Dext vs AutoEntry (2026): UK Prices, Break-Even Maths and Which Suits Your Practice

Dext is cheaper than AutoEntry for busy clients and dearer for quiet ones, and the crossover sits at roughly 45 to 55 AutoEntry credits per client a month. Dext's Essentials plan costs from £12 per client a month, while AutoEntry sells credits at between 21p and 31p each, so a client sending about 50 standard documents a month costs about the same on either. Prices were checked on both UK pricing pages on 27 October 2026.

TL;DR:

Dext prices per client: Solo from £2.50, Essentials from £12 and Advanced from £13 a month, excluding VAT, with 5 and 10-client minimums.

AutoEntry prices per credit: £15.45 a month for 50 credits up to £518.25 for 2,500, excluding VAT, with unlimited users and clients and a 90-day rollover.

One AutoEntry credit covers one invoice or receipt; line items and supplier statements take 2 credits and bank statements 3 credits a page.

Break-even against Dext Essentials is about 46 credits per client a month on AutoEntry Gold, 50 on Platinum and 54 on Diamond.

In our worked examples, 30 light clients cost £119.35 a month on AutoEntry against £360 on Dext, while 12 busy clients cost £144 on Dext against £518.25 on AutoEntry.

Many practices get the lowest bill by splitting: quiet clients on AutoEntry, busy clients on Dext.

Dext vs AutoEntry at a glance
How does Dext price for UK practices?
How does AutoEntry's credit model work?
Where is the break-even point?
Three worked examples
Which has the better workflow for a practice team?
Integrations, ownership and MTD
How to run a fair two-week test
Our verdict: which should you choose?
Compare more capture tools on The AI Ledger
Frequently asked questions
Sources

Dext vs AutoEntry at a glance

	Dext	AutoEntry
Our editor score	4.7	4.4
Owner	IRIS Software Group (announced December 2024)	Sage (announced September 2019)
Pricing model	Per client a month	Monthly bundle of credits
Entry price (UK, excluding VAT)	Solo £2.50 per client, 5-client minimum	Bronze £15.45 for 50 credits
Main practice plan	Essentials £12 or Advanced £13 per client, 10-client minimum	Platinum £119.35 for 500 credits, up to Sapphire £518.25 for 2,500
Users and clients	Priced by client	Unlimited users and clients on every plan
Heavier jobs	Bank statements, line items and supplier statements use a credit allowance that can be topped up	Line items and supplier statements 2 credits, bank statements 3 credits a page
AI layer	AI Assist suggests automations from your team's corrections; custom guidance £5 per client on Essentials and Advanced	AI and OCR extraction
Free trial	14 days	25 free credits, no card

Both tools do the core job well: they read receipts, bills and statements, code them, and publish them to the ledger. The differences that decide the choice are cost shape, review workflow and where each sits in its owner's wider product family.

How does Dext price for UK practices?

Dext publishes three practice plans on its UK pricing page, each billed per client per month on an annual subscription, excluding VAT:

Solo, from £2.50 per client with a 5-client minimum, for sole traders and landlords under MTD for Income Tax who are not VAT registered.
Essentials, from £12 per client with a 10-client minimum, covering capture, extraction and publishing for business clients.
Advanced, from £13 per client with a 10-client minimum, which Dext says adds the team, workflow and insight tools that stop the same corrections being made twice.

Dext describes its own credits as covering "the heavier extraction jobs": bank statements, line items and supplier statement reconciliation. Each plan includes an allowance and can be topped up in heavy months. The allowance size per practice plan is not shown on the pricing page, so ask for it in writing if your clients send many PDF bank statements.

Per-client add-ons on Essentials and Advanced include custom AI Assist guidance (£5), MTD for Income Tax clients (£2.50), data health and insights (£5), payments (£10) and Commerce Lite for marketplace sellers (£5). Our Dext spotlight covers each add-on in detail.

How does AutoEntry's credit model work?

