How much does Checkatrade cost per month?

There is no published price. Checkatrade quotes you over the phone based on your trade, your postcode and how competitive your area is, so the figure moves from one trade to the next. Trades commonly report somewhere between about £70 and £150 a month once you are on a lead-generating plan, with busy trades in cities reporting a good deal more. Treat any figure you read online, this one included, as a rough guide. The only real number is the written quote for your own trade and postcode.

Is there a free option or a joining fee with Checkatrade?

There is no free tier that generates leads, it is a paid membership. Checkatrade states there is no joining fee, though some trades report being quoted an upfront setup or vetting charge, so ask directly and get it in writing. You pay the monthly or annual membership whether or not any work comes in.

Does Checkatrade charge VAT, and can I reclaim it?

Yes, the fees are quoted plus VAT. If you are VAT-registered you can reclaim that VAT as a business expense, so the real cost to you is the net figure. If you are not VAT-registered the VAT is a true 20 percent on top. That single point changes the maths for a lot of trades and most cost articles skip it.

Does Checkatrade charge per lead?

On its core membership, no, you pay a fixed subscription rather than a fee per lead, and you are charged whether the phone rings or not. That is the opposite of Bark or MyBuilder, where you pay for the leads you choose. Some plans and add-ons complicate this, and members report being told they have "used up" their leads and being nudged to upgrade, so confirm exactly what your quote includes.

How long is the Checkatrade contract and what does it cost to leave?

Membership runs on a twelve-month minimum term that rolls over on its own. You cannot stop partway through, leaving early usually means paying the balance of the term. To head off an automatic renewal you have to opt out in the short window that opens roughly a month before your renewal date, and stopping your direct debit alone does not close the account. So when you work out the cost, count a full year of fees, not a single month.

Why did my Checkatrade price go up at renewal?

Price rises on renewal are a common complaint, and Checkatrade ran a broad pricing change in 2025 that saw some members report their annual cost climbing sharply, in some cases from roughly £870 to around £1,500 a year, without more leads to show for it. That change has not been reversed and members are still reporting the same jumps on 2026 renewals. Always ask what year two will cost before you sign, rather than the first-year figure alone.

How is my Checkatrade quote calculated, and can you negotiate it?

The quote is built from your trade category, the postcodes you want to cover and how much competition and demand there is in that area, plus the plan or lead volume you pick. It is a sales conversation, so there is room to push, some trades report negotiating a shorter or rolling term, or a better rate. Get the final figure, the term and what it includes in writing before you commit.

How many jobs do I need to win to break even?

Work it out on cost per won job, not the monthly fee. Total everything you pay in a month, then divide by the jobs you actually won, not the leads you were sent. Because leads are shared with several trades, you win only a share of them, so a realistic target is often four to six won jobs a month before the membership is clearly paying its way. Measure this after three months, well before renewal.

Is Checkatrade cheaper than MyBuilder or Bark?

It depends how much work you win. Checkatrade is a fixed cost you pay every month regardless of leads, while MyBuilder and Bark charge you for the leads you choose, so in a quiet month a pay-per-lead site can be far cheaper, and in a busy month a flat membership can work out better value per job. Compare them on cost per won job over a few months, not on the headline price.

How much does Checkatrade really cost?

Short answer: Checkatrade will not tell you a price until you are on the phone. There is no price list, no calculator, nothing published. Trades commonly report paying somewhere between about £70 and £150 a month once they are on a plan that actually generates leads, plus VAT, on a twelve-month contract, with busy trades in cities reporting a fair bit more.

But the figures floating around online disagree wildly, from £30 a month to nearly £400, and there is a good reason for that. Below is the honest breakdown: why there is no price, what trades genuinely report paying, the contract and VAT that change the real cost, and the only number that actually tells you if it is worth it.

