There is no free, maintained pawn shop or gold buying system that meets UK requirements. What "free pawn shop software" actually turns up, as of August 2026, is four things: free trials of paid US products (Moneywell, Bravo, the product sold at pawn-software.com); one US vendor, PawnSmarts, that drops its software charge to $0 if you route card payments through it; a handful of open-source projects on GitHub, none of them maintained or built for UK law; and spreadsheets. None of them knows what a Consumer Credit Act pawn receipt is, what CONC 6.6 requires you to record, how to word a reverse-charge invoice to a refiner, or when cash takings hit the £10,000 High Value Dealer line. A spreadsheet is free on day one; the cost arrives with the first FCA return, VAT inspection or lost pledge.

What is actually free

Option What is free What it costs after that Built for UK pawn rules (CCA 1974, CONC 6.6) UK VAT (reverse charge, margin scheme) HVD cash monitoring Xero / Sage export
PawnSmarts (pawn-software.com) Live demo with no card; "use PawnSmarts integrated credit-card processing and the software charge can drop to $0" $89/month Essential, $129/month Professional, or $2,995 one-time; $295 data conversion. US and Canada only, "48 states pre-configured" US pawn shops No No No Not stated
Pawnbroker Pawn Shop Software (PPSS) Free trial per Capterra; "free version not included" From $495 one-time per user per Capterra; the vendor's domain now sells PawnSmarts US pawn shops No No No Not stated
Moneywell Free trial; no free version From $79/month per Capterra US pawn, thrift, metal buyers, scrap yards No No No Not stated
Bravo Store Systems Free trial per Capterra; no free version Contact vendor; third-party estimates $100-$150 per user per month US pawn, gun and jewellery retail No No No Not stated
PawnMaster (now sold by Bravo) No free trial or free version per Capterra From $150/month per Capterra; implementation quoted separately US pawn No No No Not stated
Open-source pawn projects (GitHub) Code Your developer's time; hosting; no support Finnish, Philippine, academic and Odoo experiments No No No No
Google Sheets / Excel The software Your time; errors; no audit trail Anything, badly Only what you build Only what you build Only what you build CSV
Milleso - our product, so weigh this row accordingly One month free, then paid Counter £99/month, Trade £249/month, ex VAT; migration done for you UK gold buyers, jewellers, watch dealers; the buying and retail side of a pawnbroker Not the pledge ledger - no FCA loan book Yes: reverse charge at intake, margin scheme, three regimes in one sale Yes: linked cash totals against £10,000 Yes

All prices as published on 19 August 2026 and linked in the sources. US prices are in dollars because nobody in that column publishes a sterling price or addresses the UK at all.

Is there a genuinely free pawn system?

No. The closest is PawnSmarts, whose own pricing page says the software charge "can drop to $0" if you use its integrated card processing - which is to say the software is paid for out of the processing margin on your card sales, and the page is explicit that it is configured for 48 US states with US and Canada licensing guides (PawnSmarts pricing). The same site's "free pawnshop software" page says it plainly: "There is no complete, compliant pawn program that's truly free" (pawn-software.com). That is a vendor talking its own book, but on this point it is right.

The other US products offer trials, not tiers. Capterra lists Moneywell at $79 a month with a free trial and no free version, Bravo as "contact vendor" with a trial, and PawnMaster at $150 a month with neither (Capterra: Moneywell, Bravo, PawnMaster). PPSS, the name most UK searches for "free pawn software" still surface, is listed at $495 one-time with a trial and no free version (Capterra: PPSS); its vendor's domain now sells PawnSmarts on a subscription.

Open source exists in the sense that code exists. GitHub has a pawnshop application written for a Finnish pawnbroker, an Odoo module, a Java "prenda" system from the Philippines and a WPF thesis project. None is maintained, none has UK pawn receipts or notices, and none has a support line. With a developer on staff they are a starting point; without one they are a repository, not software.

What does a spreadsheet miss for a UK pawnbroker?

Quite a lot, and every item is a rule rather than a preference.

The pawn receipt. Section 114 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 requires a receipt in the prescribed form for every pledge (CCA 1974, Part VIII). A spreadsheet does not print one.

The records. CONC 6.6.3R requires a record of every article taken in pawn, redeemed or sold; CONC 6.6.7R lists what the record must contain (customer, address, description, credit, end of the redemption period, rate); CONC 6.6.9R requires the sale record to show the surplus and the date it was paid; CONC 6.6.6R requires retention for five years from the pawn or three years after sale (FCA Handbook, CONC 6.6). A sheet can hold these columns. It cannot stop someone overwriting them.

The clock. Six months' minimum redemption (section 116); property passing to you at £75 or less (section 120); 14 days' notice of intention to sell where credit exceeds £100; the sale report within 20 working days; the surplus. The FCA's 2018 sector review found firms that had returned less than half the surplus owed, and put the harm at about £1 million a year (FCA pawnbroking sector review). The failure mode was not dishonesty so much as nobody being prompted.

