Tradify vs Powered Now vs YourTradebase: an honest comparison from a builder
A sparky I know ran his whole business off a notepad and a carrier bag of receipts for about eleven years. Quotes on the back of an envelope, invoices when he remembered, VAT return done in a panic every quarter. Then he took on two lads and the carrier bag stopped working. He spent a wet January trying three different apps, one after the other, and rang me halfway through asking which one to keep.
That's the honest problem with these tools. They all look fine on the website. The differences only show up once you've got real jobs in them and a real team to pay.
This is a straight comparison of the three most-searched ones in the UK trade space: Tradify, Powered Now and YourTradebase. What each is good at, where each one bites, and roughly what they cost a small firm over a year. No affiliate nonsense, just the read I'd give a mate over a brew.
TL;DR
- All three do the core stuff well: quotes, invoices, jobs, customers, on a phone. You won't go far wrong with any of them.
- Tradify is the strongest on scheduling, timesheets and managing a team's day. It charges per user, so the bill climbs with every lad you add.
- YourTradebase has the cleanest customer-facing quotes and a tidy interface. First user is about £29 a month, then £15 per extra user.
- Powered Now leans into invoicing, VAT and Making Tax Digital, and runs on flat monthly plans from roughly £15 to £37 rather than per seat.
- For a solo trader the price gap is small. For a firm of three or more, the per-seat apps get noticeably dearer than the flat-rate ones. Pick on the job you most need sorting, not the longest feature list.
The one-line verdict on each
Before the detail, here's the short version. If you only read this far, this is the bit worth having.
- Tradify: best if you're running a team and you live and die by the schedule. Deep, capable, priced per head.
- YourTradebase: best if winning the job on a smart-looking quote is your main game. Clean, customer-friendly, fair on price for one or two users.
- Powered Now: best if invoicing and the taxman are your headache. Strong on VAT and MTD, flat pricing that doesn't punish you for growing.
Now the proper look.
Price, compared properly
Pricing is where the marketing pages go quiet, so let's do the maths with real numbers. All of these change their prices from time to time, so treat these as the lay of the land in mid 2026 and check the current figure before you sign up.
Take a typical small firm: an owner and two lads, so three users, paying monthly.
| App | How it's priced | 3 users, per month | Roughly per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tradify | Per user, around £34 each on the entry plan, plus VAT | About £122 inc VAT | About £1,470 inc VAT |
| YourTradebase | £29 first user, then £15 per extra user | About £59 | About £708, or near £590 paid annually |
| Powered Now | Flat monthly plans, roughly £15 to £37 | About £37 on the top plan | About £444 |
Worked example: the per-seat trap
Say you start solo and the firm grows to four lads over two years. With a per-user app at £34 a head plus VAT, your monthly bill goes from about £41 inc VAT to about £163 inc VAT. That's roughly £1,950 a year just in software, before you've added the SMS reminder credits or any extras some plans charge on top.
With a flat-rate plan, the same growth barely moves the bill. You're paying for the app, not for the privilege of putting more people to work. Neither model is wrong. Per-seat apps tend to give you more team management for the money, which is fair enough if that's what you actually use. The point is to know which model you're buying into, because the cheap-looking one at one user can be the dear one at five.
Tradify: the team manager's pick
Tradify is the one most people land on when they search "best app for tradespeople", and there's a reason. It's a proper job management tool. Scheduling is the standout. You can see the whole team's week on one board, drag a job from Tuesday to Thursday, assign it to a lad, and he gets it on his phone. Timesheets, quotes, invoices, and a decent customer database all sit behind that.
Where it bites is the per-user pricing, as covered above, and a bit of a learning curve. There's a lot in there. A solo trader who just wants to fire out a quote and an invoice can find it heavier than the job needs. It's built for firms that run a schedule, and if you're not running a schedule you're paying for an engine you don't drive.
Pick Tradify if: you've got a team, you plan the week properly, and timesheets and scheduling matter as much as invoicing.
