Alternatives to Farewill Probate Service in England — What Else Can You Use?

Farewill is one of the best-known online probate services in England, offering guided probate with solicitor support from around £2,750. It is a legitimate, well-reviewed service — but it is not the only option, and for many estates it is not the most cost-effective one. The alternatives range from full DIY using free government websites (free but time-consuming), to guided DIY with a paid estate settlement guide (), to Co-op Legal Services (from £1,679), local high-street solicitors (typically 1–3% of estate value), and other online platforms like Octopus Legacy. The right choice depends on three things: how much of the process you are willing to handle yourself, how complex the estate is, and what your budget allows. This page walks through each alternative so you can compare them honestly before committing.

The Alternatives at a Glance

Each Alternative in Detail

Full DIY via GOV.UK

The cheapest route is also the most fragmented. The information you need genuinely is free — but it is scattered across dozens of nested pages spanning GOV.UK, HMRC, HM Land Registry, and each bank's separate bereavement department. There is no single document that tells you what to do in what order. You assemble the process yourself.

This works if you have 30–50 hours to spare and you are comfortable reading legal forms and cross-referencing official guidance. It does not work well under time pressure or grief, because the gaps are not obvious until you fall into one. The most expensive DIY mistakes are timing and procedure errors: getting the IHT421 sequence wrong (you generally cannot apply for the grant until HMRC has processed the inheritance tax account), choosing the wrong Land Registry transfer form for the property's title situation, or distributing the estate to beneficiaries without first placing a Section 27 Trustee Act notice — which leaves you personally liable to any creditor who later comes forward.

Guided DIY with an Estate Settlement Guide

This is the middle ground between free-but-fragmented and paying someone else to do the work. A comprehensive guide like the Estate Settlement Guide for England costs and gives you the complete chronological roadmap — the order of operations, a bank-by-bank threshold matrix showing which institutions release funds without a grant, a Land Registry decision tree, and printable worksheets to track assets, debts, and deadlines.

You still do all the work yourself. The difference is that you are not guessing. The guide tells you exactly what to do at each step, which means you avoid the IHT timing trap, the wrong Land Registry form, and the missed Section 27 notice that catch out DIY executors. It is best for straightforward estates — a house, some bank accounts, no disputes — where you are willing to put in the time but want a reliable map rather than a fragmented scavenger hunt.

Co-op Legal Services

Co-op Legal Services starts at around £1,679 for their basic probate package, making it noticeably cheaper than Farewill. They handle the probate application itself and some of the correspondence, while you provide the documentation and valuations. It is a genuine middle ground between doing everything yourself and handing the whole estate to a full-service provider.

The limitation is that the basic package has boundaries. Co-op is still a commercial funnel: the entry price covers a defined scope, and estates with more moving parts — multiple properties, business assets, inheritance tax to calculate — get quoted higher. Read carefully what the £1,679 actually includes for an estate like yours before assuming it is the all-in figure.

Farewill

Farewill is the brand most people recognise, and there is a reason for that: the user experience is strong, you get online progress tracking, and there is solicitor support behind the service. Their Complete Probate service starts from around £2,750.

Two things are worth knowing. First, the free content Farewill publishes is deliberately incomplete — it is designed to introduce the process and funnel you toward the paid service, not to let you complete probate yourself. Second, the £2,750 is a starting price. It climbs as the estate becomes more complex, so the headline figure is rarely the final one for anything beyond a simple estate. Farewill is a good service; the real question is whether your estate's complexity justifies the price, which the next section addresses directly.

Local High-Street Solicitor

The traditional option. A high-street solicitor typically charges 1–3% of the estate's value, which on a £500,000 estate means roughly £5,000–£15,000. In exchange you hand over essentially everything — they do the lot.

That is the right call for genuinely difficult situations: contentious probate where beneficiaries are in dispute, insolvent estates, multi-jurisdictional assets, or significant inheritance tax liability requiring negotiation with HMRC. For a straightforward, uncontested estate, it is overkill — you are paying specialist rates for a process that does not require specialist judgement.

