Solo entrepreneurship in the UK: what our 2026 research found

It has arguably never been easier to start a business on your own.

You can build a website in an afternoon. Find specialist help on demand. Reach customers directly. And, increasingly, use AI to do work that might once have required a small team.

But does that mean running a business alone has become easy?

Not quite.

Together with Werksy, we spoke to 50 independent founders and freelancers to understand what solo entrepreneurship actually looks like in the UK in 2026.

And the results reveal an interesting tension.

AI is everywhere

84% of the people we surveyed already use ChatGPT or another large language model.

And 72% expect to use AI even more over the next 12 months.

But when we asked people how strongly they agreed that AI helps them operate confidently without needing a team, the average response was just 2.54 out of 5.

In other words, AI is helping people do more. It isn't necessarily making the experience of running a business simpler.

The hard bits are still hard

Finding customers was the most commonly cited challenge among the founders we surveyed.

Understanding finance and tax came next, alongside maintaining motivation, dealing with legal and administrative requirements, and the lack of community that can come with working alone.

There was another interesting disconnect here.

Despite finance and tax being one of the biggest pain points, only six of the 50 founders we surveyed were using AI for financial planning or administration.

Most AI adoption is still happening around things like research, writing, ideas and content creation.

Why we wanted to understand this

At FOUNDRS, we're interested in what happens after someone decides to start a company.

Incorporating is increasingly straightforward. The harder part is often knowing what needs to happen next.

What do I need to file? When is tax due? What am I responsible for? Do I need an accountant? Have I forgotten something important?

AI has dramatically increased what one person can produce.

We think the next opportunity is to increase what one person can confidently operate.

That's a big part of why we're building FOUNDRS: to make starting and running a limited company simpler, and reduce some of the administrative load that comes with working for yourself.

The full report

Our report, "Never been easier. Still bloody hard: The reality of solo entrepreneurship in the UK in 2026", looks in more detail at:

why people choose to work independently

how solo founders are using AI today

the biggest challenges they still face

the impact of working without a traditional team

and what the next generation of tools for independent businesses might need to solve.

Read the full Solo Entrepreneurship Report:
https://knowledge.foundrs.ai/reports/solo-entrepreneurship