How much does Checkatrade cost in the UK?

How much does Checkatrade cost a month?

There is no published monthly price, and on 15 September 2026 there was no page on Checkatrade's own join site that gives one. The prominent “View our prices” buttons lead to a sign-up flow that asks for your trade category first, or to an advisor phone line. That is the honest answer to the most-searched question about Checkatrade, and it is worth saying plainly rather than filling the gap with a number.

What Checkatrade does describe is how the price is built. Its own “how it works” steps are: tell us your trade and the type of work you want, pick the postcode areas you want to work in, select the number of leads you would like to receive each year, pass an ID, address and documentation check, then “get a regular flow of leads for a monthly cost”.

So the model in 2026 is neither purely per-lead nor a flat off-the-shelf subscription. It is a monthly fee for an agreed annual quantity of leads, in postcodes you choose, for a trade you choose. Two businesses in the same town and the same trade can be paying different amounts, which is why no national figure is publishable and why any price you are quoted is yours alone.

So you cannot compare Checkatrade with anything until you have your own quote in writing, and when you get it, ask for the annual lead allowance in the same document as the monthly figure. The fee on its own tells you nothing without the number of leads it buys.

Is there a Checkatrade joining fee?

Checkatrade does not advertise a joining fee, but its Master Service Terms define an Application Fee of £250 excluding VAT. The terms describe it as a fee charged to process an application, and set out two situations where the company reserves the right to charge it: if you fail the vetting checks, to cover its reasonable costs, and on reactivation of a membership, to meet the cost of that reactivation.

The same terms say that where an applicant fails vetting but has complied with their obligations, Checkatrade refunds all fees paid up to termination less the Application Fee; where the applicant did not comply, the fees are not refunded but no Application Fee is charged. Its vetting FAQ says it more simply: if your membership is declined, “you will be refunded for anything you have paid during your vetting journey”.

For most people who apply and pass, then, there is no separate up-front charge, which is why “no joining fee” is so often repeated. But £250 plus VAT sits in the contract, and it is worth knowing before you start an application you are not sure you will pass.

Why will Checkatrade not publish its prices?

Because the price is assembled from three things it cannot know in advance: your trade category, your postcodes and your annual lead volume. That is Checkatrade's own description of the sign-up process, and it makes a published list genuinely difficult. It also means your price is set in a conversation, and conversations can be negotiated.

The promotions make this clearer than the marketing does. Checkatrade publishes its own September 2026 offer terms, which set out discounts on a 12-month Fixed Plan by primary trade category for anyone signing up between 1 and 30 September 2026, in four bands: handymen and painter-decorators; fascia, gardening, landscaping and roofing; builders, electricians, plasterers and plumbers; and a long list of remaining categories. Discounts apply to the membership price excluding VAT and need an active Direct Debit.

Two things are worth knowing about it. It is time-limited, so September's offer is not November's. And on the day we checked, the headings and the body text contradicted one another: the sections headed “25% off the first 4 months” and “100% off the first 1 month” both go on to describe 50% off the first two months. If you are signing up on the strength of a promotion, get the exact discount written into your confirmation email.

What costs extra on top of Checkatrade membership?

At least three things are sold separately, and only one of them has a published starting price: sponsored listings start at £100 a month. Checkatrade's own sponsored listings page describes a pay-per-click auction where you set a monthly budget and a bid, only pay when someone clicks your listing, and can start or stop at any time with no long-term contract. It claims an average of 35% more profile views and 30% more leads for campaigns, and is explicit that a top spot is not guaranteed — the top two positions go to the most competitive bids.

The printed directory is the second. Checkatrade says its directories drop into 24 million households across more than 300 UK areas, that packages run from a standard ad to a full page, that each box gets a unique tracked phone number, and that the subscription auto-renews. On price its FAQ says only that “prices vary depending on where you're based and what type of work you do”. The third is the admin software — quoting, job management and Checkatrade Pay — presented as part of the membership rather than priced separately. No figure is published for either.

For budgeting, the membership is the floor, not the ceiling. Sponsored listings alone at the published starting point add £1,200 a year on top of whatever your plan costs.

