£9 dormant accounts services: what one-off filing buys, and what it doesn't

By Ben Davies · Updated 26 September 2026

Search for "file dormant company accounts" and you'll find services offering to do it for £8.99 or £9, one-off. They're real, they work, and for some companies they're a perfectly rational choice. But "dormant accounts filed" and "dormant company sorted for the year" are different jobs — and the gap between them is where directors get caught.

Here's an honest breakdown. (For a named, feature-by-feature table of every provider, see our comparison page.)

What a £9 one-off service does

You give the service your company details, confirm the company is dormant and has never traded, and it files the dormant accounts — the online equivalent of form AA02 — with Companies House. Reputable ones typically promise to put a rejected filing right or refund you.

That's the whole product: one form, filed once. Done well, it's fast and cheap, and if that's genuinely all you need, it's money well spent.

What it doesn't do

1. The HMRC side doesn't exist.

The £9 services file with Companies House only. If HMRC has sent the company a notice to deliver a Company Tax Return, you separately owe HMRC a nil CT600 — and since HMRC's free filing service, CATO, closed in March 2026, that has to go through commercial software. HMRC's penalties are their own: £200 from day one late, £400 after three months, on top of anything Companies House charges. Whether you need a CT600 depends on whether HMRC has sent that notice — check before assuming you don't.

2. Nobody is watching the calendar.

A one-off service files when you show up. It doesn't know your next deadline, doesn't remind you, and won't notice if your confirmation statement falls due in a different month — the filing everyone forgets because it follows a different cycle from accounts.

3. Next year starts from zero.

Dormant filing isn't a task, it's a ritual: the same obligations return every 12 months for as long as you keep the company. With a one-off service, each year means finding the service again, re-entering everything, and — statistically, the dangerous part — remembering unprompted.

The actual cost comparison

The £10 between a one-off service and a subscription isn't buying a better form — the form is the same. It's buying the CT600 route, the deadline machinery, and reminders that bring next year to you instead of waiting for you to remember it. Our full cost guide breaks down all four routes in more depth.

When the £9 service is the right call

Genuinely: if your company has never traded, HMRC hasn't sent it a notice to deliver a Company Tax Return (or you're confident handling HMRC separately), and you trust your own calendar, a one-off service is cheap and effective. We'd rather you use one than file late.

If you want the year looked after rather than the form — both filings, watched to acceptance, with reminders that start 90 days out for the accounts and the confirmation statement — that's the job DormantFile exists for: file your dormant company accounts online from £19/year, with a free deadline watchdog even if you never pay us. It also files dormant accounts for a company that traded once and still carries figures from those years.

Key points

• £8.99–£9 one-off services are legitimate: they file the Companies House dormant accounts form, once, and good ones promise to put a rejection right or refund you.
• They don't touch the HMRC side — and since HMRC's free filing service (CATO) closed, the nil CT600 has to go through commercial software — and they don't track deadlines or come back next year.
• Late filing penalties (£150+ from Companies House, £200+ from HMRC) cost more than a decade of any of these services — the expensive failure is forgetting, not the fee.
• See the named provider comparison for exactly who offers what, or the cost guide for the full DIY-to-accountant spectrum.