Checkatrade Alternatives: 7 Options Compared for UK Trades (2026)

The best Checkatrade alternatives for UK trades are MyBuilder and Bark if you want to pay only for the leads you choose, TrustATrader if you’d rather pay one yearly fee and never pay per lead, and Which? Trusted Traders if a trusted badge matters more than a stream of leads. Google Local Services Ads and your own website with a Google Business Profile are the other two routes, and the only ones where the customer comes to you directly from Google.

We build websites for trades, so we have a view: you should own at least some of your leads. That said, lead sites work for plenty of trades, and we say where they do. Every fee and term below comes from each platform’s own pricing pages and terms, checked in October 2026. Where a platform doesn’t publish a price, we say so.

Checkatrade and the six alternatives compared on what tradespeople ask about first. The detail for each, with sources, is further down.

Checkatrade has three tiers. A free profile costs nothing, Approved membership, which gets you the tick and the directory listing, is £30 a month, and Growth plans that send you leads start from £59 a month (Checkatrade pricing, 2026). The price of the Fixed Plan, which delivers a set number of leads a year, depends on your trade, your postcodes and how many leads you want, and isn’t published.

Checkatrade says it runs up to 12 checks before approving a member, including ID, qualifications and financial checks. Its terms allow an application fee of up to £250 for that vetting, which isn’t refundable (Checkatrade Master Service Terms, updated 13 October 2026). Whether you’re charged it depends on the offer at the time.

The terms worth reading before you sign:

• Fixed Plan memberships last 12 months, and the terms say membership renews automatically for the same period unless you give notice
• Notice has to be given by phone, no earlier than 35 days before the renewal date
• Checkatrade can raise fees at renewal with 30 days’ notice, and fees already paid aren’t refundable
• The number of leads on a Fixed Plan is “only an estimate and is not binding” (Fixed Plan terms)
• On the pay-per-lead Opportunities Board, “multiple trades may unlock the same Opportunity”, and there’s no refund if the customer doesn’t reply (Opportunities Board terms)

Six alternatives, in the order most trades compare them. The seventh, your own website and Business Profile, has its own section below.

Rated People no longer sells memberships to tradespeople. Its trade sign-up page says “Rated People is now part of Checkatrade Group”, that it “closed all memberships before it became part of Checkatrade”, and that leads now go to Checkatrade tradespeople (Rated People, checked October 2026). If you’re comparing it with Checkatrade, you’re now comparing Checkatrade with itself.

Local Heroes, British Gas’s trade platform, is closed too. British Gas says it “stopped accepting new jobs on 20th October, 2023” (British Gas). Older comparison articles still list both.

These two are the comparison most trades make, and they work in opposite ways. Checkatrade sells a membership and a badge, with leads on top. MyBuilder sells individual leads.

If you want steady leads and the badge, and can commit for a year, Checkatrade fits. If your work is uneven or you want to pick jobs one at a time, MyBuilder is easier to stop and start.

It can be. For a trade starting out, a badge and a stream of leads can fill the diary quickly. Whether it pays depends on your numbers, so work them out before the first renewal:

• How many leads did you get last month, and how many became paid jobs?
• What did each won job cost you in fees, once you divide the membership by the jobs?
• How many of those customers would have found you anyway, through a recommendation or Google?
• When does the plan renew, and when is the last day to give notice by phone?

If a won job costs you a small share of what it pays and the leads keep coming, it’s worth it. If you’re paying for leads that other trades also chase, or the renewal date catches you out, look again.

Lead sites are a fair trade for time. They suit you best when:

• You’re new, with few reviews and no website yet, and need work this month
• You’ve moved into a new area where nobody knows your name
• You have quiet months to fill and can drop the spend when you’re busy
• You want to test demand for a new service before building a page for it

The trade-off is that you rent the leads. You pay for each one or for the membership, you may share the customer with other trades, and the reviews you collect live on someone else’s platform. Stop paying and the enquiries stop.

The alternative to renting leads is owning them: a Google Business Profile plus a website of your own. Creating a Business Profile is free, Google says (Google Business Profile), and it’s what most people see first when they search for a trade nearby. Your website is where they check you out and get in touch, and every enquiry it brings costs you nothing extra.

It isn’t instant. Expect early movement in 2–3 months and steadier results after 6, and longer in a competitive area. That’s why we’d run it alongside a lead site at first, then cut the lead spend as your own enquiries grow. Our SEO guide for tradesmen covers the do-it-yourself version.

If you’d rather hand it over, our local SEO service works on your Business Profile, citations and service pages every month, from £199 a month, rolling. For everything we build for trades, see websites for tradespeople.

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