What is in the Checkatrade contract, and how do you cancel?

Membership is a 12-month agreement that renews itself automatically, and you cancel it by telephone, not online. This is the part people search hardest for, and the answers are all in Checkatrade's own Master Service Terms.

The join site says the same in one line under every price button: “Fixed Plan Memberships only. Memberships are for 12 months.” Treat it as a year's commitment from the day you sign, put the renewal date and the 35-day window in the diary that day, and if you ring to cancel, note the date, the time and who you spoke to.

Checkatrade vs MyBuilder, Rated People, TrustATrader, Which? Trusted Traders and Bark

Only two of the six publish a price: MyBuilder publishes a per-lead range, and Which? Trusted Traders publishes a full fee table. The rest quote you. That fact alone is useful, because it tells you where you can compare before committing and where you cannot. Everything in this table comes from the company's own website on 15 September 2026.

Read that as three different bets rather than a price ladder. A monthly membership bets that you will win enough work to spread the fee. A per-lead fee bets on each enquiry, win or lose. An endorsement scheme like Which? bets on the badge rather than lead volume, which is why its fee is published and flat.

Is Checkatrade worth it for tradesmen?

For some trades it clearly is, and the deciding number is jobs won per month, not the monthly fee. Directories are not a con: they put you in front of people already looking to buy, at the moment they are looking, which is the hardest thing in local marketing to arrange for yourself. Checkatrade says its platform had over 50,200 searches a day for tradespeople last year. If a small share of those are in your postcodes and your trade, a plan can pay for itself several times over.

It tends to work when three things are true together: your trade is in constant demand (plumbing, electrical, heating, roofing after a storm), you are somewhere the lead volume exists, and you have the reviews and the response speed to win a decent share of what you are sent. Then the fixed fee is divided by a lot of jobs, and one good bathroom or rewire covers months.

It tends not to work when the fee is fixed but the flow is thin: rural areas, specialist work with a small local market, or a new profile with no reviews against established members. The fee does not fall to match a quiet month. That is the structural difference between a membership and a per-lead platform, and it is the whole risk in the 12-month term.

The only sum that answers it

Take the monthly figure you have been quoted, and be honest about two numbers: how many leads you would actually chase, and how many you would win. Then:

• Cost per job won = monthly fee ÷ jobs won per month. A £200 plan winning four jobs is £50 a job. The same plan winning one is £200 a job.
• Compare that against your average job value, not your turnover. £50 a job against a £300 call-out is a different business from £50 against a £3,000 install.
• Then multiply by twelve, because that is the commitment. A £200 plan is £2,400 before VAT, before sponsored listings, before a directory ad.
• Run it again on a bad month. The question is not whether it works in August. It is whether you can carry it in February.

If you have never tracked where your enquiries come from, you cannot do this sum honestly — and that, more than the price, is the problem worth fixing first. Our guide on why your website isn't getting enquiries covers the tracking side.

What do tradespeople actually say about Checkatrade?

Opinion is genuinely split, and the public numbers do not settle it because they measure the wrong people. On 15 September 2026 Checkatrade's Trustpilot page showed a TrustScore of 4.7 out of 5 from 86,754 reviews, 85% five-star and 6% one-star, with 15,759 left in the previous twelve months. That is a strong score, but those reviews are written overwhelmingly by householders rating the tradesperson they hired, not by members rating what the membership cost them. It is not a measure of whether the fee pays back.

Checkatrade's own marketing quotes a member, Aaron of Smooth Touch Plastering: “That one call pays for itself, and then the rest is my money. So it's a good investment — I'm busy all month round.” That is a testimonial the company chose to publish, but it is still informative, because it describes the mechanism above: when the volume is there, one job clears the month.

Against that sit the recurring complaints on trade forums and in Facebook trade groups: fewer leads than expected, enquiries that never reply, leads shared with rivals, and difficulty getting out at renewal. Those are real experiences, consistent enough to take seriously, but they are anecdote rather than data — nobody publishes a representative survey of members' returns, and we could not find one. Your own cost per job won is the only evidence about your business.

