If you've ever typed "Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs Bark vs Rated People" into Google at the end of a quiet week, you already know the problem: every platform promises more work, but the money goes out before any of it comes in. This is an honest 2026 breakdown of how the four big UK trade platforms actually charge, what the leads are really worth, and the one weakness that all four of them share — no matter which logo is on the invoice.
None of these platforms is a scam. They all generate genuine enquiries, and plenty of tradespeople win solid jobs through them. But the way they make money shapes the way they treat your leads, and that's the bit the adverts skip over. Let's go through each one in plain English.
How each platform charges (and why it matters)
There are really only four ways a trade platform can take your money, and most of them use more than one:
- Membership / subscription — a fixed monthly or annual fee just to be listed.
- Credits — you buy a wallet of credits and spend them to contact customers; the cost per credit varies and bigger jobs cost more.
- Shortlist / contact fees — you pay a set fee each time you get put in front of a customer or respond to a job.
- Per-lead — a price per enquiry, sometimes flat, sometimes priced by job size.
The model decides where the risk sits. With a subscription you pay whether or not the phone rings. With credits and shortlist fees you pay to compete, not to win — so a single job can cost three or four trades money while only one of them gets paid. Keep that in mind as we go through the four.
Checkatrade: subscription plus per-lead, with a cap
Checkatrade is the most established name and leans on trust — vetting, reviews and the "approved" badge that homeowners recognise. In 2026 the model is typically an annual membership (often paid monthly) plus a per-lead charge once you're over an included allowance. Membership commonly runs into the hundreds of pounds per year depending on your trade and area, and you're tied into a contract.
What you're really buying is the brand and the badge. Lead volume can be steady in busy categories, and the reviews are a genuine asset — but they live on Checkatrade's profile, not yours, so you're building their domain authority, not your own. Cancel, and the reviews don't come with you.
Best for
Established firms in high-demand trades who value the consumer trust signal and can keep the membership busy enough to justify the fixed cost.
MyBuilder and Rated People: pay to be shortlisted, then compete
These two work in a similar way, which is why the "mybuilder vs checkatrade" question comes up so often. On MyBuilder you typically pay a shortlist or contact fee to respond to a posted job — the customer chooses a handful of trades, and you pay for the privilege of being one of them. Rated People runs a comparable credit/lead-fee model where you buy access to leads in your category and area.
The upside is there's no big subscription to commit to up front, and the jobs are real homeowner postings. The downside is baked into the design: you're paying to enter a contest you might lose. Three or four trades pay to quote the same kitchen; one wins it. The customer, meanwhile, is explicitly there to compare prices — which pushes every quote toward the bottom.
Key takeaways
- Checkatrade = fixed annual cost plus per-lead; you rent the brand and the reviews stay with them.
- MyBuilder / Rated People = pay to be shortlisted or to buy a lead, then compete on price against several trades.
- Bark = credit wallet; leads are often unvetted, low-intent and sold to multiple pros.
- All four sell the same lead to several trades — that's the model, not a bug.
Bark: credit burn, shared and largely unvetted leads
Bark isn't trades-specific — it's a marketplace for everything from gardeners to wedding photographers — and it shows in the lead quality. You buy credits, and you spend them to "respond" to a lead. The catch most tradespeople run into is that you pay the credits whether or not the customer ever replies, and the same lead is offered to several other pros at the same time.
The recurring complaint, and the honest answer to "are Bark leads worth it", is that a meaningful share of enquiries are tyre-kickers, wrong-area, or people who posted once and vanished — yet your credits are gone the moment you make contact. It can work if you reply within seconds, every time, and treat it as a numbers game. For most trades that's a hard, expensive way to live.
Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs Bark vs Rated People: the 2026 table
Figures below are typical ranges, not fixed prices — every platform varies the cost by trade, location and job size, so treat these as directional rather than gospel.
| Platform | How you pay | Lead exclusivity | Vetting / intent | Reviews belong to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Checkatrade | Annual membership + per-lead over allowance | Shared | Higher trust, mixed intent | Checkatrade |
| MyBuilder | Shortlist / contact fee per job | Shared (you compete) | Real postings, price-led | MyBuilder |
| Rated People | Credits / lead fee | Shared (you compete) | Real postings, price-led | Rated People |
| Bark | Credits per response | Shared (often 5+) | Often unvetted, low intent | Bark |
The gap every platform shares: leads sold to 3–5 trades
Look down the "lead exclusivity" column and you'll spot the real story. Whichever platform you pick, the same enquiry is sold to several of you. That's not a flaw — it's the business model. Selling one lead five times is simply more profitable than selling it once, so there's no incentive for any of them to change it.
For you, the tradesperson, three things follow from that:
- You compete on price. When the customer has four quotes by lunchtime, the conversation is about who's cheapest, not who's best.
- You pay to lose. On credit and shortlist models you spend money on jobs that go to someone else.
- You rent your reputation. The reviews, the ranking and the customer relationship sit on the platform's website. Stop paying and it all stays behind.
This is why so many trades describe lead platforms as a treadmill: the work appears while the spend is high, then dries up the moment you ease off. You're not building an asset — you're renting attention by the month.
A fifth option: exclusive, screened leads on your own brand
There's a different way to buy work that doesn't sit on this comparison table, because it fixes the shared part. Instead of bidding for a slice of a lead that four other trades also bought, you get the enquiry on its own — generated for a brand that belongs to you, and screened by a human before it reaches your phone.
That's the model My2ndBrand runs. We build a tradesperson a complete second brand — a proper name, logo and full website on an established domain — then drive Google Ads and SEO to it and staff a 24/7 call centre that qualifies every enquiry. You only pay a fixed fee per pre-qualified, exclusive job from your area. No membership, no credit wallet, no shared leads, no bidding war. You can see exactly how it works step by step, and there are tailored breakdowns by trade — for example leads for builders — so you can see what an exclusive enquiry actually looks like in your line.
The practical difference is ownership. The reviews, the ranking and the repeat customers attach to a brand you control, so the value compounds instead of evaporating the day you stop paying. A lead that's only ever sold to you, already filtered for intent and location, is worth a great deal more than four trades fighting over the cheapest quote.
None of this means you have to abandon the platforms tomorrow — plenty of trades run both for a while. But if you've spent a year topping up credits and quoting against three rivals on every job, it's worth seeing what exclusive, screened work on your own brand feels like instead. Have a look at how the pay-per-lead model works, and decide for yourself whether renting attention or owning a brand is the better deal for the next ten years of your business.
