KilnGuides

Free, plain-English guides for self-employed workers.

Tax, insurance, pricing, rights, safety, explained properly. No jargon. No paywall. No login. Ever.

  • 15 sites
  • ·6 countries
  • ·2,100+ free guides
  • ·450+ templates
  • ·250+ free tools

A network of independent guidance sites, one for every trade. Built in the UK. Live in Australia, Canada, the US, India and South Africa.

Find your siteSponsor a Kiln

How this works

01

Always free

Every guide, template and tool. No paywall, no login, no premium tier. Ever.

02

Plain English

Written by people who have been there. No legal jargon, no HR waffle, no gov.uk copy-paste.

03

Kept up to date

Tax rates change. Laws change. We update everything so you do not have to.

04

Honestly funded

Revenue comes from clearly labelled industry sponsorship. Sponsors never influence a word of editorial, and we never sponsor mental health content.

What every Kiln covers

Tax and Self-Assessment: how to register, what you owe, when to file, and how to claim what's yours.

Insurance: what cover you actually need, what's legally required, and what's a waste of money.

Pricing Your Services: how to charge properly, what others charge, and when to raise your prices.

Employment Rights: your rights as a self-employed worker, including IR35, CIS, and contracts.

Health and Safety: what's legally required for your trade, from risk assessments to PPE and COSHH.

Regulations and Licensing: which licences, registrations and qualifications apply to your industry.

Client Management: contracts, deposits, cancellations, complaints, and getting paid on time.

Business Growth: marketing, hiring, scaling up, and knowing when you're ready.

The sites

One site per trade, per country

Counted from each site’s own sitemap on . Every one is free, and none of them asks for your email.

United Kingdom

Australia

Canada

United States

India

South Africa

“Pages” is every URL a site lists. “Guides” is the long-form pieces only; those sites also carry reference cards, calculators and section hubs that are not counted here.

Every site on one page

Sponsored

Our founding sponsors

Network partners with category-exclusive sponsorship across two or more Kilns. Labelled, and with no say over a word of editorial.

The Online Accountant

The Online Accountant

Accounting and tax support across the network

Visit
The Property Accountant

The Property Accountant

Specialist property tax guidance

Visit

Interested in becoming a Kiln Network Partner? Get in touch

The Charter

Our promise

Every guide free, forever. No paywall, no login. Sponsors never touch editorial. We never sponsor mental health content.

Read the full Charter

What a Kiln guide is

Every Kiln site is built around long-form, plain-English guides that cover the stuff nobody else explains properly. Not blog posts. Not listicles. Not AI-generated filler. Each guide walks you through a real topic from start to finish: what the rules are, what actually happens in practice, and what to do about it. Here are three, live on their own sites and kept up to date there.

Construction

CIS Deductions Wrong: How to Check and Get Your Money Back

Your CIS deductions do not look right. How to check, what to do if your contractor got it wrong, and how to claim back what you are owed.

Read it on SiteKiln
Property

Section 21 Is Being Abolished: What Do I Do?

The transition window, the new Section 8 grounds, the PRS database, and what to do before and after 1 May 2026.

Read it on PropertyKiln
Tax

Do I need to register for Self Assessment as a sole trader?

When you must tell HMRC, the trading allowance, the 5 October deadline, what you need and how to register.

Read it on TaxKiln

Why I built this

I spent months dealing with a business dispute and realised something that should have been obvious: the information I needed existed, but it was buried across gov.uk, law firm blogs written for lawyers, and trade body sites locked behind paywalls. If I found it hard to navigate with years of business experience, someone just starting out has no chance.

KilnGuides started as one site for construction workers. Then I realised every self-employed industry has the same problem: the rules are the same, the jargon is the same, and nobody explains any of it in plain English. So I kept building.

Every guide is free. Every template is free. Every tool is free. No paywall, no login, no premium tier. Revenue comes from industry sponsorship, clearly labelled, and never on mental health content. That is it.

SJ

Scott Jones

Founder

"If I found it hard to navigate with years of business experience, someone just starting out has no chance."

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Every guide, template and tool across every Kiln site is completely free. No paywall, no login, no premium tier. We are funded by clearly labelled industry sponsorship, not by charging you.

All 15 of them are listed on one page at kilnguides.co.uk/links, grouped by country. Each is a separate site with its own name and domain, built for one trade or one subject, so you only ever read the rules that apply to you.

The UK, Australia, Canada, the US, India and South Africa. Tax guidance is written separately for each country because the rules are different in each one, and the trade sites are built per country for the same reason. Nothing is translated across borders.

KilnGuides started from a place of pain in the construction industry, problems the founder knew would be grief for self-employed workers and small business owners right across the country. Every guide takes deep research and real money to bring up to a solid standard, cross-checked against official sources (HMRC, HSE, ACAS, Companies House in the UK, and the equivalent bodies in each country we cover) and written in plain English. We are not lawyers. We tell you what the rules are in normal language so you know where you stand.

Clearly labelled industry sponsorship. One sponsor per category, per site. Sponsors are labelled on every page and they never influence or edit the content. We do not run ad networks, we do not sell data, we do not use pop-ups. We never accept sponsorship on mental health content.

No. You do not need to create an account, give us your email, or log in. Everything is open and accessible.

Gov.uk is the official source and we reference it constantly. But it is written for everyone (employers, employees, limited companies, sole traders) all in the same documents. We take the bits that apply to self-employed workers in your specific industry and explain them in plain English with practical examples. Think of us as the translation layer.