Xero Marketplace UK: The Best Apps for Small Businesses (2026)

If you’re hunting specifically for the apps we recommend most often, our shortlist of the 10 best Xero accounting integrations for UK businesses covers the picks below in less depth.

The Xero UK marketplace is the official Xero App Store at apps.xero.com/uk where Xero UK lists over 1,000 third-party apps that handle invoice automation, payment collection, expense capture, and integration with the rest of your stack connect to the accounting platform to automate data entry, accept payments, manage stock, sales pipeline, track time, and integrate with most of the other tools small businesses use. We’re a Xero Platinum Partner at JacRox in Manchester and we’ve stress-tested most of the popular UK Xero apps on real client books, so this guide is the practical view: which apps actually save you time, what they cost, and where the marketplace falls short.

The headline: the right Xero apps can save 5-15 hours a month on a typical UK small business. The wrong stack – too many overlapping apps, none of them properly connected – wastes more time than it saves and adds £100-£300/month in subscriptions for nothing. We’ll walk through the categories that matter, the UK-specific picks worth paying for, and how to evaluate any app before you connect it.

What is the Xero App Store?

The App Store (formerly the Xero Marketplace, still called the marketplace by most users) is a directory of approved third-party apps – invoice tools, payment connectors, expense capture, and more – that integrate with the platform – effectively turning a single accounting system into a hub for the wider finance stack. Each app connects to your Xero account through a vetted API connection, syncs data in and out of the books, and is reviewed before being listed.

What the marketplace covers, broadly:

  • Payments: Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal, Square, Revolut Business – accept payments and reconcile to invoices automatically.
  • Expenses and bills: Dext, AutoEntry, Hubdoc, Pleo – extract data from receipts and bills and push into the books.
  • Inventory and stock: Unleashed, DEAR Systems (now Cin7 Core), Cin7 Omni, TradeGecko – manage SKUs, stock levels, purchase orders, and post journals.
  • CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Capsule – sync contacts and invoices between sales pipeline and accounting.
  • Ecommerce: Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay, Magento – pull orders and fees in.
  • Time tracking: Deputy, Harvest, Toggl Track, WhenIWork – record time, approve, and push hours into invoices or payroll.
  • Banking and feeds: most UK banks have direct feeds (Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds, Santander, Monzo, Starling, Tide, Revolut Business, Wise).
  • Reporting and analytics: Spotlight Reporting, Fathom, Float, Futrli – build management reports and forecasts on top of accounting data.
  • Document management: SuiteFiles, Approval Donkey, Practice Ignition.

The App Store is free to browse. Each app is priced separately by the third-party provider; subscriptions typically range from £5/month to £200/month depending on functionality.

For a deeper walkthrough of accounting-focused apps, see our blog post on top accounting apps.

Top UK apps by category

Here’s the practical pick from each major category. We’ve used most of these on real client books – these aren’t sponsored picks, just what we end up recommending most often.

Invoice and receipt automation

  • Dext (formerly Receipt Bank) – £14-£30/month per business. Snap a photo of a receipt, Dext extracts supplier, date, total, VAT, and pushes a draft bill in. Best receipt accuracy in the UK market. Save time on bookkeeping by automating data entry.
  • AutoEntry – £12-£28/month. Similar to Dext, slightly cheaper, slightly less polished. Good for high-volume supplier invoices.
  • Hubdoc – included free on Standard, Comprehensive, and Ultimate. Auto-fetches statements and bills from suppliers (utilities, telcos, banks). Perfect for recurring supplier bills.
  • Pleo – £39-£59/month. Combined company card and expense management with employee expense claims. Each cardholder snaps the receipt, Pleo categorises and pushes into the books with a full audit trail.

If you’re losing two hours a week chasing receipts, the receipt tools will pay for itself in the first month.

Payments and invoice collection

  • Stripe – 1.5%+20p UK card. Add a “Pay now” button to every sales invoice. Customers pay by card or Apple/Google Pay, the payment auto-reconciles back. The single highest-ROI app for service businesses.
  • GoCardless – 1% + 20p per transaction (lower for high volume). Direct Debit collection on recurring invoices. Get paid faster on retainers and subscription invoices, with reminder automation built in.
  • PayPal – 2.9% + fixed fee. Useful if your customers prefer it; not the cheapest.
  • Revolut Business – direct bank feed plus a Revolut payment link option.

