What Checkatrade costs a plumber (and what you could do instead)

A plumber I spoke to last year had been on Checkatrade for two years. He was paying £120 a month, locked into a 12-month contract, and getting a handful of enquiries that he was competing for with two or three other plumbers. He converted one or two jobs a month from the platform. “The rest just ghost you,” he told me.

That is not an unusual story.

What Checkatrade charges

Checkatrade does not publish a single clear price. What you pay depends on your trade, your postcode, and the plan you choose. A sole trader plumber in a mid-sized UK city can expect to pay somewhere between £80 and £150 a month for a standard membership, plus VAT. That is between £960 and £1,800 a year before VAT.

The higher end of that range is more common than Checkatrade’s marketing suggests. Price hikes on renewal are a recurring complaint, with some tradespeople reporting increases of 60 per cent or more between their first and second year. And membership comes with a 12-month contract. Stop paying mid-year and you owe the remainder.

But the subscription fee is only part of it.

When a homeowner posts a job on Checkatrade, that enquiry goes to up to three tradespeople simultaneously. Checkatrade’s own guidance to members acknowledges this: respond quickly, they say, because the first to reply usually wins. If you are on a job when the notification comes through, you have already lost it to whoever picked up their phone first. Conversion rates on shared, time-sensitive leads are poor. The time spent chasing enquiries that never go anywhere is a real cost that does not show up in the monthly fee.

What the same money does differently

A properly built trades website with Northern Collective costs a one-off build fee plus £49 a month for hosting and maintenance. Over 12 months, that is £588 in ongoing costs. The build fee amortises quickly. After year one, you are paying less than half what a basic Checkatrade membership costs.

When someone searches “plumber in [your town]” and finds your website, they are not comparing you to two other plumbers at the same moment. They clicked your link, read about your work, and chose to call you. That kind of enquiry converts at a completely different rate to a shared platform lead.

A trades website optimised for local search, paired with a complete Google Business Profile, puts you in front of people at the exact moment they need someone. The lead belongs to you from the first click.

There is also the ownership question. Your Checkatrade listing, your reviews on that platform, your entire presence there belongs to Checkatrade. Stop paying and it disappears. Your website is yours. The domain is yours. The Google reviews tied to your Business Profile are attached to your business, not to a subscription. The asset builds over time and does not invoice you more each January.

When Checkatrade still makes sense

For a trade business starting out with no existing reputation, listing on Checkatrade has logic. Building up reviews quickly while you establish a client base is a reasonable strategy. The brand recognition also counts for something with homeowners who do not know where else to look.

But the calculation shifts as your business grows. If you have 25 or 30 Google reviews, a well-ranked local website, and a properly maintained Business Profile, you are paying Checkatrade £1,200 a year to compete for leads you could be receiving exclusively.

Most trades businesses we work with came to us after 12 to 18 months on platforms like Checkatrade. The work was there, but so was the monthly invoice, the contract lock-in, and the growing suspicion that they were building someone else’s platform more than their own business.

That is a common path. And it does not have to be yours.