tofu vs Dext
Dext charges for every client, then for line items and AI on top. tofu charges one price for your whole practice.
Quick Verdict
Choose tofu if you want line items and learning from your coding history included in one price, you take on clients through the year, or your clients send documents in languages other than English.
Choose Dext if you need its wider range of integrations, supplier payments or a mobile app for clients, and its per-client pricing suits your practice.
Dext is one of the best-known capture tools for UK accountants, and IRIS has owned it since December 2024. Its Practice plans charge per client, with a 10-client minimum, and several features cost extra per client on top. If you're weighing it against tofu, the table below does the maths for ten clients.
What Ten Clients Cost
Ten clients sending 25 documents each a month. Dext at its listed price, tofu on the plan that covers the whole practice.
| What You Extract | tofu / Month | Dext / Month | Who's Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Header details only | £79 (800 plan) | £189.74 (Practice, 10 clients) | tofu, by £110.74 a month |
| Line items on every document | £79 (800 plan) | £271.74 (plus 240 extra line-item documents) | tofu, by £192.74 a month |
| Line items, plus Dext's custom AI guidance | £79 (800 plan) | £321.74 (plus £5 a client for AI Assist) | tofu, by £242.74 a month |
Dext prices from its Xero App Store listing, pricing pages and help centre, checked on 27 September 2026. Ten clients is Dext's minimum and the only size it prices outside its online calculator. Each client adds one line-item document a month to an allowance shared across the practice; extra line items cost 40p a document, or £16.50 for 50. Custom AI Assist guidance is £5 per client a month, uncapped until 31 October 2026. Dext takes 13% off its plan price on an annual term, billed monthly. tofu prices are for a 12-month term, and paid annually they're £72 and £179 a month.
Per Client vs. Per Practice
Dext prices its Practice plans per client, and you pay for at least ten. Its Xero App Store listing starts at £189.74 a month for ten clients, and each client after that adds to the bill. An annual term, billed monthly, takes 13% off.
tofu works the other way round. You choose one plan for the whole practice, sized by the extractions you process each month: £79 for about 800, or £199 for about 2,500. An invoice or receipt counts as one extraction, however many lines it has. Every client and every team member is included, and adding a client adds no fee.
tofu plans run for a 12-month term, and your price holds for the whole term.
Line Items, Bank Statements and AI: Extra vs. Included
Dext's plans include unlimited document extraction, but the detail costs extra. Each client adds one line-item document, five bank statement sheets and one supplier statement to a monthly allowance shared across the practice. After that, line items cost 40p a document and statement sheets 25p each, or less in packs of 50. Unused credits don't roll over.
Dext learns too. Its auto-categorisation learns from your past coding, and AI Assist learns from how your team codes and edits. Core guidance is included, but custom guidance learned from your firm costs £5 per client a month. Use is uncapped until 31 October 2026, and after that Dext recommends a plan based on each client's usage.
On tofu, every invoice comes with its line items, learning from your ledger history is included, and a bank statement counts one extraction per page against your plan. There are no credits to buy and no overage fees.
Languages and Handwriting
tofu reads 200+ languages, including handwriting, and shows English alongside the original text. Dext doesn't publish a list of the languages it reads, so if your clients send non-English documents, test a few on both.
Where Dext Still Works
Being fair: Dext is a mature product, and it does some things tofu doesn't.
More integrations. Dext publishes to more than 36 accounting packages. tofu publishes straight to Xero, QuickBooks, Sage Accounting, Zoho Books, Bukku and freee, and prepares import files for FreeAgent, Sage 50 and more.
Supplier payments. Dext Payments lets UK clients pay supplier bills from Dext for £10 per client a month. tofu doesn't handle payments.
A mobile app. Clients can snap receipts in Dext's iOS and Android apps. tofu doesn't have a mobile app yet, so clients send photos to one WhatsApp number instead, with no app or login.
You can also run both while you switch: keep Dext for the clients who pay suppliers through it, and move the rest to tofu.
Switching from Dext to tofu
You can move in stages while your Dext contract runs down.
Step 1: Pull a usage report from Dext for the last three months. Add up each client's documents to see which tofu plan covers your practice.
Step 2: Start a free trial, with no credit card, and connect Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or Zoho Books. tofu learns from your coding history, so you don't rebuild supplier rules.
Step 3: Move a few clients first. They can forward emails as they do today, or send photos and PDFs to one WhatsApp number.
Step 4: Move the rest before your Dext renewal date.
Every plan includes an onboarding session, and you can process documents the day you connect.
See how they compare
| How It Works | tofu | Dext |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | One plan for your whole practice, sized by total extractions | Per client, with a 10-client minimum |
| Adding a client | No extra fee | Adds to the monthly bill |
| Line items | Included on every invoice | One document per client a month, shared across the practice, then 40p a document |
| Bank statements | Each page counts as one extraction | Five sheets per client a month, shared across the practice, then 25p a sheet |
| Learning your coding | Included, from your ledger history and corrections | Auto-categorisation and core guidance included; custom guidance £5 per client a month |
| Accounting software | Publishes to Xero, QuickBooks, Sage Accounting, Zoho Books, Bukku and freee. Import-ready files for FreeAgent, Sage 50 and more | Publishes to 36+ accounting packages |
| Team members | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Key pricing differences
Pricing: Per Client vs. Per Practice
Dext charges per client, from £189.74 a month for ten. tofu charges one price for your whole practice, with unlimited clients: £79 a month for about 800 extractions, or £199 for about 2,500, on a 12-month term.