YourTradebase: the quote that wins the job
YourTradebase has been around a long time and it shows in the polish. Its quotes are the best-looking of the three out of the box. When a customer opens one, it reads like a proper company sent it, not a bloke with a clipboard. For trades where the quote is the sales pitch, kitchens, bathrooms, extensions, that matters more than people admit. A tidy quote wins work.
The customer can accept the quote online, which speeds the whole thing up, and the jump from quote to invoice is clean. Pricing is fair for one or two users. The pinch comes if you scale a bigger team, since you're adding £15 a head, and some users find the scheduling lighter than Tradify's.
One thing worth clearing up, because the names trip people: YourTradebase is a separate, established UK company. It has nothing to do with TradeStash. Different product, different people. If you searched one and landed on the other, that's the similar naming, not a connection.
Pick YourTradebase if: your quotes are your shop window and you want them looking sharp without much effort.
Powered Now: built around the taxman
Powered Now markets itself hard at UK trades and it knows the local detail. Where it earns its keep is invoicing, VAT and Making Tax Digital. If your real pain is the quarterly VAT return and keeping HMRC happy, this is the one that's clearly thought about that side. It handles different VAT rates, including the reduced and zero rates that catch builders out, and keeps records in the shape Making Tax Digital wants.
The flat monthly pricing is the other draw. You're not counting seats. For a firm that's growing, that predictability is worth something. The trade-off is that some of the deeper scheduling and team features aren't as developed as Tradify's, and the interface splits opinion, some find it busy.
Pick Powered Now if: VAT and invoicing are your headache and you'd rather pay one flat fee than count heads.
So which one is for you
There's no winner here, there's a best fit. Match the app to the job that keeps you up at night.
- Drowning in scheduling and timesheets for a team? Tradify.
- Losing jobs because your quotes look thrown together? YourTradebase.
- Dreading every VAT return? Powered Now.
- Mostly solo and want low cost with the basics done well? Any of the three on their cheapest tier, or a flat-rate app so you're not paying per seat for features you don't use.
And do the thing almost nobody does: use the free trial like you mean it. Put three real jobs in, send yourself a real quote, raise a real invoice, check what the customer sees. A fortnight of real use tells you more than any comparison page, this one included.
Get the Get-Paid Pack, free
Before you pay for any app, get the paperwork right. 25 pages of UK trade templates: 4 quote forms, an invoice, 3 late payment letters with the Late Payment Act 1998 baked in, T&Cs, job sign-off, variation order and aftercare letter. Replaces around £400 of solicitor-drafted templates. No card needed.
Download instantly on the next page. Built by someone who's been in the construction field.
What NOT to do when you're choosing
- Don't buy on the feature list. Every one of these has more features than you'll use. A long list isn't value, it's clutter you pay for. Buy the one that nails the job you actually struggle with.
- Don't ignore the VAT line on the price. A plan quoted "from £34" can be £40.80 once VAT's on. Over a few seats and a year, that gap is real money.
- Don't skip the trial and pay straight off. The website demo is the app on its best behaviour. Your jobs, your customers, your fat fingers on a cold morning, that's the real test. Trial it properly first.
- Don't move mid-job. Switching apps with live quotes and half-finished jobs in the old one is how things fall through the cracks. Change over at a quiet point and run both for a fortnight.
- Don't forget your old records. Before you cancel anything, export your invoices and customer list to PDF or CSV. HMRC wants six years of records and they don't care which app you've left behind.
Where TradeStash fits
Full disclosure, since you're reading this on our site: TradeStash is a fourth option, built after a few years in the construction field for exactly the firm in that opening story, the owner with two or three lads who's outgrown the carrier bag. It runs flat-rate rather than per seat, £24.99 a month solo and £39.99 a month for a team, with a 14-day trial and no card up front.
That's the honest pitch and it's the end of it. The right move is to trial whichever fits the job you most need sorting. If that's Tradify or YourTradebase or Powered Now, grand, you'll be better off than you were with the notepad. The worst app is the one you never set up.