What UK companies actually pay for their debt
The middle half of UK companies carrying a registered charge pay between 5.54% and 10.83% on their borrowed money. The median is 7.68%. Those figures are not surveyed and not estimated: they are each company’s own finance cost divided by its own average debt, read from its own filed accounts.
The Bank of England publishes one number. Borrowing does not happen at one number.
The Bank publishes the effective interest rate on new lending to small and medium-sized businesses every month. In April 2026 it was 6.16%, a spread of 234 basis points over Bank Rate. It is a careful figure and it is the best published source there is, but it is a single mean of new lending across every business under £25m of turnover, which puts a village retailer and a £24m-turnover manufacturer in the same average. It carries no dispersion, so it cannot tell any individual borrower whether they sit above it or below it, and by how much.
That is the gap this benchmark fills. Every UK company that borrows against a charge files accounts, and those accounts carry the two numbers needed to work out what the borrowing cost: the interest paid, and the debt it was paid on. Doing that arithmetic across the register produces a distribution rather than an average, and the distribution is the part a borrower can act on.
5.54% to 10.83%
The middle half of UK companies with a registered charge, by realised cost of debt. Median 7.68%, from 631 companies' filed accounts as at 6 September 2026.
Source · Companies House filed accounts and register of charges. Solon Corporate Finance.
What the range looks like, against the single published mean.
| Rate band | Companies |
|---|---|
| 0.5–1.0% | 11 |
| 1.0–1.5% | 8 |
| 1.5–2.0% | 15 |
| 2.0–2.5% | 10 |
| 2.5–3.0% | 14 |
| 3.0–3.5% | 9 |
| 3.5–4.0% | 17 |
| 4.0–4.5% | 25 |
| 4.5–5.0% | 19 |
| 5.0–5.5% | 27 |
| 5.5–6.0% | 28 |
| 6.0–6.5% | 31 |
| 6.5–7.0% | 40 |
| 7.0–7.5% | 43 |
| 7.5–8.0% | 49 |
| 8.0–8.5% | 23 |
| 8.5–9.0% | 35 |
| 9.0–9.5% | 26 |
| 9.5–10.0% | 22 |
| 10.0–10.5% | 17 |
| 10.5–11.0% | 11 |
| 11.0–11.5% | 14 |
| 11.5–12.0% | 14 |
| 12.0–12.5% | 10 |
| 12.5–13.0% | 10 |
| 13.0–13.5% | 7 |
| 13.5–14.0% | 6 |
| 14.0–14.5% | 10 |
| 14.5–15.0% | 12 |
| 15.0–15.5% | 5 |
| 15.5–16.0% | 10 |
| 16.0% and above | 53 |
The shaded band is the middle half of companies. The dashed rule is the Bank of England's effective rate on new SME lending, the only published UK comparator, which is a mean of a different population and a different thing: new lending rather than the existing stock.
Source · Companies House filed accounts and register of charges, Companies House bulk register, July 2026 snapshot; accounts read September 2026; Bank of England, Money and Credit (April 2026). Solon Corporate Finance.
These figures are counted from filed accounts, not surveyed. They are floors on a prioritised sample of UK companies that carry a registered charge, not a census of UK business borrowing. Inclusion depends on the availability and comparability of financial disclosures. Small and micro-entity companies and the largest groups are under-represented.
Where does your rate sit?
Compare the stated pricing of a facility with the matching disclosed margin or fixed-coupon series. Floating facilities are ranked on their margin, not against the realised cost of historic debt. It runs entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent anywhere, logged, or seen by us.
The current reference is Bank Rate 3.75%, as at 22 September 2026; enter the margin only. Do not add arrangement fees, OID, exit fees or other annualised costs: this check compares the stated coupon or margin, not a total cost of debt.
The gap between the quartiles is worth £264,500 a year on a £5m facility.
The distance from the lower quartile to the upper is 5.29 percentage points. On a £5m facility that is £264,500 of interest a year, and £1,322,500 over a five-year term. It is the same money whether it is paid or not, and it is the reason the dispersion matters more than the average.
Not all of that gap is recoverable. Some of it is credit: a company with thin cover, no security and a patchy record pays more because it should. But some of it is process, and process is the part a borrower controls. A facility that has rolled with the same bank for three renewals has never been tested against the market, and the price of never being tested does not show up anywhere except here.
£264,500
Annual interest difference on a £5m facility between the lower quartile (5.54%) and the upper quartile (10.83%) of the benchmark.
Source · Solon Corporate Finance, from companies house filed accounts and register of charges.
What the borrowings notes disclose: a median margin of 2.65% over the reference rate.
The second reading is simpler and more precise. Some companies state their price in words in the notes to their accounts: a loan for £487,500 bearing interest at 2.58% above base rate, bank loans subject to interest at 4.75% above SONIA for the term loan facility. Where a borrowings note says that, it is not an estimate of anything. It is the margin, in the company’s own filing.
Across 1,203 such disclosures from 1,798 companies, the median margin is 2.65% over the reference rate, with the middle half between 2.06% and 3.50%.
That is the number worth holding on to. At a Bank Rate of 3.75%, a median margin of 2.65% implies an all-in rate of about 6.40%. The Bank of England’s own figure for new SME lending is 6.16%. Two readings built from entirely different evidence, one from the words of thousands of filed borrowings notes and one from bank regulatory returns, land 24 basis points apart. Neither was built to check the other, which is what makes the agreement worth something.
2.65%
Median disclosed margin over a named reference rate, from 1,203 statements in filed borrowings notes. Middle half 2.06% to 3.50%.