Card payments + GoCardless is the standard UK stack for service businesses. Card for one-off invoices, recurring billing for retainers, with payment reminder messages going out automatically. Combined transaction fees of 1-2% on collected revenue, easily justified by the collection improvement.

Inventory and stock

  • Unleashed – £155-£455/month. The strongest stock partner in the UK. Manufacturing-grade BoMs, multi-warehouse, batch and serial tracking. Posts cost of goods sold on every sale.
  • Cin7 Core (formerly DEAR) – £329+/month. Solid mid-market choice. Stronger ecommerce connectors than Unleashed (Shopify, Amazon, eBay direct).
  • Cin7 Omni – £349+/month. The premium tier with retail and wholesale features.
  • Stock & Buy, Sortly – entry-level options at £25-£50/month for businesses just outgrowing Xero’s native stock.

native stock works well up to 100-200 SKUs. Beyond that you’ll want one of the dedicated apps. Don’t try to push the native stock module past 500 SKUs; performance and reporting both fall apart.

CRM

  • HubSpot – free tier available, paid from £20/month. The most-used customer pipeline tool in the UK. Two-way sync of contacts, with invoices visible in HubSpot deal records, marketing automation alongside.
  • Pipedrive – £14-£64/user/month. Sales-focused, simpler than HubSpot. Solid connector – when you close a deal it generates an invoice automatically.
  • Capsule – £18-£36/user/month. UK-built, simpler still. Excellent fit for service businesses with under 50 active customers.
  • Salesforce – £20-£300+/user/month. The enterprise option. Powerful but overkill for most SMEs and connection depends on third-party tools.

For a focused tour of customer-pipeline connectors, our blog has a deeper write-up at Best CRM Connectors for UK Xero Businesses.

Ecommerce

  • Shopify – direct connector. Pulls orders, refunds, fees, gift cards across. The standard for UK ecommerce.
  • A2X for Amazon / Shopify / Etsy / eBay – £19-£139/month. The proper way to integrate marketplace sales into the books. Reconciles every payout to the underlying transactions, handling FBA fees, returns, and split currency. Without A2X, marketplace ecommerce reconciliation is a nightmare.
  • Link My Books – £17-£99/month. Cheaper alternative to A2X, gaining traction in the UK Amazon seller community.
  • WooCommerce + Xero plugin – free or low-cost. Multiple plugin options; quality varies. Stick to the officially listed connectors.

If you sell on Amazon, do NOT skip A2X (or Link My Books). Trying to reconcile Amazon payouts manually in Xero is a guaranteed bookkeeping disaster.

Time tracking

  • Deputy – £4.50-£8/user/month. Shift scheduling, clock-in/clock-out, timesheets pushed into payroll. Standard for hospitality, retail, and shift-based businesses.
  • Harvest – £11/user/month. Time tracking against projects and clients, invoices generated from approved time. Best fit for agencies and consultancies.
  • Toggl Track – free or £8-£17/user/month. Simpler timer-based time tracking; good for solo or small teams.
  • WhenIWork – similar to Deputy, slightly cheaper at the lower tier.

Banking and feeds

Most UK banks now have direct, free feeds (Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds, Santander, Monzo, Starling, Tide, Revolut Business, Wise, Mettle). A few smaller building societies still require the older Yodlee-based feed which can be flakier. If your bank doesn’t have a direct feed, statement upload (CSV or OFX) is the fallback.

Reporting and analytics

  • Spotlight Reporting – £20-£60/month per business. Management reports, KPI dashboards, three-way forecasting on top of accounting data. The most popular UK reporting partner.
  • Fathom – £36-£220/month. Similar to Spotlight, slightly stronger on visual design.
  • Float – £39-£249/month. Forecasting specifically. Better than the native cash flow report for any business with seasonal patterns.
  • Futrli – £35-£155/month. Real-time forecasting and cash flow.

Don’t pay for reporting before you need it. The native dashboard inside the platform handles most month-1 needs. the standard reports plus a half-decent Excel export will cover the first 18 months of most businesses. Move to Spotlight or Fathom when you’re hiring a finance director or talking to investors.

How much do apps cost in total?

