50 small business ideas you can start in the UK (with startup costs in £)

Most lists of small business ideas UK founders actually search for are padded with nonsense like “become an influencer”. This one isn’t. Below are 50 ideas grouped by theme, each with a one-line reality check and an honest startup cost band in pounds. The registration facts were checked on 7 August 2026 against GOV.UK and the Food Standards Agency; the cost bands are our estimates for starting lean from home, and your postcode and ambition will move them.

Before you pick: the two facts that make starting cheap

First, being a sole trader costs nothing. You only need to register for Self Assessment with HMRC once you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year — until then you can legally test an idea without telling anyone. Second, if you want a limited company instead, registering online with Companies House costs £100 and is usually done within 24 hours (both checked 7 August 2026 on GOV.UK). So the real startup cost of every idea below is kit and stock, not paperwork.

The cost bands used throughout: under £100, £100–£500, £500–£2,000, and £2,000+.

Sell products online (ideas 1–9)

These are the ideas where an online shop is the business — more on that thread at the end.

• 1. Candle making — £100–£500. Wax, wicks, fragrance oils and CLP-compliant labels. High perceived value, small margins per unit until you batch properly. Our candle business guide covers the safety labelling that trips people up.
• 2. Print on demand — under £100. A supplier prints and ships your designs on t-shirts and mugs when an order lands, so you hold no stock. Thin margins, zero waste. See our UK print-on-demand guide for suppliers that print here rather than shipping from the US.
• 3. Handmade jewellery — £100–£500. Small, light, cheap to post, easy to photograph at home. Crowded, so a recognisable style matters more than more products. The jewellery business guide covers hallmarking rules.
• 4. Soap and bath bombs — £100–£500. Every cosmetic recipe needs a safety assessment (CPSR) before you can sell it, which is most of the band. After that, ingredients are cheap.
• 5. Bakes and pantry goods by post — under £200. Brownies, fudge, hot sauce, jam. Registering your food business with the council is free, can’t be refused, and must be done at least 28 days before you trade. Full rules in our selling food online guide.
• 6. A clothing brand — £500–£2,000. Blank garments plus local printing or embroidery. Start with one product you’d actually wear; dying brands are the ones that launched twelve.
• 7. Dropshipping — £100–£500. Supplier holds and ships the stock. Honest version: margins are thin, returns are your problem, and UK-based suppliers beat three-week China shipping every time.
• 8. Vintage and secondhand reselling — £100–£500. Source at car boots and charity shops, sell on eBay and Vinted, then move your best buyers to your own site where there are no marketplace fees on the relationship.
• 9. Personalised gifts — £500–£2,000. A craft cutter or small laser engraver, then names on everything. Peaks hard at Christmas — plan cash flow for the quiet spring.

Services people pay for every month (ideas 10–18)

Lowest startup costs on this page, and recurring customers if you’re reliable.

• 10. Domestic cleaning — under £100. Products, insurance, and turning up when you said you would. Recurring weekly revenue from day one.
• 11. Gardening and lawn care — £500–£2,000. Mower, strimmer, hedge trimmer, and a way to move them. Seasonal, so pair with something winter-proof.
• 12. Dog walking and pet sitting — under £100. Insurance and a DBS check reassure owners. Midday group walks stack well.
• 13. Window cleaning — £500–£2,000. A water-fed pole system pays for itself on a dense round of houses close together.
• 14. Handyman services — £100–£500 if you own tools. Small jobs tradespeople won’t quote for: shelves, flat-pack, sealant, doors. Word of mouth does the marketing.
• 15. Tutoring — under £100. GCSE and A-level maths, science and English are perennial. Online widens your catchment beyond your bus route.
• 16. Mobile car valeting — £500–£2,000. Pressure washer, extractor, water tank. Driveway-to-driveway beats renting a unit.
• 17. Virtual assistant — under £100. Inbox, diary, invoicing and admin for founders drowning in it. Sell packages of hours, not odd jobs.
• 18. Bookkeeping — £100–£500. Software plus training, and you’ll need money-laundering supervision (via HMRC or a professional body) to practise. Boring, essential, recurring.

Food and drink (ideas 19–26)

Everything here needs that free council registration 28 days before trading, plus a food hygiene course.

• 19. Celebration cakes from home — under £200. Your kitchen gets a hygiene inspection and a rating, then you’re legitimate. Instagram is the shop window.
• 20. Market stall or street food — £2,000+. Gazebo or trailer, kit, pitch fees, and a killer single dish. The best product-testing lab there is.
• 21. Coffee cart — £2,000+. Decent used espresso kit is most of it. Location is the entire business: stations, markets, events.
• 22. Meal prep — £500–£2,000. Weekly macro-counted meals for gym-goers, delivered locally. Subscriptions make revenue predictable.
• 23. Hot sauce, jam and preserves — £100–£500. Shelf-stable, giftable, posts cheaply. Get labelling right first time: ingredients, allergens in bold, weight, your address.
• 24. Private chef and supper clubs — £100–£500. Dinner parties in other people’s kitchens. Charge properly; you are the venue’s entire kitchen brigade.
• 25. Brownies-by-post — £100–£500. Letterbox-sized food gifts are a proven repeat-purchase category. Stand out with flavour, not another kraft box.
• 26. Dog treat bakery — £100–£500. Owners spend on pets in any economy. Pet food has its own labelling and registration rules — check them with your local trading standards before launch.

