Tradify vs Powered Now vs YourTradebase: an honest comparison from a builder
A mate of mine runs a 3-lad heating firm out near Reading. Last winter he signed up to one of these job management apps on a Friday, spent the weekend moving his quotes over, then found out on the Monday that the monthly bill was three times what he thought, because it charged per person and he'd only looked at the headline price for one.
That's the thing nobody tells you about trade software. The apps all do roughly the same jobs. Quotes, invoices, scheduling, a customer list. Where they differ is the pricing model and the small stuff that only bites once you're a few weeks in.
So this is a straight look at the three names that come up most: Tradify, Powered Now and YourTradebase. Real 2026 UK prices, how they handle VAT and CIS, and where each one actually earns its keep. I run a trade app myself, so I'll be upfront about that at the end. The comparison in the middle is fair either way.
TL;DR
- Tradify is the polished, established one. Strong scheduling and accounting links. Priced per user from about £34 a month, so it gets dear with a team.
- Powered Now is UK-built and strong on VAT, the Domestic Reverse Charge and CIS. Per user, roughly £28 to £40 a month depending on plan.
- YourTradebase is the simple quote-to-invoice one. Base of about £29 a month plus around £15 per extra user, so a small team stays cheaper than the per-user rivals.
- The single biggest cost driver is per-user vs flat pricing. For a 3-person firm the same feature set can cost £59 or £102 a month depending purely on how it's charged.
- Whichever you lean towards, run a real quote and a real invoice through the free trial before you pay. Demo data hides the friction.
The quick verdict, before you scroll
If you want the short version, here's who each one suits.
- Pick Tradify if you want the most finished product, you lean hard on Xero or QuickBooks, and you're happy paying per head for it.
- Pick Powered Now if VAT and CIS are the parts that keep you up at night, and you want an app that handles the reverse charge without a workaround.
- Pick YourTradebase if you mostly want tidy quotes turning into invoices with a simple job list behind them, and you don't want the bill jumping every time you take a lad on.
None of them is wrong. They're aimed at slightly different firms. The rest of this is the detail behind that.
What you're actually comparing
All three cover the core of running a small trade business: a customer list, quotes, invoices, some job scheduling, and a mobile app so you're not tied to the office. The differences are in the polish, the pricing and the compliance side.
Tradify
Tradify is the big, established name, used across the UK, Australia and New Zealand. It's the most finished of the three to look at and to use. Job tracking, timesheets, scheduling, quotes and invoices, and solid two-way links to Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB for the books. Support is good and the mobile app is decent on both iPhone and Android.
The catch is the price. Tradify charges per user. As of 2026 that's around £34 per user a month on the Lite plan (built for 1 to 3 users), £37 on Pro, and £44 per user on Plus for bigger teams. Add-ons like a website or text-message sending sit on top. For a solo trader it's fair. For a growing team it adds up quicker than the others.
Powered Now
Powered Now is UK-built and it shows in the tax handling. It does quotes, invoices, scheduling and a customer diary, but the part worth having is how it deals with VAT, the Domestic Reverse Charge for construction, and CIS deductions on invoices. If you bill other contractors or work under CIS, that's real time saved at month end.
Pricing is per user and tiered. As of 2026 it runs from about £28 per user a month on the Business plan, £32 on Professional, up to £40 on Premium, with the higher tiers unlocking more of the compliance and team features. It's aimed at sole traders through to firms of around 50. Like Tradify, the per-user model means the monthly figure grows with the team.
YourTradebase
YourTradebase leans towards the simple end. It's built around the quote-to-invoice flow with a clean job record behind it, and it's popular with trades who found the bigger tools more than they needed. It's more web-first than the other two, so a lot of people use it from a laptop or tablet as much as a phone.
The pricing is the interesting bit. It's a flat base of around £29 a month, plus roughly £15 a month per extra user, with an unusually generous 30-day free trial and no card up front. Because only the extra seats cost more, not every seat, a small team ends up cheaper than the straight per-user apps. Annual billing knocks two months off.
Price side by side: a worked example
Headline prices lie by omission. The number that matters is what you actually pay once your whole team is on it. So let's run the same firm through all of them.
