Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs TrustATrader vs Rated People: real cost-per-lead in 2026

A mate of mine, a tiler, spent £1,400 with Checkatrade in his first year and came out the other side convinced lead sites were a con. Same year, another lad I know was on MyBuilder, picked up a kitchen splashback job that turned into a whole bathroom, and reckoned it was the best money he'd spent. Same trade, same town, opposite verdicts.

The difference wasn't the platform. It was how each of them counted, and what they did with a customer once they'd won one.

This guide puts the four big UK names side by side: Checkatrade, MyBuilder, TrustATrader, and Rated People. Not on the headline membership price, which tells you almost nothing, but on the only number that matters, what a won job actually costs you. With real figures, and an honest take on when each one is worth it.

First, the two business models

Before you compare prices, you need to know which kind of platform you're looking at, because they cost you in completely different ways.

Membership directories (Checkatrade, TrustATrader) charge a flat monthly fee to list your business. Customers browse, find you, and contact you directly. You don't pay per enquiry. The risk sits with you, if no enquiries come in that month, you've still paid the membership.

Pay-per-lead sites (MyBuilder, Rated People) work the other way. The customer posts a job, the platform sells that job as a lead, and you pay to contact them. There's little or no standing fee, but the same lead usually goes to three or four trades, so you're bidding against others for the same kitchen.

Neither model is better in the abstract. Membership rewards trades who win a steady flow and convert well. Pay-per-lead suits someone who wants to dip in and out, or who only needs the odd job to fill a gap. The mistake is judging them on the same yardstick.

Checkatrade: the big brand, the big bill

Checkatrade has the strongest consumer recognition of the four. Homeowners know the name, which means the enquiries that come through often arrive warm, with the customer already half-sold on the idea of using a vetted trade.

At the time of writing, membership commonly lands between £100 and £180 a month plus VAT. A quiet rural patch with one trade category sits at the bottom. A competitive city postcode listed under bathrooms or boiler installs sits at the top, and some trades in busy areas report paying more again. You're tied into a contract, usually twelve months, and you pay whether the phone rings or not.

What you get for it is reach and a degree of trust the smaller directories can't match. What you don't get is any guarantee of volume. The trades who do badly on Checkatrade are almost always the ones who treated the membership as the whole job, listed and waited, rather than working their reviews and responding to enquiries fast.

MyBuilder and Rated People: pay for what you chase

These two flip the risk. No big standing fee, you pay for the leads you choose to go after.

On MyBuilder, a lead can cost anywhere from a few pounds for a small repair up to around £50 for a big job like a full bathroom or an extension. You see the job, decide if it's worth the lead fee, and pay to get the customer's details. The catch is the same enquiry is typically sold to three or four trades, so you're one of several quoting, and the customer knows it.

Rated People runs a hybrid. There's a monthly subscription, from roughly £30 plus VAT, that bundles in a set number of lead credits, then you buy extra leads beyond that. So it's part membership, part pay-per-lead. Useful if you want a predictable baseline of enquiries, less useful if your work is lumpy and you can't use the credits some months.

The thing to watch on both is lead quality. A cheap lead that four trades are chasing and that turns out to be a tyre-kicker getting three quotes for a job they'll never book is not cheap. It's £30 in the bin. Pay-per-lead only works if you're quick to respond and disciplined about which leads you buy.

TrustATrader: the cheaper directory

TrustATrader is the same shape as Checkatrade, a membership directory, but smaller and cheaper. Membership usually runs £70 to £120 a month plus VAT depending on trade and area.

The trade-off is brand pull. Fewer homeowners search TrustATrader first, so enquiry volume tends to be lower than Checkatrade in the same patch. But two things go in its favour. The membership is cheaper, so your break-even is lower. And because it's a directory, the enquiries that do come in aren't being resold to four other trades the way a pay-per-lead enquiry is. A customer who contacts you through TrustATrader contacted you, not a list of five.

It suits an established trade with decent reviews working a defined area, more than someone trying to fill an empty diary in a hurry.

