Checkatrade and the trade directories, examined fairly

How the directory model works

A trade directory does three separable things, and confusing them is why the arguments about value go round in circles.

It vets, which is the part homeowners are buying. Checks on insurance, qualifications and identity, plus a review system that is harder to game than a free-for-all. It ranks, deciding which member a homeowner sees first in a given category and postcode. And it distributes, spending on its own advertising so that its brand appears where an individual trade firm cannot afford to.

You are paying for all three whether you value all three or not. A firm with two hundred reviews and a strong local reputation is mostly paying for distribution. A firm three weeks old is mostly paying for borrowed credibility, which is worth considerably more to them.

Commercially the directories split into two shapes. Some charge a membership fee for a listing and whatever enquiries follow. Some charge per lead. Some combine the two. These arrangements change, so check the current published terms on the provider’s own site rather than trusting a blog post, this one included.

What Checkatrade publishes about cost

Here is what can be stated without inference, because Checkatrade publishes it on its own membership pricing page: there is a free tier, a tier at £30 a month, and a tier described as “from £59 a month”, each presented as a twelve-month plan.

Two things follow from that, and both matter more than they look.

• “From” is doing work in that sentence. A price described as starting at a figure is a price that varies, typically by trade category and by how contested your area is. The published number is a floor, not a quote. Ask for the figure for your trade and your postcodes before you compare anything.
• Twelve-month plans are annual commitments. Whatever the monthly figure, the decision you are making is an annual one. Judge it on twelve months of expected work, not on whether the first month felt busy.

What Checkatrade does not publish, as far as we can see, is any leads-delivered figure. There is no stated number of enquiries a member should expect in a month, which is entirely reasonable, because it would depend on trade, area, reviews and competition and any single number would be misleading. But it has a consequence for every cost comparison you will read.

Why the cost-per-lead claims are inferred

If a provider publishes a price but no lead volume, nobody can calculate a cost per lead from published information. It is arithmetic with one side missing.

So when you see “it works out at £X per lead”, that figure has been produced by dividing a published or reported price by a lead volume that came from somewhere else: a survey, a forum thread, one firm’s experience, or an assumption. Usually the person doing the dividing sells a competing service. We sell a competing service. That is precisely why we are telling you the number is inferred rather than offering you one.

The honest version of the calculation is one you run yourself, after the fact, from your own records.

• Total paid to the platform over twelve months, including any add-ons.
• Enquiries received through it in the same period. Count contacts, not profile views.
• Quotes issued from those enquiries, and jobs won.
• Revenue and gross margin from those jobs.

That gives you cost per enquiry, cost per job and return, for your firm in your area. It is the only version of the number that is worth anything, and it is not available to anybody writing a comparison page, including us. If you keep that record for a year you will know more about the value of your membership than every article on the subject combined.

What a directory genuinely delivers

The strongest argument for directories has nothing to do with lead volume. It is the review layer, and the evidence for how much reviews matter is reasonably solid even if it is not British.

BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, a panel of 1,002 consumers in the United States, found 97% read reviews for local businesses and 68% said they would only use a business rated four stars or above. The geography is a real caveat and we are not going to pretend a US panel is a UK one. Directionally, though, it describes something every trade owner recognises: people check, and a thin review profile loses work before the phone ever rings.

A directory hands you a structured place to accumulate that proof, with verification attached, and it markets that proof harder than you can. For a young firm, that is a real product.

The second thing a directory delivers is reach you could not buy on your own terms. Established directory brands rank for the generic searches an individual trade firm struggles to hold, and they advertise on television and radio in a way no local contractor can. When a homeowner types the name of the directory rather than the name of a trade, that traffic is only reachable through membership. Whether that reach converts for you specifically depends on where you sit within it, which brings up the part members most often overlook.

Position inside a directory is not fixed and it is not entirely bought. It responds to review count and recency, to how completely the profile is filled in, to response times, and to the category and postcodes you have selected. A neglected profile on an expensive tier will be beaten by a well-kept one on a cheaper tier, and firms that conclude the platform does not work for them have sometimes never uploaded a photograph or replied to a review. Before judging a membership, spend an afternoon making the profile as good as your competitors’ best one, then judge it three months later. That is the fair test, and it costs nothing.

The third thing worth naming is what a directory does not deliver: control of how you are presented. You appear in the format chosen for everyone in your category, alongside your competitors, with the comparison invited. There is no opportunity to explain a minimum job size, a specialism or a price position before the enquiry arrives. That is the structural trade you are making, and for some firms it costs more than the subscription does.

The realistic alternatives

“Alternatives to Checkatrade” usually means one of three quite different things, and they are not interchangeable.

The third route is what we do, and it is worth being clear about the trade. It asks for more patience and more involvement from you, and it can fail if the search demand in your area is genuinely small. What it produces, when it works, is a pipeline that does not switch off on the day you stop paying a subscription. The mechanics are on the Google Ads, SEO and web design pages, and the four sectors where we can show our own account data are listed on the results page.

When a directory is the right answer

We would keep or join one in these situations, and say so on a call.

• Under a year old with no review history. You need proof before you need reach. A directory supplies the frame for collecting it.
• Small average job values. Where a job is worth a couple of hundred pounds, a fixed monthly fee that produces steady small work can beat a click-based channel where each click is priced by an auction that does not care what your jobs are worth.
• Genuinely low search volume in your patch. If the searches are not there, no amount of advertising skill creates them, and a directory that already has the traffic is the better route.
• No appetite to manage anything. A membership needs a photograph, a description and a habit of asking for reviews. An advertising account needs somebody reading it weekly. If nobody will do the second, the first is the better fit.
• It is already working. If your own twelve-month figures show a return you are happy with, that is better evidence than any argument on this page. Keep it.

If you decide to leave

Leaving badly is expensive. Three things are worth doing first.

Check the term. These are described as twelve-month plans, so establish your renewal date and notice requirement before you make a decision, not after.

Get the reviews working for you elsewhere. Reviews on a directory profile stay on the directory. Build your Google Business Profile in parallel while you are still a member, so there is somewhere for the proof to live afterwards. Our methodology page covers how the review routine gets systematised rather than remembered.

Have the replacement running before the membership lapses. Paid search can be live within a week; organic cannot. Overlapping for a quarter costs less than a gap in the diary. And if the honest answer after all that is that the membership is producing work at a cost you are comfortable with, the sensible decision is to keep paying it and spend your attention on something that is not working. Ask us and, if that is what your numbers say, that is what you will be told.

Common questions

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