Brands over time

FreeAgent
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

266 of FreeAgent's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 59 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 15 other software companies, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
266
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
59
Blog · press
188 · 78

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

FreeAgent's homepage from 2011 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026freeagent.com24 Jun 2026
FreeAgent homepage, 24 Jun 2026

Screenshot of FreeAgent’s homepage (freeagent.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 24 Jun 2026. © FreeAgent or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by FreeAgent.

Homepage

2026

“You are currently viewing our [Locale] site”

Page title

Accounting software for every small business - FreeAgent

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2011FreeAgent small business accounts software helps at every step
  2. 2014Say hello to your business's new best friend Accounting software trusted by over 35,000 freelancers and small businesses
  3. 2015Say hello to your business's new best friend Accounting software trusted by over 40,000 freelancers and small businesses
  4. 2018Trusted by over 60,000 businesses already!
  5. 2019Accounting software that sorts out the mess and the stress of managing business finances
  6. 2023You are currently viewing our [Locale] site

15 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
6
12
18
Software avg 13.3
11.6
14.4
13.8
15.2
11.6
13.6
13.7
14.4
17.8
16.7
14.8
16.1
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
20169 pp
201712 pp
20184 pp
20198 pp
202014 pp
202115 pp
202221 pp
202314 pp
202411 pp
20256 pp
20266 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201511.61
201614.49
201713.812
201815.24
201911.68
202013.614
202113.715
202214.421
202317.814
202416.711
202514.86
202616.16

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2016 (9), 2017 (12), 2018 (4), 2019 (8), 2020 (14), 2021 (15), 2022 (21), 2023 (14), 2024 (11), 2025 (6), 2026 (6). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Before and after

2019 to Nov 2022 against 2024 to 2026

The same measures on 57 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 23 pages from 2024 on. A change here is a change in style. It does not show how any page was written: people used every one of these words and shapes long before 2022, and SGR-011 found most of the shift across brands was a trend already under way.

Measure2019 to Nov 2022 · 57 pp2024 to 2026 · 23 ppChange
Sentence length
13.616.0+18%
Sentence rhythm
0.740.56−24%
Contractions
17.615.5−12%
"You"
72%60%−12 pts
"We"
27%36%+9 pts
Questions
4.11.9−53%
Exclamations
1.081.01−6%
Long words
27%28%+1 pts
Em dashes
0.100.08−17%
AI-associated words
0.612.64+329%
AI-era marketing words
0.442.08+374%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.810.90+11%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.100.08−26%
Page length
8511,178+38%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (57 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (23 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

FreeAgent among software companies

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. Em dashes

    93% less than its sector

    0.21 against a sector average of 3.04; lowest of 16.

  2. Contractions

    23% more than its sector

    18.9 against a sector average of 15.4; 2nd highest of 16.

  3. Sentence length

    18% more than its sector

    15.7 against a sector average of 13.3; highest of 16.

Sentence lengthHighest of 16
FreeAgent 15.7
10.415.7
Contractions2nd highest of 16
FreeAgent 18.9
8.519.6
"You"6th highest of 16
FreeAgent 65%
39%78%
"We"Mid-table, 9th of 16
FreeAgent 31%
12%49%
QuestionsMid-table, 8th of 16
FreeAgent 3.0
1.65.1
Long words4th lowest of 16
FreeAgent 26%
23%34%
Em dashesLowest of 16
FreeAgent 0.21
0.216.56
AI-associated wordsLowest of 16
FreeAgent 1.03
1.033.27
Exclamations6th highest of 16
FreeAgent 1.38
0.155.13
Page length2nd lowest of 16
FreeAgent 792
7403,377

Pages measured: FreeAgent 266 · GoCardless 217 · Xero 328 · Sage 229 · Intercom 204 · HubSpot 190 · Canva 203 · Figma 222 · ClickUp 203 · Miro 14 · Notion 30 · Slack 270 · Asana 223 · monday.com 266 · Airtable 299 · Mailchimp 258. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words FreeAgent uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

tax157.1 vs 9.1
mtd46.8 vs 0.6
vat37.6 vs 1.3
accountants36.5 vs 1.9
hmrc31.0 vs 0.7
income47.3 vs 4.8
bookkeepers28.7 vs 0.8
clients44.6 vs 5.8
accounting52.7 vs 8.6
self17.5 vs 0.4
small76.4 vs 19.9
FreeAgentSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 266 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

06 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

201625 Jul · Blog
“Attention all early birds and eager beavers - you can now file your 2015/16 Self Assessment literally months ahead of the January deadline. Perfect if you just want it out of the way and a gold star from HMRC!”
Self Assessment filing for 2015/16 is now live
201724 Feb · AnnouncementArchived copy
“We know that VAT can be a confusing topic for small businesses; our chief accountant, Emily, nicknames it “Very Awkward Tax” for a reason!”
Video: an introduction to VAT by HMRC
201925 Apr · BlogArchived copy
“Like a Bob Ross masterpiece, making good software takes love, attention to detail and time - tiny improvements end up making a big impact.”
Happy little features
202020 Feb · Blog
“Whether it’s long hours, the search for new clients or the stress of late payment, life can be tough for small business owners. When the buck stops with you alone, it can be tempting to spend more time looking after your business than yourself, so here are five useful ways to practice self-care when you’re self-employed.”
5 self-care tips for the self-employed
20238 Nov · Blog
“FreeAgent has been named Friendliest Software of the Year at the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) LUCA Awards 2023. It’s the fourth time FreeAgent has taken home this award, following wins in 2019, 2020 and 2022.”
FreeAgent wins Friendliest Software award for the fourth time!

07 · Every page

All 267 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 266 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 under 150 words of text). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20266 pages
20256 pages
202411 pages
202314 pages
202221 pages
202115 pages
202014 pages
20198 pages
20184 pages
201712 pages
20169 pages
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year145 pages
Not measured1 page

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

FreeAgent's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.