The short version

No public price. You get a quote by phone, based on your trade, postcode and how busy the area is.
Most report roughly £70 to £150 a month on a lead-generating plan, plus VAT. Cities and high-value trades run higher.
It is a fixed subscription, not pay-per-lead. You pay whether the phone rings or not.
Twelve-month minimum term that auto-renews. Leaving early usually means paying the rest.
Fees are plus VAT. VAT-registered trades reclaim it. If you are not registered, it is a real 20 percent on top.
The number that matters is your cost per won job, not the monthly fee.

Start here

Why there is no price list.

This is the bit almost every article skates over. Checkatrade does not publish its prices. There is no pricing page, no calculator, no tier list you can read before you commit your details. To get a number you either take a call from their sales team or work through the sign-up funnel and hand over your trade and postcode first.

So where do all the confident figures online come from? Mostly from each other. Dig into the numbers being quoted around the web and you find blogs citing other blogs, not a single Checkatrade source. That is not a criticism of them, it is just the reality you are working with: nobody can quote you a firm monthly price for your trade, because the price is set deal by deal on a phone call.

The one rule

Get the figure in writing for your trade and your postcode.

Every range on this page is a rough guide built from what trades report, not a quote. Before you sign anything, get Checkatrade to put in writing the monthly cost, the term, what it includes, and what year two will cost. If they will only say it over the phone, that on its own tells you something.

The real numbers

What trades actually report paying.

With the big caveat that these are reported figures, not published prices, here is the honest range. The quotes trades share tend to fall into three broad bands, and where you land depends on your trade, your area and how much you want to be seen.

Rough band	Reported cost	Who tends to land here
Entry / basic listing	from ~£30 to £60 a month +VAT	A basic verified listing, quieter areas, less exposure. Fewer leads to match.
Typical lead-generating plan	~£70 to £150 a month +VAT	The band most working trades report once they are set up to actually get leads.
Busy trade, competitive city	~£200 to £400 a month +VAT	High-value or in-demand trades in London and big cities, often with a featured or premium listing.

That spread is exactly why the figures online feel so contradictory. A £30 basic listing and a £399 premium plan for a London gas engineer are both "Checkatrade", and both get quoted as the price. The gap is not one site being wrong, it is the difference between a bare listing and a full membership with featured placement in a busy patch.

One widely-shared example gives the flavour: an electrician posting that Checkatrade wanted around £150 a month for roughly four leads. Whether that is good value depends entirely on how many of those four he actually won, which is the whole point of the maths further down.

The thing to know

The 2025 price shake-up, and where it sits now.

A big one that plenty of older guides still have not caught up with: the pricing change Checkatrade rolled out in 2025. It was framed as bringing fees in line with the value of the leads delivered. In practice, plenty of existing members reported their renewal cost jumping hard, in some cases from around £870 a year to roughly £1,500, with no extra leads to show for it.

Well over a year on, it has not been rolled back. Through 2026 members are still reporting the same renewal jumps, and the standard cost now settles at roughly £1,000 to £1,500 a year for most trades. It helps to know who you are dealing with: Checkatrade is owned by the investment group Brookfield, so it is a commercial platform run for revenue, which is part of why the price tends to travel one way at renewal.

So whatever headline figure you are quoted, treat it as a first-year number. The pattern of prices climbing at renewal is consistent enough that you should ask, and get in writing, what it costs in year two before you commit to year one.

What you are paying for

In the price, and on top of it.

In the membership

A verified listing and the Checkatrade badge
Your profile in the search results and app
Leads matched to your trade and area
Somewhere for customers to leave reviews

Watch for on top

VAT on every fee (reclaimable if you are VAT-registered)
Featured or premium placement as a paid upgrade
A possible upfront setup or vetting charge, so ask
Renewal rises after year one

The model, plainly

You pay to be listed, not per lead.

Checkatrade's core plan is a fixed subscription. You pay it every month whether ten jobs come in or none, which is the opposite of pay-per-lead sites where the cost only lands when a lead does. It is worth knowing that some members report being told they have "used up" their leads for the period and then being encouraged to move up a plan, so pin down exactly what volume your quote covers.