The number that actually matters: cost per won job

Here's where most trades go wrong. They look at the membership price or the lead price and stop there. The figure that tells you whether a platform pays is cost per won job, what you spent divided by the work you actually landed.

Worked example: a bathroom fitter, one month

Say you fit bathrooms and you're trying all four. Here's a realistic month.

• Checkatrade: membership £150. It brings 10 enquiries. You're decent on the phone and quick to quote, so you convert 3 into jobs. Cost per won job: £150 ÷ 3 = £50.
• TrustATrader: membership £90. Lower volume, 5 enquiries, you win 2. Cost per won job: £90 ÷ 2 = £45.
• MyBuilder: you buy 8 leads at an average £30 each, £240 spent. They're shared leads so conversion is harder, you win 2. Cost per won job: £240 ÷ 2 = £120.
• Rated People: £40 subscription plus £120 of extra leads, £160 spent. You win 1. Cost per won job: £160.

Look at what that does to the league table. On the headline, MyBuilder looked cheapest, no monthly fee at all. On the number that matters, it's the second most expensive way you won work that month, and Rated People is the dearest. The two boring membership directories quietly delivered jobs at under £50 each.

That won't be every trade's result. Your area, your reviews, your response speed, and your trade all move these numbers around. The point isn't the exact figures, it's the method. Run this maths on your own spend for ninety days before you decide any platform is a con or a goldmine. Without it you're guessing, same as my tiler mate was.

Where lead sites quietly cost you more

The membership and the lead fee are the visible cost. There are two hidden ones that decide whether you actually profit.

The first is time. Every shared lead you chase is a quote written, a site visit done, a customer fielded, often for work you don't win because three others quoted too. That time has a value. A bathroom fitter doing four quotes to win one job through a pay-per-lead site has spent half a day quoting on top of the lead fees. Count it.

The second is the race to the bottom. When a customer is sitting on four quotes from four trades who all paid for the same lead, the easy lever for them to pull is price. Lead sites can train you to quote cheap to win, which eats the margin the platform was supposed to help you earn. The trades who do well resist this. They quote their proper number and let the bargain-hunters go to whoever's desperate.

What NOT to do

1. Don't judge a platform on the headline price. A £30 subscription that wins you nothing is dearer than a £150 membership that fills your diary. Cost per won job is the only fair comparison.
2. Don't sign a 12-month membership on a hunch. If you can start monthly or take a short trial, do that first. Prove the maths in your area before you lock in a year.
3. Don't be slow on enquiries. On every one of these platforms, the trade who replies in the first hour wins far more than the one who replies the next evening. A lead you paid for and answered three days later is money you set fire to.
4. Don't pay to win the same customer twice. If a past customer finds you again through a lead site and you pay another fee for them, you've lost control of your own relationship. Get their number, keep in touch, and make sure the next job comes direct.
5. Don't treat the lead site as your whole marketing. Leads you rent stop the day you stop paying. Reviews, referrals, a Google Business Profile, and repeat customers are yours to keep. Use the platforms to start, not to live on.

So which one, in 2026?

If you want the honest builder's answer rather than a fence-sit: it depends on where you are in your business.

Empty diary, no reviews, need work this month: a pay-per-lead site like MyBuilder gets you in front of customers fastest, because you can start today and only pay for jobs you choose to chase. Expect to graft on response speed and accept the shared-lead grind.

Established, decent reviews, want steady inbound: a membership directory earns its keep, and the maths often beats pay-per-lead once your conversion is solid. Checkatrade for reach and brand trust, TrustATrader if you want the cheaper break-even and your area searches it.

Either way: the platform is the front door, not the house. The trades who win treat a lead site as the cost of meeting a customer once, then run their admin tight enough that the customer comes back direct. Send the quote the same day. Send the invoice the day the job finishes. Follow up six months later to see how the boiler's running. That's the work that turns a £50 lead into three jobs over five years, and none of the next two cost you a penny in lead fees.