Lead Generation for Tradesmen: Rent Your Leads or Own Them

Two ways to get work: rent the leads or own them

Lead generation for tradesmen comes down to one choice. You can rent enquiries from someone else (Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark, TrustATrader, Google's ads) or you can own the things that make your phone ring: a website that wins the job, a Google Business Profile full of real reviews, and follow-up that stops enquiries going cold.

Renting is quick and the tap is adjustable. Owning is slow to start and keeps paying once it's built. Most trades who have been going a few years end up with a bit of both, and the real question is the ratio.

So you can weigh what follows: I build websites for trades and do Local SEO, which means I earn my living on the owning side. I don't sell leads, I don't buy them for anyone, and I don't take a cut of the jobs you win. There are times when renting is the right call, and I'll say when.

Every platform price and policy on this page was checked against the platform's own site in October 2026. Most of them won't publish a price list, and where that's the case I've said how they charge rather than guess a number.

Where trade leads actually come from in 2026

Strip away the branding and there are only seven places job leads for tradesmen come from.

• Lead platforms and directories. Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark, TrustATrader and MyJobQuote. The homeowner posts a job or searches the directory, and the platform charges you for the introduction, a membership, or both. Rated People is now part of the Checkatrade Group, and since September 2026 its jobs go to Checkatrade members.
• Google's paid spots. Local Services Ads, where you pay for each enquiry, and ordinary Google Ads, where you pay for each click.
• Google's free spots. The map results and the normal results underneath. Nobody pays per click there, which is exactly why they're the most fought over.
• AI answers. People now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI for "a good plumber in Rotherham". When I studied 120 AI answers about plumbers, Checkatrade was cited in 67.5% of them. The platforms are winning this one at the moment, and you can check who AI names for your trade and town for free.
• Word of mouth and repeat customers. Still the best lead there is, and it works better the easier you are to find and review.
• Other trades and local businesses. The builder who needs a sparky next Tuesday, the letting agent who needs a plumber on a Saturday, the kitchen fitter who doesn't do gas.
• Public records. Planning applications (public on your council's website) and public sector contracts advertised on Find a Tender. Mostly useful to builders and construction firms.

Only the last four cost nothing per enquiry. That isn't a coincidence. The free routes take effort, and the paid routes sell you a way round the effort.

Lead generation for tradesmen: every option compared

Here's how the main sources of leads for tradesmen stack up for a UK trade business. Prices and terms are as of October 2026, from each platform's own pages. Most of them quote privately, so where there's no public figure I've described how they charge instead.

Two columns matter more than the price. Who keeps the customer decides whether you pay again next time they need a trade. Shared or exclusive decides whether you're quoting against three others on price or talking to someone who has already picked you.

If you want the platforms side by side in more detail, I've written up the best lead generation sites for tradesmen, one by one.

Cost per job won: the only sum that matters

The price per lead is the number on the invoice. The number that matters is what you spent divided by the jobs you actually won. Every figure below is made up to show the shape of the sum, so swap in your own.

Say you're an electrician in Doncaster. Your average job is £450 and leaves about £200 after materials. Here's what four routes might look like over a month.

The owned rows also carry the website itself, £497 once, which I've left out of the monthly figures because you only pay it the once.

Look at what happens down the table. On the rented routes, more work means a bigger bill, every time, because every extra enquiry is charged. On the owned route the monthly cost stays put when the enquiries go up, so each extra job makes the cost per job smaller. That's the whole argument for owning, in one table.

Now the honest bit, because the owned rows are the ones I can't promise. In months one to three you'd be paying £515 a month and might get very little back. In a crowded city it can take a good deal longer, and in some areas a well-run platform membership stays the cheaper route for years. Google decides the order of its results, not me.

Win rates differ as well. When somebody has found you, read your reviews and rung you directly, you're often the only quote. When a lead went to three trades in the same minute, the fastest and cheapest usually wins. That's why a fixed fee per lead hurts most on small jobs: £20 is nothing against a £3,000 rewire and a big slice of the profit on a £90 socket swap.

Run this sum on your own last quarter: total spend by source, divided by jobs won from that source. If you don't know which jobs came from where, start asking every caller "how did you find me?" and write it in the diary. Three months of that settles more arguments than any article, this one included.

When renting leads is the right call

I'm not going to pretend renting is always wrong. There are four situations where paying for leads is the sensible decision, not a compromise.

• You're brand new. No reviews, no website, nothing for Google to rank yet. Paying for your first ten jobs, and turning each one into a Google review, is a perfectly good way to start.
• There's a hole in next week's diary. Nothing I do fills next Tuesday. A pay-as-you-go platform can fill it this afternoon.
• You're testing a new service. Before you build pages for EV chargers or flat roofs, a few pounds of leads in that category tells you whether people near you want it at your price.
• The badge itself wins you work. Some customers, often older homeowners, trust a vetted directory more than a website. For them the membership is part of your reputation, not only a lead source.

What I'd avoid is renting as the whole plan. If one platform doubling its price, changing how it shares leads or dropping you would put the business in trouble, you haven't got a marketing channel, you've got a landlord.

If you're weighing up the biggest one, start with is Checkatrade worth it and then the alternatives to Checkatrade.

What owned lead generation looks like

Owned lead generation isn't one thing. It's three things that work as a set, and each one makes the others pay.

