Most business bank accounts cost a newly incorporated company nothing to open and nothing to run, so price is rarely what decides it. Two things do: whether your company's ownership structure is eligible at all, and what happens when a free period ends.

A company with a holding company above it, or with three founders who all need access to the account, is quietly shut out of several of the accounts most often recommended to new businesses. Nobody tells you that until you apply.

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What stops a new company opening an account

Very little, if your company is straightforward. At the app-based providers the gate is identity verification rather than financial history. Tide asks for photo ID and a selfie, runs no hard credit check, and gives a company incorporated last week the same terms as one that has traded for five years.

The restrictions that do bite are about ownership, not age, and they are easy to miss. Starling requires every person with significant control to be an individual resident in the UK, which rules out a corporate shareholder. It also won't open an account for a holding company, or for a business you run through a separately incorporated entity. Mettle takes limited companies with no more than two people with significant control, all of them individuals, and only one of those two can use the account at all. Monzo needs the company to be active at Companies House, so a dormant company won't do, and it must be a UK tax resident and nowhere else. Starling, by contrast, sets no limit on the number of directors and gives them all free access once you have proved their position.

So a three-founder company, a UK subsidiary, or a company held by a founder's existing holding company can be turned down by accounts that every comparison of this subject recommends to it. Check the eligibility page before you spend an evening on the application.

You may also read that banks want a year's trading before they will open an account. Business.gov.uk puts it as 'some banks only offer business accounts to businesses that have been trading for at least a year', and that is fair: Allica wants 12 months of incorporation and £50,000 to deposit, and the NatWest, RBS and Ulster group sends businesses under a year old to a start-up product instead. It is a minority policy rather than a market rule. Lloyds, Metro, the Co-operative Bank, HSBC, and Barclays will all open an account for a company registered days ago.

High street applications involve a credit search in a way the app-based ones mostly don't. NatWest runs a credit check on everyone named on a start-up application, and on a company incorporated last week the only file worth searching is yours. That is worth knowing if your personal credit history is thin or has a mark on it, and there is more on whether the bank runs a credit check and what it does to your file.

The paperwork is much the same wherever you apply, and how to open a limited company bank account sets out what to have ready before you start.

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The accounts a new limited company can open today

Here are 11 accounts worth a look for a company with no trading history. The second column is the one to read first.

Two things are deliberately not in that table. The first is paid tiers. Every app-based provider sells a ladder of plans with cashback, expense cards, savings pots, and invoicing tools on the upper rungs, and a company in its first month has no way of knowing which of them it will want. Start on the free plan and upgrade when something annoys you. The second is accounting integrations, because they no longer separate anyone: all of these connect to the main accounting packages, usually through open banking.

None of the providers checked asks for a minimum opening deposit.

If you have seen HSBC Kinetic recommended for start-ups, it closed on 2 July 2026 and its customers were moved across to HSBC's business banking range. A good deal of advice published since then still lists it.

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What the free accounts cost once the free period ends

Six of the accounts above have no monthly fee at all, so there is no cliff to plan for. The high street works the other way round, and the date is worth putting in a calendar the week you open the account.

Barclays is free for 12 months and then £8.50 a month. Lloyds is free for 12 months on your first Lloyds business account and then £10. HSBC's Business Banking Account is free for 12 months for start-ups and switchers and then £10 – though its Small Business Banking Account has no monthly fee in the first place, which makes it the simpler choice for most new companies.

NatWest is the one that doesn't fit the pattern, and most comparisons get it wrong. Its start-up account gives you two free years, and when they end you move to the standard tariff, which has no minimum monthly charge either. What you pay instead is per item: 35p for each automated payment, and 95p per £100 of cash paid in or out over a branch counter. So whether NatWest is cheap in year three depends on how you take money in, not on a monthly fee. A company paid by card that settles its suppliers electronically may pay almost nothing. One banking a few thousand pounds in cash a week will notice.

One NatWest condition is easy to trip over. Since 20 April 2026, the free banking stops if your cash deposits pass £200,000 in any 12-month period.

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Whether your money is protected if the provider fails

Your first deposit is usually your share capital, which is why this matters more at the start than it will later.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme covers eligible deposits up to £120,000 per depositor per authorised firm, raised from £85,000 on 1 December 2025, and it protects a company's deposits whatever the size of the company. Two things about it catch people out. Brands that share a banking licence share one limit, so splitting money between two names in the same group doesn't double your cover. And the scheme cannot protect money held with an e-money or payments firm. Those funds are kept in safeguarded accounts instead, which is a weaker position: there is no automatic compensation, and the money can be tied up while an administrator works through the business.

That line doesn't fall where you would expect. Tide is not a bank, but Tide current accounts are provided by ClearBank, so eligible deposits are protected – apart from older e-money accounts on sort code 23-69-72, which are not. ANNA's business account is e-money, issued by PayrNet, and is safeguarded rather than protected; only ANNA's separate savings account, provided by Griffin Bank, carries FSCS cover. Revolut became a fully authorised UK bank on 11 March 2026, when the regulator lifted the restrictions on its licence, so new Revolut business accounts are protected, while older e-money balances stay safeguarded until they are migrated.

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How long it takes, and the four-day wait nobody plans for

Days at an app-based provider and longer on the high street – but the delay most likely to catch you out has nothing to do with the bank.

The providers that publish real numbers are the ones to listen to. Monzo says over 80% of business accounts are opened the same day. HSBC says 65% of accounts are opened within 24 hours on average. Lloyds says an account could be open in 24 hours, with the caveat that times vary and are not guaranteed. Mettle is the most candid and the most sobering: same day for 19.5% of its customers, an average of 11 days, and 99% within 37 days. Barclays, NatWest, and Starling publish no timeframe at all, so treat 'apply in minutes' as the length of the form rather than the wait.

The four-day problem is Lloyds'. Your company must have been registered at Companies House for at least four days, and nothing on the register can have changed in the past four days. The second half is the trap, because the usual order of events for a new company is to incorporate and then tidy up the details: issue shares to a co-founder, change the registered office, appoint another director. Each of those filings restarts the clock. If you need the account quickly, either get the details right at incorporation or open the account first and make the changes afterwards.

Since 18 November 2025, every director has also had to verify their identity with Companies House and give a personal code when a new company is registered. No bank links that to how fast an account opens, but it is one more step between deciding to trade and being able to.

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Why your borrowing probably won't come from your bank

Almost none of these providers will lend to a company that has not traded yet, and that includes us. We look at your revenue and what your business can afford to repay before we make an offer, and a company with no revenue has nothing to show us. Mettle offers no lending at all. Starling has stopped taking applications for business overdrafts and loans, including increases to limits it has already agreed. So choosing a first account for the credit attached to it means choosing on something you cannot use for a while.

When you can borrow, it does not have to come from whoever you bank with. If you're waiting on an invoice, a Flexi-Loan can cover the gap, and you can clear it with no early repayment fee once your customer pays. It is a business loan with flexible repayment options, and we lend to UK limited companies.

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When to look again

Your first account is not a commitment. After a year of trading you will know what you can only guess at now: how much cash you handle, how many people need access, whether anyone ever needs to speak to a human, and whether a free plan still covers you. That is the point to compare business bank accounts on their merits for a trading business, and the Current Account Switch Service makes it straightforward to switch to a different account if you decide to move.

For now, the best start-up business bank account is the one that will have your company and let you take your first payment this week.