YouLend vs Uncapped: two lenders that barely overlap any more

Who YouLend actually is

YouLend Limited (company 12576377) says it was founded in 2016, though one page on its own site says 2015; the current trading entity was incorporated in April 2020. It is now the largest embedded lender in the UK by a wide margin. The group accounts to 31 March 2025 show revenue of £171.5m and a profit of £8.8m, and the homepage claims 370,000-plus businesses funded across ten or more countries. The ultimate owner is EQT, the Swedish private-equity house, through a Singapore holding company; Banking Circle sits under the same control.

Most merchants never apply to YouLend directly. They meet it inside something else. Dojo's core business-funding product is YouLend (Dojo's page says “YouLend will carry out a soft search”), and so are Amazon's UK cash advance and Flexible Financing Line, the YouLend half of eBay Seller Capital, Just Eat's partner funding, and since January 2026 the cash-advance products at Teya and Worldline. Shopify appears on YouLend's Trustpilot profile rather than its UK site, so we treat that one as a partner it names less loudly. Two things follow. The platform already holds your sales history, so the decision is quick: YouLend says approval in as little as 24 hours and funds in as little as 48 hours after that. And repayment comes off the top of the sales the platform sees, through a settlement account YouLend operates under its FCA payment-institution licence (FRN 947287, granted 29 June 2023). That licence covers the account, not the advance; YouLend's own regulatory page says its UK financing agreements are not FCA-regulated.

What YouLend does not publish matters as much on this page. There is no rate card, no repayment-percentage range, no minimum advance, no minimum trading period and no personal-guarantee policy anywhere on youlend.com. The maximum is £2,000,000 direct; the Dojo and eBay routes quote £1,000,000. Dojo's page adds the two figures we find most useful: average funding of 0.8 to 1 times monthly card turnover, and a typical payback of nine months with a maximum of one year. Our full YouLend review goes through the partner routes one by one.

Who Uncapped actually is

Uncapped Ltd (company 12258266) was founded in London in 2019 by Asher Ismail and Piotr Pisarz, raised £10m at launch and $26m from Mouro Capital the following year, and became one of the names people meant when they said “revenue-based finance” in the UK. Then it stopped. A blog post captured by 30 September 2023 says the company had underwritten no new RBF deals that year, had not offered the product for over a year “unless they expressly asked for it”, and was ending it entirely. The same post lists Wayflyer, 8fig, Shopify, PayPal and Outfund as providers still offering RBF and describes it as “the potentially misleading RBF option”. The FAQ now reads: “We no longer offer revenue based financing and instead offer fixed term loans and line of credit for eligible businesses.” Ismail left the board in November 2023; Pisarz remains CEO and, per the accounts, the ultimate controlling party.

The 2026 range has three parts, and the floors matter more than the names. Fixed Term Financing is for brands with £100,000 or more in monthly revenue: a fixed fee of 0.7% to 1.5% a month (average 1%; the UK product page says “as low as 0.8% p.m.”), no interest, a maximum term of 24 months, and a daily, weekly or monthly direct debit that typically starts the day the money lands. Funding for Amazon Sellers is the same loan from a £10,000-a-month floor, with an “approval rate of ~80%” and a payment holiday of up to three months advertised on that page. The Line of Credit, launched in January 2024, is for businesses the homepage puts at £500,000 a month and the product page at £5m a year: a fixed APR “as low as 10.99%”, a limit “typically up to double your monthly business' revenue”, and a repayment every 14 days calculated on the outstanding balance.

Everything is for limited companies (“sole traders are not eligible”) with six months of trading, and everything is offered without a personal guarantee, equity or warrants. Applying “won't affect your personal credit score”, though the FAQ says smaller businesses may have personal credit data used in underwriting, and every key person does a selfie-and-ID check. Declined applicants wait 60 days. The site is US-leaning in places: dollar figures on the .com homepage, a US support number, and terms of use that name Uncapped Technologies Inc. as owner of the service while the UK lending companies are Uncapped Finance Ltd, II and III. Check the name on the offer letter. Our Uncapped review covers the group structure in more detail.

Which Uncapped range is real

Uncapped's site gives three answers to “how much”. The UK homepage and about page say £100,000 to £2 million. The Fixed Term Financing page and the Amazon Sellers page say £10,000 to £10 million. The FAQ says “$10K to $10M depending on business”. Nothing on the site reconciles them. Our reading is that the homepage describes the business Uncapped wants and the product pages describe the widest range the platform will quote, with the Amazon product as the only route where a £10,000 loan is plainly on offer. The FAQ's sizing rule for Amazon sellers, “generally going up to 1-1.5x your MRR”, supports that: a £10,000-a-month seller is looking at £10,000 to £15,000, and the six-figure loans are for six-figure months.

YouLend has the same problem in the other direction. The site says “up to £2,000,000” and publishes no floor at all; third-party reviews put it at a few thousand pounds, and the partner routes cap at £1,000,000. If you need to know whether a £4,000 advance is available, YouLend's own pages will not tell you and the platform you apply through will.

What you actually pay

YouLend charges “a single fixed fee” and does not say what it is. There is no rate card, and the FAQ confirms that where a third party has introduced you YouLend may pay them a commission that is “typically a percentage of the fixed fee”. The fee is set per offer from the sales data, then collected as a percentage of each day's takings until the total is repaid. There is no term as such: Dojo's page says nine months is typical and twelve the maximum, and Lopay's says many advances clear in six to nine.

