Read this first. The Landlord Alliance is one of the products on this page. We built it. That is a reason to read everything below sceptically, so we have tried to earn it: every price is taken from the vendor's own pricing page on 7 September 2026 with the figure quoted as published, every gap is marked as a gap rather than filled in with a guess, and the section on what we do not do is longer than the section on what we do.
The short version
Roughly four in ten UK landlords still run their portfolio on a spreadsheet. Making Tax Digital is what is finally changing that, and the threshold people should be worried about is not the £50,000 one that has already landed — it is the £20,000 one arriving in April 2028, because it is measured on the income you are earning right now, and it is measured on gross rent, not profit. The most useful question when comparing tools is not price. It is whether the tool submits to HMRC itself or simply keeps records for someone else to submit.
[JAMES: check this] I ran my own portfolio on a spreadsheet for years and told myself it was fine, because it was fine right up until the moment I needed to prove something. What changed my mind was not a feature. It was sitting down to work out, for a single property, what I had actually spent on it over three years, and discovering that the answer lived in four places and two of them were bank statements I no longer had.
The thing actually driving this: Making Tax Digital
Most comparison articles treat MTD as a 2026 story about landlords earning over £50,000. That framing is out of date and it understates who is affected. HMRC's own timetable:
| You must use MTD from | If qualifying income exceeded | Measured on the tax year |
|---|---|---|
| 6 April 2026 | £50,000 | 2024–25 |
| 6 April 2027 | £30,000 | 2025–26 |
| 6 April 2028 | £20,000 | 2026–27 — the year running now |
Two details that catch landlords out. First, qualifying income is gross — HMRC defines it as "your total income from self-employment and property… the amount before expenses". A landlord with £55,000 of rent and £30,000 of mortgage interest and costs is in scope on £55,000, not on the profit. Second, it includes your share of jointly-owned property. Between them, these two rules pull in a great many landlords who have assumed MTD is somebody else's problem.
The comparison that actually matters
Price is the wrong first question. The first question is whether a product submits to HMRC itself, or whether it keeps tidy records that you or your accountant then submit with something else. Both are legitimate. They are not the same purchase.
HMRC publishes a searchable list of recognised software. This is the one comparison axis that is a published fact rather than somebody's opinion. Checked on 7 September 2026, when the tool returned 138 recognised products:
| Submits to HMRC itself | Keeps records; you or your accountant submit |
|---|---|
| Landlord Vision Landlord Studio (and Nexus) Hammock PaTMa Property Manager Lendlord August Plus Xero, FreeAgent, QuickBooks, Sage and others | Alphaletz Arthur Online Lofti Rentila NRLA Portfolio The Landlord Alliance |
To be clear about our own product: The Landlord Alliance is in the right-hand column. We do not submit to HMRC and we are not on HMRC's recognised list. If filing your quarterly updates from inside one tool is what you need, buy one of the products in the left column. We would rather tell you that here than have you find out after paying us.
Equally, being in the right-hand column is not a criticism of Arthur, Alphaletz or Lofti. They are property operations tools and were never trying to be submission software — Alphaletz says only that it keeps digital records "so you're ready for Making Tax Digital", which is an accurate claim about what it does. Anyone presenting this table as compliant versus non-compliant is misreading it.
What everything costs
All figures read from each vendor's own pricing page on 7 September 2026. Watch the unit column — it matters more than the headline price.
| Product | Free tier | Entry paid price | Priced per |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rentila | Yes — 1 unit | £5.90/mo tax excl. | Unit band |
| Hammock | 30-day trial | £8 + VAT/mo (1–3) | Property |
| August | Yes — 2 tenancies | £8.99/mo | Tenancy band |
| The Landlord Alliance | No | £10/mo, or £99/yr | Flat, 1–19 properties |
| Alphaletz | Yes — 3 units | £11/mo annual (10 units) | Unit |
| Lendlord | Yes — core free | £12/mo or £99/yr | Flat |
| Landlord Studio | Yes — 3 units, but £5 per MTD submission | £15/mo (3 units) | Unit, +£1.20 each |
| PaTMa | Yes — 1 unit | £15/mo incl. VAT | Unit, +£1.50 each |
| Landlord Vision | 14-day trial | £19.97 + VAT/mo | Active tenancy |
| Lofti | Yes — 5 units | £1.20/unit/mo | Unit |
| Arthur Online | No trial stated | from £82.50/mo | Minimum spend, 55 units |
Per tenancy, per property or per unit is the hidden cost. An HMO with six rooms is one property, one tenancy and six units depending on who is counting. Landlord Vision charges per active tenancy and counts a joint tenancy as one; Hammock charges per property, which is why an HMO landlord in their own testimonials calls it good value; Lofti and Alphaletz charge per unit. Work out your own number under each model before comparing headline prices, because the ranking changes.
