How much does Checkatrade cost? Honest numbers, and how to judge them

If you're weighing up whether to join Checkatrade — or your renewal is coming round and you're wondering whether it still earns its keep — the numbers are harder to pin down than they should be. Here's what's published, what members report actually paying, and the sums worth doing before you commit to a year.

What Checkatrade publishes

Checkatrade doesn't put a full price list on its website. What it does say, on its own pages:

• There's no joining fee. Members pay a monthly cost only.
• The cheapest plan starts at £30 + VAT a month. This is a directory listing: customers can find you on the site by searching your name, but the plan doesn't send you leads.
• The plans that send leads are built per member. You pick your trade, the postcode areas you want to work, and the number of leads you want each year — and the monthly price is quoted from that.
• Membership runs for 12 months. At the time of writing (August 2026), the signup offer is your first two months free.
• VAT is charged on the fee. If your business is VAT registered you can reclaim it. If you're not — and plenty of sole traders aren't — the advertised £30 is £36 to you, and the same uplift applies to whatever lead plan you're quoted.

That's the published picture: a £30 + VAT floor, and everything above it quoted per trade and postcode.

What members report paying

Because lead plans are quoted individually, the useful numbers come from what members say their bills look like. Third-party price trackers and trade-forum threads from the last couple of years report:

• Roughly £100–£300 a month for an active lead-generating plan in most trades and areas.
• £300–£500+ a month in competitive trades and dense areas — London and the big cities sit at the top of the range.
• Lead prices that scale with job size. Guides that track per-lead costs put small jobs (a dripping tap, a single socket) around £5–£15 a lead, and bigger projects (a rewire, a bathroom refit) at £25–£40.

Treat all of these as reported figures, not a tariff — your quote depends on your trade, your postcodes, and how much lead volume you ask for. The practical move is simple: get your own quote in writing, and multiply the monthly figure by twelve before you decide. It's a year's commitment, so the annual number is the real price.

The maths that matters: cost per won job

The monthly fee is the number everyone argues about, and it's the wrong one. A lead is not a job. Between the two sit the enquiries that never answer, the customer who got three quotes and went with someone's brother-in-law, and the job that was never really going ahead.

So run the sum on what you actually win. Say your plan costs £150 a month and brings you 15 enquiries. That's £10 an enquiry. If you quote ten of them and win three, each won job carried £50 of membership cost. Against a £2,000 rewire, £50 is nothing. Against an £80 call-out, it's most of your margin.

That's the whole judgement, and only your numbers can make it. Two things follow from it:

• Your win rate moves the answer more than the fee does. Going from winning one enquiry in ten to two in ten halves your cost per job — a bigger saving than any discount you'll negotiate.
• You need to be counting. If you can't say how many enquiries the platform sent last month and how many became paid work, you can't judge the renewal. A notebook column is enough. So is job software that keeps every enquiry in one list with a source against it.

The costs that don't appear on the bill

Every lead platform — not just this one — carries costs that never show up on the invoice, and traders on all of them report the same frustrations:

• Shared enquiries. Many customers contact several businesses at once. However good your profile, some of the leads you pay for were always going to someone else.
• Enquiries that go quiet. Some never answer at all. That's not a fault you can fix; it's a share of dead cost to price in.
• The first reply usually wins. Many customers go with whoever answers first with a question or a bookable time. An enquiry that sits until the evening has usually cooled.
• Your time is a cost too. Reading, replying, quoting and chasing enquiries that go nowhere is unpaid admin — and it lands in the evening, after the paid work.

None of this makes lead platforms a bad buy. It means the sticker price understates the real cost, and speed and record-keeping are how you claw the value back. Answer fast, ask one qualifying question early, and know your numbers at renewal time. The enquiries you've paid for are worth most in the first hour — grafter.ly turns a forwarded enquiry email into a job you can quote from your phone, so the ones worth winning don't sit unread until the evening.

So — is it worth the money?

For some businesses, clearly yes: one member's steady month of won work covers the fee many times over. For others the same fee buys a trickle of shared enquiries that rarely convert. The difference is rarely the platform alone — it's trade, area, how fast you respond, and whether the jobs it sends are the kind you want.

Nobody can tell you from outside your business. What you can do:

1. Get the quote in writing, and budget the annual figure. It's a 12-month membership.
2. Decide your target cost per won job before you join — a number that makes sense against your typical job value.
3. Count everything for the first three months. Enquiries in, quotes out, jobs won, revenue from the platform.
4. Judge the renewal on your own numbers, not on the good or bad month freshest in your memory.

A lead platform is a marketing spend like any other. Priced and measured, it can be a good one. Signed and forgotten, it's just a standing order.

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Sources. Checkatrade's published figures are from its own guide "Does Checkatrade cost money?" (last updated December 2024) and its join page (checked 20 August 2026). Reported member bills and per-lead ranges are from third-party price roundups and trade-forum threads published 2024–2026, including the Local Adder cost tracker; they're reports, not a price list. Prices in this post were checked on 20 August 2026 — if you're reading much later, get a current quote.