Checkatrade Cost in 2026: What You'll Actually Pay

The structure, from Checkatrade's own sign-up process, is this. You pick your trade and your postcode area. You choose roughly how many leads you'd like a year. They quote you a monthly fee for a fixed plan, on a twelve-month membership.

At the time of writing they're running a "two months free" offer on fixed plans, which tells you two useful things: there's a promo cycle, and there's room in the margin.

What drives the quote up or down:

Your trade. A roofer and a locksmith are not quoted the same, because the job values and the competition for each lead aren't the same.

Your postcode. Busy urban patches with lots of member competition price differently to quiet ones.

Lead volume. More promised leads, higher fee. This is the big lever.

Extras. Additional trade categories and wider coverage areas add to it. Members also report an initial vetting or setup element when joining.

Two details on how the money is taken. It's structured as an annual subscription paid in twelve instalments, not a rolling month-to-month arrangement, which matters the moment you want to leave.

And the promotional months tend to sit at the front of the contract, so the effective rate for the year is worth working out before the sweetener distracts you.. take the full-year figure, subtract the promo, divide by twelve, and compare that number, not the one in the brochure.

Because it's all quoted, the honest answer to "how much is Checkatrade per month" is: whatever they think your patch, your trade and your appetite are worth.

Reported figures from members generally land somewhere between £70 and £150+ a month for a single trade in a normal area.. the most basic plan starts lower, with less volume attached.. and the "twelve to thirteen hundred a year" figure comes up again and again in trade forums.. one of the busiest threads you'll find on the subject is literally titled around whether it's worth £1,300 a year. Treat all of those as reported numbers rather than a menu. Yours will be its own quote. (For the machinery behind the matching and who sees what, see how Checkatrade actually works.)

Before the sums, it's fair to spell out what the fee buys, because it isn't nothing.

What you get:

What you don't get is any promise of volume. The plan is built around an expectation of work coming through, not a guarantee of it, and the difference between those two words is where most of the disappointed members I talk to went wrong.

If the enquiries in your postcode are thin, the bill doesn't shrink to match.

One more thing worth knowing: your profile competes with every other member profile in your area, and the platform decides how they're all displayed. Strong reviews and fast responses push you up.

So the membership rewards exactly the tradespeople who are already organised.. which is worth being honest with yourself about before you sign.

The twelve months. This is the one to respect. However the first conversation feels, you're not trialling Checkatrade for a month or two. You're signing a year. If the leads in your patch turn out to be thin, you're still paying in month nine.

Ask directly what happens if you want out early, and get the answer in writing.

Leads are not jobs. The plan is priced on leads.. an enquiry, a contact, a chance. You're still quoting against other members for the same homeowner, and the homeowner may have pinged three firms in ninety seconds.

Your real cost per job is the fee for the month divided by the jobs you actually win, and that number is the only one that matters. It's also worth asking how many other tradespeople in your patch receive the same lead.. the answer shapes your win rate more than your workmanship does.

The renewal. Members report quotes changing at renewal, sometimes upwards, based on lead volumes and area. Diary a check for month ten, because the lazy thing is to let it roll.

Everyone on the platform looks the same. You're a card in a list with a tick, a star rating and a radius. The homeowner is comparing you against the other cards, on the platform's terms, and the customers it sends you stay its customers. That's not a fee, but it's a cost.

Here's the sum I'd do on the back of whatever quote they give you. Say the quote is £110 a month.. £1,320 a year.

Now be honest about three numbers. How many leads a month will actually come through in your patch.. find out from other local members, not the salesperson.

What fraction you'll win.. one in three is decent going when several members chase each lead. And what an average job is worth to you in profit, not turnover.

Then set that money against the benefits you can actually bank, and work out the ROI the same way you'd price a job.

So, say 6 leads a month, winning 1 in 3. That's 2 jobs a month for £110, or £55 a job.

On £2,000 bathroom refits, £55 to win a job is brilliant and you should probably do it. On £90 call-outs, £55 a job is most of your margin gone before you've picked up a spanner.

That's the whole trick with every Checkatrade pricing question. The fee isn't high or low on its own.. it's high or low against your job value and your win rate.

Which is why the plumber next door swears by it and the handyman two streets over calls it a waste of a year's money, and they're both right.

