How much does Rated People cost per month?

Rated People publishes no price. Not on its sign-up page, not in its payment terms, nowhere public, and that is true of the flat-fee Unlimited plan as well as the older membership plans. Figures you will read elsewhere, ours included until we went and checked, are trades reporting their own bills rather than a tariff anybody can hold Rated People to. What its payment terms DO tell you is the shape: a recurring membership fee, a minimum term whose length is set per plan and never published, and lead credit that expires at the end of each billing period with no rollover and no refund.

How does Rated People charge for leads?

It depends which plan you are on, and that is the part worth pinning down before you sign. Its trade sign-up page now leads with Unlimited: "One fee. Unlimited leads", nothing charged per lead. But its payment terms still describe membership plans that bundle in lead credit you then spend per job, and describe the Unlimited plan itself as entitling you to "a certain amount of credit or included Job Leads" subject to "specific eligibility criteria, such as trade, budget". So ask which plan you are being put on, what happens when a lead falls outside it, and get the answer in writing.

Is Rated People shared or exclusive?

Shared, but capped, and Rated People is one of only two big lead sites that publishes the number at all. Its trade sign-up page states plainly that "no more than 3 tradespeople can buy the same lead". Bark's terms say up to five. Checkatrade and MyBuilder do not publish a figure. Three is better than an unknown number, but it is still three of you quoting a job all three paid for, so assume you are competing on price from the first phone call.

Does Rated People vet tradespeople?

It runs fraud and identity screening on signup and then monitors accounts with a red-flag system. The one hard, checked requirement is Gas Safe registration, and only for gas-related leads. For every other trade there is no equivalent requirement to show insurance or qualifications before you can start buying leads, which is a lighter bar than Checkatrade sets.

Can you get a refund on Rated People?

Rated People operates a refund route for leads you genuinely cannot contact, and trades report the allowance is rationed. On the contract itself, be careful what you have been told: its payment terms contain no cooling-off period at all, and publish no minimum term length. The fourteen days that do exist are notice periods, not a change-your-mind window. You must give at least 14 days notice to cancel, and at least 14 working days before a renewal date to stop it renewing. Miss it and the terms are explicit: "your membership will automatically renew for the same Minimum Term Membership Plan". That is the clause to diarise.

Is Rated People a good site?

It depends which review platform you check, and that is itself worth knowing before you commit to a minimum term of a length they never print. Trustpilot puts it at roughly 4 out of 5 from around 19,000 reviews; Reviews.io puts the same company at 2.3 out of 5 from 238 reviews. Neither cleanly separates tradesperson reviewers from homeowners, but the gap between the two platforms is the honest headline here, not either number on its own.

What is better, Checkatrade or Rated People?

The honest answer is that you cannot compare them on price, because neither publishes one. Checkatrade quotes you individually at the end of a sign-up questionnaire. Rated People shows no figure for any plan. What you can compare is what each commits to in writing: Rated People caps a shared lead at three trades and caps its Unlimited plan to your primary trade, jobs under £4,000 and a 20-mile radius. Checkatrade publishes neither a price nor a sharing cap. Judge them on what they will put in a contract, because that is the only part you can hold them to.

Last updated 11 September 2026

Is Rated People worth it for tradesmen?

Short answer: it can be, but read the contract before the sales page. Rated People now leads with a plan it calls Unlimited, a flat monthly fee with nothing charged per lead. Its own trade agreement then limits that plan four ways: your primary trade only, jobs under £4,000, within 20 miles, and a daily cap on how many leads you can take. Anything outside those “may incur an additional charge”.

The older shape has not gone either. Membership plans with lead credit bundled in still exist in the terms, and on those you pay a monthly fee and spend credit per lead on top. Which one you land on depends on your trade and what you are sold, so the first question is not what it costs, it is which plan you are actually being put on.

Below is the honest version, taken from Rated People's own user agreement and payment terms rather than from what the sign-up page says: what the plan actually caps, the renewal clause that catches people, what changed in who owns it, and why the reviews look completely different depending which site you check.

Everything here about Rated People'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.

The 30-second version

Rated People against the rest.

Where Rated People sits next to the other lead sites, and next to owning your leads outright.

