside plan allowances. Mettle can’t hold or receive foreign currency at all.
- You run a team that needs expense cards. Per-employee spend controls on paid tiers. Mettle has no multi-user team card programme.
- Your structure is a partnership, LLP, charity, or Ltd with 3+ owners. Mettle excludes all of these outright.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mettle FSCS-protected?
Yes. Mettle is owned by National Westminster Bank plc (FRN 121878), a full PRA-licensed UK bank with direct FSCS deposit protection to £120,000 per eligible depositor.
Is Revolut Business FSCS-protected?
Usually, for new accounts, though not unconditionally. Revolut Bank UK Ltd launched as a fully authorised UK bank on 11 March 2026, when the PRA lifted the mobilisation restrictions on the licence it had held since July 2024. New applicants are usually onboarded directly to Revolut Bank UK Ltd, with FSCS protection up to £120,000 per eligible depositor, the same statutory cover as Mettle. But Revolut is phasing that rollout, so some new signups may still land on the older Revolut Ltd e-money entity temporarily, worth checking your account terms to confirm which entity holds your money.
Can a UK sole trader open a Revolut Business account?
No. Revolut Business accepts limited companies, LLPs and partnerships. Revolut’s own freelancer eligibility FAQ lists the markets where a sole trader can open one, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and a handful of others, and the UK is not among them. UK sole traders are directed to Revolut Pro instead: a separate account inside the personal Revolut app, with no subscription fee, but not a business current account. Mettle, by contrast, is built for sole traders and accepts them directly.
Does Mettle accept partnerships, LLPs, or charities?
No. Mettle accepts sole traders and limited companies with up to 2 owners (only 1 can access the account). Partnerships, LLPs, charities, CICs, and Ltds with 3+ owners are not supported. For these structures, choose Revolut Business, Starling Business, or Allica Business Rewards.
How much does Mettle cost?
£0/month. Mettle has no monthly account fee, no charges for UK transfers, and FreeAgent accounting software is included free (saves up to £150/year) provided you make at least one transaction per month.
How much does Revolut Business cost?
Revolut Business runs three priced tiers plus custom Enterprise: Basic is £10/month flat. Grow is £35/month billed monthly, or £30/month if you pay annually. Scale is £125/month billed monthly, or £90/month if you pay annually. International transfers cost £5 each on Basic, with 5 free on Grow and 25 free on Scale per month.
Can I hold foreign currency with Mettle?
No. Mettle is a GBP-only account. International payments route through NatWest’s standard SWIFT and FX infrastructure. For multi-currency wallets, Revolut Business or Wise Business are the alternatives.
Does Mettle offer team card programmes or API access?
No. Mettle’s positioning is simple free GBP banking for sole traders and small limited companies, not a full fintech platform. For per-employee team cards with spend controls, choose Revolut Business; for a Business API, Revolut also wins in this matchup, it’s available on the Grow and Scale plans.
Can you use both Revolut and Mettle at the same time?
Yes. There’s no restriction on holding accounts with both providers. A common setup is Mettle as the free primary UK account with FreeAgent, with Revolut alongside for international payments and multi-currency spending once the business needs it.
How we reviewed Revolut vs Mettle
Ranking criteria. We compared Revolut and Mettle 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.
Revolut pricing and FSCS wording were re-verified against editorial-os/fact-ledgers/revolut-business.md on 12 July 2026.
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.