Data · Companies House
How much cash does the typical UK company hold?
Draft, not published
The median UK company filing accounts at Companies House held £12,327 in cash at its balance sheet date. That is from 3,347 companies in our sample with cash tagged. Set against what those companies owe, the median company's cash covered 48% of the creditors due within one year, and 20.6% had £1,000 or less in the bank.
The UK-wide figures
| Measure | UK-wide | Companies in this figure |
|---|---|---|
| With negative net cash (cash plus debtors, less creditors due within one year, below zero) | 37.2% | 1,615 |
| In net current liabilities (net current assets below zero) | 37.3% | 6,424 |
| Holding less cash than the creditors due within one year | 63.8% | 2,311 |
| Median cash as a share of creditors due within one year | 48% | 2,249 |
| With £1,000 or less in the bank at the balance sheet date | 20.6% | 3,347 |
| Median cash at the balance sheet date | £12,327 | 3,347 |
Cash held, by sector
Ordered by median cash at the balance sheet date. Both columns share one denominator: the companies in that sector which tagged cash.
| Sector | Median cash | With £1,000 or less | Companies in this figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | £31,154 | 14.4% | 146 |
| Health and social care | £22,925 | 16.0% | 163 |
| Accommodation and food service (hospitality) | £17,218 | 14.6% | 157 |
| Construction | £14,882 | 18.8% | 431 |
| Professional, scientific and technical services | £14,681 | 18.9% | 435 |
| Retail, wholesale and motor trade | £14,254 | 19.2% | 412 |
| Financial services | £14,054 | 30.9% | 136 |
| Information and communication | £13,984 | 24.4% | 242 |
| Administrative and support services | £11,940 | 24.0% | 250 |
| Transport and logistics | £8,183 | 30.2% | 96 |
| Real estate | £7,938 | 18.9% | 466 |
| Other service activities | £7,207 | 23.0% | 139 |
Reading these numbers
A median is the middle company, which makes £12,327 a more honest answer than an average would be: a handful of large balances cannot pull it upwards. Read it as the middle of the filing population. The sample is companies that filed accounts in June and July 2026, and it is dominated by small companies, which file balance-sheet-only accounts, with micro and dormant entities included. We did not filter it by turnover, headcount or company size, because the filings do not reliably carry those fields, so this is not a measured small-business figure.
The size of the balance is the least useful part of the answer on its own. The same £12,327 means one thing against a small near-term bill and another against a large one, which is why the next row matters more: the median company's cash covers 48% of the creditors falling due within a year, from the 2,249 companies with both figures tagged and creditors above zero, and 63.8% of companies hold less cash than those creditors. Then the tail: 20.6% had £1,000 or less at the balance sheet date. What that means for any one of them depends on what it owes and when, which the filings do not say.
Across sectors the middle balance ranges from £7,207 to £31,154. If you want the figure that applies to you rather than to the population, it is your own cash set against your own due dates, this week rather than at year end.
Where these numbers come from. The Companies House monthly accounts bulk product, which is free and public, for accounts filed in June and July 2026. Dataset 2026-08: 10,000 filings randomly sampled (seed-reproducible), 6,863 with usable iXBRL facts; SIC joined from BasicCompanyDataAsOneFile-2026-08-01. Balance sheet facts were read from the filings themselves; each figure carries its own count of companies, because companies do not all tag the same fields.
Small companies file balance-sheet-only accounts with no profit and loss, so nothing on this page describes cover over time. Every claim here is cash against what is owed. Full method, definitions and caveats.
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