Business Bank Accounts for Market Traders: Starling vs Tide vs Monzo vs Mettle

Business Bank Accounts for Market Traders: Starling vs Tide vs Monzo vs Mettle

The app banks are brilliant right up until Saturday evening, when you're holding £600 in notes and nowhere sensible to put them. Every comparison site ranks these accounts on invoicing features and card design. Almost none of them lead with the question that actually decides it for a market trader: what does it cost to pay cash in? That's the question this guide answers properly, with the fees checked this month.

Why the Cash Question Decides It

Card has taken over at events. Markets still run on a meaningful slice of cash, though. If you bank a float every week, the deposit fee is a running cost like pitch fees or fuel. It compounds quietly. The difference between the cheapest and dearest option below is hundreds of pounds a year for exactly the same pile of notes.

The four accounts here are the ones traders actually open. All of them are free (or have a free tier) and all of them sort the basics: instant notifications, easy transfers, a card that turns up in a few days. The differences live in the details.

Starling Bank

Starling is a proper licensed UK bank with a free business account and no monthly fee. Cash goes in at any Post Office for 0.7% with a £3 minimum, up to £5,000 per deposit and £25,000 per six months. The app is arguably the most complete of the four and there's an optional bookkeeping toolkit for a monthly fee if you want your admin in the same place.

The 0.7% rate stings less on bigger deposits. Pay in £1,000 and it's £7. Pay in £150 and the £3 minimum makes it effectively 2%, which is worth knowing if you bank small amounts often. Fewer, larger deposits suit Starling's pricing.

Tide

Tide isn't a bank. It's an e-money platform, with the actual accounts provided through ClearBank. That matters for protection (more below) but day to day it behaves like the others. The free tier covers the essentials and paid plans add perks, though transfers cost a few pence each on the free plan where rivals include them.

Cash deposits give you two routes. The Post Office costs 0.5% with a £2.50 minimum, the cheapest percentage here, with generous limits (£25,000 a month). PayPoint costs 3%, capped at £500 a day. That 3% is the trap: it's the convenient corner-shop option and it quietly costs six times the Post Office rate. Walk the extra ten minutes.

Monzo Business

Monzo holds a full UK banking licence and offers three plans: Lite at £0, Pro at £9 a month with invoicing and accounting integrations, Team from £25. For a sole trader the Lite plan does the job.

Cash deposits cost a flat £1 each through PayPoint, which makes Monzo the cheapest per-deposit option by a distance. The catch is the caps: deposits max out per transaction and there's a monthly ceiling for sole traders, so heavy cash businesses hit the wall. For a trader banking modest cash alongside mostly-card takings, £1 a time is hard to argue with.

Mettle

Mettle is NatWest's app-only business account. No monthly fee at all, and the headline perk is a free FreeAgent subscription, proper bookkeeping software that normally costs real money. With Making Tax Digital coming for sole traders, that bundled software quietly becomes the most valuable feature on this page for some of you.

Cash deposits happen at the Post Office at £2.75 per deposit, with £500 the most you can pay in at one go. That per-deposit pricing rewards the same habit as Starling: fewer, fuller paying-in trips.

Side by Side

The £500-a-Week Worked Example

Say you bank £500 in cash every week, one paying-in trip, 52 weeks a year. Here's what the same habit costs at each:

• Monzo: £1 a deposit = £52 a year (if your amounts fit inside the caps)
• Tide via Post Office: £2.50 minimum = £130 a year
• Mettle: £2.75 a deposit = £143 a year
• Starling: £3.50 (0.7%) = £182 a year
• Tide via PayPoint: £15 a deposit at 3% = £780 a year

Same notes, same year, a £728 spread between best and worst. The account matters less than the habit. Whichever you pick, batch the cash into fewer trips. Use the Post Office, not the PayPoint percentage routes.

Is the Money Actually Safe?

Since 1 December 2025 the FSCS protects deposits up to £120,000 per person per banking licence, up from the old £85,000. Starling and Monzo hold their own licences, so balances there get that protection directly. Mettle accounts are provided by NatWest, so protection sits under NatWest's licence (worth knowing if you also bank with NatWest personally, because the limit is shared across the licence).

Tide is the different one. Your money sits with ClearBank, a licensed bank, so FSCS protection applies through them for standard accounts. It's fine in practice for a trader's balances. It's just a longer chain than "my bank is my bank". Understand it before you park serious money there.

Which One Suits Your Setup

Mostly card, a little cash, want one app that does everything. Starling. The free account is the most rounded and the bank licence keeps things simple.

Heavy cash from markets. Tide, using the Post Office route. The 0.5% rate with £25,000 monthly headroom is built for your Saturday.

Small, frequent cash amounts. Monzo Lite. £1 flat per deposit beats every percentage model at the small end, caps permitting.

Sole trader staring down Making Tax Digital. Mettle. The free FreeAgent subscription handles the quarterly digital submissions MTD demands. The account costs nothing while doing it.

Questions Traders Actually Ask

Can I just use my personal account?

Sole traders can legally trade through a personal account, but most personal account terms prohibit business use and the bank can close the account if trading activity is obvious. A free business account removes the risk and keeps your trading money separate, which your accountant (and future MTD software) will thank you for. Limited companies don't get the choice: the company needs its own account.

What about the high-street banks?

Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, NatWest: all of them offer business accounts with branch counters, which is genuinely useful for cash. The catch is that free periods end and monthly fees plus per-transaction cash handling charges follow. Price the whole year, not the intro offer. For most small traders the app banks with Post Office deposits work out cheaper, since the Post Office network is effectively their branch counter.

Is switching painful?

Less than you'd think. Starling and Monzo are in the Current Account Switch Service, which moves everything across in seven working days with a guarantee behind it. Card readers, standing orders, supplier payments: it all follows the switch. The admin hour it takes is usually paid back in the first few months of cheaper deposits.

Do any of them handle cheques?

Starling and Monzo accept cheques by post or app imaging within limits. It's slower than a branch counter. If cheques are still a real part of your trade (some corporate clients cling on), factor that in or keep a high-street account alongside.

The Bottom Line

All four accounts are good and all four are free to hold, so the fee tables that matter are the cash ones. Pick Starling for the all-rounder, Tide for heavy Post Office cash, Monzo for small flat-fee deposits, Mettle for the free FreeAgent that turns MTD from a purchase into a perk. Then build the habit that saves more than the choice itself: batch the cash, skip the PayPoint percentage, diary the deposit run like any other job.

Last updated: August 2026. Fees checked at publication against provider fee documents. Banks move their pricing, so confirm before opening.