Take a 3-person firm: the owner plus two on the tools, all needing access. Here's the rough monthly cost on each entry-level plan, as of 2026.
| App | Pricing model | Cost for 3 users / month | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tradify (Lite) | Per user, ~£34 | 3 × £34 = £102 | 14 days |
| Powered Now (Business) | Per user, ~£28 | 3 × £28 = £84 | Yes |
| YourTradebase | Base + per extra user | £29 + (2 × £15) = £59 | 30 days, no card |
| TradeStash (Growth) | Flat, whole firm | £39.99 | 14 days, no card |
Same three people, and the monthly bill ranges from about £40 to over £100 depending purely on how the app charges. That's £1,224 a year at the top end versus roughly £480 at the flat end. Over a couple of years it's the price of a decent set of tools.
The lesson isn't "cheapest wins". A firm that lives in Xero might happily pay Tradify's rate for the integration. The lesson is that the pricing model matters more than the sticker price once you're past a single user, and it's the easiest thing to miss when you sign up on a Friday afternoon.
The features that actually matter on a job
Feature lists all look the same on a website. Here's what to actually weigh up.
Quoting speed
The whole point is quoting faster so you send them the same day, not three days later when the goodwill has cooled. All three do saved line items and reusable templates. Tradify and Powered Now both do it well from the phone. YourTradebase is tidy but people tend to build the quote on a bigger screen. If you quote from the van, test that flow specifically in the trial.
VAT, the reverse charge and CIS
This is where they split. Powered Now handles the Domestic Reverse Charge and CIS deductions directly, which is a proper time saver if you're VAT-registered and working under CIS. Tradify and YourTradebase both do standard UK VAT and lean on Xero or QuickBooks for the heavier tax work. If you're not sure how the reverse charge affects you, that's worth sorting first. We wrote a plain-English guide to it, linked at the bottom.
Getting paid
All three send invoices and take card or bank payments through the usual providers, with fees per transaction. None of them will chase a late payer for you, so your payment terms and your follow-up still do the heavy lifting. The app just makes the invoice quick to send and easy to pay.
Mobile vs desktop
Tradify and Powered Now are built mobile-first. YourTradebase works on mobile but feels most at home on a laptop. If most of your admin happens standing in someone's kitchen, weight that heavily. If you do the paperwork at a desk on a Friday, it matters less.
Get the Get-Paid Pack, free
Before you pay for any app, get the templates sorted. 25 pages of UK trade paperwork: 4 quote forms, an invoice, 3 late-payment letters with Late Payment Act references, T&Cs that bake in your right to charge interest, a job sign-off form, a variation order and an 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
Most of the regret I hear about isn't picking the "wrong" app. It's picking the right app the wrong way. Five mistakes worth dodging.
- Don't judge on the single-user headline price. As the table shows, per-user pricing changes the whole picture at three or four people. Work out your real total before you decide, not the number on the pricing page's biggest font.
- Don't move all your data across before the trial's done. Spend the first few days running one real quote and one real invoice through it. If that flow annoys you, it'll annoy you every day. Move your back-catalogue only once you're sure.
- Don't ignore the VAT and CIS side because it's boring. If you work under CIS or bill contractors, an app that gets the reverse charge wrong costs you more in accountant time than you saved on the subscription. Check it early.
- Don't buy for the firm you'll be in three years. The 20-user plan features are irrelevant if you're three lads now. Buy for the firm you are, and switch up a tier when you actually grow into it.
- Don't skip the exit. Before you commit, check you can export your customers, quotes and invoices as a file you own. If getting your data out is hard, you're not a customer, you're a hostage.
So where does TradeStash fit
Full disclosure, since I said I would: TradeStash is the app I build. So take this last bit as the maker telling you where his tool sits, not as part of the neutral comparison above.
TradeStash is mobile-first and built for the 2-to-6-lad firm, with clients, jobs, quotes, invoices, materials, photo diaries and team chat in one place. The difference that shows up on the bill is the pricing: it's flat per firm, not per user. Solo is £24.99 a month, Growth (with the team features) is £39.99, and both come with a 14-day trial and no card. For the 3-person firm in the table above, that flat model is why it comes out lowest.
It's also the newest and smallest of the names here. It doesn't have Tradify's years of polish or its long list of integrations yet. If deep Xero workflows are your world, Tradify may still be the better fit today, and I'd rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. But if you want the core job admin done fast from your phone without the bill climbing every time you take someone on, it's worth a look on the trial alongside the others.
Whatever you land on, the honest advice is the same: try two or three with a real job, not the demo, and pick the one that annoys you least on a wet Tuesday.