A typical UK small business app stack:

  • Xero Standard subscription: £39/month
  • Receipt tool: £18/month
  • Card processing: pay-as-you-go (1.5% + 20p)
  • GoCardless: pay-as-you-go (1% + 20p)
  • HubSpot (free tier): £0/month
  • Hubdoc (included): £0/month

Total fixed monthly: about £57. Plus transaction fees on collected revenue.

An ecommerce business adds: A2X (£25/month) plus a stock app (£155+ for Unleashed). Total fixed monthly £237+.

A service agency with project tracking adds: Harvest (£11/user/month for 3 users = £33/month) plus Spotlight (£20/month). Total fixed monthly £110.

The pattern: SMEs spend £50-£250/month on the platform plus apps, depending on category mix. The ROI rule of thumb: each app should save at least 2 hours of finance team time per month, or generate clear revenue/cash-flow benefit. If it doesn’t, drop it.

How do I choose the right apps?

Five-step framework we use with new clients:

  1. List your highest-friction processes. What’s eating the most time on your finance team’s calendar? Receipt entry? Invoice chasing? Stock reconciliation? Don’t pick apps for areas that are already smooth.
  2. Pick one app per category, not three. The single biggest waste we see is overlapping apps – Receipt Bank and AutoEntry running in parallel, or HubSpot and Pipedrive pulling the same customer data in. Pick one in each category.
  3. Check the app is on the App Store (apps.xero.com/uk). If it’s only available through a generic Zapier or Make connection, it’s usually worse than a properly integrated alternative.
  4. Use the free trial properly. Set up real data, not a sandbox. Run it for the full trial (typically 14 or 30 days) and watch what happens to your bookkeeping work in that period.
  5. Read the recent reviews. App Store reviews go back years. The recent ones (last 3-6 months) tell you whether the app is currently maintained or whether the connector has gone stale.

If you want a structured review of your existing apps and where to cut or add, our Xero third-party integration service covers exactly that.

UK-specific apps worth knowing about

Some apps are UK-built or UK-focused and worth the cost over generic alternatives:

  • GoCardless (UK-built). GoCardless is the way to get paid in the UK without card fees. Particularly powerful for retainers, subscriptions, and recurring service invoices.
  • Capsule (UK-built). Lighter than HubSpot, friendlier UK pricing.
  • Tide / Starling / Monzo Business (UK challenger banks). Direct Xero feeds, instant transactions, no monthly fees on basic accounts.
  • BrightPay Connect (UK). Optional alternative to Xero Payroll if you’ve outgrown the native option, with a Xero connector to push payroll journals into the ledger.
  • HMRC connection for MTD VAT – built into Xero, no app required, but worth flagging it’s there.

UK businesses get most value from a mix of UK-specific apps where local features matter (banking, Direct Debit, payroll) and global apps where scale matters (HubSpot, Shopify, Cin7).

Common Xero apps mistakes

Things we see go wrong:

  • Connecting an app and forgetting it. Apps need maintenance. Re-authenticate at least every 6 months. Stale connections silently stop syncing and you discover the gap weeks later.
  • Multiple apps writing to the same Xero contact. If HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Shopify all create contacts in Xero you’ll get three near-duplicates with slightly different details. Pick one master.
  • Not setting up the chart of accounts properly first. Most apps map their data to ledger accounts. If your chart of accounts is a mess, the apps amplify the mess.
  • Paying for an app before learning the native feature. The native Projects module covers a lot of project tracking ground. The native Expenses module is fine for small teams. Don’t bolt on Harvest and Pleo until you’ve outgrown the native tools.
  • Trusting the marketing. App Store listings are written by the app vendor. The “save time” and “automate” claims are sometimes optimistic. The free trial is what tells you the truth.

How does the App Store quality and suitability check work?

Each app on the marketplace goes through a Xero review process before listing. the app team checks the integration against published API standards, reviews the data flow, and verifies the app’s privacy and security posture. This catches the most obvious problems but isn’t a guarantee that an app fits your specific business.

For sensitive use cases (payroll, multi-currency, multi-entity), it’s worth running a short pilot before committing to annual contracts. The platform’s review tells you the app meets a baseline standard; only your trial tells you whether it actually saves time on your books.