Uncapped prices the other way round. The term-loan fee is a monthly percentage of the capital, 0.7% to 1.5%, with 1% as the stated average. Multiply by the months and you have the whole cost before you sign; the FAQ says “you'll know the exact total amount you are paying before you accept the offer of capital”. Then comes the clause that decides a lot of these deals: “paying off your loan early does not result in a reduction of the total amount due”. A 12-month loan settled at month six still costs 12 months of fee. The line of credit is different. Interest accrues only on the drawn balance and there is no prepayment fee, so that is the Uncapped product for a business that expects to clear early.

Put those side by side and something odd happens. If YouLend's fee on an advance were 12% (an assumption; it publishes nothing) and the advance ran nine months, that is about 1.3% a month, inside Uncapped's band. Run it over twelve and it is 1% a month, exactly Uncapped's average. The published prices are not far apart. The shapes are: one lender fixes the fee and lets the time float, the other fixes both. Our MCA cost guide shows how to turn a fixed fee into a monthly rate for any offer you are holding.

Who gets approved

YouLend's homepage claims it is “approving every 9 out of 10 applicants” and that 85% of customers renew. The criteria behind that are not on its site. What we can describe is the process as we see it from the arranging side: a soft search, sales data read from the platform or through open banking, and an advance sized against monthly card or platform turnover rather than against a forecast. YouLend publishes no rule on business structure, trading history or minimum turnover; the platform you apply through sometimes does.

Uncapped publishes its criteria and they are narrow. Limited company. Six months of trading. £100,000 a month in revenue for the term loan, £10,000 for the Amazon product, and £500,000 a month or £5m a year (the site says both) for the line of credit. “Predominantly in the ecommerce space”, with offline sales accepted “if data can be provided”. The data ask is the whole application: Amazon, Shopify, Walmart or Stripe, plus the bank and the accounting software. The Amazon page's “~80%” is the only approval rate Uncapped gives and it applies to that product.

Where the two diverge most is the personal guarantee. Uncapped states it plainly: “We don't take equity, personal guarantees, warrants, or hidden fees.” YouLend says nothing either way on its public pages. Wayflyer's comparison page, citing “independent 2026 reviews”, says YouLend guarantees are “commonly requested”; we do not repeat a competitor's characterisation as fact. We do say that if a guarantee is a deal-breaker it is a question to put to YouLend in writing before the sales data goes in, and one Uncapped has already answered. What a guarantee commits a director to is set out in our personal guarantee guide.

How fast the money lands

YouLend: “approved in as little as 24 hours”, funds “in as little as 48 hours after approval”, and partner pages that talk about funds in 24 hours. Because the platform already has the data, the slow part in the deals we arrange is usually the settlement-account setup, which is a condition of the financing under YouLend's payment-account terms. Uncapped: “Apply in minutes, get a decision in 48 hours”, funds “within 1-2 business days”, offers “within 24 hours” on the Amazon product, and for the line of credit a transfer “within 1-3 business days” of each drawdown request. Neither is slow. Neither is same-day unless the data connections are done before you start.

What the accounts say

We read both sets of filed accounts, because a lender's own numbers tell you what it wants to write. YouLend's group accounts to 31 March 2025 show revenue of £171.5m, up from £118.7m, and a profit of £8.8m, up from £1.2m. Its private securitisation with J.P. Morgan, announced in January 2024, runs to £4 billion. That is a lender with appetite and the funding to match, and the practical consequence is that the advance you are offered is limited by your sales, not by YouLend's balance sheet.

Uncapped Ltd's group accounts to 30 April 2025 show a loss of £10.4m (the prior year: £1.2m), loans to customers of £36.4m against £72.7m a year earlier, loan-loss provisions up from £3.76m to £7.54m, and an average of 35 staff. The directors' own explanation is that the group “shifted its strategy from large to mid-market loans” and that the loss rose “due to higher loan losses and interest expenses”. The funding line, described in the accounts as a £100m facility, was extended in May 2025 to May 2027 with covenants attached.

We read that as appetite, not safety. A borrower's money is not at risk from a lender's losses; the loan is drawn and the direct debits run regardless. What a halved book and doubled provisions tell you is where Uncapped wants to lend now: mid-market, £100,000 a month and up, with better data. That is consistent with the homepage floor, and with the FAQ's warning that smaller businesses may face a personal credit check.

The bit nobody mentions

The settlement account. YouLend's payment-account terms make using its account “a condition of financing”: your card processor pays YouLend's account, YouLend takes its percentage, the rest is forwarded to you. Closing that account before the advance is repaid “may trigger an event of default”. For a business with one Dojo terminal that is invisible. For one with terminals from two acquirers plus an online checkout it means every route needs pointing at the account, and the time that takes is the time between “approved” and “funded”.

On Uncapped's side it is the start date. “Repayments will begin on the date agreed on your Offer Letter. This is typically the same day you receive the investment in your bank account.” A daily direct debit that begins on drawdown day is a different animal from a sweep that only takes money when you sell something. Amazon sellers who hoped to line the debits up with fortnightly Amazon payouts get a flat answer in the FAQ: the schedule “cannot be changed after the funds are disbursed”.

Worked examples

YouLend publishes no rate; Uncapped publishes a band. The YouLend fee below is an assumption chosen to sit near Uncapped's stated average so the two shapes can be compared on level terms. Swap in the figures from your own offer before drawing a conclusion.

Who fits where

Profiles we meet, matched to the published criteria. Where we say “either” the lender is a genuine choice and the deciding factor is written in the reasoning.

General information on how the lenders differ, not a recommendation. We arrange finance; the lender decides, and you choose.