AutoEntry sells one monthly bundle of credits that the whole practice spends across every client. Its UK prices, excluding VAT:

Plan	Credits a month	Price a month	Price per credit
Bronze	50	£15.45	31p
Silver	100	£27.65	28p
Gold	200	£51.95	26p
Platinum	500	£119.35	24p
Diamond	1,500	£331.50	22p
Sapphire	2,500	£518.25	21p

What a credit buys, per AutoEntry's pricing page:

Purchase or sales invoice: 1 credit.
Invoice with line items: 2 credits.
Expense receipt: 1 credit.
Supplier statement: 2 credits.
Bank or credit card statement: 3 credits per page.

Every plan includes unlimited users, unlimited clients, a partner portal and unlimited cloud storage. Unused credits carry over for up to 90 days, and plans can be downgraded or paused at any time. Above 2,500 credits AutoEntry quotes a custom package after a demo.

The catch is forecasting. A client who sends 40 receipts is 40 credits; the same client sending 40 line-item supplier bills and two five-page bank statements is 110.

Where is the break-even point?

Divide Dext's per-client price by AutoEntry's price per credit and you get the number of AutoEntry credits a client can use before Dext becomes the cheaper option:

AutoEntry plan	Price per credit	Break-even vs Dext Essentials (£12)	Break-even with Dext's 15% first-year offer (£10.20)
Gold	26p	46 credits	39 credits
Platinum	24p	50 credits	43 credits
Diamond	22p	54 credits	46 credits
Sapphire	21p	58 credits	49 credits

In plain terms: if a typical client uses fewer than about 45 to 55 credits a month, AutoEntry is cheaper; above that, Dext is. Two things move the line. Dext add-ons such as custom AI Assist push it up, because they raise Dext's per-client cost. Heavy bank statement and line-item work pushes it down, because those burn AutoEntry credits two or three at a time.

Three worked examples

These use the published prices above and ignore VAT, add-ons and any Dext credit top-ups.

1. Thirty light clients. Each sends 15 documents a month, with one in ten needing line items. That is 495 credits, which fits AutoEntry Platinum at £119.35 a month. Dext Essentials for 30 clients is £360. AutoEntry saves about £240 a month.

2. Twelve busy clients. Each sends 120 documents a month, with one in five needing line items: 1,728 credits, which needs AutoEntry Sapphire at £518.25 (Diamond's 1,500 is not enough). Dext Essentials for 12 clients is £144. Dext saves about £374 a month.

3. A mixed practice of 40 clients. The 30 light clients and 10 busy ones together use 1,935 credits, so all-AutoEntry is Sapphire at £518.25. All-Dext is 40 times £12, £480. Splitting them, quiet clients on AutoEntry Platinum (£119.35) and busy clients on Dext Essentials at its 10-client minimum (£120), comes to £239.35, less than half either single-tool bill.

The split has a cost of its own: two logins, two sets of supplier rules and two review queues. For a team of one or two that may not be worth the saving; for a team clearing documents daily it usually is.

Which has the better workflow for a practice team?

Dext has the more polished practice-side workflow. Its plan table lists supplier rules, auto-publishing, duplicate detection, document smart split and bank matching, and Advanced adds the team, workflow and insight tools. AI Assist turns the corrections your team makes into suggested rules, and staff approve each one, which is the right design for AI in bookkeeping. Capture routes are broad: mobile app, email, WhatsApp, desktop upload and automatic invoice fetching.

AutoEntry covers the same essentials: receipts, bills, sales invoices, supplier statements and bank statements, with a partner portal for managing clients. Its strength is simplicity: one bundle, every user, every client, no per-client decisions. Reviewers who clear high volumes every day tend to find Dext faster; a bookkeeper clearing documents weekly may not notice the difference.

The practical test is the daily review queue, not the feature list. Time how long your team takes to clear the same 50 documents in each.

Integrations, ownership and MTD

Ledgers. Dext says it integrates with more than 36 accounting products, including Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage and FreeAgent. AutoEntry lists Sage, QuickBooks, Xero, FreeAgent, KashFlow and others on its integrations page. Both cover the ledgers most UK practices run.

Ownership. Sage announced its acquisition of AutoEntry on 27 September 2019, and IRIS Software Group announced its acquisition of Dext in December 2024. Sage practices may find AutoEntry fits their wider stack more naturally, and IRIS practices may see Dext bundled with IRIS products. In both cases, check renewal terms for price rises.