The NRLA is a different kind of purchase
Landlords often compare NRLA membership against software, which is not quite comparing like with like. NRLA membership is £125 a year for an individual landlord and £250 for business membership, and what you are mostly buying is advice and documents rather than a tool: unlimited tenancy agreements and guides, an advice line staffed six days a week by more than 30 trained advisers, 20% off training, tax investigation insurance and free access to NRLA Portfolio.
It is good value for what it is. It is just not a portfolio system, and NRLA Portfolio is not on HMRC's recognised list. We have written a fuller assessment: is NRLA membership worth it?
What landlords actually complain about
Taken from reviews we read on 7 September 2026, with the rating and volume attached so you can weigh them yourself.
| Theme | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Support you cannot reach | The most consistent complaint across every price point. One Hammock reviewer in July 2026: "Impossible to speak to someone to help with my MTD submission". An MTD deadline with no phone number behind it is the category's sharpest failure mode |
| Bank reconciliation friction | Appears even in glowing reviews. A four-star Landlord Vision reviewer in July 2026 liked the product but wanted the accounting and bank reconciliation to be easier to use |
| Accounting you were never trained on | The honest core of the category. A Landlord Vision reviewer in August 2026 struggled with non-standard expenses and adding to the chart of accounts, adding "that may be my lack of knowledge on Accounting" |
| Complexity at the agent end | Arthur Online sits at 3.4 on Trustpilot across 537 reviews, with recurring reports of glitches and slow support. Note it scores 3.9 on Capterra, but across only 16 reviews |
Where we fit, honestly
What The Landlord Alliance is for
Portfolio value, equity, LTV, yield and cash flow in one dashboard; a compliance tracker with red/amber/green on every property; rent, arrears, tenancies and maintenance; a document library; templates that fill themselves in; an AI adviser; and a member community. £10 a month or £99 a year for 1–19 properties, £29 or £290 above that. No contract.
What it is not
It does not submit to HMRC. It is not on HMRC's recognised software list. It has no free tier — several competitors do. If your single problem is filing quarterly MTD updates, we are not the answer and one of Hammock, Landlord Vision, Landlord Studio or PaTMa probably is.
Read next
Do I legally have to use software?
Once MTD applies to you, you must keep digital records and submit quarterly updates using compatible software. Until then, no — a spreadsheet is legal. Around four in ten landlords still use one.
Can I use a spreadsheet plus bridging software?
Yes. Several recognised products are bridging tools that take a spreadsheet and submit from it, which is often the cheapest route if your records are already tidy.
Is the free tier enough?
For one or two properties, often yes. Watch the caps and the exceptions — Landlord Studio's free plan is genuinely free to use but charges £5 for each MTD submission, which changes the arithmetic once you are filing quarterly.
Does any of this handle possession or deposits?
Software tracks dates; it does not serve notices. The rules changed substantially on 1 May 2026 — see section 8 grounds and tenancy deposits.
Built by a landlord, for landlords who want the whole picture
Portfolio, compliance, rent and documents in one place, with a community attached. £10 a month or £99 a year, no contract, cancel anytime.
See what is includedPrices and HMRC listings read on 7 September 2026 from each vendor's own published pricing pages and from HMRC's recognised software tool, which is in Beta. Software pricing changes frequently — check before you buy. The Landlord Alliance is a product described on this page; treat our assessment of ourselves accordingly.
Sources: gov.uk Making Tax Digital for Income Tax guidance; HMRC find-software tool; published pricing pages for NRLA, Landlord Vision, Landlord Studio, Alphaletz, Arthur Online, Hammock, Lofti, Rentila, PaTMa, Lendlord, August and OpenRent; Trustpilot and Capterra UK review data; Censuswide research commissioned by Landlord Studio (500 UK landlords, May 2026); HMRC/Ipsos MTD research 2021.
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