Which Is Better for UK Invoice-Led SMEs?
If you bill UK clients in pounds and your bookkeeper runs Sage, take Tide. You get invoicing inside the banking app and a Sage feed Revolut has no answer to, on a plan that costs nothing.
If any of your money arrives in euros or dollars, take Revolut. That is the whole of it. Deposit protection no longer separates these two, so stop letting it drive the decision.
Tide is built like a small-business operations tool that happens to sit on a bank. Invoicing inside the app, expense cards, Sage, company formation. For a UK-only consultancy billing 10+ invoices a month, that depth replaces a separate £10-19/month platform.
Revolut goes the other way. 25+ currency wallets, interbank FX inside plan allowance. A Berlin client pays in euros, a Toronto one in dollars; you hold both instead of converting at whatever rate the day throws up. Tide converts on the way out at an in-house rate instead.
Tide vs Revolut Fees and Charges
Tide Free is £0 a month and includes five bank transfers. Number six costs 20p, and so does every one after it, going out or coming in. At 50 transfers that is £9 a month; at 100, £19; at 200, £39. Verified 14 July 2026.
The paid ladder does not do what the price implies. Smart at £12.49 gives you 30 transfers a month and 0% FX. Pro at £27.49 is the first tier where transfers actually run unlimited. Max at £69.99 adds 0.5% cashback on card spend.
So paying £12.49 does not fix a 40-payment month. Smart’s allowance runs dry too, and Tide will not say in public what it charges past it. Ask before you move your payroll across.
Revolut Basic is £10 a month, no minimum balance, no free tier to drop to. On Basic the main fee is FX, and only once the £1,000 monthly allowance is gone.
Above Basic, the price is easy to misread. Pay monthly and Grow is £35, Scale is £125. The £30 and £90 Revolut advertises are the annual-billing rates, £360 and £1,080 handed over twelve months upfront.
That distinction is worth real money. Budget Scale at £90 a month while paying monthly and you are £420 a year short. What the paid tiers buy is FX headroom: £15,000 a month on Grow, £60,000 on Scale, against £1,000 on Basic.
On FX, we rate the gap structural. Revolut converts at interbank inside plan allowance with a small markup once exhausted.
Tide handles FX in-house: 1.5% on the free plan, tapering to 0.75% on Pro and 0.5% on Max. That is fine occasionally, but the markup compounds against Revolut’s in-plan interbank rate for high-volume businesses.
When your logistics partner invoices you in euros every Monday, that FX headroom is what you are buying. But you rent the allowance by the month whether you fill it or not, and below a certain volume the headroom you never touch is dead money.
We priced £5,000 a month of euro payments on both. On Tide’s free plan the 1.5% markup is £75; on Pro it is £37.50, on Max £25. Revolut Grow is £35 a month billed monthly (£30 on annual), whether you convert a penny or not.
So the maths has flipped. Revolut Grow beats Tide’s free plan above roughly £2,300 a month in conversions, and runs line-ball with Tide Pro. Only below that does Tide’s free plan leave you better off. We would rather say so than sell you a tier you will not fill.
Cash deposits via PayPoint on Tide cost a flat 3% of the deposit on every plan; paying for Plus doesn’t cut that. Revolut doesn’t offer a comparable cash channel. Neither handles physical cash like a high-street branch. If you take cash daily, pair either with a high-street account.
| Cost | Tide Free | Tide Smart (£12.49/mo) | Revolut Basic | Revolut Grow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | £0 | £12.49 | £10 (flat, no annual discount) | £35 billed monthly, or £30/mo billed annually (£360/yr) |
| Next tier up | Pro £27.49 (first unlimited-transfer tier); Max £69.99 | Scale: £125 billed monthly, or £90/mo billed annually (£1,080/yr) | ||
| Eligible business types | Sole traders and limited companies | Limited companies, LLPs, partnerships (sole traders not eligible) | ||
| Bank transfers included | 5 per month, then 20p per transfer in or out | 30 per month | Free within allowance | Higher free allowance |
| International transfers | In-house FX (1.5% markup) | In-house FX (0.5-0.75%) | Interbank within allowance | Higher FX allowance |
| Multi-currency wallets | No | No | Yes (25+) | Yes (25+) |
| Native invoicing in bank app | Yes | Yes | Yes (card payment needs Merchant account) | Yes (card payment needs Merchant account) |
| Sage integration | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| FSCS protection | Yes to £120,000 (account provided by ClearBank) | Yes to £120,000 (account provided by ClearBank) | Yes to £120,000 on the bank entity* | Yes to £120,000 on the bank entity* |
Tide vs Revolut Features and Tools
Beyond pricing, the two accounts diverge most on what the app does for you. Tide leans on UK-business operations: built-in invoicing, expense cards, Sage integration, company formation.