A year of directory fees against a year of owning the channel

Using the one directory that publishes a full price, the smallest Which? Trusted Traders membership costs £1,045 in year one — the £248 assessment fee plus £797 paid annually — then £797 a year after that, both including VAT. Checkatrade cannot go in this sum because its price is not published, which is itself the point: you can run this comparison for Which?, and you cannot run it for Checkatrade until you have a quote.

Now the other side of the ledger, also from published prices. A .co.uk domain at Krystal is £7.99 a year excluding VAT, the same on renewal, and its entry shared hosting plan is £7 a month including VAT, or £84 a year. A Google Business Profile costs nothing: Google's own help page says “You can add or claim your business at no charge.”

That is the honest case against paying for leads forever, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion: the running cost of your own channel is roughly a tenth of the cheapest published directory membership, and the difference is enough to build something once that keeps working. A directory fee buys a place in someone else's queue this month; the same money spent once on a site you own buys pages still earning in three years, and a profile that keeps ranking whether or not you renew anything.

What the arithmetic does not do is make the directory worthless. A new website takes weeks to be found; a directory listing can produce an enquiry next Tuesday. The sensible order for most trades is both, then fewer: use paid leads to fill the diary now, build the owned channel alongside, and let the fee go when your own enquiries carry the month. What you must not do is pay for leads for five years and never build the thing that would have ended the need.

What to do before you sign, renew or cancel

Start with the quote in writing, because nothing else can be decided without it. Then work through the rest in order.

• Get the monthly fee and the annual lead allowance in the same document, with the renewal date, the notice window and any promotional discount, all in the confirmation email.
• Do the cost-per-job-won sum above on a realistic win rate, then again on a quiet month.
• Check what you already have. Search your trade and your town on a phone and see whether your own site appears at all, or whether it is directories all the way down. That result tells you what you are actually buying.
• Claim and finish your Google Business Profile before you spend anything: it is free and it is the listing you control. Our step-by-step guide walks through it.
• Get the free directories done too. There are more no-cost listings than most trades use, and they help you turn up in AI answers as well as search: see how to get listed in online directories.
• For one trade's worked example of building enquiries that carry no fee, how to get more roofing work follows it end to end.
• Diarise the renewal date the day you join, with a reminder 40 days before it. That is the single most useful thing on this list.

And if you are mid-term and unhappy: you cannot undo the year, but you can use it. Twelve months is long enough to build a site and a profile that leave you choosing whether to renew rather than having to. What that looks like for a trade business is a short read.

Common questions

How much is Checkatrade a month?

There is no published monthly figure. Checkatrade's own join site sends every price question through a sign-up flow or an advisor call, because the quote is built from your trade category, the postcodes you pick and the number of leads you choose to receive each year. Anyone quoting you a single national monthly price for Checkatrade in 2026 is repeating a second-hand number, not a published one.

Is there a Checkatrade joining fee?

Checkatrade does not advertise a joining fee, and its join site talks only about a monthly cost. Its Master Service Terms, though, define an Application Fee of £250 excluding VAT, which it reserves the right to charge if you fail the vetting checks, or to cover the cost of reactivating a lapsed membership. So for most successful applicants there is no up-front charge, but the fee exists in the contract.

How do you cancel a Checkatrade membership?

The Master Service Terms say the agreement renews automatically for another term equal to the last one unless notice of non-renewal is given, and that you cancel by the business owner calling 0333 014 6190 no earlier than 35 days before the renewal date. There is no cancel button described in the terms. Diarise the renewal date, ring inside that window, and keep a written note of the call.

Can you cancel Checkatrade after you have signed up?

You get two business days. The Master Service Terms give you two Business Days from the commencement date, which is the day you create your profile, to cancel without having to pay anything further. After that you are in the agreement term set out in your confirmation email, and the terms say that where the agreement ends for cause you must make any remaining payments up to the end of that term.

Is Checkatrade worth it for electricians and plumbers?