MTD for Income Tax. HMRC says MTD for Income Tax applies from April 2026 to sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, then over £30,000 from April 2027 and over £20,000 from April 2028. Dext's Solo plan includes quarterly updates to HMRC for those clients, and MTD clients cost £2.50 a month extra on Essentials and Advanced. AutoEntry is a capture tool that publishes to the ledger, so quarterly updates are sent from the ledger or a bridging tool. Our guide to MTD for Income Tax software costs per client compares the filing options.

How to run a fair two-week test

Both vendors offer a trial: 14 days on Dext and 25 free credits on AutoEntry. Use them on the same material.

Pick three real clients: your quietest, your busiest and the one with the messiest paperwork.
Send identical documents to both, including line-item supplier bills and at least one multi-page PDF bank statement.
Count credits used on AutoEntry and multiply up to a month.
Time the review queue for 50 documents on each.
Count the items that still needed a human after supplier rules were set.
Price your whole book with the break-even table above, including the add-ons you would actually switch on.

Our verdict: which should you choose?

Choose Dext if most of your clients are busy, your team reviews documents every day, or you want MTD Income Tax clients in the same workflow. It is still the benchmark for practice capture, which is why it scores 4.7 in our directory. New customers get 15% off any Dext plan for 12 months through our Dext link; The AI Ledger earns a commission if you sign up through it.

Choose AutoEntry if most of your clients are quiet, volumes are lumpy, or you run on Sage. Its credit model is transparent, every user and client is included, and for a long tail of small clients it is usually far cheaper. It scores 4.4 in our directory. We do not have an affiliate arrangement with AutoEntry, and that does not change this recommendation.

Choose both if your client list has a clear split between quiet and busy clients and your team can run two queues. In our mixed example, splitting cut the bill by more than half.

Compare more capture tools on The AI Ledger

Put Dext and AutoEntry side by side, or add a third tool, on the compare page.
See every scored tool in data entry and receipts.
Read our guide to the best receipt capture software in the UK, which includes Datamolino and Briefcase.
Answer three questions in the tool finder for a shortlist that fits your practice.

Our scores are editorial and never for sale.

Frequently asked questions

Is AutoEntry cheaper than Dext?

For quiet clients, yes. A client using fewer than about 45 to 55 AutoEntry credits a month is cheaper on AutoEntry than on Dext Essentials at £12. For busy clients sending more than that, Dext's per-client price usually works out cheaper.

How many AutoEntry credits does a receipt use?

One. A purchase or sales invoice or an expense receipt is 1 credit, an invoice with line items or a supplier statement is 2 credits, and a bank or credit card statement is 3 credits per page, according to AutoEntry's pricing page.

Does Dext charge for bank statement extraction?

Dext says its credits cover bank statements, line items and supplier statement reconciliation, with an allowance on every plan that can be topped up. The allowance per practice plan is not published, so ask Dext for it before you sign.

Which is better for Sage users, Dext or AutoEntry?

Both integrate with Sage. AutoEntry has been owned by Sage since 2019, so Sage practices often find it fits their wider stack, but Dext also publishes to Sage. Decide on cost shape and review workflow rather than ownership alone.

Can I use Dext and AutoEntry together?

Yes. Some practices put quiet clients on AutoEntry and busy clients on Dext. In our 40-client example that cut the monthly bill from £480 on Dext alone to £239.35, at the cost of running two review queues.

Is there a Dext discount for new customers?

Yes. New customers get 15% off any Dext plan for 12 months by subscribing through an eligible affiliate link such as ours. The plan renews at Dext's standard rates afterwards.

Sources

Dext, UK pricing for accounting and bookkeeping firms (checked 27 October 2026)
Dext, 15% off for 12 months affiliate offer and terms (checked 26 October 2026)
AutoEntry, pricing and credits (checked 27 October 2026)
AutoEntry, integrations (checked 27 October 2026)
Sage, Sage announces acquisition of AutoEntry, 27 September 2019
IRIS, IRIS announces intent to acquire Dext
HMRC, find out if and when you need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax