Rated People vs MyBuilder vs Checkatrade: Which Trade Directory Is Worth It? (2026 UK)

Trade directories have been the backbone of UK tradesperson marketing for over two decades. Checkatrade, Rated People and MyBuilder between them account for tens of millions of homeowner searches every year. But the question most tradespeople never properly answer is: which one actually generates profitable work, and which one quietly drains your budget while you’re too busy to notice? This guide breaks down all three platforms — pricing, lead quality, review mechanics and ROI — so you can decide where your money goes.

Why directories still matter in 2026

Despite the rise of Google Local Services Ads and social media marketing, trade directories retain real value because of search intent and homeowner trust. When someone searches “plumber near me” on Google, they’re in buying mode but haven’t decided who to hire. When someone opens Checkatrade or Rated People directly, they’ve already decided to hire through a vetted platform — the intent is stronger and the conversion window is shorter.

Directories also capture a segment of homeowners who distrust paid ads entirely. These customers specifically choose platforms with independent reviews and vetting processes over clicking a Google ad. For higher-value jobs — kitchen fitting, loft conversions, full rewires — this trust factor is genuinely significant. The homeowner spending £15,000 on an extension wants proof the tradesperson is legitimate, not just well-advertised.

The challenge is that the three main directories operate on fundamentally different models, and what works for one trade type in one region may be a poor investment for another. Understanding the mechanics before committing your budget is essential.

Checkatrade: membership, vetting and lead quality

Checkatrade is the most recognised trade directory in the UK and operates primarily on an annual membership model. Pricing in 2026 ranges from roughly £1,200 to £2,000 or more per year depending on your trade category, how many locations you want to cover and whether you take optional add-ons such as enhanced profile placement. That equates to £100–£170 per month before any extras.

In exchange for membership, Checkatrade carries out a vetting process: they check your insurance, any relevant qualifications (Gas Safe registration, NICEIC approval, etc.) and run a background check. Once approved, you get a profile listing with a “Checkatrade Approved” badge, the ability to collect and display verified customer reviews, and inclusion in their search results when homeowners look for your trade locally.

Lead quality from Checkatrade varies considerably by trade and location. In less competitive trade categories — specialist restoration work, access control installation, domestic sprinkler fitting — Checkatrade can still generate warm, high-converting enquiries. In saturated categories like domestic plumbing, electrical work and plastering in major cities, homeowners increasingly use Checkatrade to collect multiple quotes rather than to find one trusted tradesperson. Conversion rates have declined in these markets over the past three to four years as more tradespeople joined the platform.

Reviews on Checkatrade are verified against actual jobs — the homeowner must confirm they used you before they can leave a review. This makes the review score more meaningful than unverified platforms, and a strong review profile (50+ reviews, 9.5+ rating) genuinely differentiates you in homeowner searches. Building that profile takes time, but once established it creates a compounding advantage.

Rated People: pay-per-lead and how the model works

Rated People operates on a pay-per-lead model with no annual membership fee. Instead, you buy credits and spend them to express interest in jobs posted by homeowners in your area. Each lead costs roughly £3–£15 depending on job size and category — a small repair job might cost £3 to connect on, while a full bathroom renovation lead could be £12–£15.

When a homeowner posts a job, up to three tradespeople can express interest and their details are sent to the homeowner. The homeowner then decides who to contact. You pay the credit whether the homeowner contacts you or not — the credit is the cost of putting your profile in front of them, not a guaranteed conversation.

The Rated People model suits tradespeople who want flexibility without a fixed monthly commitment. You can buy credits when you have capacity and stop when you’re fully booked. The risk is that lead quality varies significantly: some jobs are genuine, ready-to-book enquiries; others are homeowners still in the research phase who posted speculatively to “see what it would cost.” With up to three tradespeople competing for the same enquiry, you need to respond quickly — ideally within 10 minutes — to be the first profile the homeowner sees.

