iwoca vs Fleximize: two flexible loans that price and size very differently
By the CapExpand team
Reviewed by Alex Beardsley, Founder · UK commercial finance broker
Facts checked 7 September 2026 · first published 7 September 2026
Read against iwoca.co.uk, fleximize.com, both lenders’ Companies House filings and their 2026 press releases. Trustpilot figures are from the latest snapshot we could read, not a live page.
Provider A
iwoca
Flexi-Loan: a credit facility priced per 30 days
Provider B
Fleximize
Flexiloan: a term loan with free early settlement
On paper these two look like the same product. Both let you overpay or clear the balance early without a fee, both want a personal guarantee from a director, both promise a decision inside 24 hours, and both use the word “flexi” in the product name. In the deals we arrange they behave nothing alike. iwoca sells a credit facility that charges per 30 days on whatever is drawn and sizes it at roughly one month of your revenue. Fleximize sells a term loan of 12 to 60 months, priced from 0.9% a month, sized at up to four months of revenue, with a homeowner rule buried in its FAQ that decides more applications than the rate table does.
The short version: a business under twelve months old usually lands at iwoca, because Fleximize's full Flexiloan wants a year of trading and its non-homeowner cap is £20,000. A business wanting £250,000 usually lands at Fleximize, because iwoca's own sizing rule points to a much smaller limit unless turnover is in the millions. The rest of this page is the working behind those two sentences, with a £40,000 example run through both lenders' published rates.
The 60-second answer
iwoca tends to fit if
- You have been trading under a year, or under six months (Fleximize Lite starts at six)
- Nobody on the board owns a home, so Fleximize’s £20,000 non-homeowner cap would apply
- You draw and repay in bursts: a stock buy, a VAT quarter, the gap between an invoice and its payment
- The amount you need is about one month of revenue or less
- You want a limit sitting there undrawn, costing nothing until you use it
Fleximize tends to fit if
- You have twelve months of trading and want 12 to 60 months to repay a fixed sum
- A director owns a home and will sign the personal guarantee
- You need more than one month of revenue, up to about four months of it
- You would rather one fixed monthly instalment than a balance charged per 30 days
- You expect to clear the loan early and want the interest recalculated when you do
The honest overlap is a homeowner-backed limited company trading one to three years and borrowing under £100,000 over a year or less. Both lenders will look at that case. Which one prices better on the day is decided by the offers, not by either rate table, which is why we put such cases to both.
At a glance
| Feature | iwoca | Fleximize |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | March 2011, London (iwoca Ltd, company 07798925) | 2014, Ipswich (Fleximize Limited, company 07117447, part of the Alterium group) |
| What the product is | Flexi-Loan: a credit facility you draw and repay, held from 1 day to 5 years | Flexiloan (12 to 60 months) and Flexiloan Lite (3 to 12 months): fixed-instalment term loans |
| Amount | £1,000 to £1,000,000, unsecured | £10,000 to £1,000,000; unsecured up to £500,000, secured above that |
| Published rate | From 1.5% per 30 days on the drawn balance; iwoca’s FAQ gives a range of 1.5% to 5.7% a month | Flexiloan 0.9% to 2.9% a month; Flexiloan Lite 1.9% to 3.9% a month |
| Representative example | 3.33% per 30 days, 49% APR representative | 34.9% fixed a year, 41.1% APR representative, on £15,000 over 18 months (loans under £25,000) |
| Fees | No arrangement fee; a fee of typically 5% for 13 to 24 month terms and 6% beyond | No set-up, application or arrangement fees when applying directly |
| Early repayment | No fee; more than 20% of customers repay ahead of schedule in their first six months | No fee; interest recalculated to the time you had the loan (Penalty-Free Promise) |
| How the limit is sized | Typically around one month’s revenue; up to 20% of annual turnover; start-ups capped at £10,000 | Up to four months’ revenue on the unsecured product |
| Minimum trading and turnover | None published for either | 6 months (Lite) or 12 months (Flexiloan); £5,000 a month turnover |
| Structures | Limited company or LLP, UK based | UK limited companies and LLPs; sole traders and partnerships with fewer than four partners only above £25,000 |
| Security | Personal guarantee from at least one company director; unsecured, no asset requirements | Personal guarantee from at least one director or shareholder; a debenture may be needed; equitable charge on secured loans |
| Homeowner rule | None published | Non-homeowners supported only after 36 months’ trading, to a maximum of £20,000 |
| Speed | Decision within 24 hours in almost all cases; money within hours; record 2 minutes 37 seconds | Decisions in as little as 24 hours; funds the same day as approval once documents are signed |
| Trustpilot | 4.7 from over 11,000 reviews | 4.8 from around 1,100 reviews |
Published criteria as at 7 September 2026; every figure is subject to the lender’s own checks and the offer it makes.