Same fee, wildly different outcomes. Three worked examples, all using that £110-a-month quote:

Read the last column against the profit column and the pattern is plain. High-ticket trades can be lazy about the price and still come out ahead.

Low-ticket trades need everything to go right.. strong lead flow, sharp win rate.. just to keep the arithmetic respectable. The quote doesn't know your margins. You have to bring them.

And one wrinkle the table hides: the win rate isn't yours to control alone. In a patch with many members, the same enquiry lands with several firms at once, and the average win rate falls for everyone as the platform grows locally.

Ask how many members share your category in your area. It's the question the rep least wants.

Five questions, in writing where you can:

Straight answers to all five and you can make a clean decision. Vague answers to any of them tell you what the twelve-month tail is for.

The comparison everyone wants: MyBuilder charges per shortlist rather than a fixed membership, so you pay only when you pursue a job, and Rated People sells lead credits in a similar pay-as-you-go shape. Fixed membership suits steady volume in a busy patch.. you're buying in bulk.

Pay-as-you-go suits thin patches, new starts and anyone testing the water, because a quiet month costs you nearly nothing.

The trap is comparing headline prices instead of cost per won job. A £110 fixed month that wins you three jobs beats a £15-per-lead model where you chased eight and won one.

Run the same arithmetic on whichever quote is in front of you and the platforms become directly comparable. If the deeper question is whether platforms deserve your money at all, that's the subject of is Checkatrade worth it.

£1,300 a year is not small money, so it deserves a comparison.

That's roughly the one-off cost of a decent freelance-built website, or two-thirds of a professional conversion-focused build you'd own outright forever.

It's a year of modest local SEO work on your own Google presence. It's a healthy Google Ads test in most trades. It's most of a year's marketing budget for a one-van firm.

The difference in kind, not just in price: money into Checkatrade rents you access to their audience for exactly as long as you keep paying. Money into your own site and your own Google rankings buys an asset that keeps answering the phone after you stop feeding it.

I've written a fuller comparison of the two roads in should you buy leads or build your own, and an honest take on the platform overall in my full review.

And no, it doesn't have to be either-or. Plenty of sensible firms run Checkatrade for fill-in work while their own site grows into the main feed, then quietly drop the membership when the balance tips.

How much is Checkatrade per month?#

There's no public price list. Membership is quoted individually based on your trade, your postcode and the lead volume you choose, on a twelve-month fixed plan.

Members commonly report figures from around £70 to £150+ a month for a single trade, with add-ons for extra categories and areas.

Is there a setup cost when you join?#

Members report an initial element covering vetting and setup when they join, alongside the plan itself.. some describe it as a joining fee, so use whichever word gets you a straight answer. Ask for the full first-year figure in writing, including any promo months, so you're comparing one clean number.

Can you pay Checkatrade monthly and cancel anytime?#

You pay month by month, but the standard membership is a twelve-month commitment.. it's not a rolling subscription you can drop after a slow spell. Find the exact exit terms in writing before signing.

Do you still pay if you get no work?#

Yes. The plan is priced on lead expectations, not results, so a quiet quarter costs the same as a busy one.

That's the strongest argument for doing the postcode homework before signing rather than after.. and for building a source of work you own alongside anything you rent.

What makes the Checkatrade price go up?#

Extra trade categories, wider coverage areas, and higher lead volumes are the main levers. Members also describe renewal quotes rising in busy patches.

Every add-on deserves the same test as the core plan: cost per won job, or it doesn't earn its keep.

Is Checkatrade free for homeowners?#

Yes. Homeowners search, find and contact trades for nothing. The tradespeople fund the platform through membership, which is worth remembering when you think about whose interests the site is built around.

Checkatrade in 2026 is a quoted, twelve-month, lead-volume-priced membership that lands, for most single-trade members, somewhere in the low hundreds a month and four figures a year.

Whether that's dear or cheap depends entirely on your patch, your win rate and your job values.. run the cost-per-won-job sum above and the decision usually makes itself.

Just don't let it be the only feed you've got. If every enquiry you get arrives through a platform you rent, your business has a landlord. A website of your own that actually converts is how you stop paying rent on your own phone ringing.