If you are weighing up MyBuilder against Checkatrade and Rated People, trying to work out which lead site is actually worth your hard-earned money, this is the honest, no-nonsense rundown I wish someone had given me. I am going to compare all three properly, show you how each one really charges, and tell you the thing none of them want you to hear: that the best long-term answer for most trades is not picking one of them at all.

I’m Jamie, founder of Grwthhub. Before the agency I spent over a decade on the trade side as a quantity surveyor, so I have watched plenty of good tradespeople pour money into these platforms and end up chasing the same shared leads as five competitors. Let’s go through MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People with clear eyes, and then talk about what a smarter setup looks like.

The quick verdict: MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People at a glance

All three connect homeowners with tradespeople, but they make their money in very different ways, and that difference matters more than anything else when you are deciding where your budget goes. In short: Checkatrade charges you a monthly membership whether you win work or not. MyBuilder charges you only when a homeowner shortlists you. Rated People sells you the homeowner’s contact details, often the same lead to several trades at once.

None of them are scams. People do win good work through MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People alike. But every one of them shares a basic problem for you as a trade: you are renting access to customers rather than owning a pipeline of your own. The price can go up, the lead quality can drop, and the moment you stop paying, the work stops too. Keep that in the back of your mind as we go through the detail.

Checkatrade: the directory you pay to be in

Checkatrade is the biggest name of the three, and the one homeowners recognise. It is essentially a vetted directory: you pay a monthly membership to have a profile, collect reviews, and appear when people search. It is part of HomeServe, which is itself owned by the Canadian investment giant Brookfield, and the brand carries a lot of trust with the public, which is its main selling point.

The catch is the cost, and the fact that Checkatrade does not publish a full public price list. Basic plans reportedly start from around £30 plus VAT a month, but most established trades report paying somewhere between £70 and £120 plus VAT once they are on a proper plan, and in busy trades and postcodes it can climb well past that. On top of the membership, Checkatrade now charges per lead for many trades too, with bigger jobs like bathroom refits and boiler swaps commonly costing £20 to £40 a lead. Over a year that adds up to well north of a thousand pounds, often before you have priced a single job.

The way I see it, Checkatrade can work if you are in a high-demand trade and you milk it properly: keep your profile sharp, gather reviews relentlessly, and respond fast. But you are paying a fixed cost every month regardless of whether the work comes in, and a quiet patch still costs you full whack. We went deep on this in our honest review of whether Checkatrade is worth it, and it is worth a read before you commit.

MyBuilder: pay only when you are shortlisted

MyBuilder works very differently, and for a lot of trades it is the fairer of the three. There is no monthly membership with MyBuilder. Instead, homeowners post a job, interested tradespeople express interest, and the homeowner shortlists the ones they like the look of. You are charged a fee only when you get shortlisted, and the fee is shown to you upfront before you express interest.

The shortlist fee scales with the likely size and value of the job, which is sensible. It can be a couple of pounds for a tiny job and £50 or more for a big one. Crucially, you pay when the homeowner picks you out, not just for the chance to chase a lead, which tends to mean the leads are warmer. MyBuilder claims to connect over a million customers a year with tradespeople, and it holds a strong rating on Trustpilot across tens of thousands of reviews.

The honest downside is that you can still pay to be shortlisted and then not win the job, so MyBuilder is not risk-free, and a string of near-misses on bigger jobs can burn through real money. But of the three platforms, MyBuilder’s model lines up most closely with paying for genuine interest rather than paying for the privilege of competing. If you are going to use a lead site at all, this is often the one I would point a trade towards first.

Rated People: buying the lead, and so are others

Rated People runs a lead-buying model. Homeowners post jobs, and you buy the lead to get their contact details and then reach out to quote. There is usually a modest monthly cost to keep your profile active, and then you pay per lead on top, typically somewhere between £2 and £15 depending on your trade and the size of the job.

Here is the part that frustrates trades the most. Rated People sells the same lead to up to three tradespeople. So you buy a contact, ring them up, and find you are the third caller that morning. The homeowner is now juggling quotes, the job becomes a price race to the bottom, and you have paid for the privilege of being in it. The platform advertises tens of thousands of new job leads a month, so there is volume there, but competition on each individual lead can be fierce.

That is not to say nobody wins on Rated People. Quick, well-priced trades who respond within minutes can do alright. But the shared-lead model means you are buying contacts, not customers, and your conversion rate depends heavily on being first to the phone. For my money, of the three, this is the model with the most friction for the trade.