Reviews on Rated People work similarly to Checkatrade — verified by job completion — and compound over time. A tradesperson with 80 five-star reviews on Rated People gets meaningfully more enquiries than one with 15. The review system rewards longevity on the platform, which creates a chicken-and-egg problem for new joiners.

Best trades for Rated People

• Plumbers and heating engineers — high job volume on the platform
• Painters and decorators — homeowners frequently use the platform for smaller interior jobs
• Handymen — good volume of small, quick-turnaround jobs
• Landscapers — seasonal but strong spring and summer volume
• Tilers and floor layers — consistent demand, manageable competition

MyBuilder: similar model, regional differences

MyBuilder operates almost identically to Rated People — homeowners post jobs, tradespeople buy credits to connect, and reviews compound over time. The pricing structure is similar: leads typically cost £3–£12 in credits depending on job type.

The key differences are regional strength and trade category depth. MyBuilder tends to perform better in London and the South East, where its search traffic is strongest, while Rated People has broader national coverage. If you’re a tradesperson in Manchester, Leeds or Birmingham, Rated People typically generates more job volume; if you’re in London, both platforms are worth testing and MyBuilder may outperform.

MyBuilder’s review system is robust and heavily weighted in its search algorithm — tradespeople with strong review scores appear higher in job search results and are shown to homeowners first when they post a job. This means the long-term value of building reviews on MyBuilder is high, but the short-term economics for a new account with few reviews are poor. Plan for a three to six month ramp-up period before you see consistent returns.

One advantage MyBuilder has over Rated People is a more transparent refund policy on poor-quality leads. If you connect on a job and the homeowner’s details turn out to be invalid, or the job description is materially inaccurate, you can apply for a credit refund. The process is not automatic but it is more accessible than some competitors.

Head-to-head comparison

Where directories fit in your marketing mix

No single channel should own your customer pipeline. Directories, Google Ads, direct mail and referrals each reach different customer segments at different points in the buying journey, and the most resilient trade businesses use at least three channels simultaneously.

Directories are strong for capturing homeowners in active buying mode who want verified tradespeople and independent reviews. Google Ads (especially Local Services Ads) are strong for capturing emergency and urgent searches where the customer needs someone today. Direct mail reaches homeowners who haven’t started searching yet — useful for building brand awareness in your local area before they need you. Referrals from past customers have the highest conversion rate of any channel and zero cost, making customer retention work the highest-ROI marketing activity for most trade businesses.

A realistic budget allocation for a sole trader or small trade business doing £150,000–£400,000 per year might look like: one directory membership (Checkatrade or Rated People, £100–£150/month), Google Local Services Ads (£150–£300/month), and a systematic follow-up process for referrals (time, not money). Total paid marketing spend of £300–£450/month generating 15–25 booked jobs is realistic in most UK markets.

How to maximise ROI from any directory

Regardless of which platform you choose, the difference between a tradesperson who breaks even on directories and one who generates consistent profit comes down to a handful of operational habits.

• Complete your profile fully. Profiles with a clear description, service area, trade qualifications, photos and at least 10 reviews consistently outperform thin profiles. Homeowners make snap judgements — a half-finished profile signals you’re not serious about the business.
• Get 10+ reviews in your first 60 days. Review count is the most significant factor in directory search ranking. Ask every customer to leave a review immediately after job completion — not days later when they’ve forgotten. Send them a direct link to your profile review page by WhatsApp or SMS.
• Respond within 10 minutes. Response speed is the single biggest driver of conversion on pay-per-lead platforms. When a homeowner posts a job and gets three responses, the tradesperson who calls within 10 minutes books significantly more jobs than the one who calls three hours later. Set up phone alerts for new job notifications.
• Call, don’t message. A phone call converts at 2–3x the rate of a platform message. Most tradespeople send a message; calling immediately differentiates you and builds rapport faster.
• Track quote-to-job conversion by source. If you’re quoting 10 Checkatrade leads and booking 2, your conversion rate is 20%. If you’re booking 4 out of 10 MyBuilder leads, the economics are completely different. Without tracking this, you’re guessing.

Red flags to watch for

Not all directory leads are worth pursuing, and some structural problems are baked into how these platforms operate.