It depends entirely on jobs won per month, and nobody can answer it for you before you sign. The arithmetic is simple: a fixed monthly fee divided by the jobs it actually brings in. Win four, and the fee splits four ways. Win one, the whole fee sits on that job. Busy urban trades with strong reviews tend to spread the fee thin. Rural and specialist trades often cannot.

Checkatrade or MyBuilder, which is cheaper?

MyBuilder is the only one of the two that publishes its prices. It says there are no joining or membership fees and that shortlist fees typically range from £2 to £35 depending on the size of the job, charged when contact details are exchanged whether or not you win. Checkatrade charges a monthly membership on a 12-month term instead. Which works out cheaper depends on how many leads you take and how many you convert.

How much do Bark credits cost compared with Checkatrade?

Bark does not publish credit prices either. Its own pricing page says it uses a credit system, that the cost of contacting a customer is calculated from the service, the value of the job and supply and demand in the area, and that credits expire three months after purchase. There is no subscription and no contract. Like Checkatrade, you only learn your price once you are in the system.

Is Checkatrade free for tradesmen?

No. Paid membership is how you receive leads, and it runs for 12 months. Checkatrade's product terms do describe a Free Profile Service that you drop back to if your paid service ends, so a profile can exist without a plan, but that is not the same as being listed and fed enquiries. The free listing you fully control is your Google Business Profile.

Sources, all checked 15 September 2026. Checkatrade's own join site, join.checkatrade.com (the five sign-up steps, “get a regular flow of leads for a monthly cost”, the 12-month Fixed Plan small print, the 50,200 daily searches claim and the member testimonial from Aaron of Smooth Touch Plastering). Checkatrade sponsored listings page (pay per click, “starting from just £100/month”, no long-term contract, 35% more profile views, 30% more leads, top two spots by bid). Checkatrade directory page (24 million households, 300+ areas, tracked phone numbers, auto-renewal, “prices vary depending on where you're based and what type of work you do”). Checkatrade September 2026 Fixed Plan offer terms (trade-category discount bands, Direct Debit condition, and the contradiction between the headings and the body text noted on this page). Checkatrade Master Service Terms (Application Fee of £250 excluding VAT; two business days to cancel; automatic renewal; cancellation by the business owner calling 0333 014 6190 no earlier than 35 days before the renewal date; 30 days' notice of fee increases; remaining payments due to the end of the term). Checkatrade Product Terms — Approved (the Free Profile Service). Checkatrade vetting FAQ (the six checks and the refund if declined). MyBuilder trade registration page (no joining or membership fees; shortlist fees typically £2 to £35) and MyBuilder tradesperson terms and conditions (shortlist fee payable when contact details are shared, win or lose). Rated People tradespeople page and its Unlimited Plan help article (flat monthly fee, price by phone on 0333 212 0182, jobs up to £4,000, within 50 miles, no more than three tradespeople per lead). TrustATrader join page (no commission, never pay for leads, memberships limited per area; no price published). Which? Trusted Traders join page at for-traders.which.co.uk (assessment fee £248 incl VAT for 0–3 employees; £66 monthly or £797 annually for 0–3, £86 or £1,029 for 4–9, £114 or £1,363 for 10–19). Bark seller pricing page (credit system, job-related pricing, credits valid three months, no contract or commission). Trustpilot, uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.checkatrade.com (4.7 out of 5 from 86,754 reviews, 85% five-star, 6% one-star, 15,759 in the last twelve months). Krystal (.co.uk domain £7.99 a year excluding VAT; entry shared hosting £7 a month including VAT). Google Business Profile Help, “Add or claim your Business Profile” (“at no charge”). Could not be established, and deliberately not estimated: Checkatrade's monthly membership prices and tiers, its cost per lead, its cost per job won, its printed directory prices, Rated People's Unlimited price, TrustATrader's membership price, and Bark's credit pack prices — none of these are published by the companies themselves, and each is only obtainable by requesting a quote. There is also no representative published survey of what Checkatrade members earn back, so the forum and Facebook-group complaints referred to above are described as anecdote rather than evidence. Questions and headings were drawn from 337 unique Google UK autocomplete suggestions returned by 440 seeded queries in September 2026.