Who iwoca actually is
iwoca was founded in March 2011 by Christoph Rieche and James Dear and is run from Queen Street Place in London. It has lent £4.5 billion to date on its own figures, and 2025 was its biggest year yet: 58,000 loans worth over £1.3 billion, a 60% rise in lending value on 2024. In July 2026 it closed a £250 million funding structure with a UK bank and Waterfall Asset Management, and it was named Fintech Company of the Year 2026 at the Fintech Awards London. This is a large lender with a lot of money to put out.
The product is the Flexi-Loan, and the word to hold onto is facility. You are approved for a limit of £1,000 to £1,000,000, you draw what you need, and interest is charged per 30 days on the drawn balance for the days it is out. Repay it and the charging stops. There is no arrangement fee, no early repayment fee, and iwoca says more than a fifth of its customers repay ahead of schedule within six months. The rate is variable, which iwoca discloses on its support pages with the line that it cannot change your rate without your consent.
Two product moves in the last year matter for this comparison. iwoca has withdrawn its revenue-based loan (its cash advance page now says so in plain words), so it competes purely on the facility model. And around May 2026 it launched a Visa credit card with a 1% cashback and a limit up to £250,000, which sits alongside the Flexi-Loan rather than replacing it. One demand signal from its July 2026 release is worth knowing: loans of £50,000 to £100,000 made up 42% of its applications in the first quarter of 2026, up from 27% a year earlier. iwoca is being asked for bigger sums than it used to be.
There is a fuller account in our iwoca review.
Who Fleximize actually is
Fleximize has lent from Ipswich since 2014 under co-founder and chief executive Peter Tuvey, as part of the Alterium group (Fleximize Limited, company 07117447, and Fleximize Capital Limited, 09485920). It is roughly a tenth of iwoca's size: £149 million lent in 2025 and £688 million cumulatively, per its February 2026 release, funded in part by a £136 million securitised facility from Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Citi agreed in 2023. It won Best Business Loan Provider at the Business Moneyfacts Awards in 2023, 2024 and 2025, took a different category (Best Service from a Business Loan Provider) in 2026, and was LendTech of the Year at the UK FinTech Awards 2026.
The products are two versions of one idea. The Flexiloan runs 12 to 60 months for businesses trading a year or more, priced at 0.9% to 2.9% a month. The Flexiloan Lite runs 3 to 12 months for businesses trading six months or more, at 1.9% to 3.9% a month. Both are term loans with a fixed monthly instalment, both come unsecured up to £500,000 or secured up to £1,000,000, and both carry the same fee position: no set-up, application or arrangement fees when you apply directly, and no early repayment fee. Settle early and the interest is recalculated to the time you actually had the money. Fleximize says customers who do that save an average of 44% of their total interest.
Top-ups and repayment holidays open up after three successful repayments, and a Loyalty Pledge promises a cheaper rate or £100 cashback to anyone who comes back for a second loan after clearing the first. The terms of a repayment holiday, and what happens to interest during one, are not published. Our Fleximize review goes through the rest.
What you actually pay
Start with the two floors, because they are not in the same units. iwoca's 1.5% is per 30 days on the drawn balance, with daily accrual. Fleximize's 0.9% is per month on a fixed instalment loan. Held for a full year on the same balance, 1.5% per 30 days is a materially higher rate than 0.9% a month, and the representative examples say the same thing in APR: iwoca 49%, built on 3.33% per 30 days; Fleximize 41.1%, built on a fixed annual rate of 34.9%. Both examples are for the smaller end of the book (iwoca says at least 51% of customers borrowing £25,000 or less get its representative APR or better; Fleximize's example is for loans under £25,000).
Then look at the ceilings, which nobody quotes. iwoca's FAQ puts its range at 1.5% to 5.7% a month. Fleximize's tops out at 2.9% on the Flexiloan and 3.9% on the Lite. A weak case at iwoca can be priced well above anything Fleximize publishes. A strong case at either lands near the floor. The floors are strong-case numbers; a first-time borrower under £25,000 is more likely to see something close to the representative example than to the floor, at both.
Fees change the picture for longer money. Fleximize has none on direct applications. iwoca has none inside 12 months, then a fee of typically 5% for 13 to 24 month terms and 6% beyond, which its own pages describe both as paid upfront and as spread across the first few repayments. On a £100,000 balance held for two years that is £5,000 before any interest, and it is the reason our business loans page treats iwoca as short-money and Fleximize as term-money even though both products will run for years.
