← Quiggy Finance & Mentor — the idea
Every vendor figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page today and is marked sourced; every usage assumption is ours and marked estimate. The conclusion in one line: at any real scale the cost is dominated by model calls, it lands between €1.20 and €1.60 per business per month once the fixed programme is spread, and the market's list prices sit between €15 and €70 — so the question is not whether Quiggy can be cheap, it is what price makes the market move.
Sonnet 5, two calls (read, propose), prompt cached. Haiku halves it; Opus is 3.5c. estimate
Model calls, hosting, email, monitoring, bank data placeholder and the fixed programme, all in; heavy users about €2.95. estimate
Xero Grow £39, Sage Standard £43, FreeAgent Ltd £33, Holded Basic €29, Zoho Standard £12. sourced
Before people and marketing. Fair-use cap on documents keeps the heaviest users above 90%. estimate
Everything downstream multiplies from these. They are our estimates from the demo entity and Nick's own business; the first hundred real customers will replace them.
| Per business per month | Light | Median | Heavy | Drives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase documents captured (receipts, bills) | 15 | 35 | 120 | Model calls, storage |
| Sales invoices issued and emailed | 3 | 8 | 40 | Email, PDF, storage |
| Bank lines imported and matched | 40 | 90 | 400 | Compute (deterministic; model only on the unmatched tail) |
| Chase, statement, payslip and card emails | 6 | 18 | 70 | |
| Tell / Ask Quiggy queries | 5 | 20 | 60 | Model calls |
| Payroll employees | 0 | 3 | 12 | Compute, email, storage |
| Storage added (images, PDFs, ~400 KB per document) | 7 MB | 17 MB | 65 MB | Supabase storage, egress |
| Monthly active users per business | 1 | 2 | 6 | Auth MAU |
Two forced-tool calls per document (read, then propose), as the engine does today. A phone photo downscaled to Claude's 1,568-pixel ceiling is about 1,500 image tokens; the system prompt and schemas are about 5,500 tokens, of which roughly 4,000 are identical every time and cache at a tenth of the price; the two answers total about 700 output tokens.
| Model | Input $/MTok | Output $/MTok | Cache read | Per document, cached | Per document, no cache | Median business-month (35 docs + 20 queries) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1 | $5 | $0.10 | $0.007 | $0.011 | $0.34 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 (base case) | $2 | $10 | $0.20 | $0.014 | $0.021 | $0.58 |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5 | $25 | $0.50 | $0.035 | $0.053 | $1.41 |
Three things move this number. Caching is worth a third and is a one-line change if the prompt is structured for it. Routing — Haiku for the read call, Sonnet for the propose call — takes another quarter off without touching accuracy where it matters. The Batch API halves everything for anything that can wait an hour, which the overnight shoebox can. Taken together, a median business costs about $0.35 a month in model calls; a heavy one about $1.50. Note the regional multiplier: US-only inference costs 1.1×; global routing is the standard price, and no EU-specific rate is published — the EU-residency promise needs a check against whichever endpoint is used.
Vendor list prices as published today, in USD as the vendors bill; usage lines are the median profile above times the number of businesses. Read the pill on each row.
| Line | Today (PoC) | 1,000 | 10,000 | 100,000 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model calls (Sonnet 5, cached, median mix) | $50 | $580 | $5,800 | $58,000 | estimate |
| Supabase plan + compute (Pro $25; Micro → Large $110 → 2XL $410 → 8XL $1,870 + 2 replicas) | $35 | $135 | $435 | $5,635 | sourced |
| Supabase point-in-time recovery (7 days) | $100 | $100 | $100 | $100 | sourced |
| Storage growth after 12 months ($0.0213/GB) and egress ($0.09/GB over 250 GB) | — | $10 | $230 | $2,300 | estimate |
| Vercel (Pro $20/seat + usage: CPU $0.128/h, invocations $0.60/M; Enterprise at scale) | $20 | $90 | $600 | $4,000 | estimate |
| Resend (Free 3k → Pro $20/50k → Scale $90/100k → $0.90 per extra 1k) | $0 | $20 | $250 | $2,400 | sourced |
| Bank data provider (GoCardless Bank Account Data) | $0 | ? | ? | ? | not published |
| Card processing (Stripe, EEA 1.5% + €0.25) | pass-through | pass-through | pass-through | pass-through | sourced |
| Cloudflare (Free → Pro $20 → Business $200) | $0 | $20 | $200 | $200 | sourced |
| GitHub Team ($4/seat) + Actions overage | $8 | $20 | $60 | $150 | sourced |
| Monitoring and status (Sentry Team $26 → Business $80 + PAYG; Better Stack $34) | $60 | $114 | $300 | $1,000 | sourced |
| Stack, per month | $273 | $1,089 | $7,975 | $73,785 | |
| Stack per business-month | — | $1.09 | $0.80 | $0.74 |
Model calls are 53% of the bill at a thousand businesses and 79% at a hundred thousand. Everything else is a rounding error by comparison, which is why the caching and routing choices in section 2 are worth more than any hosting negotiation. The one blank is the bank data provider: GoCardless publishes no Bank Account Data price and no free-tier limit, and its own docs say account verification is "only offered to paying customers". That line needs a quote before any price is fixed; the industry norm is a per-connected-account monthly fee, and a placeholder of €0.50 per business-month is used in section 5.
