Checkatrade or Trust a Trader? The 5-Way UK Directory Comparison (2026)

The short answer

If you only weigh Checkatrade against Trust a Trader, the choice comes down to price for your trade and area and which brand homeowners recognise locally — both are vetted membership directories. MyBuilder, Rated People and Bark are the pay-per-lead alternatives if you would rather pay only when a homeowner asks for quotes.

But that comparison hides the decision that actually sets your cost per job. Every one of the five sells the same homeowner enquiry to several firms at once, and you pay whether or not you win the work — so whichever you pick, you are competing on who calls back fastest. The real fork is directory vs exclusive: keep buying shared leads, or switch to a model where the demand is generated for one business in your area and you only pay when a survey is booked. MyTradeBuddy runs that exclusive model, and this guide compares the five directories fairly, then shows where an exclusive booked-survey pipeline beats all of them.

How each platform actually charges

Checkatrade and TrustATrader both work on a monthly membership: you pay for a vetted profile and visibility, and enquiries that come through are not individually billed. Costs vary by trade and area, so get a current quote for your postcode rather than trusting a figure from a forum thread.

MyBuilder charges tradespeople a fee per lead they express interest in — you see the job description first and pay to make contact. Rated People runs on a subscription plus per-lead credits. Bark sells credits that you spend to contact a customer who has posted a request; several professionals can buy the same contact.

None of these models is automatically cheaper. A quiet month on a membership still costs the full fee; a busy month on pay-per-lead can cost far more than a membership would have. The only fair comparison is what one booked job costs you on each platform over a real month of activity.

Checkatrade or Trust a Trader, head to head

Both are vetting-led membership directories, and for homeowners the experience is similar: search, read reviews, contact a shortlist. Checkatrade is the bigger brand with heavier advertising; TrustATrader is commonly the challenger a trade compares it against, often on price.

Practical way to decide between them: search your own trade and town on both sites and count how many competitors already hold profiles. A crowded page means every enquiry is shared further; being one of three profiles in your patch is worth more than being one of thirty on a bigger platform.

Also check the contract terms at renewal. Trades' most common complaint about membership directories is fees rising at renewal while enquiry volume falls — whichever platform you pick, diarise the renewal date and re-run your cost-per-booked-job maths before it auto-renews.

Where MyBuilder, Rated People and Bark fit

Pay-per-lead platforms suit trades with spare capacity and a disciplined, fast callback process: you can scale spend up and down and you only pay when there is a live request. They punish slow responders — by the time you call, two competitors who paid for the same lead may already have quoted.

Bark spans far more categories than the trade-specific platforms, which means volume, but also means requests can be vaguer and further from ready-to-buy. MyBuilder and Rated People stay closer to real building and home-improvement jobs.

If you test one, track every lead for a month: what you paid, whether anyone answered, whether it quoted, whether it booked. Cost per booked job — not cost per lead — is the number to compare against a membership.

The thing none of the five change

Every directory model shares the same mechanic: the homeowner's enquiry reaches several businesses, and the platforms are paid whether or not you win the work. That is not a scam — it is just their model. But it means the directory decision matters less than your response system: answer speed, qualification, and follow-up persistence decide who books the job.

It is also why cost per booked job varies so wildly between firms on the same platform paying the same fees. The firm that answers every call and chases every quote wins on any directory; the firm that misses calls loses on all of them.

The alternative model — the one MyTradeBuddy runs — removes the sharing instead: demand is generated for one business per area, every enquiry is qualified and chased automatically, and you pay per booked survey rather than per lead or per month. For big-ticket work like boiler replacements, bathrooms and roofs, exclusivity is worth the most, because one lost shared job is hundreds of pounds of margin.

Which to pick, by situation

Choose a membership directory (Checkatrade or TrustATrader) if you want brand-backed credibility, steady visibility, and can commit to answering everything that comes in. Pick between them on local competition density and quoted price for your trade and area.

Choose pay-per-lead (MyBuilder, Rated People, Bark) if you want to switch demand on and off, have capacity to respond within minutes, and will honestly track cost per booked job.

Choose an exclusive booked-survey model — MyTradeBuddy — if your work is big-ticket, your diary depends on surveys rather than call-outs, and you would rather pay for outcomes than for visibility or contact details. It is the one option here where the enquiry is never shared with a competitor, the calls and follow-up are handled for you, and the bill only lands when a qualified survey is booked in your calendar. Many firms sensibly keep a directory profile for reviews and credibility while an exclusive pipeline fills the diary with their bread-and-butter jobs.

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