Where iwoca claws it back is the drawn-balance mechanic. Fleximize charges interest on the full lump sum from day one. iwoca charges on what is out. A business that takes a £60,000 limit, draws £25,000 for six weeks and repays it, pays interest on £25,000 for six weeks. A business that takes a £60,000 Flexiloan pays on £60,000 from the first day, and gets the interest recalculated only if it settles the whole thing. Our factor rate versus APR guide covers why per-month and per-30-day quotes need converting before you compare them.
How much each one will actually lend
This is the section that decides the £250,000 borrower, and it gets far less attention than the rates. iwoca publishes two sizing rules that point the same way: a credit limit “typically around one month's revenue” (its FAQ) and “up to 20% of annual turnover” (its calculator). Start-ups are capped at £10,000. So a £250,000 iwoca limit implies around £250,000 of monthly revenue, or £1.25 million of annual turnover. The £1,000,000 headline is real, and the businesses it applies to turn over several million a year.
Fleximize publishes one rule: up to four months' revenue on the unsecured product, with the unsecured ceiling at £500,000. A £250,000 Flexiloan implies about £62,500 of monthly revenue, or £750,000 a year. That is a very different business from the one iwoca's rule describes, and it is why a mid-sized firm wanting a six-figure sum over three years tends to end up at Fleximize in the cases we arrange, provided it clears the homeowner line. Above £500,000 Fleximize moves to a secured loan with an equitable charge, and its secured page quotes a tighter multiple of about two months' revenue depending on the assets.
Flip it round for the small end. A business turning over £15,000 a month sees an iwoca limit in the region of £15,000 (or £36,000 on the 20% rule, if annual turnover is £180,000) and a Fleximize ceiling near £60,000. On paper Fleximize offers four times as much. In practice, a director who rents rather than owns is capped at £20,000 by Fleximize and only after three years of trading, so the four-month multiple is theoretical for a large share of young businesses. That single FAQ line is the most important sentence on either lender's site for anyone under three years old.
Who gets approved
iwoca publishes no minimum trading period and no minimum turnover, and says it looks at the current strength of the business rather than demanding a spotless history. What it does publish is narrower than people assume: the applicant must be a limited company or LLP based in the UK (sole traders are not listed anywhere), a personal guarantee is required from at least one company director, and the loan is unsecured with no asset requirements. It does not publish a document list.
Fleximize publishes more, and most of it is stricter. Six months' trading for the Lite, twelve for the Flexiloan. Turnover of at least £5,000 a month. UK-registered limited companies and LLPs, with sole traders and partnerships of fewer than four partners considered only for loans above £25,000. A personal guarantee from at least one director or shareholder on every loan, a debenture where the state of the business calls for one, and an equitable charge on secured loans. Businesses in Scotland and Northern Ireland get the unsecured products only, capped at £500,000. Documents are three months of bank statements, the latest management accounts and a month-by-month summary of the last year's revenue. And then the homeowner rule, which we have laboured already because it matters that much.
Neither lender publishes a sector exclusion list, and Fleximize says outright that it lends across retail, professional services, manufacturing and property. Neither publishes an adverse-credit policy either, so a director with a satisfied CCJ from a few years back gets a case-by-case answer at both. Our personal guarantee guide covers what the guarantee both of them require actually commits a director to.
How fast the money lands
Both quote 24 hours, and both are telling the truth about clean cases. iwoca says you get a decision in 24 hours in almost all cases, that the money should hit your account within hours of approval, and that its record from application to funds is 2 minutes 37 seconds, a number it labels as its record rather than a norm. Fleximize says decisions in as little as 24 hours, funds in as little as 24 hours from receipt of the application, and same-day payment once signed loan documents are back. On secured loans it uses an equitable charge specifically so it can release funds the same day as approval instead of waiting for a legal charge to register.
The difference we see is in what slows each one down. iwoca's process is built around open banking and a short online form (five minutes, it says), so the delays come from limit sizing on bigger requests. Fleximize asks for management accounts and a revenue breakdown, so the delays come from businesses that do not have those to hand. A firm with a bookkeeper and tidy monthlies moves through Fleximize at the advertised pace; one running on bank statements alone moves faster at iwoca.
The bit nobody mentions
iwoca's rate is variable. Its support pages say every Flexi-Loan has a variable interest rate and that it cannot change yours without your consent, which is reassuring as far as it goes, and it is still a different animal from Fleximize's fixed instalment. A business that plans its cash flow around a fixed number for three years is buying that certainty at Fleximize and not at iwoca. Related: iwoca publishes its top-up trigger three ways (after a third of the limit is repaid, after 15% on 13-month-plus terms, after four monthly repayments), so ask which applies to you before you count on a top-up.
