Yes, it is legitimate. £1.99 is a cost floor set by what the service costs to run, not a signal of a cut-price document. The tools run entirely in your browser, so there is very little to fund: no per-user servers, no accounts, and nothing you type into a document is harvested or sold[1]. A low cost to run becomes a low price to you, so you pay pennies for a single document instead of signing up to a subscription.
Why is £1.99 the minimum, not a cut-price signal?
Efficiency sets the number. Your payslip, receipt, or invoice is generated on your own device, so the running cost is close to zero and the price can be close to zero too. The £1.99 floor keeps the site sustainable without either usual alternative: charging a monthly subscription for a document you need once, or making it "free" and funding it by harvesting and selling your data. The final PDF is identical whatever you pay, so £1.99 buys exactly the same document as £4.99.
What the £1.99 floor pays for, and what it avoids
| Common model | How it is funded | The £1.99 pay-what-is-fair floor |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | A recurring charge whether or not you make a document that month | One-off payment per document; nothing renews |
| "Free" generator | Ads, or collecting and selling the data you enter | No ads; nothing you type leaves your device, so there is no data to sell |
| Paywall before you see the result | You pay before you can check the document is right | Free draft first; you proofread every field, then pay only for the final PDF |
Proofread free, pay only for the final PDF
Every generator produces a full free draft so you can check each figure and field before spending anything. Payment unlocks the final, ready-to-use PDF, and £1.99 is simply the lowest amount that keeps the tool running. Paying more is optional and helps keep the service ad-free, subscription-free, and privacy-first: the details you enter into a document are never harvested and never sold, a data-minimisation posture in the spirit of the principles[2] the ICO[2] and the Data Protection Act 2018[3] set out. The limited operational data the service does handle, such as payment processing and cookieless analytics, is set out in the privacy posture; see the full pricing page for the pricing detail.
Primary sources
- 1.Data protection: the UK GDPR principles — gov.uk — Plain-English overview of UK data-protection duties, including collecting only the data you need
- 2.A guide to the data protection principles — ICO — Data minimisation: personal data must be adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary
- 3.Data Protection Act 2018 — legislation.gov.uk — The UK statute that sits alongside the UK GDPR
Editorial process: how we source and review UK tax content.