Verdict at a glance
Pick A Few Quid if
Pick A Few Quid if you're happy to type your own numbers in and want a cheap, UK-tax-aware projection engine, not a connected picture of every account.
How we compared: published fees, account types and review scores for each, verified against the provider’s own price pages.
The short version
A spreadsheet is free and does exactly what you tell it, including the mistakes; A Few Quid gives you UK tax bands, allowances and pension rules already wired in for £36.99 a year. Both still depend on you remembering to update the numbers, which is the failure mode that eventually gets either one.
Why people compare them
A Few Quid is sold explicitly as the thing that replaces your retirement spreadsheet, so anyone considering it is usually deciding whether to stop maintaining their own model.
Price and fit, side by side
| Feature | A Few Quid | A custom Excel spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | A Few Quid£36.99 per year | A custom Excel spreadsheetFree tier, then £84.99 per year |
| Free tier | A Few QuidNo | A custom Excel spreadsheetYes |
| Billed in pounds | A Few QuidYes | A custom Excel spreadsheetYes |
| Best for | A Few QuidUK savers who are happy to type their own numbers in and want a cheap, UK-tax-aware projection engine rather than a connected picture of their money | A custom Excel spreadsheetPeople who want total control over every assumption and genuinely enjoy building the model |
Where A Few Quid wins
- Built for UK rules from the ground up: income tax bands, NI, CGT, dividend allowance, ISA and SIPP wrappers and the state pension
- Natural-language scenario setup, so "what if I retire at 55?" builds the projection rather than asking you to fill in a form
- Unusually good property modelling for the price, including stamp duty, overpayments, rent-vs-buy and buy-to-let under Section 24 versus a limited company
Where A custom Excel spreadsheet wins
- Complete flexibility: if you can define the rule, you can model it, with no vendor deciding what is supported
- No subscription lock-in to a planning vendor, and your file keeps working whatever happens to any company
- Your data never leaves your machine unless you choose to sync it, so nothing is shared with a third party
Where both fall short
- Both are built US-first, so UK users pay in dollars and work around US assumptions.
If neither is quite right
If what you actually want is the retirement answer rather than a better dashboard, that is the gap Delphina was built for: UK pensions, ISAs and tax, projected to the age you want to stop. It does not do the job A Few Quid does for uk savers who are happy to type their own numbers in and want a cheap, uk-tax-aware projection engine rather than a connected picture of their money, so if that is the real problem, A Few Quid is still the better buy. Free plan is £0, no card.
A Few Quid vs A custom Excel spreadsheet: common questions
A Few Quid is £36.99 per year and A custom Excel spreadsheet is £84.99 per year. Compare the billing period before the number: an annual price and a monthly price are not the same thing.
You can, and some people do, because they solve different halves of the problem. It does mean paying for both, so add the two annual figures together before deciding.
Judge it on billing currency, Open Banking coverage and whether ISAs and pensions are handled. Check each one against those three points, because a tool that scores well elsewhere can still be a poor fit in the UK.
A Few Quid suits uk savers who are happy to type their own numbers in and want a cheap, uk-tax-aware projection engine rather than a connected picture of their money. A custom Excel spreadsheet suits people who want total control over every assumption and genuinely enjoy building the model. The one that matches how you already think about money will take less setting up.
Delphina covers the gap both leave, which is UK pensions, ISAs and tax projected forward to retirement. The trade-off is that it does not do the job A Few Quid does for uk savers who are happy to type their own numbers in and want a cheap, uk-tax-aware projection engine rather than a connected picture of their money, so if that is the real need, pick one of these two.