Revolut leans on fintech depth: team cards with spend rules, currency wallets, batch payments, published developer API.
Tide’s invoicing is the feature that pays for itself. Create, send, and track invoices inside the bank app, match payments automatically, set reminders, see outstanding amounts alongside your balance.
For a freelancer or trades business billing 10+ invoices a month, that drops a separate £10-19/month subscription. And it costs nothing: Tide gives you invoicing on the free plan.
Revolut invoices too, on every plan including Basic, and we were wrong to tell you otherwise. Creation, recurring invoices, reminders, VAT. The difference is the entry price: £10 a month at Revolut against £0 at Tide for the same job.
There is a catch on the Revolut side that only surfaces when a client tries to pay. To accept card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Revolut Pay on an invoice, you must switch on a separate Merchant account. Without one, the invoice is payable by bank transfer only.
On accounting integrations, Tide integrates with Sage. Revolut doesn’t. If your bookkeeper runs Sage, Tide is the only choice in this matchup. Both connect to Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent.
We checked both providers’ integration lists in May 2026 and confirmed no Sage connection exists on Revolut at any tier.
For team spend, Revolut wins outright. Virtual and physical cards with per-employee limits, real-time expense review, batch payroll on Grow and above. Tide offers expense cards too, but the depth of per-employee controls favours Revolut past 3-4 cards.
API access at Revolut covers automated supplier payments, batch processing, reconciliation workflows, useful for ecommerce or SaaS businesses with recurring programmatic payment needs.
Tide doesn’t offer comparable API depth on its business accounts. Confirmed from both developer pages in May 2026.
Tide vs Revolut International Payments
Invoice a US client in dollars on Monday, payment lands Thursday lunchtime; Revolut lets you hold the USD rather than convert at whatever rate the day throws up. 25+ currency wallets, near-interbank rates inside plan allowance. Tide can’t do any of that natively.
Tide handles international payments in-house: 1.5% on the free plan, down to 0.5% on Max. That works for the odd transfer, but for an SME running multiple payments a week, Revolut’s in-plan interbank rate beats Tide’s markup on common currency pairs.
For an SME converting £8,000 a month, Revolut sits around £35 flat inside allowance. Tide’s free-plan 1.5% markup on that volume is £120, and even Pro at 0.75% is £60, so Tide loses clearly once you are running real volume.
On deposit protection, you can stop worrying about the old bank-versus-e-money gulf: we rate it closed. The Tide business current account is provided by ClearBank, a PRA-authorised UK bank, and eligible deposits in it are FSCS-protected to £120,000.
Revolut gets you to the same £120,000 through a bank of its own, authorised in full on 11 March 2026 once the PRA lifted the mobilisation restrictions on a licence granted back in July 2024. The catch is who gets onto that bank, and when.
Tide Platform itself is not a bank, and it is easy to read that fact and conclude your float is uncovered. It isn’t. The firm that holds the money is the one the FSCS looks at, and that is ClearBank.
Two caveats do survive, and neither is small. Some longstanding members are still on legacy e-money accounts powered by PrePay Technologies. Those funds are safeguarded, not FSCS-covered. Open your account details and check which you hold before you assume anything.
The second is the one that could sting a cash-rich business. The £120,000 is a per-depositor ceiling at ClearBank, shared across every ClearBank-backed balance you hold, including its 20-plus partner brands. Two such accounts do not buy you £240,000 of cover.
So if you are sitting on a large VAT float or client prepayments, the question is no longer Tide or Revolut. It is whether one bank is quietly behind more of your money than you realised. Spreading the balance is the only fix.
Signing up last week is no guarantee that your money sits on the bank. Revolut is moving people across in batches, so a brand-new account can still rest on Revolut Ltd e-money for a spell.
So open your terms and find the entity name, whether you joined last week or years back. It is the difference between a £120,000 statutory backstop and safeguarding rules that stand on an entirely different footing.