Creative and handmade (ideas 27–34)

• 27. Freelance graphic design — under £100. If you have the skill, you have the business. Niche down: menus for restaurants, labels for food brands.
• 28. Wedding stationery — £100–£500. High emotional stakes, long lead times, brilliant margins on paper. One styled shoot fills a portfolio.
• 29. Furniture upcycling — £100–£500. Facebook Marketplace finds, paint, new hardware, triple the price. Delivery logistics are the hard bit.
• 30. Pottery and ceramics — £100–£500 via a studio membership. Kiln access through a shared studio first; buy your own (£2,000+) once sales justify it.
• 31. Illustration and art prints — under £200. Print small runs locally or print on demand. Sell the same artwork ten ways: prints, cards, calendars.
• 32. Photography — £500–£2,000 used. Weddings pay best, brand photography for small businesses is steadier. Used kit is fine; nobody hires the camera.
• 33. Crochet and knitwear — under £100. Materials are cheap; your hours aren’t. Price them in honestly or you’ve built a hobby that loses money.
• 34. Videography for small businesses — £500–£2,000. Every local firm knows it needs video and nobody in-house can make it. Short packages, fixed prices.

Local and practical (ideas 35–42)

• 35. Man with a van — £2,000+. The van is the cost; goods-in-transit insurance is the must. eBay collections, small moves, student season.
• 36. Pressure washing — £500–£2,000. Driveways and patios. Before-and-after photos posted locally are the whole marketing plan.
• 37. Mobile hairdressing or barbering — £100–£500 if qualified. No chair rent, no salon cut. Regulars on a six-week cycle are the asset.
• 38. Ironing and laundry — under £100. Unglamorous, recurring, and you already own the iron. Collection and drop-off wins the customer.
• 39. Holiday-let changeovers — under £100. Cleaning, linen and restocking between Airbnb guests. Owners will pay well for someone who never cancels on a Saturday.
• 40. Children’s party entertainment — £100–£500. Face painting, games, balloon modelling. Weekend-only by nature, so it stacks with a weekday idea.
• 41. Bike repair — £100–£500. Tools plus a workstand in the shed. E-bike servicing demand is only going one way.
• 42. House clearance — £2,000+. Van, tip fees, and waste carrier registration with the Environment Agency. The stock you keep feeds idea 8.

Digital and online-only (ideas 43–50)

• 43. Social media management — under £100. Local firms will pay monthly for someone to just consistently post. Retainers beat one-offs.
• 44. Web design for local businesses — under £100. Thousands of UK trades still have no site or a 2014 one. Fixed-price packages sell better than day rates.
• 45. SEO and content freelancing — under £100. Learn by ranking one small site, then sell the case study, not the theory.
• 46. Digital products — under £100. Templates, planners, guides: make once, sell forever, no postage. Slow to first sale, lovely after.
• 47. A niche newsletter — under £100. Free to start, monetised by sponsors once the audience is real. Honest timeline: months, not weeks.
• 48. Podcast editing — £100–£500. Hosts hate editing. Reliable turnaround wins clients who stay for years.
• 49. AI workflow consulting — under £100. Small firms want the admin-saving bits of AI without the hype. Demonstrate one working automation and you’re hired.
• 50. UGC creation for brands — £100–£500. Short product videos brands run as ads. A phone, a lighting kit, and a portfolio of three unpaid examples gets you started.

The quick-scan version

Half of these business ideas need an online shop

Roughly half the list — everything in the products, food and creative sections, plus digital products — needs somewhere to sell that isn’t just a marketplace taking a cut of every order. Our step-by-step pillar guide, how to start an online store in the UK, walks through the whole thing: registering, picking products, building the shop, taking payments, first sales.

Full disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, a UK-based ecommerce platform, so we would say that — but the Solo plan is £25/month with unlimited products, a drag-and-drop page builder, and free Amazon, eBay and Etsy plugins, which covers every product idea on this page. The 14-day trial needs no card, so testing idea 1, 2, 3 or 5 costs you a weekend, not a subscription.

Questions people ask us about small business ideas in the UK

What is the easiest business to start in the UK?

A service you can already do — cleaning, tutoring, dog walking, virtual assistance. Startup costs are under £100, there’s no stock, and you don’t need to register with HMRC until you’ve earned over £1,000 in a tax year, so you can take your first paying customer this week.

How much money do I need to start a small business in the UK?

Less than most people think. Being a sole trader is free, a limited company costs £100 to register online (checked 7 August 2026 on GOV.UK), and around 20 of the 50 ideas here start for under £100. The realistic range for most home-based product businesses is £100–£500 for materials, labels and insurance.

Do I need to register my business before I start selling?

Not immediately, in most cases: you register for Self Assessment once you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year. The big exception is food — you must register with your local council at least 28 days before trading. It’s free and can’t be refused, but skipping it can mean a fine or worse.

What are the best small business ideas in the UK for 2026?

The ones with recurring revenue and low fixed costs: subscription-friendly products (candles, coffee, pet treats, brownies-by-post), monthly services (cleaning, bookkeeping, social media retainers), and digital products with no postage at all. Pick the overlap between what you can genuinely do well and what people already pay for locally.

Pick one and start this month

Fifty ideas is forty-nine too many to act on. Choose the one that fits the money you have and the hours you can protect, spend a weekend on it, and get one real customer before you buy anything else. If your idea involves selling products, start your free 14-day Orbit trial — no card needed — and see our pricing when you’re ready to go live.