Source · Companies House filed accounts and register of charges. Solon Corporate Finance.
The margin, by the rate it is quoted over.
| Category | Companies | 10th percentile (%) | Lower quartile (%) | Median (%) | Upper quartile (%) | 90th percentile (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Over SONIA | 158 | 0.90 | 1.40 | 2.90 | 4.50 | 6.02 |
| Over Bank Rate / base rate | 980 | 1.75 | 2.10 | 2.60 | 3.50 | 4.25 |
| Over LIBOR (legacy) | 44 | 1.78 | 2.11 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.09 |
A margin only means something against its reference, and the lower-mid-market has not moved to SONIA the way the syndicated market has: 980 of these margins are quoted over Bank Rate or a bank's base rate against 158 over SONIA. Where LIBOR still appears it is a legacy facility that has not been repapered.
Source · Companies House filed accounts and register of charges. Solon Corporate Finance.
The margin, by what is being borrowed.
| Category | Companies | 10th percentile (%) | Lower quartile (%) | Median (%) | Upper quartile (%) | 90th percentile (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Term loan | 73 | 1.50 | 1.85 | 2.40 | 3.25 | 4.23 |
| Revolving credit facility | 40 | 2.07 | 2.43 | 3.50 | 4.25 | 5.10 |
| Overdraft | 92 | 1.75 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.78 |
| Property-secured loan | 70 | 1.71 | 2.02 | 2.44 | 3.00 | 4.08 |
| Asset finance and hire purchase | 203 | 1.70 | 2.10 | 2.50 | 3.25 | 4.00 |
| Invoice finance | 34 | 1.80 | 2.00 | 2.37 | 3.00 | 3.25 |
| Government-backed (CBILS / RLS / BBLS) | 85 | 1.95 | 2.34 | 2.81 | 3.99 | 4.25 |
Facility type is read from the words around the rate in the same note, so these are the facilities that describe themselves. An overdraft priced at four points over base and a property loan at two are the same market behaving rationally about security, not a mispricing.
Source · Companies House filed accounts and register of charges. Solon Corporate Finance.
A disclosed margin and a realised cost of debt are not the same measure and the page does not blend them. The margin is what the facility is priced at. The realised cost is what the year’s interest came to across every borrowing the company carries, which is why it reads higher: it includes arrangement fees written off over the term, asset finance and hire purchase at their own rates, and any legacy borrowing struck when Bank Rate was higher.
What you make, and how big you are.
Sector decides what a facility can be secured on. A manufacturer with plant, stock and a debtor book has asset-based options a services business does not, and a services business is judged almost entirely on how durable its earnings look through a cycle. Size decides who will look at all: below a certain facility the cost of running a proper credit process is more than the margin earns back, so the choice of lender narrows and price follows.
Realised cost of debt, by sector.
| Category | Companies | 10th percentile (%) | Lower quartile (%) | Median (%) | Upper quartile (%) | 90th percentile (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale and distribution | 151 | 2.43 | 5.79 | 7.78 | 11.44 | 15.86 |
| Manufacturing | 250 | 3.64 | 5.49 | 7.65 | 10.71 | 15.83 |
| Business-to-business services | 230 | 3.67 | 5.54 | 7.60 | 10.28 | 14.47 |
Three business-to-business sector groups, so these are comparisons within that scope rather than the sector composition of UK borrowing.
Source · Companies House filed accounts and register of charges. Solon Corporate Finance.
One category is held back for now: Small (4 companies). A median needs 30 companies behind it before it means anything, and these will publish as the read of the register continues.
How the benchmark is built.
The benchmark draws on Companies House filed accounts and the register of charges. We reviewed 41,250 companies’ latest accounts, comparing reported finance costs with average interest-bearing debt and analysing disclosed borrowing margins.
No figure is published off fewer than 30 observations. Rates below 0.5% or above 25% are excluded as not being the price of anything, as are companies whose debt moved by more than 60% across the year, because an average of a balance that halved is not a balance the year’s interest was paid on. The published percentiles are trimmed at the 2.5th and 97.5th to stop one distressed borrower moving a headline.
The full method, every gate with the count it removed, and the reasons a company drops out are set out in the method and limits. To discuss access to the underlying dataset,request the dataset. Leave your email and intended use; we will review your request and get back to you.
What this cannot tell you.
It cannot tell you what you should be paying. Price follows credit, and credit is leverage, cover, security, sector, the quality of the numbers and the record of the management, none of which a filing shows in the round. A company at the top of this range may be correctly priced and a company at the bottom may be about to be repriced. The distribution tells you where you stand among your peers. It does not tell you what your own bank would do if it were asked to compete, and that is the only question with money in it.
This is a sample, not a census. Inclusion depends on the available financial disclosures. Small and micro-entity companies and the largest groups are under-represented, so the results should not be treated as representative of all UK borrowing.
Nothing on this page is advice, an offer, or an invitation to borrow. It is a reading of the public record, published because the reading is useful and because nobody else publishes it.
The only way to find out what your price should be is to test it.
A facility that has rolled with the same lender through three renewals has never been priced against anything. Testing it does not mean moving: most of the value in a debt process is captured by the incumbent improving its own terms once it knows somebody else is looking. What a process buys is the information that this page can only gesture at, which is what the rest of the market would do with your credit.
We run that process for UK companies raising between £3m and £15m, and we say plainly when the answer is that the incumbent’s offer is fair and you should stay. If you want your own facility read against this benchmark properly, with your leverage, security and covenants in the frame, tell us what you are paying and we will tell you what we think.