Where the marketplace falls short

Honest list:

  • Discovery is hard. Over 1,000 apps in 30 categories means most users find apps via Google or a recommendation, not by browsing the marketplace itself.
  • Pricing is opaque. Most listings show “from £X/month” without spelling out the tier features. You have to dig into each vendor’s website.
  • Not all categories are deep. Construction job costing, manufacturing BoMs, multi-entity consolidation – all have only one or two real options each.
  • Free apps are rare. Most useful apps are paid; the marketplace skews to mid-tier SaaS subscriptions.
  • Dependencies stack. Card processing + GoCardless + Receipt tool + Shopify + Cin7 + HubSpot is six vendors in your stack alongside the books. Each has its own login, its own outage risk, its own contract renewal date.

None of this is a deal-breaker. The ecosystem is the largest in UK cloud accounting and the breadth is a real advantage. But going in with eyes open about subscription creep is sensible.

Real client examples

Three short stories from our own client base:

  • An ecommerce client selling on Shopify and Amazon UK. Stack: Standard + A2X + Shopify direct + card processing + receipt automation. Total app cost about £80/month. Reduced bookkeeping time from 6 hours/week to 90 minutes/week. Bookkeeper switched to higher-value reporting work.
  • A service business with 12 staff on retainers. Stack: Comprehensive + GoCardless + Hubdoc + Spotlight + HubSpot. Invoice automation cut admin by 4 hours/week. Total app cost about £100/month. Get paid faster (recurring billing reduced debtor days from 38 to 9). Monthly management reports automated.
  • A construction subcontractor with CIS staff. Stack: Standard + BrightPay (separate from the native payroll module) + receipt tool + Deputy. Total app cost about £140/month. CIS300 monthly returns properly handled in BrightPay; subcontractor invoice handling sits in the books.

Each stack is different. The common thread: pick apps that solve a real problem on the actual workflow, not apps because they’re popular.

How marketplace apps help you grow your business

The right app stack reduces admin time so you can focus on selling. Most clients we work with shave 5-10 hours a month off finance work after picking the right three or four apps; that time goes back into client work or sales pipeline.

Frequently asked questions: Xero marketplace UK

Does HMRC recognise Xero?

Yes. The platform is HMRC-recognised for MTD for VAT and PAYE/RTI. Most apps in the marketplace inherit this – they don’t file with HMRC themselves; the platform does. Check our Making Tax Digital guide for the wider compliance picture.

Are apps free?

The App Store is free to browse but most apps charge their own subscription. Hubdoc is included free on Standard plus, and a handful of small UK CRMs and project tools have a free tier. Most useful apps are £10-£200/month.

How do I install an app from the store?

From apps.xero.com/uk, click “Get this app”, sign in, and authorise the connection. Authentication is via OAuth 2 – you’ll see exactly which permissions the app is asking for. Most apps ask for read/write on contacts and invoices.

Can I use Xero for sole traders?

Yes. The Starter plan is built for sole traders with light invoicing. Add a card processor for online payments and you’ve got a complete solo setup for £18/month plus transaction fees.

Who is the biggest competitor in the UK?

Sage and QuickBooks are the two main competitors. We’ve covered the head-to-head comparisons in Xero vs QuickBooks and our companion Xero vs Sage piece linked elsewhere on this site. Most UK SMEs are picking between these three.

Do I need an accountant to use Xero?

No, but having one helps. The free training inside Xero Central will get you running the day-to-day. For year-end, corporation tax, and complex VAT scenarios, an advisor is normally cost-positive within the first year. Our Xero accountants page covers what we do for new clients.

Is the UK marketplace different from the global one?

Same store, regional filters. Apps are tagged by region, so apps.xero.com/uk shows the apps that work for UK users (UK banks, UK pension providers, UK ecommerce platforms). You can also browse the global directory but you’ll see apps that aren’t relevant.

How do I review an app’s quality and suitability before connecting?

Read recent reviews on the App Store listing, check Trustpilot or G2 for the vendor, run the free trial against real data, and confirm the app’s data export works (so you can leave cleanly if it doesn’t fit).

Need help picking the right app stack for your specific business? We run free 30-minute reviews for prospective UK clients and we’ll be straight about which apps you need versus which ones you’re paying for and not using. Or if a term in this guide is unfamiliar, our Xero glossary covers the basics.