Read before you sign

The contract is part of the cost.

The monthly figure is only half the story, the commitment is the other half. Checkatrade membership is a twelve-month deal, so the true cost of saying yes is a full year, not a month.

Saying yes commits you to a full year, so multiply the monthly quote by twelve for the real number
There is no pause for a quiet spell, the fee lands every month of the term whether work comes or not
Walk away early and you generally owe whatever is left of the twelve months
It rolls over on its own unless you opt out in a narrow window that opens about a month before your date
Try to leave and you will likely get a retention call dangling a discount to stay
The sting tends to be at renewal, so pin down the year-two price, not the first-year one alone

None of that makes it a bad deal on its own, plenty of trades happily renew. It just means the real question is not "can I afford £100 this month", it is "am I confident this pays for a year". If your work is seasonal or you are testing the water, that twelve-month lock matters.

The only number that counts

Work out your cost per won job.

The monthly fee tells you nothing on its own. What tells you if Checkatrade is worth it is how much each job you actually win is costing you to get. Here is the sum, and why the shared-lead catch matters.

A worked example

You pay~£120 a month +VAT on your plan
You are sentsay 8 matched leads that month
But they are sharedeach one also goes to several other trades, so you win only some
You actually win2 jobs from those 8 leads
So your cost per won job is£120 divided by 2 = £60 a job, before VAT

£60 to win a £2,000 bathroom is a bargain. £60 to win a £90 call-out is not. That is the whole calculation, and it is personal to your trade and your win rate. Total what you pay, divide by the jobs you truly won, not the leads you were sent, and do it after three months, well before renewal. As a rough rule, most trades need to be winning four to six jobs a month off it before it is clearly paying its way.

One thing to watch in 2026: as more trades pile onto the platform, the same lead gets shared more ways, and members increasingly report customers collecting five quotes and going with the cheapest. That pushes your win rate down, which pushes your cost per won job up, so a figure that stacked up a year ago may not hold today. Rerun the sum on your own recent numbers, not on what it used to cost you.

Cheaper elsewhere?

How it compares on pure cost.

Checkatrade is not the only game, and the others charge in a completely different way. The headline split is simple: Checkatrade charges you to be listed, the rest mostly charge you for the leads you pick. That is why a quiet month can make a pay-per-lead site far cheaper, and a busy one can flip it the other way.

Option	How you pay	Rough cost	Tied in?
Checkatrade	Fixed monthly membership	~£70 to £150+/mo +VAT	Yes, 12-month contract
MyBuilder	No monthly fee, you pay to quote on the jobs you choose	~£5 to £40 a lead	No contract
Bark	Buy credits, spend per lead	~£5 to £40 a lead	No contract
Rated People	Small monthly fee plus lead costs	~£15 to £50/mo + leads	Varies

Costs are reported ranges, not published prices, and all of these sites share your job with other trades. Vetting differs too: Checkatrade's is the strictest of the four.

We gave each of the others the same honest treatment, on MyBuilder and Bark, and put all three head to head. If your question is less about the price and more about whether Checkatrade is right for you at all, start with is Checkatrade worth it.

The checklist

Five things to nail down before you sign.

Get the price in writingFor your exact trade and postcodes, not a rough phone figure.
Ask what year two costsGet the year-two figure as well, so a renewal rise cannot ambush you.
Check the termTwelve months is standard, but ask about a shorter or rolling option.
Confirm the lead volumeWhat you are actually promised, and what happens when it runs out.
Set your cost-per-won-job targetKnow the number you need to hit before you say yes, then measure it at three months.

Another way to spend it

Rent the leads, or own them.

Once you have your cost-per-won-job figure, there is a fair comparison to make. Say a busy trade spends £150 a month on Checkatrade, that is £1,800 a year to rent a spot where the job is still shared around. Put similar money into your own website and your own ads and every lead comes straight to you, nobody else is sold the same job, and what you build is yours. That is the whole reason we build what we build. The longer argument is in the shared-lead trap, and when you are ready to build something of your own, how to get more leads lays out the order to work through.