Other Online Platforms (Octopus Legacy and similar)

A growing number of online platforms sit between the pure-DIY and full-solicitor ends of the market, with pricing models varying from roughly £500 to £2,000. Some offer guided self-service; others provide solicitor-backed packages with online convenience. Quality and coverage vary a great deal between providers.

The thing to check before signing up: does the platform provide genuinely England-specific guidance, or generic "UK" advice? Probate in England and Wales differs from Scotland (confirmation) and Northern Ireland, and a platform that papers over those differences will leave gaps. Read the scope of what is included, and confirm there is a real human available if your estate hits a snag.

When Farewill IS the Right Choice

It is worth being honest here rather than treating Farewill as the enemy. If you want minimal personal involvement, your estate is moderately complex (more than a single bank account but short of litigation), and you can comfortably afford £2,750 or more, Farewill delivers a professional, well-designed service with solicitor support and good technology. For an executor who is time-poor, grieving, and would rather pay to make the problem go away, that is a reasonable trade.

The decision is not "is Farewill good" — it is. The decision is whether your estate's complexity justifies the price, or whether a cheaper alternative would handle it just as safely.

Who These Alternatives Are For

• Executors who have seen Farewill's price and want to know what else exists before committing
• Budget-conscious families where £2,750+ represents a meaningful chunk of a modest estate
• DIY-minded executors who want a clear roadmap but not a full-service provider doing it for them
• Families comparing every option side by side before locking into any single approach

Who These Alternatives Are NOT For

• Executors who have already engaged Farewill and are happy with the service — there is no reason to switch mid-process
• Estates requiring contentious probate, where beneficiaries are in genuine dispute — you need a specialist litigation solicitor, not a cheaper platform
• Estates with complex inheritance tax liability where HMRC negotiation is required — that is professional territory regardless of budget

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Farewill good for probate?

Yes. Farewill is a legitimate, well-reviewed probate service with strong technology and solicitor support behind it. The question is not whether it works — it does — but whether you need to spend £2,750 or more, or whether a cheaper alternative suits your estate just as well. For a simple, uncontested estate, the answer is often that you do not.

What's the cheapest way to do probate in England?

Full DIY via GOV.UK is free, because the underlying information is published by the government — it is just fragmented and time-consuming to assemble. Guided DIY with an estate settlement guide costs and gives you the same outcome with a structured roadmap. Either way, the probate court application fee itself is £300 (rising to £526 in July 2026) and applies regardless of which approach you choose, so factor that in on top of any service cost.

Can I start with a guide and hire a solicitor later if I get stuck?

Yes — and it is a common, sensible strategy. Starting with a guided-DIY approach costs little and gives you a clear view of what the estate actually involves. A good guide also tells you exactly when professional help is genuinely needed, so if you hit a complication — a dispute, an unexpected tax issue, a property title problem — you can bring in a solicitor for that specific issue rather than paying full-service rates from day one.

What does Farewill not cover?

Farewill's free online content deliberately withholds the final procedural steps — it is designed to introduce the process and lead you toward the paid service. The paid service covers the probate application itself, but depending on the package it may not include detailed Land Registry form guidance or a bank-by-bank threshold matrix, both of which you will need if you are transferring property or releasing accounts yourself. Check the scope of the specific package against what your estate requires.

Is Co-op Legal cheaper than Farewill?

Generally yes. Co-op Legal Services starts at around £1,679 versus Farewill's £2,750, so on the headline figure Co-op is cheaper. But the two packages do not necessarily include the same scope, and both rise in price with estate complexity. Compare what each one actually covers for your specific estate — the assets, the tax position, the number of beneficiaries — rather than comparing entry prices alone.

Deciding Between Them

There is no single best answer, only the best fit for your estate. If you are confident, have time, and the estate is simple, guided DIY with the Estate Settlement Guide for England gives you the structure of a professional process at a fraction of the cost. If you want partial support, Co-op sits in the middle. If you want it handled and can afford it, Farewill or a local solicitor will take it off your plate. For a deeper look at the two ends of that spectrum, see DIY probate vs. hiring a solicitor in England and how an estate settlement guide compares to online probate platforms. The worst choice is the one made without comparing — which is exactly the position Farewill's marketing is designed to leave you in.

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