Tide vs Revolut Customer Reviews and Reputation
When we checked Trustpilot in May 2026, Revolut Business sat at around 4.2 stars across 200,000+ reviews. Tide sat at around 4.2 stars across 30,000+ reviews. Neither score is a red flag; both reflect large, active UK customer bases.
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 24-72 hours while support catches up.
Tide reviews skew toward the invoicing and the speed of account opening. Complaints lean toward customer support response times on free-plan accounts and toward the fees and limits on international payments.
Less account-freeze volatility than Revolut, but support depth varies by plan tier.
For support quality, Revolut runs 24/7 in-app chat with fast response times on paid tiers; Tide’s in-app chat varies by plan, with Plus getting priority. We found both beat a high-street bank’s phone queue, and both draw the most complaints on compliance-related holds.
Tide vs Revolut for Invoicing and Sage Integration vs FSCS Multi-Currency Banking
The trade-off here is currency, not safety. Both routes reach £120,000 of FSCS cover once your money is sitting on the right entity, so what you are really choosing between is UK paperwork depth and the ability to hold foreign money.
Tide gives you invoicing inside the banking app, a Sage feed, and company formation bundled in: operational depth no other free UK business account matches. For a pounds-only, invoice-led SME, that is the product.
Revolut gives you what Tide cannot: 25+ currency wallets and interbank FX inside the plan allowance, 0.6% above it. For a business invoicing or paying in more than one currency, that capability isn’t optional.
Match it to how you actually work. Sole trader billing UK clients and working with a Sage bookkeeper? Tide, and Revolut Business is not open to you in any case. Incorporated ecommerce seller invoicing US and EU clients and paying suppliers in euros? Revolut.
A dual setup beats forcing either account to do the other’s job. Tide for the GBP invoicing and the Sage feed; Revolut for the currency wallets. What it does not buy you is double the deposit cover.
You reconcile two accounts at month-end, but each plays to its strengths. For most internationally-facing SMEs, that pairing wins.
Downsides of Tide and Revolut
Tide’s real deposit catch is not the one you have probably read. Your current account is provided by ClearBank and is FSCS-covered to £120,000. But that ceiling is shared across every ClearBank-backed balance you hold, including its 20-plus partner brands, so it does not stack.
And if you are a longstanding member on a legacy e-money account powered by PrePay Technologies, your funds are safeguarded rather than FSCS-covered. Tide does not shout about which one you are on. Go and look.
Tide has no overdraft and no business lending. The cleaner live-feed integrations are Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent.
And the transfer allowances are stingier than the headline. Free covers five transfers, Smart 30. Only Pro at £27.49 runs unlimited. If you pay 40 suppliers a month, the cheap-looking tiers both meter you, and Starling would do the same job for nothing.
We checked whether any overdraft option existed on Tide in May 2026 and found none at any plan tier.
Revolut Business will not open its doors to a UK sole trader at all. Limited companies, LLPs, and partnerships only; everyone else is sent to Revolut Pro in the personal app. Tide takes sole traders on the free plan, so for a good share of readers this settles it.
Revolut also charges £10 a month before you have done anything, with no free tier beneath it, and its paid tiers cost £35 (Grow) and £125 (Scale) billed monthly. The £30 and £90 in the marketing need a full year paid upfront.
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 that’s survivable. For an SME running payroll, it’s real operational risk; pair with a high-street account.
Revolut’s deposit protection carries an asterisk you have to go looking for, and we think the marketing should carry it instead. The bank entity has been fully authorised since 11 March 2026, but Revolut is onboarding customers onto it in batches rather than all at once.
That cuts both ways, whichever side you are on. Long-standing members are still queued for migration off the old Revolut Ltd e-money arrangement, and even a brand-new applicant can land on the e-money side temporarily. The onus of checking which of the two you are on sits with you.
Neither provider replaces a high-street business bank. No physical branches, no relationship managers, limited cash handling (Tide via PayPoint with a fee; Revolut via partners only).
If your business needs branch access, business lending, or daily cash deposits, pair either account with a Lloyds, Barclays, or NatWest current account.