We will be straight with you though: a lead site can have you live tomorrow, and your own setup is a build that takes a little while to find its feet. If you need work this week and have nothing of your own yet, a stint on Checkatrade while you get sorted is a fair call. We would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

Why us

Why take our word for it?

Fair question, given we build websites and run ads for trades for a living. Honestly? Because we will tell you when Checkatrade is the right move for you right now, and plenty of times it is. We make nothing from selling your job to the four other blokes down the road, because we never do it. We only do well when your phone actually rings.

Straight answers

Cost questions trades actually ask.

How much does Checkatrade cost per month?: There is no published price. Checkatrade quotes you over the phone based on your trade, your postcode and how competitive your area is, so the figure moves from one trade to the next. Trades commonly report somewhere between about £70 and £150 a month once you are on a lead-generating plan, with busy trades in cities reporting a good deal more. Treat any figure you read online, this one included, as a rough guide. The only real number is the written quote for your own trade and postcode.
Is there a free option or a joining fee with Checkatrade?: There is no free tier that generates leads, it is a paid membership. Checkatrade states there is no joining fee, though some trades report being quoted an upfront setup or vetting charge, so ask directly and get it in writing. You pay the monthly or annual membership whether or not any work comes in.
Does Checkatrade charge VAT, and can I reclaim it?: Yes, the fees are quoted plus VAT. If you are VAT-registered you can reclaim that VAT as a business expense, so the real cost to you is the net figure. If you are not VAT-registered the VAT is a true 20 percent on top. That single point changes the maths for a lot of trades and most cost articles skip it.
Does Checkatrade charge per lead?: On its core membership, no, you pay a fixed subscription rather than a fee per lead, and you are charged whether the phone rings or not. That is the opposite of Bark or MyBuilder, where you pay for the leads you choose. Some plans and add-ons complicate this, and members report being told they have "used up" their leads and being nudged to upgrade, so confirm exactly what your quote includes.
How long is the Checkatrade contract and what does it cost to leave?: Membership runs on a twelve-month minimum term that rolls over on its own. You cannot stop partway through, leaving early usually means paying the balance of the term. To head off an automatic renewal you have to opt out in the short window that opens roughly a month before your renewal date, and stopping your direct debit alone does not close the account. So when you work out the cost, count a full year of fees, not a single month.
Why did my Checkatrade price go up at renewal?: Price rises on renewal are a common complaint, and Checkatrade ran a broad pricing change in 2025 that saw some members report their annual cost climbing sharply, in some cases from roughly £870 to around £1,500 a year, without more leads to show for it. That change has not been reversed and members are still reporting the same jumps on 2026 renewals. Always ask what year two will cost before you sign, rather than the first-year figure alone.
How is my Checkatrade quote calculated, and can you negotiate it?: The quote is built from your trade category, the postcodes you want to cover and how much competition and demand there is in that area, plus the plan or lead volume you pick. It is a sales conversation, so there is room to push, some trades report negotiating a shorter or rolling term, or a better rate. Get the final figure, the term and what it includes in writing before you commit.
How many jobs do I need to win to break even?: Work it out on cost per won job, not the monthly fee. Total everything you pay in a month, then divide by the jobs you actually won, not the leads you were sent. Because leads are shared with several trades, you win only a share of them, so a realistic target is often four to six won jobs a month before the membership is clearly paying its way. Measure this after three months, well before renewal.
Is Checkatrade cheaper than MyBuilder or Bark?: It depends how much work you win. Checkatrade is a fixed cost you pay every month regardless of leads, while MyBuilder and Bark charge you for the leads you choose, so in a quiet month a pay-per-lead site can be far cheaper, and in a busy month a flat membership can work out better value per job. Compare them on cost per won job over a few months, not on the headline price.

Rather spend it on leads that are yours alone?

Tell us a bit about your business and we'll show you what owning your leads looks like for the kind of money you are weighing up. Got a question first? Just message us.

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