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Posted: Tue 21st Jul 2026
5 min read
New research has found the UK is in the midst of a solopreneur boom that would be the envy of policymakers – if only they knew it was happening.
In line with our own Start Up Ambition Report 2026, which found that one in four working-age adults planned to start a business this year, data from Stripe, the payments giant, has seen UK business sign-ups double in just two years.
This mirrors explosive growth in the United States and France, but the difference is that these are captured by official sources – by the US Census Bureau or France's INSEE.
Meanwhile, Companies House registrations – the government's main barometer of business creation – have barely budged since 2024.
Stripe's chief economist Ernie Tedeschi, co-author of the report, said:
"The UK is likely experiencing an increase in solopreneurship broadly in line with what we see in the US, France, and many other markets.
"But solopreneurship in the UK is poorly captured by official statistics."
Enterprise Nation CEO Aaron Asadi said:
“We are experiencing a surge in one-person enterprises that's transforming the UK economy beneath the government’s official radar.
“When we go deeper into the data, something remarkable is happening.
"Our own Start Up Ambition Report 2026 found 41% of working-age adults said they wanted to start a business this year, with more than a third citing the need to improve their finances as the driving force.
"This is why we have built the SME Index – we can see picture of a nation turning to entrepreneurship out of both ambition and necessity – yet government statistics remain blind to the trend.”
The report suggests the problem lies in how Britain counts its businesses. Unlike the United States and France, which have explicit pathways for tracking solo and micro-enterprises, the UK has no such system.
Companies House doesn't count sole proprietors or the self-employed unless they register their company. The Office for National Statistics and HMRC only track businesses registered for VAT or PAYE tax – thresholds that many solopreneurs never meet.
The Department for Business and Trade attempts to estimate unregistered businesses using the Labour Force Survey, but the report found this approach has serious limitations. It struggles to capture individuals whose solo ventures are nascent or supplemental – the person running a Depop store while holding down a job, or the side-hustler building a Substack following.
Making matters worse, the Labour Force Survey has been plagued by problems since COVID-19, losing roughly half its effective sample. It was suspended entirely in 2023 and relaunched in 2024 with a humbling downgrade to "statistics in development" status.
Clues to the solopreneur surge do exist, buried in tax data. HMRC’s Self Assessment Income Tax receipts have risen by almost 70% since 2019/20, including a 12% increase in the latest year. It's the kind of jump that suggests fundamental change in how people are earning their living.
Even this data has limitations, however. Solopreneurs earning less than £1,000 don't need to register with HMRC, excluding a large swath of early-stage entrepreneurs and experimenters.
And self-assessment returns capture various income types beyond self-employment, including property and investment income, making it difficult to isolate the solopreneur signal from the noise.
The report argues that if, as early analysis suggests, AI is driving a major economic transition toward solo-run businesses, the UK’s inability to track the phenomenon creates what it calls "a major policy and economic blind spot."
Last week, we reported on the government’s plan to force side hustlers to pay tax on their earnings directly from their salary via PAYE. The government is consulting on this now.
Enterprise Nation supports small businesses and entrepreneurs across the UK with resources, events, and expert guidance. The Start Up Ambition Report 2026 surveyed working-age adults about their entrepreneurial intentions and motivations.
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