Alternatives to Tide and Revolut
Tide and Revolut are worth considering, but they’re not the only options. Here are the four alternatives we’d weigh first depending on your priorities:
- Starling Business: UK-only, PRA-licensed since 2018, FSCS-protected to £120,000, with overdraft on application and free FreeAgent for sole traders. Pick this if you want credit access, which neither Tide nor Revolut offers, and better accounting integration than Tide gives you on the free plan.
- Mettle by NatWest: free sole-trader and limited company account from a high-street bank. Pick this if you want NatWest’s balance sheet behind the account without the legacy bank fees, and if spreading money away from ClearBank matters to you.
- Wise Business: multi-currency account specialist with the tightest published FX margins on the market. Pick this over Revolut if international payments are the primary use case and you don’t need a UK primary current account.
- ANNA Money: UK business account with built-in invoicing, automatic VAT calculations, and AI receipt scanning. Pick this over Tide if you want deeper tax automation and you don’t need Sage integration.
Final Verdict: Tide or Revolut?
I’d start with Tide if you invoice UK clients in pounds and your bookkeeper runs Sage: the in-app invoicing and the Sage feed are worth real money every month, and the entry tier is free.
I’d start with Revolut the moment foreign currency enters the picture. 25+ wallets and interbank FX inside the plan allowance; Tide has nothing like it and converts on the way out at an in-house rate instead.
If you have not incorporated, the choice is made for you. Revolut Business takes limited companies, LLPs, and partnerships in the UK; a sole trader is sent to Revolut Pro in the personal app. Tide takes you on the free plan.
What should not decide this is deposit protection. Both reach the same £120,000 of FSCS cover, and any page telling you Tide leaves your money unprotected is out of date.
Do check which entity you have landed on, though, whichever way you go. A legacy Tide e-money account is safeguarded rather than FSCS-covered, and a Revolut account can still sit on Revolut Ltd while the bank migration grinds through.
Choose Tide if you bill UK clients through the bank app and want to pay nothing to do it. Invoicing is on the free plan, which saves a separate £10-19/month subscription, and at 10+ invoices a month that beats the 20p outgoing transfer charges.
Revolut will invoice for you too, but its floor is £10 a month and there is no free tier to fall back to. For a UK-only consultancy, trades business, or freelance operation, that gap is the whole argument.
Choose Tide if your accountant uses Sage. Tide integrates with Sage; Revolut doesn’t. When your bookkeeper opens Sage on Monday morning expecting a live feed, a Revolut account leaves a blank; you’re back to manual exports. For Sage-led practices that gap is real.
Or choose Tide if you’re forming a limited company. Tide bundles company formation with the account, including a registered office address. Revolut doesn’t. For a founder spinning up a new Ltd, the bundled path saves real admin time at the start.
Choose Revolut if your business trades in more than one currency. Revolut gives you 25+ currency wallets and interbank FX inside the Basic plan allowance. Tide holds sterling only and converts outgoing payments at an in-house FX markup.
Check you can actually open one first. Revolut Business in the UK takes limited companies, LLPs, and partnerships, and turns sole traders away to Revolut Pro in the personal app. Tide takes sole traders on the free plan, so for the unincorporated this page is already settled.
Don’t choose Revolut for the deposit protection. A Revolut Business account on the bank entity is FSCS-protected to £120,000, and so is Tide’s current account through ClearBank. On cover alone there is nothing to whittle down between them.
Or choose Revolut if you need team expense cards and API access. Virtual and physical cards on paid tiers with per-employee limits, real-time review, batch payroll, developer API. Tide’s expense cards exist, but the depth of controls favours Revolut past 3-4 cards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I have both a Tide and a Revolut Business account at the same time?
Yes. There is no restriction on holding accounts with multiple business banking providers. A common dual setup is Tide as the primary GBP account (for the in-app invoicing, Sage integration, and UK operational depth) with Revolut alongside for cross-border invoicing and currency wallets. Tide is free on its base plan and Revolut Basic is £10 a month, so the running cost of holding both is modest. One thing it will not do is double your deposit protection: FSCS cover is per authorised bank, not per app.
Which business types can open a Tide account?
Tide is built for sole traders and directors of UK limited companies. It does not open accounts for charities or Community Interest Companies (CICs), or for businesses in restricted sectors like gambling, adult services, crypto, or money-service firms.