1. A website that wins the enquiry

Most people looking for a trade decide in seconds, on a phone, often with a leak or a dead socket in front of them. Your site needs to say what you do and where in the first screen, put a call button under their thumb, and show real photos and real reviews. Plenty of trade sites get visits and no calls because they fail one of those.

That's what my Job Winning Website is built for: £497 one-off, no VAT and no deposit, built by me, mobile-first and set up for Google. You see your homepage design within 24 hours of the set-up call, before you pay a penny, and if it isn't live within seven working days of your start date because of a delay on my side, I give you £100 back. You get 90 days of tweaks and support after that, and the site is yours once paid. Hosting and your web address are yours to pay, at £20 a month. If you want to see it first, ask for a free website mockup.

2. Local SEO so the right people find it

A good site nobody finds is a nice brochure. Local SEO for tradesmen is the work aimed at getting you into the map results and the ordinary results for the jobs you want, in the towns you cover: a finished Google Business Profile, a page for each service and area, a steady flow of reviews, and being named in AI answers. It's £495 a month, month to month with no contract, and you get a plain-English report every month. The free Search Opportunity Review shows you where you stand first.

3. Follow-up so leads don't leak

This is the part most trades skip, and it's often the cheapest win. A missed call while you're on a roof is a lead you paid for one way or another. A missed-call text back replies within seconds, an AI receptionist takes the details when you can't, quote follow-up chases the ones that went quiet, and review requests go out after every job. All of it is custom, with a fixed quote before I start.

Follow-up makes rented leads work harder too. A platform lead answered in two minutes has a much better chance than one rung back at teatime, so this is worth doing whatever the mix.

Lead generation by trade

The principle is the same for every trade. The details aren't.

Plumbers and heating engineers

Plumbing has two markets. Emergency work (a leak, no hot water) goes to whoever answers first, so speed and the map results decide it. Planned work (a combi swap, a bathroom) gets researched, so reviews and your website decide it. Customers can check any gas engineer by postcode on the Gas Safe Register, and landlords need an annual gas safety check by a Gas Safe registered engineer, which makes letting agents a steady source of repeat work. My guide to plumbing leads has the costs and the sums, and SEO for plumbers covers the owned side.

Electricians

Electrician leads split between small jobs (sockets, lights, fault finding), bigger planned work (rewires, consumer units, EV chargers) and landlord work. Private landlords in England have to get their electrical installations inspected and tested at least every five years, so a good relationship with two or three letting agents is worth more than most lead subscriptions. Check your entry on the electrical Competent Person register, because homeowners search it by postcode. More in SEO for electricians and my piece on EV charger enquiries.

Roofers

Roofing leads arrive in bursts. A storm fills every diary in the county for a fortnight, then it goes quiet. That makes pay-per-lead tempting, and it's also where "guaranteed roofing leads" offers turn up, so read what's actually guaranteed (usually a number of enquiries, never a number of jobs). I've done the full arithmetic in roofing leads: buy them or build your own, and SEO for roofers covers the owned route.

Builders and construction companies

Lead generation for builders is mostly about big, planned jobs that homeowners research for weeks, so your finished work, your reviews and your site carry more weight than speed. MyBuilder suits this kind of work better than most platforms, because you only pay when a customer shortlists you.

Construction leads in the business-to-business sense are a different game. Planning applications are public, so you can see extensions and loft conversions coming months before the homeowner picks a builder, and there are paid tools that filter them by trade and postcode. Public sector contracts are advertised on Find a Tender, the government's service, including smaller contracts from £12,000 for central government and £30,000 for councils and NHS trusts (including VAT). Paid project databases such as Glenigan and Barbour ABI exist for firms bidding for larger contracts. See SEO for builders and SEO for construction companies for the owned side.

Every lead platform, reviewed

I've written up each platform separately, with what it costs, how it works and who it suits. Same rule throughout: prices checked against the platform's own pages, and an honest answer even when it isn't the one that suits me.

• The best lead generation sites for tradesmen: every UK platform side by side.
• Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs TrustATrader: the three most common choices compared.
• Is Checkatrade worth it? When the membership pays for itself and when it doesn't.
• Checkatrade cost: how the tailored pricing works and the sums to run before signing.
• How Checkatrade works for trades and homeowners.
• Checkatrade alternatives, paid and free.
• MyBuilder for tradesmen: shortlist fees and who it suits.
• TrustATrader cost: the annual membership explained.
• Is Bark worth it for tradesmen? Credits, competition and the guarantee.
• Rated People cost, and what changed when Checkatrade took it over.
• Google Local Services Ads in the UK: paying per lead, straight from Google.
• Google Ads for tradesmen: when paying per click makes sense.
• Free advertising for tradesmen: everything that costs nothing but time.
• Plumbing leads: where they come from and what a job really costs.
• Roofing leads: the honest maths on buying versus building.
• Marketing for tradesmen: twelve ways to get more work, ranked.

Where I'd start, and when I'd tell you not to spend

If you'd like a second opinion before you move any money, send me your details. I'll look at where your work comes from now, what each source is likely costing you per job, and what I'd change first.

Sometimes the honest answer is that your platform spend is doing a decent job and your area is a hard one to rank in, and I'll tell you that rather than sell you something. If you mainly need a website that turns visits into phone calls, the free website mockup is the quickest way to see what I'd build. If you want to know where you stand on Google, start with the free Search Opportunity Review on the Local SEO page.

Either way, it's me who reads it and me who replies. No salesperson, no account manager.

Send me your details