The sticker price is not the price you pay
A UK organisation pays three things on top of the advertised US figure: the exchange rate on the day, a non-sterling transaction fee from the card issuer, and 20% VAT unless a valid VAT number is on file. Together these add roughly 23% to a headline price if you do nothing about them.
- Currency conversion: your bank's rate, not the mid-market rate
- Non-sterling transaction fee: typically 2–3% on UK business cards
- UK VAT: 20%, charged unless the vendor has your VAT number
- Annual plans lock the price but not the exchange rate — each renewal converts afresh
2026 tiers converted to pounds
Approximate monthly cost of the entry paid tier for each platform, converted at current rates and shown before VAT. Treat these as a planning figure and check the vendor's checkout for the exact amount on the day.
- Make — about £7/month (from $9), operations-based metering
- Brevo — about £7/month (from $9), contact and email-volume based
- Pabbly Connect — about £13/month (from $16), flat task pricing with a lifetime option
- Fillout — about £15/month (from $19)
- Zapier — about £16/month (from $19.99), task-metered
- Airtable — about £16/month (from $20 per user)
- Systeme.io — about £21/month (from $27)
- Jotform — about £27/month (from $34)
- n8n self-hosted — free software, roughly £4–8/month for a small UK VPS
How UK VAT actually works on these subscriptions
These are electronically supplied services from overseas suppliers. If you are a VAT-registered UK business and you give the vendor your VAT number, the supply is zero-rated to you and you account for it yourself under the reverse charge — meaning nothing extra leaves your bank account. If you do not supply a number, the vendor charges 20% and you are paying real money you could have avoided.
- VAT registered: add your VAT number in billing settings before the first payment
- Not VAT registered: you pay the 20% and cannot reclaim it — build it into the budget
- Charities and clubs: no automatic exemption on software; the same rules apply
- Keep the vendor invoice — HMRC expects it as evidence for the reverse charge entry
Cutting the FX cost
The 2–3% non-sterling fee is the easiest saving available and almost nobody takes it. Paying from a multi-currency account that holds dollars removes the fee entirely, and buying dollars when the rate is favourable rather than on the vendor's billing date smooths the cost across a year.
- Pay from a USD balance in a multi-currency business account
- Prefer annual billing where the discount exceeds the FX volatility risk
- Avoid cards that add a fee on top of the conversion — check the statement, not the marketing
- For agencies rebilling clients, quote in pounds with a small FX buffer rather than passing through raw USD
Total annual cost, worked through
Take Zapier's entry tier as a worked example. At $19.99/month the headline annual cost is about $240, or roughly £192 at current rates. Add a 2.5% non-sterling fee and that becomes about £197. If you are not VAT registered, add 20% and the real cost is about £236 a year — nearly a quarter above the figure most people write in the budget.
- VAT-registered with a number on file: about £197/year
- Not VAT registered: about £236/year
- Same maths applies to every USD-billed tool on this list
- Flat-priced Pabbly Connect removes the overage variable but not the FX or VAT ones
When the cheapest option is not the cheapest
Self-hosting n8n on a UK server is free of licence cost, VAT and FX entirely — but somebody has to patch it, monitor it and restore it when it falls over. Price that time honestly. Below about £40/month of subscription spend, hosted tools almost always win once maintenance is costed at a realistic UK hourly rate.