Fleximize's quiet line is the debenture. Its FAQ says it may need “additional security in the form of a debenture, depending on the state of your business”. A debenture is a charge over the company's assets, registered at Companies House, and it can complicate any later borrowing that wants a first charge. iwoca states plainly that its loans have no asset requirements. For a business that expects to add asset finance or an overdraft later, that is a real difference between two products both marketed as unsecured.
Worked examples
Both lenders publish rates, so these examples use only published figures: iwoca's 1.5% per 30 days floor and its 3.33% representative rate, Fleximize's 0.9% Flexiloan floor and 1.9% Lite floor. We have treated each as a monthly rate on a reducing balance with 12 equal instalments, which is close to how both charge but not exact (iwoca accrues daily per 30 days). Your offer will differ; the shape of the comparison will not.
Worked example · iwoca
£40,000 drawn in full for 12 months
Assumptions (illustrative, not a quote)
- Facility limit £40,000, drawn in full on day one and repaid in 12 equal monthly instalments
- Rate treated as monthly: 1.5% (published floor) and 3.33% (published representative rate, 49% APR)
- Term of 12 months, so no longer-term fee applies
- Interest charged on the reducing balance; no arrangement fee, no early repayment fee
The arithmetic
- At 1.5%: 12 instalments of about £3,667; 12 × £3,667 = £44,004; interest about £4,000
- At 3.33%: 12 instalments of about £4,098; 12 × £4,098 = £49,176; interest about £9,180
- Draw only £20,000 of the limit and the interest roughly halves at either rate; the undrawn £20,000 costs nothing
- Hold the same £40,000 for 24 months instead and iwoca adds a fee of typically 5% (£2,000) on top of two years’ interest
The gap between iwoca’s floor and its representative rate is more than £5,000 on this loan. The number to ask for is the rate on your offer, and the discipline that saves money is drawing less than the limit.
Worked example · Fleximize
£40,000 over 12 months on a Flexiloan and on a Flexiloan Lite
Assumptions (illustrative, not a quote)
- Loan £40,000 over 12 months, the shortest Flexiloan term and the longest Lite term
- Rate at the published floor: 0.9% a month (Flexiloan, 12+ months trading) or 1.9% a month (Lite, 6+ months trading)
- No arrangement fee (direct application); personal guarantee signed by a homeowner director
- Business turnover at least £10,000 a month, so £40,000 sits inside the four-month sizing rule
The arithmetic
- Flexiloan at 0.9%: 12 instalments of about £3,532; 12 × £3,532 = £42,384; interest about £2,380
- Flexiloan Lite at 1.9%: 12 instalments of about £3,759; 12 × £3,759 = £45,108; interest about £5,110
- Settle in full after 6 months and the Penalty-Free Promise recalculates interest to the six months you had the loan
- For comparison, Fleximize’s own representative example (34.9% fixed, £15,000 over 18 months) totals £19,479.60, so a small first loan can cost far more than the floor suggests
At the floors, Fleximize is about £1,600 cheaper than iwoca on this loan, and the Lite is about £1,100 more expensive. The year of trading that separates the two Fleximize products is worth real money.
Who fits where
Concrete cases, matched against each lender's published criteria. The likely fit is where the case usually lands in the deals we arrange; the lender still makes its own decision.
| Business | Likely fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Eight-month-old café in Leeds, £18,000 a month through the till, director rents | iwoca | iwoca publishes no trading minimum and no homeowner rule. Fleximize’s £20,000 non-homeowner cap only opens after 36 months of trading. |
| Two-year-old engineering firm, £60,000 a month, homeowner director, wants £200,000 over three years for a machine | Fleximize | Four months’ revenue supports £240,000. iwoca’s one-month sizing points nearer £60,000, and a three-year term adds its 6% fee. |
| Online retailer, £45,000 a month, buys stock three times a year and clears each buy inside eight weeks | iwoca | A facility charged per 30 days on the drawn balance fits a draw-and-repay pattern. A Flexiloan charges on the full sum from day one. |
| Solicitors’ LLP, five years’ trading, £250,000 wanted, partners own their homes | Fleximize | Inside the £500,000 unsecured ceiling and within four months’ revenue at £62,500 a month or more; expect the PG and possibly a debenture. |
| Company incorporated four months ago, £6,000 a month, needs £25,000 | Neither yet | iwoca caps start-ups at a £10,000 limit. Fleximize Lite wants six months of trading and would size at about £24,000, and only for a homeowner. |
| Scottish limited company, £120,000 a month, wants £400,000 unsecured, homeowner directors | Fleximize | Scotland gets Fleximize’s unsecured products only, capped at £500,000, and £400,000 sits inside four months’ revenue. iwoca’s sizing points nearer £120,000. |
| Restaurant group, 14 months trading, wants a £30,000 buffer it may never fully draw | iwoca | Nothing is charged on an undrawn iwoca limit. A £30,000 Flexiloan would accrue interest from the day it lands whether or not the money is used. |
General information on how the lenders differ, not a recommendation. We arrange finance; the lender decides, and you choose.
