Hammock and Tenarize
Hammock does my books and my MTD. Do I need anything else?
These are not really competitors, and a page pretending otherwise would waste your time. Hammock is built around a bank feed: it reconciles rent and expenses, produces SA105 figures, and files your Making Tax Digital quarterly updates. Tenarize is built around a tenancy: the compliance checklist, the certificates, the deposit duties, the agreement, the tenant.
The useful question is not which is better. It is which problem you actually have — and whether the other one is a problem you are currently solving with nothing at all.
Everything below was read off Hammock's own website on 15 September 2026. Prices change — check theirs before deciding. England only — Scotland and Wales are different regimes.
What Hammock does that Tenarize does not
None of this is a setup for a counter-argument. If these are the things that matter most to you, the rest of this page will not change your mind, and it should not.
It files your MTD return. Tenarize does not.
Quarterly updates and the final declaration are included on every Hammock plan. Tenarize produces rent and expense reports and pushes figures into FreeAgent nightly, but it files nothing with HMRC. If you want the submission to happen in the same product that holds the numbers, that is Hammock and not this.
Real bookkeeping off a real bank feed
Over fifty UK bank and credit card feeds, automatic reconciliation of rent and expenses, and receipts photographed onto the transaction. Tenarize records what it charged and what a maintenance job cost; it does not reconcile your bank account and never claims to.
It is cheaper than Tenarize almost everywhere
£8 plus VAT for one to three properties, £15 plus VAT for four to ten, £25 plus VAT for eleven to twenty. Against Tenarize's £15, £35 and £75 with no VAT added, Hammock is the cheaper subscription at every portfolio size except four and five properties.
Investment figures, not just tax figures
Loan-to-value, rental yield and profit and loss per property. Tenarize reports what came in and what went out; it does not model the investment.
Tenarize and Hammock, as published
What each company says on its own website. Not a verdict, and not a feature count — a record of two price lists and two sets of claims on one date.
| Tenarize | Hammock | |
|---|---|---|
| Price, 1–3 properties | £15/month, no VAT added | £8 + VAT (£9.60) |
| Price, 4–10 properties | £15 to 5, then £35 | £15 + VAT (£18) |
| Price, 11–20 properties | £75/month | £25 + VAT (£30) |
| Free tier | None — one month free, full refund inside 3 months | None — 30-day trial |
| MTD for Income Tax | Via FreeAgent, which files. Tenarize does not file | Files quarterly updates and final declaration |
| Bank reconciliation | No | 50+ UK bank and card feeds |
| Certificate expiry reminders | Yes, with the renewal bookable from the reminder | Yes — alerts on expiring documents |
| Compliance checklist against statutory duties | Yes — gas, EICR, EPC, alarms, deposit, RRA information sheet | Not advertised |
| Tenant portal | Yes | Not advertised |
| Inventory and inspection reports | Room by room, photos, signed both sides | Not advertised |
| Maintenance request tracking | Yes | Not advertised |
| Supplier list | Real local tradespeople, filtered and mapped | Not advertised |
| E-signed tenancy agreements | Yes | Not advertised |
| Audit trail | Export per tenancy, for a dispute or tribunal | Not advertised |
On Tenarize not having a free tier
There is no free tier, and that is deliberate. All three plans are the same product — the same compliance tracking, the same tenant portal, the same inventories, the same e-signed agreements, the same audit trail, the same support. The only thing the price changes is how many properties it covers.
A free tier is a smaller version of a product, and a landlord with one property would be on the smaller version permanently. Tenarize is built for one to twenty properties, so one property is the size it was designed around rather than the size it tolerates. What replaces a free tier here is a month free and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.
What Tenarize does that Hammock does not advertise
Read off usehammock.com on 15 September 2026. Where it says not advertised, that is what their own pages did or did not claim — not a statement about what exists behind their login.