Platform	How you pay	Lead shared with	Best for
Rated People	Flat monthly fee (Unlimited), or membership plus lead credit. Neither price published	No more than 3, stated in its own terms	Work inside the caps: primary trade, under £4,000, 20 miles
Checkatrade	Membership, quoted individually. No price list published	Not published	Reactive trades who want the badge
MyBuilder	Free to express interest, a non-refundable fee when shortlisted. No fee table published	Not published	Planned home-improvement work
Bark	Credits at £1.75 excl VAT at standard rate, spent per lead	Up to 5, in its own terms	Flexibility, wide range of trades
Your own website + ads	You pay for the site and the ads	Nobody, it is yours	Owning your leads outright

The defining mechanic

Unlimited, and the four things it is not.

The sign-up page says “One fee. Unlimited leads”. The contract underneath it says something narrower, and it is worth reading before you sign rather than after. Section 19 of Rated People's trade agreement limits the Unlimited plan to your primary trade, to jobs with budgets under £4,000, and to a 20-mile radius, and adds that leads outside those “may incur an additional charge”. On top of that a fair usage policy says lead purchases “may be regulated once a certain number of leads are reached per day”. Four caps, then, on the thing called unlimited.

A recurring membership fee
monthly, quarterly or annual, and the amount is published nowhere

A minimum term
defined in the terms as "the minimum period of time which you commit to paying", with no length given

Lead credit that expires
included credit dies at the end of each billing period, cannot roll over, and is never refunded

Charges outside the caps
leads beyond your trade, £4,000 or 20 miles "may incur an additional charge"

Why there are no pounds on this page

Because Rated People publishes none, for any plan, anywhere public. We used to print a set of reported figures here and we have taken them down, because a number a trade posted about their own bill is not a price list and repeating it made us part of the problem. Everything above comes from Rated People's own user agreement and payment terms instead, which is the one source they cannot dispute. If you want a figure you have to ask them, and if you do, ask what the minimum term is in months and get the answer in writing, because the terms do not state one.

The contract

The clause that renews you for another full term.

We had this wrong until we read the contract, and the correction matters, so here it is plainly. This page previously told you there was a 12-month minimum and a 14-day cooling-off window. Neither is in Rated People's terms. The word “cooling” does not appear in them at all, and no minimum term length is published anywhere: the payment terms define a minimum term only as “the minimum period of time which you commit to paying the Membership Fee”, with the length set per plan.

What there is instead is worse, and it is the thing to diarise. Cancelling needs “not less than fourteen (14) days notice”, and stopping a renewal needs “at least fourteen (14) working days in advance” of the renewal date. Miss either and the terms are not vague about what happens: “your membership will automatically renew for the same Minimum Term Membership Plan”. Not another month. Another whole term, of a length you were never shown in writing.

Two more worth knowing before you sign. Lead credit included in a plan expires at the end of each billing period, “you cannot roll them over into your next Billing Period”, and there is “no refund for any unused Lead Credits”. Any credit handed to you as a goodwill gesture expires 30 days after it lands. So unspent credit is not money in an account, it is money with a clock on it.

On lead sharing, credit where it is due: Rated People states the cap in its own words, “no more than 3 tradespeople can buy the same lead”, and only one other big lead site publishes a number at all. Three is a real limit and it is better than the unknown you get elsewhere. It is still three of you quoting a job all three paid for.

The number nobody works out

Your real cost per won job.

Whichever plan you end up on, the sum that matters is not the monthly fee and it is not the credit. It is everything Rated People took off you in a month, against the jobs you actually won that month. Nobody selling you a plan will do this sum with you.

everything they charged you ÷ jobs you won = your true cost per job

You cannot run that sum in advance, because Rated People will not tell you the fee. But there is one part you CAN work out before you sign, and it needs no price at all. A lead goes to no more than three of you, on their own published figure. Across those three trades it can still only ever become one job. So however sharp your quoting is, the ceiling on a shared lead is one in three, which means whatever monthly fee you are quoted is really three fees for every job that actually gets won. Ask what the fee is, ask how many leads a month it realistically covers, then divide the jobs by three. That is the optimistic version, and it is the one to judge it on.

Work inside the caps

Your primary trade, jobs under £4,000, customers within 20 miles, and enough of them that a flat fee divides down sensibly. This is the case it is built for.