Nick asked for the agentic tooling and the security programme to be counted, not hidden. Ranges are third-party published figures for a company of one to ten people; Vanta, Cobalt and Shireburn publish no prices.
| Line | Year 1 | Steady state / yr | Basis | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Team premium seats ×2 (build agent, watcher) | $3,000 | $3,000 | $125/seat/month monthly, $100 annual | sourced |
| API usage for evaluation suite, agents, prompt changes | $3,600 | $6,000 | ~$300–500/month at Sonnet rates | estimate |
| Compliance platform (Vanta tier, quote-only; Sprinto range $4k–8k for 1–10 staff) | $6,000 | $6,000 | Sprinto blog, 18 Sep 2026 | estimate |
| SOC 2 Type 2 audit (platform partner route) | $3,000 | $3,000 | $2k–3k audit via platform; $5k–15k small CPA firm direct | sourced |
| ISO 27001 stage 1+2, then surveillance | $15,000 | $7,000 | Vanta collection page: $14k–16k certification, $6k–7.5k surveillance | sourced |
| Penetration test, annual | $5,000 | $5,000 | Intruder from $3,500/test; ranges $4k–20k | sourced |
| Legal review of the compliance pack; annual refresh | $8,000 | $2,500 | Nick to obtain quotes | quote |
| Cyber and professional-indemnity insurance | ? | ? | Nick to obtain quotes | quote |
| Fixed programme (excluding insurance) | $43,600 | $32,500 |
Spread over the customer base this is $3.60 per business-month at 1,000 businesses, $0.36 at 10,000 and $0.04 at 100,000. It matters only at the start — which is exactly when the firm channel matters most, because a firm's clients arrive in blocks of fifty rather than one at a time.
| Scale | Cost, median | Cost, heavy user | Margin at €12 | Margin at €29 | Margin at €59 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 businesses | €4.77 | €6.20 | 60% | 84% | 92% |
| 10,000 | €1.52 | €2.95 | 87% | 95% | 97% |
| 100,000 | €1.17 | €2.60 | 90% | 96% | 98% |
List prices from each vendor's pricing page today, monthly excluding VAT. QuickBooks UK loads its prices by script and could not be read; Dext's pages return 404; Shireburn (Malta) is quote-only.