The returns. An FCA-authorised consumer credit firm files regulatory returns through the FCA's reporting system on a schedule. The figures come from the pledge book. A spreadsheet produces them once, by hand, per return.

Everything in this section is the lending side. None of the US products in the table handles it for the UK either; they handle it for Texas.

What does a spreadsheet miss for a UK gold buyer?

The reverse charge. When the scrap lot goes to a refiner at metal value between two VAT-registered businesses, the invoice must carry the wording from section 11 of VAT Notice 701/21 and must not add the VAT to the total. A sale to the public of a piece you kept is a margin scheme sale under VAT Notice 718. An unredeemed pledge is a margin scheme sale only if the loan was £75 or less and the statutory period applied, with the purchase price defined as the redemption amount (Notice 718, section 18); above £75 you are selling on the pledgor's behalf and the margin scheme is not available. Three VAT treatments can arise from one customer in one visit, and a spreadsheet applies none of them. See do I charge VAT on scrap gold.

The cash line. Cash of £10,000 or more for goods, in one payment or linked payments, makes you a High Value Dealer who must be registered with HMRC before taking the money - a flat £10,000 since 30 June 2026 (HMRC ECSH51525). The obligation turns on a running total per customer. A sheet can sum a column; nobody checks it at the counter.

The purchase record. Weight, fineness, spot used, price paid, test method, the seller's identity and the melt-or-keep decision, per item, retained for six years for VAT. Recoverable from a sheet if it was entered; a sheet has no intake step to make sure it was.

Serialised stock. A pledge, a purchased ring and a repair on the bench are each one object with one history. A SKU-and-quantity spreadsheet loses that the moment two 9ct rings arrive on the same day.

What does free actually cost?

Work it out per year rather than per licence.

  • Staff time. A counter doing 30 transactions a day and re-keying each into a sheet, a receipt template and a cash book spends, at ten minutes a transaction, 25 hours a week. At £13 an hour that is about £17,000 a year in wages spent on typing.
  • One VAT error. A scrap lot invoiced to a refiner with VAT added, or a kept piece sold outside the margin scheme, is an assessment risk of 20% on the sale plus interest. One lot of 200 g of 18ct at August 2026 prices is about £15,000 of metal.
  • One missed surplus or notice. The FCA's review put the sector's surplus failures at £1 million a year and treated expenses of sale of 20% as hard to justify. A firm found to have a pattern has an enforcement problem, not a bookkeeping one.
  • One lost pledge. An item the sheet says is in safe A that is not in safe A.
  • Migration later. Every vendor in the table charges for data conversion (PawnSmarts: $295) or does it as part of onboarding. The longer the spreadsheet runs, the worse the data it contains.

Against that, a paid system at £80 to £250 a month is a rounding error. The big chains run a lending system and a retail system side by side; an independent can do the same at a smaller scale, but not with a spreadsheet on both sides.

When is free the right answer?

Three cases. A jeweller who takes scrap from existing customers a few times a month, sells it to the refiner quarterly and never takes cash near £10,000 can run a purchase log in a spreadsheet and a template invoice with the reverse-charge wording, and should. A developer-owner can start from the open-source code, provided they understand the rules above well enough to implement them. And anyone evaluating software should use the free trials - Moneywell, Bravo and PawnSmarts all offer one - to see what a US pawn system does before deciding how much of it they need.

A pawnbroker taking pledges from the public, or a gold buyer taking cash, is not in any of those cases.

What we could not verify

  • Bravo and PawnMaster pricing. Neither publishes a price list; the Capterra starting prices and third-party estimates are all there is. Ask for a UK quote in sterling and expect not to get one.
  • Whether PPSS is still sold as a one-time licence. Capterra lists $495 one-time; the vendor's own domain now presents PawnSmarts on subscription. Treat the PPSS figure as historical.
  • Any UK-built free or open-source pawn system. We found none. If one exists it is not indexed.
  • The GOV.UK High Value Dealer guidance page still showed €10,000 when checked; HMRC's own manual gives £10,000 from 30 June 2026 and we have followed the manual.

Sources

This is general information, not legal, tax or purchasing advice. Vendor pricing and free-tier terms change without notice; check each vendor's page before you decide. The regulatory points above are summaries - read CONC 6.6, the Consumer Credit Act and the VAT notices directly, and take advice from a consumer credit specialist and your accountant.

Milleso is our product. It covers the buying and selling side described here - counter purchases with the VAT treatment and AML file decided at intake, serialised stock, the reverse-charge invoice to the refiner, cash monitoring against the High Value Dealer threshold, repairs, consignment and exports to Xero and Sage - on the Counter plan at £99 a month or Trade at £249, ex VAT, with one month free. It does not run an FCA pledge ledger; if you lend, you need that alongside.