Are Checkatrade leads shared with other tradesmen?

Yes. The same lead goes to other matching local members at once and you compete to respond first. Checkatrade publishes no figure for how many, and you should be sceptical of anyone who quotes one as fact: the reported numbers run from a handful to twenty or more, and none of them comes from Checkatrade. It is not exclusive to you. Checkatrade does not officially publish the exact number.

Can you cancel or leave Checkatrade?

Membership is a twelve-month fixed term that auto-renews. Its membership terms require no less than 30 days notice by phone to cancel, so find your renewal date and work backwards from it. Do not count on a fourteen-day cooling-off period: the Consumer Contracts Regulations right protects consumers, and a trade buying a membership for its business is not one, which is the same reason it does not apply to a Yell contract. Cancelling your direct debit on its own does not end the contract, you have to contact Checkatrade to cancel.

Does Checkatrade vet tradesmen?

Yes, and this is one of its genuine strengths. There are up to twelve checks before you can show the badge, including photo ID, proof of address, trade qualifications, public liability insurance, personal and business CCJ checks, a company-history check for repeated closures, and customer references. It re-checks members over time. That is stricter than pay-to-play rivals like Bark.

Why are Checkatrade reviews so high if tradesmen complain about it?

Its high Trustpilot score comes mostly from homeowners rating the traders they hired, not from tradesmen rating their membership. Member opinion on trade forums and review sites is far more mixed, with complaints about lead quality, cost and contracts.

Do Checkatrade leads actually turn into work?

It is mixed and depends heavily on your trade, your area and how fast you respond. Plenty of members report a high share of leads that never pick up or turn out to be time-wasters, while others do well by replying instantly and treating it as one channel among several. Measure your own cost per won job before you commit long term.

What are the best alternatives to Checkatrade?

MyBuilder lets you join free and pay only to quote on jobs you choose, which suits planned home-improvement work. Bark is pay-per-lead and flexible but with lighter vetting. A Google Business Profile is free and you keep it. Your own website with Google Ads gives you leads that are yours alone. Word of mouth is still the most trusted source, it is just hard to turn on when you need it.

Last updated 26 August 2026

Is Checkatrade worth it for tradesmen?

Short answer: sometimes. If you are just starting out, or you do emergency work like plumbing or electrics in a busy area, Checkatrade can bring in real jobs while you build your name. If you already tick over on word of mouth, the cost, the shared leads and the twelve-month contract often make it poor value.

No spin here, and no pretending it is all bad. Below is the honest breakdown: what it costs, how the leads really work, the vetting, and who it suits, so you can make the call for your trade and your postcode.

Everything here about Checkatrade's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 26 August 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.

How it works

How Checkatrade actually works.

Checkatrade is a paid membership. You pass their vetting, choose the areas you want to cover and how many leads you want, then pay a monthly fee to appear in their search results and app. Homeowners then call you, ask for a quote, or book you straight from your profile, and your reviews build up your rating over time.

Pass the checks
ID, insurance and qualifications verified

Pick your patch
choose postcodes and lead volume

Pay monthly
a membership fee to be listed

Homeowners find you
they call, quote or book you

Credit where it is due

The vetting is real, and stricter than most.

This is Checkatrade's genuine strength. Before you can show the badge there are up to twelve checks, and your insurance evidence has to be refreshed each year. That is a world away from the sites where anyone with a card can pay to appear.

Photo ID and proof of address
Trade qualifications and public liability insurance
Personal and business CCJ checks
A company-history check for firms that keep closing and reopening
Customer references before you are approved

The money

What it really costs.

Here is the honest part most articles skate over, and it changed under our feet. Checkatrade now publishes entry tiers: a free profile, Approved at £30 a month, and Growth at “prices from £59 a month”. We said flatly that it published nothing until we re-read the page on 26 August 2026 and found it did. What it still does not publish is the number that actually matters to you, because Growth is a floor rather than a price and the sign-up flow ends in a figure quoted for your trade, how competitive your postcode is and how many leads you ask for. So treat every figure you read online, this one included, as a rough guide, not gospel.