A reminder about a document is not a reminder about a duty
Hammock alerts you that a certificate is expiring, which is genuinely useful and more than most spreadsheets manage. What it does not advertise is the duty underneath: that a deposit has two statutory limbs and one deadline counted from the day of receipt, that an outstanding one bars a possession order, or that a section 8 notice has to satisfy the longest ground you cite.
Tenarize tracks the duties rather than the documents — both deposit limbs against the same deadline, sixteen section 8 grounds with their statutory minimums and a warning when your expiry date falls short, and a compliance checklist that changes when the law does.
There is no tenant in it
Hammock's tenant is a name on a payment. Nothing on their site offers the tenant a login, a document to sign, or a place to report a leak.
Tenants get their own portal: documents, payment history, e-signing and maintenance reporting — and since September 2026 they see the same rent position the landlord sees, rather than finding out by email that they are behind.
Nothing to show an adjudicator
When a deposit deduction is disputed, the argument is about the condition of a room at two points in time, and it is decided on evidence. Bookkeeping does not produce that evidence.
Room-by-room inventories with photographs, signed by both sides at move-in and move-out, plus an audit trail per tenancy you can export for a dispute or tribunal.
The tenancy itself is not modelled
Generating the agreement, e-signing it, tracking who has signed, changing the rent from a date on a live periodic tenancy — none of this is what a bookkeeping product is for, and Hammock does not claim it.
Tenarize generates the agreement against the current England regime, gets it e-signed by both sides, and records a mid-tenancy rent change that collects the old figure until the date you set and the new one from it.
When Hammock is the right answer and this is not
There is a version of this page that leaves this section out. It would be a worse page, and you would find all of it out later anyway.
Your actual problem is the tax return
If what keeps you up is the SA105 and the quarterly filing, Hammock is built for exactly that and Tenarize is not. Tenarize will not file for you, and buying it expecting otherwise would be a mistake.
You have one to three properties and price is the deciding factor
£9.60 including VAT against £15 is a real difference on a small portfolio, and it is not one to argue away. The question is only whether what the extra buys is worth it to you.
You have six or more properties and still only want the books done
Hammock stays at £18 including VAT up to ten properties where Tenarize moves to £35. If the compliance and tenancy half is genuinely handled elsewhere, the gap widens as the portfolio grows.
You want one product, and the books matter more
Plenty of landlords run both — Hammock for the numbers, something else for the tenancy. If that is one subscription too many and you have to pick, pick the one that solves the problem you actually have.
Answers, in plain terms
Can I use both?
Yes, and some landlords will want to. They overlap barely at all: Hammock is the bank feed, the bookkeeping and the HMRC filing; Tenarize is the compliance checklist, the agreement, the tenant portal and the audit trail. If you already run Hammock, nothing in Tenarize duplicates it.
Does Tenarize do Making Tax Digital?
Not by filing. Tenarize pushes rent and costs into FreeAgent nightly, split by property, and FreeAgent is HMRC-recognised and does the submission. FreeAgent is the only accounting provider supported. Tenarize also produces rent and expense reports as PDF or CSV with UK tax-year presets, and a CSV is a valid digital link, so a spreadsheet plus bridging software is a legitimate route too.
Is Tenarize cheaper than Hammock?
Only at four and five properties. Hammock is £8 plus VAT for one to three and £15 plus VAT for four to ten; Tenarize is £15 with no VAT added for one to five, then £35 for six to ten. So Tenarize is cheaper in a narrow band and more expensive either side of it. They are not the same product, so the comparison is worth less than it looks — but the numbers are the numbers.
Does Hammock handle compliance certificates?
It alerts you to expiring documents, which their own site states, so a gas certificate running out will not pass unnoticed. What their pages do not describe is the statutory layer — the deposit's two duties and their shared deadline, the possession bar while one is outstanding, or section 8 notice periods by ground.
A month free, and your existing tenancies come with you
"Import existing tenancy" skips the vetting you already did years ago and keeps the certificates, which are the part worth carrying across. £15 a month for one to five properties, no commission on rent, and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.