| Product | Entry | Core | Top | Payroll | Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xero UK | Ignite £18 (20 invoices) | Grow £39 | Comprehensive £55 · Ultimate £70 | 1–10 people included by tier; £1.50/person | 90% off for 6 months; unlimited users; receipt capture on all plans |
| Sage Accounting UK | Start £20 (1 user, 30 captures) | Standard £43 | Plus £59 (multi-currency, inventory) | +£1.85/employee | 90% off for 6 months; "Sage Copilot" AI on all plans; captures metered at £0.20 |
| FreeAgent | Sole trader £19 | Partnership £27 | Limited company £33 | Included | 50% off 6 months; free with NatWest/RBS/Mettle accounts — the bank pays |
| Zoho Books UK | Free (1,000 invoices) | Standard £12 · Professional £24 | Premium £30 … Ultimate £199 | — | Cheapest full ledger; users and scans metered |
| Holded (ES/EU) | Plus €15 (250 invoices) | Basic €29 · Standard €59 | Advanced €99 · Premium €199 | €5/employee | 50% off 3 months; inventory €25 add-on; CRM included |
| Pennylane (FR, freelancers) | Free (e-invoicing) | Starter €7 · Basique €14 | Essentiel €24 | — | Free tier as the door; monetises payments and the accountant |
| Wave (US/CA) | Free | Pro $19 | — | from $25 | Free books, paid capture and payments (2.9% + $0.60) |
| QuickBooks Online UK | Prices not readable today (client-side); five tiers Sole Trader → Advanced, 1–25 users, 90% off 6 months, "Intuit Intelligence" AI on all | Add-on, not shown | The reference point for 85% of the market | ||
Three patterns matter more than any single price. Everyone discounts 50–90% for the first three to six months, so the list price is a ceiling nobody pays at first and the real competition is on the second-year price. Payroll is an add-on priced per employee at £1.50–£5. Two disruptors already price the books at zero — Pennylane and Wave — and earn on payments, capture and the accountant; FreeAgent lets a bank pay. Nobody in this table prices what the customer actually buys, which is not software but "my books are done".
Three tiers by the size of the business's paperwork, a firm offer that prices per client, and one deliberate market move.
Firms bring clients in blocks and want one invoice. Price per client per month on a ladder — €19 for the first 25 clients, €14 to 100, €9 beyond — with the white-label view, the firm's own marketplace controls and the client-acceptance pack included. At €9 the margin is still above 80%; at fifty clients the fixed programme is paid for by one firm.
Every incumbent prices a tool and leaves the work to the customer or their bookkeeper. A Maltese small company typically pays a bookkeeper or its accountant a monthly fee for exactly the work Quiggy does — capture, posting, VAT preparation, payroll — and that fee is the number the owner knows. Sell "your books, done" at €29 against that number, not against Xero's. The proof is the accountant's own sign-off: Quiggy prepares, the firm reviews, and the review takes a fifth of the time — Mark's own words. That is a story a firm can sell, because it moves the firm from data entry to review without losing the client.
| If… | Then… | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Median documents per month is 100, not 35 | Model cost roughly triples to €1.60; margin at €29 still 93% | Fair-use allowance and per-document price above it |
| Model prices double | Cost per business-month rises by €0.50–1.00 | Routing to Haiku for reads; Batch for the shoebox; already in the plan |
| Bank data costs €2 per connected account, not €0.50 | Adds €1.50 for businesses with a feed | Get the GoCardless quote before fixing Solo's price; Solo may need €15 |
| EU-only inference carries a premium | 1.1× on the model line, about €0.05 | Immaterial; keep the residency promise |
| Firms want one price for all clients | The ladder collapses to ~€12 blended | Still 85% margin at 10k; fine if firms bring volume |
| Malta's whole addressable market is small | The fixed programme dominates for longer | The UK country pack is the second market for a reason; the firm channel is how Malta pays for itself |
All fetched 18 September 2026 from the vendor's own page; the study's fact file lists every figure with its URL. Market-size anchors (EU SME count, Malta business count, QuickBooks subscriber numbers) could not be fetched today and are not used.
supabase.com/pricing · vercel.com/pricing · platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing and …/build-with-claude/vision · claude.com/pricing · resend.com/pricing · stripe.com/en-mt/pricing · cloudflare.com/plans · github.com/pricing · sentry.io/pricing · betterstack.com/pricingxero.com/uk/pricing-plans · freeagent.com/pricing · sage.com/en-gb/sage-business-cloud/accounting/pricing · zoho.com/uk/books/pricing · holded.com/pricing · pennylane.com/fr/tarifs · waveapps.com/pricing · quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/pricing (structure only)sprinto.com/blog/soc-2-compliance-cost · vanta.com/collection/iso-27001/iso-27001-certification-cost · drata.com/blog/iso-27001-certification-cost · intruder.io/pricingCost and price study v0.1 for Quiggy Finance. USD figures converted at 0.92 EUR/USD where shown in euros (a field, not a forecast). Every usage figure is an estimate to be replaced by measurement once the first businesses are live; the product already records model, prompt version and token usage per posting, so the measurement is a query, not a project. Not financial advice; a pricing decision is Nick's.