Head to head: how the three really compare

Let me lay the differences out plainly, because the marketing on each site blurs them on purpose.

  • How you pay. Checkatrade: fixed monthly membership, win or lose, plus per-lead fees for many trades. MyBuilder: pay per shortlist, no membership. Rated People: modest monthly fee plus pay per lead bought.
  • Lead exclusivity. Checkatrade: homeowners contact you directly off your profile. MyBuilder: homeowner shortlists you specifically. Rated People: lead sold to up to three trades.
  • Brand trust with homeowners. Checkatrade leads here, it is the household name. MyBuilder is well known and well rated. Rated People is recognised but less dominant.
  • Risk to you. Checkatrade: you carry the cost in quiet months. MyBuilder: lower fixed risk, you mostly pay when picked. Rated People: you risk buying shared leads that go nowhere.
  • Best suited to. Checkatrade: established trades in busy areas who work the profile. MyBuilder: trades who want fairer, interest-led leads. Rated People: fast responders comfortable competing on price.

If you put a gun to my head and made me rank them purely as lead sites, I would say MyBuilder first for its fairer model, Checkatrade second for its brand pull if you can afford the fixed cost, and Rated People third because of the shared-lead problem. But ranking them misses the bigger point, which is coming up next.

What about Bark, TrustATrader and the rest?

MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People are the big three for trades, but they are not the only names you will come across. Bark covers everything from dog walkers to driveways and sells homeowner contact details through a credit system: you buy credits, then spend them to unlock a lead, which typically works out at £5 to £40 a lead depending on the job. Each Bark lead can be sold to several professionals at once, so it shares the same crowded-lead problem as Rated People, and newly bought credits now expire after three months, so there is quiet pressure to keep spending.

TrustATrader and Which? Trusted Traders sit closer to the Checkatrade model: an annual membership in exchange for vetting, a profile and the badge, usually without per-lead charges. TrustATrader has advertised joining fees around £699 plus VAT a year, and Which? Trusted Traders typically lands in the £450 to £850 a year range depending on your trade and area. The detail changes from platform to platform, but the economics do not. Every one of them sits between you and the customer and charges you for the introduction. So rather than agonising over which directory to join, the better question is how much of your budget should go on rented leads at all, and how much should go into the one channel nobody can switch off: your own visibility on Google.

A word on lead quality, because it is what really counts

Price is the thing everyone obsesses over, but lead quality is what actually decides whether a platform makes you money. A cheap lead that never converts is expensive. A pricier lead that turns into a booked job is a bargain. So before you judge any of these three on cost alone, you need to know how many of the leads turn into real, paying work.

This is where the models really separate. On MyBuilder, because the homeowner has actively shortlisted you, the person at the other end already wants to hear from you, which lifts your conversion rate. On Rated People, where the same lead may have gone to two other trades, you are often quoting against the clock, and plenty of trades report needing five or even ten paid leads to win a single job. On Checkatrade, the homeowner has usually found you through your profile and reviews, so the intent is decent, but you are still paying that fixed monthly cost in the background regardless.

My advice is to track it yourself rather than trusting any platform’s marketing. For a couple of months, write down every lead, what it cost, and whether you won the job. Work out your real cost per won job on each platform. The numbers will surprise you, and they will tell you far more than any review site. We explain how to think about this properly in our piece on a good cost per lead for trades.

The problem with all three: you are renting your customers

Here is the thing none of these platforms will put on their homepage. Whichever one you choose, you are renting access to customers, not building anything you own. Stop paying and the leads stop instantly. The platform controls the price, the rules, and how many competitors see the same job. You are a tenant, not a landlord.

I have seen this play out hundreds of times. A trade leans entirely on Checkatrade, MyBuilder or Rated People, the costs creep up or the lead quality dips, and suddenly their whole pipeline is at the mercy of a company they have no control over. Worse, every job is a competitive scramble, so margins get squeezed and you end up doing more work for less. That is no way to build a business you can rely on, let alone sell one day.

There is nothing wrong with using a lead site as one tap among several, especially when you are starting out or filling a quiet week. The mistake is making it your only tap. The trades who sleep well at night are the ones who own their own lead flow, so that the platforms are a nice-to-have, not a lifeline. Our guide to marketing for tradesmen walks through how to build exactly that.

The alternative: owning your own pipeline

So what does owning your leads actually look like? It is not complicated, and you already have the foundations. It comes down to being the trade who shows up when someone in your area searches Google, looks trustworthy when they find you, and is easy to get hold of. Do that and the leads come straight to you, exclusively, with no per-lead fee and nobody else in the queue.