• Lead sharing with 4–5 tradespeople. When the same lead goes to five competitors, you’re spending credits or membership budget to enter a five-way price war. The homeowner gets multiple quotes and often chooses on price. Your margin shrinks and your time-per-booked-job increases. Checkatrade sends enquiries to up to five tradespeople simultaneously — worth factoring into your conversion expectations.
• Speculative homeowner posts. On pay-per-lead platforms, some jobs are posted by homeowners who are genuinely just “seeing what it would cost” with no intention of proceeding for months. These leads consume your credits and your time. Warning signs: vague job descriptions, no clear timeline, requests for “ballpark figures only.”
• Weak refund policies on poor leads. Most platforms make credit refunds difficult and time-consuming. Factor non-refundable wasted leads into your expected cost per booked job from the start rather than assuming you’ll recover them.
• Auto-renewal traps. Checkatrade memberships auto-renew annually. Set a calendar reminder three months before your renewal date to evaluate whether the platform is generating profitable work before you’re locked in for another year.
• Paying for coverage you don’t use. Multi-location Checkatrade packages can look attractive but only make sense if you have the capacity and crew to serve every area. Paying for coverage in three postcodes when you can only reliably serve one wastes budget.

Tracking which directory actually brings paid jobs

The biggest problem with trade directory marketing is what you might call the attribution gap: the moment between a lead arriving and a job being booked is often not recorded anywhere. A homeowner finds you on Rated People, calls your mobile, you book the job on a handwritten sheet and the source of that job is never captured. Three months later you have no idea whether Rated People is generating profitable work or just enquiries that don’t convert.

Closing this gap requires a simple discipline: ask every new customer how they found you and record it against the job. On Checkatrade and Rated People, most enquiries arrive via the platform’s messaging system or a masked phone number, which makes source tracking easier — you know it came from the platform. The problem is converting that knowledge into data. Without recording it in your job management system, you can’t report on it.

For phone leads, call tracking numbers are the most reliable method. You assign a unique phone number to each directory listing and any call to that number is automatically tagged as coming from that source. Services like CallRail or simpler UK alternatives provide this for £20–£40 per month — cheap relative to what you’re spending on directory listings.

UTM tracking parameters work for website traffic from directories but not for direct platform enquiries. They’re worth setting up on any links in your directory profiles that point to your website, but they won’t capture homeowners who contact you through the directory platform without visiting your site.

The metric you ultimately want is cost per booked job by channel. Calculate it monthly: total spend on each platform divided by jobs booked that originated from that platform. A platform costing you £60 per booked job on a £400 average job value is generating a healthy return. A platform costing £180 per booked job needs immediate scrutiny.

The verdict: which platform for which trade type

There is no universally best directory — the right choice depends on your trade category, your location, your capacity for active lead management and how quickly you need to generate work.

• Checkatrade is best for specialist trades where the vetting badge matters (gas engineers, electricians, specialist installers), for trades in less competitive rural or suburban markets, and for tradespeople with 30+ reviews who can rank highly in local searches. Budget £100–£170/month and expect 4–8 enquiries monthly in most markets.
• Rated People is best for tradespeople who want flexibility without a membership commitment, who are willing to be selective about which leads they buy, and who have the capacity to respond within 10 minutes. Best suited to plumbers, painters, landscapers and handymen nationally. Budget £80–£150/month in credits to generate meaningful volume.
• MyBuilder is best for builders, plasterers and general construction trades in London and the South East. The review system rewards longevity, so commit for at least six months before evaluating performance. Budget similarly to Rated People.
• Use two platforms simultaneously for the first three months and compare cost per booked job before dropping the weaker one. Most tradespeople assume they know which platform works better; the data almost always surprises them.

Whichever platform you choose, the return on investment hinges almost entirely on how well you track the results. Directory spend without attribution data is marketing in the dark. Know your cost per lead, your conversion rate from lead to quote and your conversion rate from quote to booked job — by platform, every month. That data tells you where to put next month’s budget.