With that caveat, trades commonly report membership somewhere between about £50 and £100 a month at the lower end, and £200 to £400 a month for busy trades in competitive areas. Paying per lead is a real option and not a rumour: Checkatrade's own membership terms define a PPL Membership, where you “pay for as many leads that we provide you” and get a monthly invoice showing the number of leads and the price per lead. What that price is, Checkatrade does not publish, and the per-lead figures floating around online do not come from it. Add it up and a busy trade can spend a few thousand pounds a year. For the full picture, including the 2025 price shake-up, VAT and the contract, see how much Checkatrade really costs.

Read this before you sign

It is a twelve-month contract, and it renews itself.

Membership is a fixed twelve-month term that auto-renews every year
The terms want at least 30 days notice by phone before your renewal date
Cancelling your direct debit does not end the contract, you have to tell them
Trades often report the price jumping on renewal, so check what year two will cost

Do the maths

Work out your cost per won job, not your monthly fee.

The fee on its own tells you nothing. Total everything you pay in a month, membership plus any per-lead charges, then divide it by the jobs you actually won. That number, cost per won job, is the only way to tell if it is paying its way. Do it after three months, before you are anywhere near the renewal.

The case for it

When it is worth it.

Plenty of trades do well out of Checkatrade, and it would be daft to pretend otherwise. It earns its keep in a few clear situations.

You are new or have no website yet, and you need work coming in while you build your name
You do reactive or emergency work, plumbing, electrics, heating, locks, where people search in a panic and hire fast
You are in a busy town or city with enough searches to justify the fee
You will work the profile properly, answer in minutes, and chase every review
You treat it as one tap among several, not the only source of work

The case against it

Where it bites.

The complaints from trades are consistent, and worth knowing before you commit for a year.

The lead is never only yours

The same job goes to several of you at once, so you are racing to answer and often quoting against each other on price. Checkatrade does not publish how many.

Time-wasters and no-answers

A common gripe is that a big share of leads never pick up, ghost the chat, or were never a real job, and you have paid to chase them all the same.

It can cost more than it makes

For trades in quieter areas or on low-value jobs, the fees do not always come back, and it can feel like working to pay the membership.

You are locked in for a year

The twelve-month auto-renew and the renewal-window rules make it far easier to join than to leave, and prices can rise when it renews.

The badge is theirs, not yours

Your profile, your reviews and your spot in the list live on their platform. Stop paying and it comes down, and you cannot take the reviews with you.

Those glowing reviews are homeowners

The high Trustpilot score is mostly homeowners rating traders they hired, not trades rating the membership. Trade opinion is far more mixed.

The verdict

Worth it for some, not for others.

Worth a look if

You are just starting out with no online presence
You do emergency or reactive work
You are in a busy, high-demand area
You can respond to a lead within minutes

Probably not if

You already have steady word of mouth and repeat work
You do high-volume jobs where the fees do not add up
You are in a rural or quiet area with few searches
You want to own your marketing, not rent your spot

Your options

The alternatives.

Checkatrade is not the only option, and it is not the only lead site that shares your job around. We gave the other two the same honest treatment, on MyBuilder and Bark, and put all three head to head. Here is how the main ones stack up, fairly.

Option	How you pay	Lead yours alone?	Best for
Checkatrade	Monthly membership, sometimes plus per-lead	No, shared	New or emergency trades in busy areas
MyBuilder	Free to join, pay to quote on jobs you pick	No, shared	Planned home-improvement work
Bark	Pay per lead with credits	No, shared	Flexibility, but lighter vetting
Rated People	Pay for matching leads	No, shared	Less used than it was
Google Business Profile	Free	Yes	Local searches, and you keep it
Your own website plus ads	You pay for the build and the ads	Yes	Owning your leads outright

Word of mouth still beats all of them for trust. It is just the one thing you cannot switch on the week the diary goes quiet, which is why trades turn to the paid options in the first place.