Our verdict
Fleximize is the cheaper lender on every published number: a lower floor, a lower ceiling, a lower representative APR, no fee on longer terms and a bigger multiple of revenue. If your business is a homeowner-backed limited company with a year of trading, tidy management accounts and a defined sum to borrow over one to five years, that is where the deal tends to go in the cases we arrange, and we send more term-loan cases there than to iwoca.
iwoca wins the cases Fleximize cannot write, and there are a lot of them. Under twelve months of trading, under six, no property on the board, or a need that comes and goes rather than a lump sum to deploy: iwoca is built for all four, and its drawn-balance pricing means a short draw can cost less in pounds than a cheaper-looking loan held for a year. The price of that flexibility is a higher rate, a variable one, and a limit sized at about a month of revenue.
Both are on our panel. One enquiry through the funding form lets us check your trading months, your directors' property position and the size you need against both sets of criteria before anything is submitted, and the offer in pounds does the rest.
Want both checked against your numbers?
One enquiry, and we tell you which of iwoca, Fleximize or the rest of the panel your figures actually fit before anything is submitted.
Frequently asked questions
Sources and method
Facts on this page were checked against the sources below on 7 September 2026. Where a lender does not publish a figure we say so rather than estimate it.
- iwoca, Flexi-Loan page (amounts, term, rates, representative example, longer-term fee, early repayment, £4.5bn, payout record)
- iwoca, homepage (24-hour decision, personal guarantee wording, Ltd/LLP criterion, 20% of turnover, top-up rule)
- iwoca, FAQ (1.5% to 5.7% range, one month’s revenue, £10,000 start-up cap, top-up rules, unsecured, founders)
- iwoca support, how iwoca loans work and who is eligible (60-month maximum, variable rate, fee timing, four-repayment top-up)
- iwoca, business loan calculator (49% representative APR, 20% of annual turnover)
- iwoca, cash advance page (revenue-based loan withdrawn)
- iwoca, business credit cards (card terms)
- iwoca, £250m funding structure release, 27 July 2026 (2025 lending figures, Q1 2026 demand)
- iwoca, Fintech Company of the Year 2026
- Companies House, iwoca Ltd 07798925
- Trustpilot, iwoca (Wayback snapshot, 16 March 2026: 4.7 from 11,619 reviews)
- Fleximize, Flexiloan and Flexiloan Lite (amounts, terms, monthly rates, personal guarantee, top-ups)
- Fleximize, FAQs (eligibility, homeowner rule, four months’ revenue, Scotland and NI, Penalty-Free Promise, 44% figure, Loyalty Pledge, debenture, documents)
- Fleximize, business loans (£5,000 monthly turnover, four-partner rule)
- Fleximize, loan calculator (representative example)
- Fleximize, secured business loans (equitable charge, two months’ revenue)
- Fleximize, about us (2014, Ipswich, Peter Tuvey, group entities)
- Fleximize, LendTech of the Year 2026 release, 11 February 2026 (£149m in 2025, £688m cumulative)
- Fleximize, Business Moneyfacts Awards 2026 release
- Fleximize, £136m financing release, September 2023
- Companies House, Fleximize Limited 07117447
- Companies House, Fleximize Capital Limited 09485920
- Trustpilot, Fleximize (search snapshot, 7 September 2026)
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Important information
CapExpand Ltd (FRN 1060885) is an Appointed Representative of White Rose Finance Group Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 630772). We are a credit broker, not a lender, and we do not provide financial, tax or legal advice. We work with a panel of lenders whose particulars are available on request. If a deal completes the lender pays us a commission, at no cost to you; different lenders pay different amounts under different models, and we will tell you the amount for your deal on request. All lending is subject to status, valuation where applicable and the lender's own checks.
Registered office: Pure Offices, Lake View Drive, Annesley, Nottingham, NG15 0DT. Company No. 14433858.