Revolut Business applies similar sector restrictions, so a charity, CIC, or restricted-sector business will usually need a specialist or high-street account. It also goes further on entity type: in the UK it opens accounts for limited companies, LLPs, and partnerships only, and directs sole traders to Revolut Pro in the personal app. Tide, by contrast, takes sole traders on the free plan. Confirmed from Tide’s eligibility pages, June 2026, and Revolut’s, July 2026.
Is Tide FSCS-protected?
Yes, if you hold the Tide business current account. That account is provided by ClearBank Ltd (sort code 04-06-05), a PRA-authorised UK bank, and eligible deposits in it are protected by the FSCS up to £120,000. Tide Platform Ltd is not itself a bank, which is where the confusion comes from, but the firm holding your money is.
Two caveats matter. Some longstanding members are still on legacy e-money accounts powered by PrePay Technologies Ltd. Those funds are safeguarded rather than FSCS-covered, so check your account details rather than assume. And the £120,000 is a per-depositor ceiling at ClearBank, shared across every ClearBank-backed balance you hold, including its 20-plus partner brands. It does not stack, so a large float is worth spreading.
Is Revolut Business FSCS-protected?
Usually, but check rather than assume. 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. Eligible deposits held with that bank entity are FSCS-protected up to £120,000 per eligible depositor, a limit raised from £85,000 on 1 December 2025.
The word doing the work there is “usually”. Revolut is phasing the move onto the bank entity rather than flipping everyone across at once. New applicants are normally onboarded to it, but some new signups still land on the older Revolut Ltd e-money entity temporarily, and customers who opened before 11 March 2026 are migrating in batches.
That distinction is your working capital, not a technicality. Money on the e-money entity is safeguarded rather than FSCS-protected, which is a different kind of backstop entirely. Open your account terms, find the entity name, and only then decide how much of your float to leave sitting there.
Is Tide or Revolut better for a sole trader?
Tide, and for a UK sole trader it is not really a contest. Revolut Business is open to limited companies, LLPs, and partnerships. A UK sole trader cannot open one, and Revolut directs sole traders and freelancers to Revolut Pro instead, a fee-free account inside the personal Revolut app with a narrower feature set than Revolut Business.
Tide takes sole traders on the free plan, with invoicing inside the bank app that drops a separate £10-19/month subscription, and the only Sage integration in this matchup. Deposit protection is the same £120,000 either way, so it should not sway you. If you incorporate and start holding euros or dollars, Revolut Business becomes worth a look at £10/month on Basic.
Does Revolut Business integrate with Sage?
No. Revolut Business doesn’t integrate with Sage at any plan tier. Revolut connects with Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent. If your accountant or bookkeeper runs Sage, Tide is the only choice in this matchup: its Sage integration is one of the headline features that justifies Tide as the primary UK business account for Sage-led practices. Confirmed from Revolut’s integrations page in May 2026.
Does Tide offer multi-currency accounts?
Not natively. Tide is a GBP-led UK business account. International payments are converted in-house at Tide’s own FX markup: 1.5% on the free plan, tapering to 0.75% on Pro and 0.5% on Max. That is workable occasionally, but you convert on the way out rather than holding foreign currency natively. If your business invoices or pays in foreign currencies regularly, Revolut’s 25+ currency wallets and interbank FX inside plan allowance are the more practical structure. Confirmed from Tide’s pricing page in July 2026.
How we reviewed Tide vs Revolut
Ranking criteria. We compared Tide and Revolut on pricing, fees, feature set, eligibility, and contract terms. We also verified regulatory status and deposit protection where applicable.
Data sources. We opened both accounts and ran each through its own job: an invoice raised inside Tide’s app and checked against Sage, and a euro payment priced through Revolut against Tide’s in-house FX at £5,000 a month.
We checked regulatory status and deposit protection against the FCA and PRA registers and each provider’s published terms, most recently on 14 July 2026. That re-check is what corrected our earlier reading of who holds Tide members’ money.
Correction, 14 July 2026. The same pass caught three errors on the Revolut side, and they were ours. We had been quoting Revolut’s annual-billing rates for Grow and Scale as if they were the monthly prices.
Budget Scale at £90 a month while paying monthly and you are £420 a year short. We had also said Revolut Business accepts UK sole traders, and that it offers no invoicing. Neither is true, and every price now shows both billing figures.
Update cadence. We re-verify every provider on this page regularly, 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.