Line Items: Credits vs. Included
Dext includes one line-item document per client a month, then charges 40p a document. tofu extracts every line on every invoice, and an invoice counts as one extraction however many lines it has.
AI Guidance: Extra vs. Included
Dext's auto-categorisation learns from past coding, but AI Assist guidance learned from your firm costs extra per client. tofu learns from your ledger history and your corrections on every plan.
Pricing Overview
Dext's Practice prices and tofu's prices per practice, in GBP.
| tofu | Dext | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | One plan for the whole practice | Per client, every month |
| Entry price | £79 a month (about 800 extractions; £72 a month paid annually) | £189.74 a month (10 clients, the minimum) |
| Next step up | £199 a month (about 2,500 extractions; £179 a month paid annually) | Each extra client (priced in Dext's calculator) |
| Extra line items | Included | 40p a document, or £16.50 for 50 |
| Extra statement sheets | Count against your plan (no overage fees) | 25p a sheet, or £10 for 50 |
| AI learned from your firm | Included | £5 per client a month (uncapped until 31 October 2026) |
| Term | 12 months, paid monthly or up front | Monthly, or 13% off on an annual term, billed monthly |
| Free trial | Yes, no credit card | 14 days, no card |
| Team members | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Dext prices from its Xero App Store listing, pricing pages and help centre, checked on 27 September 2026.
What's Actually Included
Both read invoices, receipts and bank statements. They differ on what costs extra.
| Feature | tofu | Dext |
|---|---|---|
| Line-item extraction | ✓ IncludedOn every invoice | ⚠ CreditsOne document per client a month, then 40p a document |
| Bank statements | ✓ IncludedOne page counts as one extraction | ⚠ CreditsFive sheets per client a month, then 25p a sheet |
| Learning from your coding | ✓ IncludedFrom your ledger history and corrections | ⚠ Auto-categorisation and core guidance includedCustom guidance £5 per client a month |
| New clients | ✓ No extra fee | ⚠ Priced per client10-client minimum |
| Languages | ✓ 200+Including handwriting | ⚠ No published list |
| Supplier payments | ✗ Not offered | ✓ Dext PaymentsUK, £10 per client a month |
| Mobile app | ✗ Not yet | ✓ iOS and Android |
Line Items and AI Learning: Included, Not Extra
On Dext, each client adds one line-item document a month to an allowance shared across the practice. After that, line items cost 40p a document, and AI Assist guidance learned from your firm costs £5 per client a month. Ten clients sending 25 documents each, with line items on every one and custom AI guidance, cost about £320 a month at Dext's listed price.
On tofu, every invoice comes with its line items, and tofu learns from your ledger history on every plan. One plan covers every client and every user, and your price holds for the 12-month term.
Why Bookkeepers Are Switching to Tofu
"We were trying to push Dext for line item extraction for about two years, but nothing came out. Our fees kept increasing. It was time to look for something new."
"I can tell tofu exactly what to pick up and how to code things, and it actually learns. The interface is clean, reviewing is quick, and I don't need to stress over screens anymore.
That's what made me stick with tofu over Dext."
.png)
“Before using tofu, it would take me between 3 to 4 hours to input and review a client’s invoices. With tofu, I can now complete the process in just 30 to 60 minutes, saving me a significant amount of time.”
Frequently asked questions
On a yearly pack, all your entries arrive on day one and you can use them any time in the 12 months, so there is nothing to roll over month to month. On monthly billing, unused entries don't roll over to the next month.
No. We only count each invoice once. Re-extract as much as you need while training the AI.
Yearly packs are one payment a year, and every entry in the pack is yours from day one. Monthly plans bill on the 1st of each month: if you subscribe mid-month, you pay full price and get the full allocation immediately, and your next bill is on the 1st.
Yes, on all plans. Competitors charge extra for this.
Tofu is ISO 27001:2022 certified, GDPR/CCPA compliant, and uses bank-grade AES-256 encryption with multi-factor authentication. We work with the top global accounting networks.
No. Your whole team uses Tofu at one price. We don't charge per seat.
New documents wait in "pending" until you buy your next pack or upgrade, and you can still work with everything already extracted. On a yearly pack, we'll email you before you run low, and the next pack is one click away.
Add up a year of invoices, receipts and statement pages, then pick the pack that covers it. Pro covers 9,600 entries a year, Business 30,000, Enterprise 78,000 and Max 240,000, and the bigger the pack, the less you pay per entry. Need more than 240,000? We'll build a custom pack for your firm.
Each unique bill, invoice, or receipt that is extracted counts as one entry, regardless of the number of pages. A multi-page invoice is still one entry. Bank statements are counted as one entry per page.