Distil vs Dext
Two ways to price document capture for a UK practice.
Every Dext figure on this page was checked on 22 August 2026.
The two price shapes
Distil Solo
The practice entry plan. Every feature is on every tier.
£35a month, per practice
- 250 invoice documents a month
- 100 statement pages a month
- No per-client fee, and no minimum licence count
- Unlimited users
- MTD VAT and MTD for Income Tax filing to HMRC
- Every document is stored in UK data centres, encrypted at rest, and kept for seven years from upload, which covers the six-year HMRC rule.
14-day free trial. Cancel inside it and you pay nothing. No VAT added at checkout.
Dext
Dext Essentials, billed monthly
£13.80per client, a month
- Dext Advanced is £14.95 per client a month
- Ten clients is about £138 a month at that rate
- MTD quarterly updates are a £2.50 per client add-on
- An ITSA-only client tier is £2.88 a month
Published figures, read on 22 August 2026.
Monthly cost as a practice grows
Dext’s column is its published Essentials price multiplied by the client count. Distil’s is the tier whose monthly document allowance covers that volume. Distil has no per-client fee and no minimum licence count — self-billing is the one paid add-on, charged per client the practice switches it on for — so the same tier carries more clients at the same price.
| Volume | Dext | Distil |
|---|---|---|
| 10 clientsabout 600 documents a month | ~£138 | £95Starter |
| 25 clientsabout 1,500 documents a month | ~£345 | £215Professional |
| 50 clientsabout 3,000 documents a month | ~£690 | £215Professional |
Where the two differ.
“Not published” means we did not find it on Dext's own pages when we checked on 22 August 2026. It is a statement about our check, not about the product. Check dext.com for what is current.
| Capability | Distil | Dext |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice and receipt extraction | Included | Included |
| Bank statement extraction | Included | Included |
| Bank reconciliation | Auto-match, at practice scale | Not published |
| Categorisation that learns per client | Two-tier supplier rules | Supplier rules |
| Publishing to Xero and QuickBooks | Included | Included |
| Its own general ledger and seal | Included | Not published |
| MTD VAT filing to HMRC | Included | Not published |
| MTD for Income Tax | Yes | MTD quarterly updates, £2.50 per client a month |
| P&L, cash flow and balance sheet | Included | Not published |
| Sales invoicing | Included | Not published |
| Mileage at HMRC rates | Included | Not published |
| Client upload links, no client account | Included | Included |
| Seven-year document storage (covers HMRC six-year rule) | Included | Not published |
What Dext does well.
A comparison that only lists one side is not a comparison. These are real reasons to choose the other one.
More than thirty integrations
Direct connections to Sage, FreeAgent and a long tail of other packages. Distil publishes to Xero, QuickBooks and its own ledger, and exports CSV for everything else.
Native mobile apps
Dedicated iOS and Android apps with offline capture. Distil’s client link installs to a phone home screen and needs no app store, but it is a web app.
Employee expense management
Built-in expense claims and approval flows for a client’s staff. Distil does not do expense approvals.
A long track record
Trading since 2010 as Receipt Bank, with a large installed base. Distil is new.
Which one to pick.
Distil
Choose Distil if the practice wants one bill that does not move when it wins a client, and wants the work to continue past extraction into reconciliation, a sealed ledger, reports and a VAT return that prefills from those sealed books.
Dext
Choose Dext if you need direct Sage connections, native mobile apps with offline capture, or employee expense approvals.
Try it against your own month.
A 14-day free trial, and cancelling inside it costs nothing. Pick the plan whose allowance covers the documents your practice already puts through.
Comparing something else?
Distil’s prices and allowances on this page are read live from its own plan configuration, so they are whatever Distil currently charges. Dext figures are figures read off the vendor’s own published pages on 22 August 2026 and recorded in docs/handoffs/pricing-to-marketing-copy-2026-08-22.md §3. Dext is a trademark of Dext Software Ltd. Distil is not affiliated with Dext. Visit dext.com for their current pricing.