Another way

Rent the leads, or own them.

Strip it all back and the real question is not Checkatrade versus MyBuilder versus Bark. They all work the same way: you rent your spot, and the job gets shared around. The other path is to own your leads instead of renting them, with your own website and your own ads, so every call comes straight to you and nobody else is sold the same job. That is the whole reason we build what we build. If you want the longer argument on why shared leads are stacked against you, we wrote it up in the shared-lead trap.

We will be straight with you though: this is not a switch you flip overnight. A lead site can have you live tomorrow. Your own setup is a build, and ads take a little while to find their 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. When you are ready to build something of your own, our guide on how to get more leads lays out the order to work through.

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 not to bother. If a lead site is the right move for you right now, we will say so. 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

Questions trades actually ask.

How much does Checkatrade cost per month for tradesmen?: Partly, and this changed recently. Checkatrade now publishes entry tiers at join.checkatrade.com/pricing: a free profile, Approved at £30 a month, and Growth at “prices from £59 a month”. What it still does not publish is what a lead-generating plan actually costs, because Growth is a floor rather than a price and the sign-up flow ends in a figure quoted for your trade and postcode. Trades commonly report anywhere from about £50 to £100 a month at the lower end up to £200 to £400 a month in busy trades and competitive areas, and some plans add a fee on top for each lead. Get a direct quote for your own trade and postcode before you sign anything.
Is Checkatrade worth it for tradesmen?: It can be, mainly for newer businesses and reactive trades like plumbers and electricians in busy areas who need work now and have little online presence of their own. For established trades with strong word of mouth, the cost, the shared leads and the twelve-month contract often make it poor value. Track what each won job actually costs you before you renew.
Are Checkatrade leads shared with other tradesmen?: Yes. The same lead goes to other matching local members at once and you compete to respond first. Checkatrade publishes no figure for how many, and you should be sceptical of anyone who quotes one as fact: the reported numbers run from a handful to twenty or more, and none of them comes from Checkatrade. It is not exclusive to you. Checkatrade does not officially publish the exact number.
Can you cancel or leave Checkatrade?: Membership is a twelve-month fixed term that auto-renews. Its membership terms require no less than 30 days notice by phone to cancel, so find your renewal date and work backwards from it. Do not count on a fourteen-day cooling-off period: the Consumer Contracts Regulations right protects consumers, and a trade buying a membership for its business is not one, which is the same reason it does not apply to a Yell contract. Cancelling your direct debit on its own does not end the contract, you have to contact Checkatrade to cancel.
Does Checkatrade vet tradesmen?: Yes, and this is one of its genuine strengths. There are up to twelve checks before you can show the badge, including photo ID, proof of address, trade qualifications, public liability insurance, personal and business CCJ checks, a company-history check for repeated closures, and customer references. It re-checks members over time. That is stricter than pay-to-play rivals like Bark.
Why are Checkatrade reviews so high if tradesmen complain about it?: Its high Trustpilot score comes mostly from homeowners rating the traders they hired, not from tradesmen rating their membership. Member opinion on trade forums and review sites is far more mixed, with complaints about lead quality, cost and contracts.
Do Checkatrade leads actually turn into work?: It is mixed and depends heavily on your trade, your area and how fast you respond. Plenty of members report a high share of leads that never pick up or turn out to be time-wasters, while others do well by replying instantly and treating it as one channel among several. Measure your own cost per won job before you commit long term.
What are the best alternatives to Checkatrade?: MyBuilder lets you join free and pay only to quote on jobs you choose, which suits planned home-improvement work. Bark is pay-per-lead and flexible but with lighter vetting. A Google Business Profile is free and you keep it. Your own website with Google Ads gives you leads that are yours alone. Word of mouth is still the most trusted source, it is just hard to turn on when you need it.

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