A quiet month

The fee lands whether or not you take a lead, and any credit you did not spend expires at the end of the billing period rather than carrying over.

The rule

Everything they charged you, divided by jobs won. Then remember a lead goes to up to three of you, so budget for winning one in three rather than one in one.

Straight from the reviews

Two review sites, two different companies.

Check one review platform and you would sign up today. Check another and you would not touch it. Neither is wrong, they are just measuring different, smaller slices of opinion, and that gap is worth knowing before you commit to a minimum term, not after.

Platform	Rating	Review count
Trustpilot	~4.0 out of 5	~19,000
Reviews.io	2.3 out of 5	238

Neither platform cleanly separates tradesperson reviewers from homeowners, so treat both as a mixed signal, not a clean read on the trade experience specifically. What does show up repeatedly among trade-authored reviews and forum posts is billing and refund friction, not workmanship complaints. One Reviews.io reviewer described their monthly subscription being raised, in their words, "from £18 per month to £154 without me agreeing", an extreme single case, but consistent with a wider pattern of trades flagging unexpected subscription changes and rationed refunds.

You will also see "less used than it was" floating around comparison sites, ours included until this rewrite. We could not find any public usage or market-share data to back that up, only forum sentiment. The honest version is: there is no evidence of decline, just tradespeople who say they have moved on, which is a softer and more useful thing to know than a made-up statistic.

Vetting and trust

How well does it vet?

Rated People runs fraud and identity screening at signup, then keeps an eye on accounts with a red-flag system rather than a heavy upfront check. The one hard, verified requirement is Gas Safe registration, and that only applies before you can buy a gas-related lead.

For every other trade, there is no equivalent public requirement to prove insurance or qualifications before you start buying leads. That is a genuinely lighter bar than Checkatrade, which requires a vetting interview and proof of public liability insurance. Worth knowing both ways: it is quicker to get started here, and it means the badge on a profile is not proof of much beyond passing a fraud check.

Who you are actually signing up with

Who owns Rated People now.

Rated People Limited (company number 05540422) was venture-backed by Frog Capital from 2011. Companies House filings show that changed on 3 June 2024: Frog Capital stopped being registered as a person with significant control, and CEO Ottokar Rosenberger and Chairman Adrian Cox were each registered holding between 25 and 50 percent. There is no public press release explaining the deal in detail, so treat this as what the filings show, not a confirmed story. What it does tell you: the venture-capital chapter that funded its growth years has ended, and it is now run and largely owned by its own leadership. No evidence of financial distress in its filings, its accounts continue to be filed on the normal schedule.

The honest verdict by trade

Who it is for, and who should walk away.

Worth a go if

You do steady, mid-value jobs most months
You can win close to half the leads you buy
You would rather one bundled bill than juggling several sites
You are Gas Safe registered and want the gas-lead pool
You want the member discounts on top of the leads

Give it a miss if

You mostly do small or low-margin jobs
Your area is quiet, so the monthly fee still lands
You are new with no reviews and cannot absorb a losing month
You hate paying a bill regardless of whether you win any work
You would rather not pay for a lead two rivals also bought

The bigger picture

Renting leads, or owning them.

Step back from the subscription and the credit fees and the shape is the same as every lead site: you pay for an introduction, share it with at least one rival, and the customer was never really yours. Win or lose, the subscription lands again next month. A lead from your own website and your own ads is owned outright, no rival quoting the same job, no bill just for existing.

We are straight about it: building that takes time, and a lead site can carry you while you get there. We laid out the full argument in the shared-lead trap, and the practical order for getting more work is in how to get more leads. If you are weighing the rivals too, see is Checkatrade worth it and is MyBuilder worth it, or put Checkatrade, MyBuilder and Bark side by side.

The 90-day test

How to tell if it is working.

Do not judge it on a good month or a bad one. Run it for ninety days and do the sum properly, then decide with numbers, not a gut feeling.

Log every charge. The subscription each month plus every credit spend, whether the lead turned into a job or not.
Work out cost per won job. Subscription plus credit spent, divided by jobs actually won. That is your real number.
Compare it to the job value. A small slice of an average job and the two-charge model is earning its keep. Eating into your margin means it is time to cut it loose.
Compare it to owning. Set that total against what a customer from your own website and ads would cost you once, and kept for good.

Why us

Why take our word for it?

