- Checkatrade is a monthly membership for a vetted profile; MyBuilder charges per lead you choose to contact — two different bills for the same underlying mechanic.
- Both platforms let several firms compete for the same homeowner, so callback speed and follow-up decide your cost per booked job on either.
- MyTradeBuddy is the exclusive alternative to both: demand for one business per area, enquiries chased automatically, billed per booked survey.
The short answer
Pick Checkatrade if you want steady visibility, brand-backed credibility with homeowners, and you'll reliably answer everything that comes in — you're buying a shop window. Pick MyBuilder if you want to dip in and out around capacity and only pay when there's a live job you actually want — you're buying entry to an auction, and speed is your bid.
Neither is cheaper by design: a quiet month on membership still bills in full, and a busy month of pay-per-lead can cost more than a year's membership. And both share the homeowner with your competitors. If that's the part you're trying to escape, the fork isn't Checkatrade vs MyBuilder at all — it's shared vs exclusive, which we cover at the end and in full in our five-way directory comparison.
How the two models actually work
Checkatrade: you pay a monthly membership, quoted for your trade and area, for a vetted profile with reviews. Homeowners search, browse and contact you directly; individual enquiries aren't billed. The vetting and the brand's advertising are the product — Checkatrade spends heavily to be the name homeowners type into Google.
MyBuilder: homeowners post a job; interested tradespeople pay a fee to express interest and make contact. You see the job description before paying, so you control spend job by job. The homeowner then shortlists from those who responded — typically comparing several firms.
The practical difference is where the risk sits. Membership risk: paying for a quiet patch or an over-crowded listing page. Pay-per-lead risk: paying for contacts who never answer, or races you lose to a faster competitor who bought the same lead.
What decides it for your firm
Callback speed is the honest first question. MyBuilder punishes slow responders — if nobody can ring a new lead within minutes during the working day, membership visibility will treat you better than an auction you keep losing.
Local competition density is the second. Search your trade and town on Checkatrade and count the profiles: being one of four in your patch is worth far more than one of forty. On MyBuilder, watch how many firms typically respond to jobs like yours in your area for a week before committing.
Job size is the third. For small, fast jobs, pay-per-lead's dip-in-dip-out control suits well. For big-ticket work — boiler replacements, bathrooms, re-roofs — losing a shared enquiry to a faster caller costs hundreds of pounds in margin, which is what pushes bigger-ticket firms toward exclusivity. Run the numbers with our cost-per-booked-job guide.
The mechanics both share — and the alternative
However you pay, the same homeowner can be talking to several firms, and the platform gets paid whether or not you win. That's not a criticism — it's the model — but it means your response system, not your platform choice, sets your real cost per job. The firm that answers every call and chases every quote wins on either platform; the firm that misses calls loses on both.
The alternative model removes the sharing: demand generated for one business per area, every enquiry answered and qualified instantly, chased by phone, SMS and email, and billed per booked survey rather than per lead or per month. That's what MyTradeBuddy's lead generation runs for UK trades, and it's at its best on exactly the big-ticket, survey-led work where shared leads cost the most.
Plenty of firms sensibly run both worlds: a directory profile kept for reviews and credibility, with an exclusive pipeline filling the diary. What rarely makes sense is paying for shared leads on two platforms while enquiries die in voicemail — fix the answering first, then buy demand.
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Frequently asked questions
Checkatrade suits firms that want always-on visibility and can answer every enquiry; MyBuilder suits firms that want to control spend job-by-job and can call new leads back within minutes. Compare your local competition on each and run one honest month's cost-per-booked-job maths before deciding.
Neither is reliably cheaper. Checkatrade is a fixed membership quoted for your trade and area, so quiet months cost the same as busy ones. MyBuilder is pay-as-you-go per lead, so costs scale with use — and with how many leads you pay for but don't win. The only fair comparison is what one booked job costs you on each.
No — several tradespeople can pay to contact the same job, and the homeowner picks a shortlist. Exclusive enquiries only exist where demand is generated for one business per area, which is how pay-per-booked-survey models like MyTradeBuddy work.
Yes, and some firms do — membership for credibility and steady flow, pay-per-lead for filling gaps in capacity. Just track each channel's cost per booked job separately, and make sure every enquiry from both actually gets answered; running two shared-lead channels into an unanswered phone doubles the waste, not the work.