The building blocks are simple. A strong Google Business Profile that ranks in the local map pack, set up properly through Google Business. A steady stream of genuine Google reviews. A website that loads fast and makes it obvious what you do and how to contact you. And, when you want to grow faster, some well-run Google Ads on top. Each of those leads belongs to you, not a platform.

Compare the maths. On Rated People or Bark you might buy a shared lead for £15 and win one job in four. Rank your own business for “builder near me” or “electrician in Leeds” and those enquiries arrive free, exclusive, and ready to book. The upfront effort is greater, but you are building an asset that keeps paying out instead of a bill that resets every month. This is the heart of what we do at Grwthhub, and you can see how it works on our how it works page.

How to actually get off the lead sites

You do not have to quit the platforms overnight, and you probably should not. The sensible route is to keep them ticking over while you build your own pipeline alongside, then wind them down as your own leads grow. Here is the order I would do it in.

First, sort your Google Business Profile and start asking every happy customer for a review. That alone moves you up the map pack and costs nothing. Second, make sure your website does not let you down, because every lead source sends people there to decide. Our websites for trades and local SEO for trades services are built for precisely this. Third, once your own leads are flowing, add Google Ads for trades to turn the volume up when you want more work, on your terms.

Within a few months most trades find their own pipeline is bringing in better jobs, with fatter margins, than the shared leads ever did. At that point Checkatrade, MyBuilder or Rated People become optional extras you can take or leave, rather than the thing your livelihood depends on. That shift, from renting to owning, is the single best move most trades can make.

Frequently asked questions

Is MyBuilder better than Checkatrade?

For most trades, MyBuilder’s pay-when-shortlisted model is fairer than Checkatrade’s fixed monthly membership, because you are not paying in quiet months. Checkatrade has the stronger brand recognition with homeowners, which can be worth the cost in busy areas. The right pick depends on your trade and how much fixed cost you are comfortable carrying, but MyBuilder usually carries less risk.

Is MyBuilder worth it for tradespeople in 2026?

MyBuilder can be worth it in 2026, especially because there is no membership fee and you mostly pay only when a homeowner shortlists you, which tends to mean warmer leads. The downside is you can still be shortlisted and not win the job. Used as one lead source among several, rather than your only one, MyBuilder is a reasonable option for many trades.

Why does Rated People feel so competitive?

Because Rated People sells the same lead to up to three tradespeople. You buy a homeowner’s details only to find you are one of several calling, which turns the job into a price race and drags margins down. Fast responders can still win, but the shared-lead model is the main reason trades find it frustrating.

Can I use these platforms and my own marketing together?

Yes, and that is often the smart move while you are building. Keep a lead site like MyBuilder running for steady work, and grow your own pipeline through your Google Business Profile, reviews, SEO and ads alongside it. Over time your own exclusive leads should take over, and the platforms become optional. The goal is never to depend on a single tap you do not control.

How much do these lead sites cost overall?

Checkatrade membership varies by trade and postcode: basic plans reportedly start around £30 plus VAT a month, most established trades pay £70 to £120 plus VAT, and many trades also pay per-lead fees of £20 to £40 for bigger jobs. MyBuilder has no membership but charges a shortlist fee from a couple of pounds up to £50 or more depending on job size. Rated People usually has a modest monthly fee plus £2 to £15 per lead bought. None of them publish fully transparent pricing, so always check current figures before committing.

What is the best alternative to MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People?

The best long-term alternative is building your own lead pipeline so the customers come directly to you, exclusively and fee-free. That means a strong local presence on Google, real reviews, a website that converts, and optionally some ads. It takes more effort upfront than buying leads, but you own the result. Our local SEO guide for trades is a good place to start.

The bottom line, and how we can help

MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People all have their place, and if you use them with your eyes open they can bring in work. But none of them solve the real problem, which is that you do not own the customers you are paying for. The trades who win in the long run are the ones who build their own pipeline so the leads come straight to them, exclusive and on their terms. At Grwthhub we help trade businesses across Leeds and Yorkshire do exactly that, and we back it with a 90-day guarantee: if we do not deliver, you are not locked in. If you are tired of renting your customers from a lead site, get in touch and let’s build you something you actually own.

About the author

Jamie Laird is the founder of Grwthhub, a marketing agency for trade businesses in Leeds and Yorkshire. Before marketing he spent a decade on the trade side as a quantity surveyor, pricing and running jobs for builders and contractors, which is why the advice here leans practical rather than theoretical. Read more about Jamie and Grwthhub or get in touch.