LLCR vs Landlord Vision: Which Does a UK Landlord Actually Need in 2026?

LLCR vs Landlord Vision: Which Does a UK Landlord Actually Need in 2026?

Landlord Vision is accounting and property management software, priced from £21.97 plus VAT a month for four tenancies. LLCR is a compliance evidence record, free for one property and £19 a month for five. They solve different problems, and most landlords who compare them end up running both rather than choosing.

This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Landlords should seek independent legal advice for their specific circumstances. It describes the position in England. Pricing was verified from each provider's published pages on 22 September 2026 and changes without notice.

What each platform is actually built around

Landlord Vision is built around the books. Its core is a double entry accounting engine with bank feeds via Open Banking, a reporting suite covering profit and loss, balance sheet, aged receivables and capital gains, and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax submissions included on every plan at no extra cost. Compliance management sits inside that platform as a reminder and document module.

LLCR is built around a different question: if a council officer, a tribunal, or a judge asked you today to show what was in place and when, what could you produce? Certificate tracking, a fingerprinted and chained activity log, proof of service records, the Compliance Defence Pack, and the Section 8 and rent increase notice builders all exist to answer that one question.

The practical distinction is between a reminder and a record. A reminder tells you the gas certificate expires in 30 days. A record shows, months later, what the certificate said, when it was uploaded, when it was served, and that nothing was altered afterwards.

Verified pricing at September 2026

Two things about that table matter more than the headline numbers.

First, Landlord Vision was running heavy introductory discounting when this was written, with Starter advertised at £7.99 a month against a £21.97 standard price under a two year price guarantee. Compare the standard rate, not the promotional rate, if you are modelling a five year cost.

Second, the billing units differ. Landlord Vision counts active tenancies, so an HMO let room by room counts every tenancy separately. LLCR counts properties, so an eight room HMO is one property. For HMO landlords this is the single largest cost difference between the two, and it runs in LLCR's favour by a wide margin.

Where Landlord Vision is genuinely stronger

This is not a close call, and pretending otherwise would be useless to you.

• Accounting. Landlord Vision has a real ledger with journal entries, a trial balance, VAT support on the Enterprise plan, and a Xero integration. LLCR has rent tracking built for possession evidence, not bookkeeping, and no general ledger at all.
• Making Tax Digital. MTD for Income Tax became mandatory from April 2026 for landlords whose combined trading and property income exceeded £50,000, with the threshold falling in later years. Landlord Vision includes MTD submissions on every tier. LLCR does not file anything with HMRC and does not attempt to.
• Rent collection and tenant facing tools. Direct debit collection, a tenant portal, a tenant service desk, e-signatures and mail merge are all in Landlord Vision's higher tiers.
• Financial reporting. Yields, cash flow, mortgage broker summaries and capital gains reporting are a genuine strength if you are actively trading a portfolio.
• Support model. Every plan includes a free onboarding call and unlimited UK phone support.

If your problem is that your books are a mess and April's quarterly update is coming, Landlord Vision solves that and LLCR does not.

Where LLCR is stronger

• Evidence integrity. Every change in LLCR is fingerprinted and chained, so an altered record breaks the chain, and the history is independently timestamped each day. That is a materially different claim from storing a PDF in a folder.
• Possession readiness. Section 21 was abolished in England on 1 May 2026 by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. Every possession claim now runs through Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988, and the compliance history is the first thing scrutinised. LLCR builds the Form 3A notice, holds proof of service, and exports a Court-Ready Rent Ledger PDF.
• Exportable defence bundles. The Compliance Defence Pack produces an indexed evidence bundle for one property in one action. Nothing comparable exists in a general property management platform.
• Hazard and disrepair records. The Issue Register timestamps reported repairs and hazards, and where an HHSRS type is set it exports a Hazard Response Pack, kept separate from the Compliance Defence Pack.
• Risk visibility in money terms. LLCR totals the civil penalty ceiling across a portfolio from the records held. An EICR that has not been renewed within its five year interval can attract a civil penalty of up to £40,000 under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, and the amount is set by the local authority on the facts.
• Cost at one property. LLCR's free plan carries the full platform for one active property, including the Document Vault and the Compliance Defence Pack. Landlord Vision has no free tier.

Does Landlord Vision's compliance module cover it?

Landlord Vision does include compliance management on every plan, and its reminders work. For a landlord who wants to be told before a gas certificate lapses, that module is adequate.

Where it stops is at the evidential layer. Storing a certificate and reminding you of a date is not the same as being able to demonstrate, at a hearing or during a council investigation, the sequence in which documents were held and served and that the record has not been changed since. That is the specific gap LLCR was built to fill, and it is why the honest answer to "which one" is usually "both, for different reasons".

Worked cost at five properties

A landlord with five single lets who wants proper books and a defensible compliance record pays roughly this:

Set that against the exposure. One EICR breach carries a civil penalty of up to £40,000, and a possession claim that fails on a compliance point costs court fees, legal costs, and months of continued arrears. The combined subscription is not the expensive number on the page.

When one platform is enough

Being straight about this matters more than the sale.

• One property, simple finances, no MTD obligation. LLCR's free plan on its own is a reasonable position, with a spreadsheet for the figures.
• Serious accounting need, low compliance risk, agent managed properties. Landlord Vision on its own is defensible, although the landlord usually remains legally responsible for compliance even where an agent arranges the certificates.
• HMOs. Check the tenancy counting basis carefully before committing to per tenancy pricing.

For a fuller view of the market, see the comparison of landlord compliance software for the Renters' Rights Act era and the ranked roundup of compliance platforms for 2026. If you want the feature level detail on the compliance side, what LLCR does across a portfolio sets it out, and the evidence page explains how the audit trail is constructed.

If you already use Landlord Vision, the quickest way to see whether an evidence gap exists is the free compliance checker. It takes about two minutes, needs no account, and shows where certificate records are incomplete before a council or a court finds it first.