Is Checkatrade Worth It for Tradesmen? The Honest Maths (2026)

A homeowner posts a job on Checkatrade. Checkatrade sells that enquiry to three, four, or five tradespeople at once. Each pays £15–40 for the lead. All of them call the homeowner, drive out, spend an hour on a site visit, write up a quote — and only one of them wins the work. The other four have spent real money and half a day of their time, and earned nothing. Checkatrade keeps the money either way.

This is not a secret. It is the entire business model, and it is perfectly legal. But before you spend another penny on lead platforms, it is worth doing the maths properly — because most tradespeople only look at the cost per lead, not the cost per job won.

1. The Shared-Lead Model Explained

Checkatrade, Bark, MyBuilder, and Rated People all operate variations of the same model. A homeowner submits a job request. The platform sells that request — as a “lead” — to multiple tradespeople in the area. Depending on the platform and job type, the same enquiry may go to 3–5 tradespeople simultaneously.

Each tradesperson pays for the lead upfront, regardless of whether they win the work. The platform's revenue from a single homeowner enquiry is therefore:

The platform earns £60–200 per homeowner enquiry before any work has been carried out. Your job, as the tradesperson, is to win a profitable share of those enquiries — and that's harder than the lead price alone suggests.

2. What Paid Leads Actually Cost You

The advertised lead price is not your real cost. Your real cost per job won is the lead price divided by your win rate — plus the unpaid time you invest in losing quotes.

Here is what that looks like at different win rates, assuming a £30 lead price:

The unpaid visit column assumes each site visit and quote takes two hours, and your effective day rate is £200. At a 25% win rate — fairly typical when competing with four other tradespeople — your true cost per job acquired is close to £200, even before materials, labour, or overhead.

For a £2,000 boiler installation, absorbing £195 in acquisition cost may still leave a healthy margin. For a £400 bathroom tap replacement, it almost certainly does not.

3. The Break-Even Calculation

Before committing to any lead platform, run this calculation for your trade and typical job value:

1. Estimate your win rate. If you do not yet know, assume 25% (1 in 4) as a realistic starting point for a shared-lead platform.
2. Calculate lead cost per job won. Lead price ÷ win rate. At £30 and 25%: £120.
3. Add unpaid quoting time. Count the hours you spend on site visits and writing quotes for jobs you do not win. Multiply by your effective hourly rate.
4. Add that total to your job cost. If the combined acquisition cost pushes your margin below 20%, the leads are not profitable at that job size.
5. Find your minimum viable job value. Work backwards: what is the smallest job where paid leads still make sense? That is the threshold below which you should turn leads off.

Many tradespeople discover that paid leads only make sense for jobs above £800–1,500, depending on their trade. For anything smaller, the economics favour building inbound channels instead.

4. What the Platforms Do Not Tell You

Beyond the shared-lead structure, there are several things the lead platforms typically do not highlight upfront:

Lead quality varies significantly

Not all homeowner enquiries are genuine. Some are speculative price checks from homeowners who are six months away from being ready to book. Some are research queries rather than live jobs. Platforms have a financial incentive to sell leads quickly — their quality control is imperfect, and a lead that results in no contact made is difficult to dispute and reclaim.

You are competing on price

When a homeowner receives calls from four tradespeople in the same hour, the natural comparison point becomes price. Shared leads push the market towards the lowest quote, not the best tradesperson. If your competitive advantage is quality, reliability, and local reputation — none of that is visible to a homeowner comparing four strangers who all called within the same afternoon.

Membership fees on top of lead costs

Some platforms charge an annual membership or subscription fee in addition to per-lead credits. If you are on a £300 annual membership and buying 50 leads per year at £30 each, your actual marketing spend is £1,800 per year — which needs to generate enough extra work to justify both the cost and the time investment.

Your reviews live on their platform, not yours

Every positive review you accumulate on Checkatrade makes Checkatrade more valuable — not your own website or Google Business Profile. If you leave the platform, or the platform changes its pricing, those reviews do not come with you. You are building someone else's asset.

5. When Checkatrade Does Make Sense

This is not an argument that paid lead platforms are always a bad idea. There are situations where they deliver a reasonable return:

• You are new to an area and have no local reputation yet. Paid leads can seed your first reviews and build momentum while you establish referral networks.
• You specialise in high-value jobs. A heating engineer fitting £3,000–5,000 boiler systems can absorb a £200 acquisition cost far more easily than a handyman doing £150 jobs.
• You have a strong close rate. If your conversion is genuinely above 40% — because you respond fastest, present professionally, and follow up well — the maths shift meaningfully in your favour.
• You use it as a top-up, not a core channel. Tradespeople who treat paid leads as a way to fill gaps in their diary — rather than their primary source of work — tend to use them more selectively and profitably.

6. Building Inbound Leads Instead

The most cost-effective lead source for most tradespeople is a warm inbound enquiry — someone who already knows your name, has seen your reviews, or was referred by a past customer. These leads cost almost nothing to acquire, convert at far higher rates, and tend to attract customers who are less focused on price.

The channels that generate inbound leads at low cost:

Google Business Profile

A fully completed Google Business Profile with genuine customer reviews is the single highest-return marketing investment most tradespeople can make. When someone in your area searches “gas engineer near me” or “plumber [town],” Google shows the local pack — and tradespeople with more reviews and a higher rating consistently appear at the top. The cost to set it up is zero. The cost to maintain it is asking every satisfied customer to leave a review, which takes 30 seconds.

Referral systems

A referred customer already trusts you before you speak to them. They are more likely to book, less likely to haggle, and more likely to leave a review. Simply telling satisfied customers “if you know anyone who needs a [plumber/electrician/builder], please mention me” costs nothing — but it requires asking consistently, which most tradespeople do not do. A systematic follow-up message after job completion can double your referral rate.

A simple website that ranks locally

A basic website targeting “[trade] in [town]” search terms can generate consistent inbound enquiries at no ongoing cost once it ranks. Unlike a Checkatrade profile, this asset belongs to you. A single page describing your services, a list of areas covered, and five to ten real customer testimonials will outrank most tradespeople's online presence in smaller towns and suburbs.

Staying visible between jobs

Posting occasional before-and-after photos in local Facebook or Nextdoor groups keeps your name visible to homeowners who are not ready to book today but will be in three months. The tradespeople who appear regularly — without selling — are the ones people think of first when they need someone.

Checkatrade vs. Inbound Marketing: At a Glance

7. What to Track Before You Decide

If you are currently using Checkatrade or a similar platform, you need three numbers to know whether it is working:

1. Total spend this year (membership + lead credits combined)
2. Number of jobs won from platform leads
3. Average value of those jobs

Divide total spend by jobs won to get your cost per acquired job. Compare that to your average job value and your margin. If the cost per acquired job is more than 15–20% of your average job value, the economics are under pressure.

Most tradespeople have never done this calculation. Those who do are often surprised by the result — not because the platform is a scam, but because the maths of shared-lead models only work within a fairly narrow range of job values and win rates. Outside that range, you are subsidising the platform's revenue with your time.

The model is legal. It is transparent, if you read the small print. Whether it works for your business depends entirely on whether your numbers sit inside or outside the range where it makes sense.