Fair question, because we build websites and run ads for trades, so we have a horse in this race. Honestly? Because we will tell you to stay on Rated People when the sum works in your favour, and we make nothing from you doing that. We only do well when your phone rings with work that is yours, so we would rather give you the real sum than talk you off a subscription that is paying for itself.

Straight answers

Questions trades actually ask.

How much does Rated People cost per month?: Rated People publishes no price. Not on its sign-up page, not in its payment terms, nowhere public, and that is true of the flat-fee Unlimited plan as well as the older membership plans. Figures you will read elsewhere, ours included until we went and checked, are trades reporting their own bills rather than a tariff anybody can hold Rated People to. What its payment terms DO tell you is the shape: a recurring membership fee, a minimum term whose length is set per plan and never published, and lead credit that expires at the end of each billing period with no rollover and no refund.
How does Rated People charge for leads?: It depends which plan you are on, and that is the part worth pinning down before you sign. Its trade sign-up page now leads with Unlimited: "One fee. Unlimited leads", nothing charged per lead. But its payment terms still describe membership plans that bundle in lead credit you then spend per job, and describe the Unlimited plan itself as entitling you to "a certain amount of credit or included Job Leads" subject to "specific eligibility criteria, such as trade, budget". So ask which plan you are being put on, what happens when a lead falls outside it, and get the answer in writing.
Is Rated People shared or exclusive?: Shared, but capped, and Rated People is one of only two big lead sites that publishes the number at all. Its trade sign-up page states plainly that "no more than 3 tradespeople can buy the same lead". Bark's terms say up to five. Checkatrade and MyBuilder do not publish a figure. Three is better than an unknown number, but it is still three of you quoting a job all three paid for, so assume you are competing on price from the first phone call.
Does Rated People vet tradespeople?: It runs fraud and identity screening on signup and then monitors accounts with a red-flag system. The one hard, checked requirement is Gas Safe registration, and only for gas-related leads. For every other trade there is no equivalent requirement to show insurance or qualifications before you can start buying leads, which is a lighter bar than Checkatrade sets.
Can you get a refund on Rated People?: Rated People operates a refund route for leads you genuinely cannot contact, and trades report the allowance is rationed. On the contract itself, be careful what you have been told: its payment terms contain no cooling-off period at all, and publish no minimum term length. The fourteen days that do exist are notice periods, not a change-your-mind window. You must give at least 14 days notice to cancel, and at least 14 working days before a renewal date to stop it renewing. Miss it and the terms are explicit: "your membership will automatically renew for the same Minimum Term Membership Plan". That is the clause to diarise.
Is Rated People a good site?: It depends which review platform you check, and that is itself worth knowing before you commit to a minimum term of a length they never print. Trustpilot puts it at roughly 4 out of 5 from around 19,000 reviews; Reviews.io puts the same company at 2.3 out of 5 from 238 reviews. Neither cleanly separates tradesperson reviewers from homeowners, but the gap between the two platforms is the honest headline here, not either number on its own.
Who owns Rated People?: Rated People Limited (company number 05540422) was VC-backed by Frog Capital from 2011. Companies House filings show that changed on 3 June 2024, when Frog Capital stopped being a person with significant control and CEO Ottokar Rosenberger and Chairman Adrian Cox were each registered holding 25 to 50 percent. No press release explains the deal in detail; this is what the public filings show.
What is better, Checkatrade or Rated People?: The honest answer is that you cannot compare them on price, because neither publishes one. Checkatrade quotes you individually at the end of a sign-up questionnaire. Rated People shows no figure for any plan. What you can compare is what each commits to in writing: Rated People caps a shared lead at three trades and caps its Unlimited plan to your primary trade, jobs under £4,000 and a 20-mile radius. Checkatrade publishes neither a price nor a sharing cap. Judge them on what they will put in a contract, because that is the only part you can hold them to.
Is Rated People worth it for tradesmen?: It fits best where the caps do not bite: work inside your primary trade, jobs under £4,000, customers within 20 miles, and enough volume that a flat monthly fee divides down to something sensible. It is a harder sum in a quiet patch, because the fee lands whether or not you take a single lead, and a poor one if your good work sits outside the caps, because those leads "may incur an additional charge" on top of the plan you thought was unlimited.

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