Airtasker vs TaskRabbit UK (2026): fixed price or hourly?

Airtasker and TaskRabbit get compared constantly, and neither company will write the comparison, so here is one from a third party that competes with both.

They are not really the same product. Airtasker is an open marketplace: you post a job with a budget, people bid a fixed price for the whole job, and you pick one. TaskRabbit is a booking tool: you pick a person and an hourly rate, and you book their time.

That single difference decides most of the rest, who carries the risk when a job runs long, whether you can negotiate, which side pays the platform, and who each one actually suits.

The short version

	Airtasker	TaskRabbit
How you buy	Post a task with a budget, receive fixed-price offers, assign one	Browse taskers by hourly rate and availability, book directly
Price basis	Fixed price for the whole job	Hourly, with a one-hour minimum
Who pays the platform	Both sides	The customer, plus a one-off registration fee from the tasker
Negotiation	Yes, in public comments before you assign	No, you take the listed rate
Money held until the job is done	Yes, held in escrow and released when you confirm completion	No, your card is charged after the task
Breadth	Very broad, including removals, admin and online work	Narrower, focused on standard household jobs
Assembly	General category	Dedicated IKEA channel with fixed task-based pricing

What Airtasker charges, as published September 2026

Airtasker takes money from both sides.

The tasker pays a service fee, deducted from the job price, tiered by their earnings on the platform over the previous rolling 30 days and their completion rate over their last 20 assigned tasks. UK rates, excluding VAT, which is added on top:

Tier	30-day UK earnings	Service fee (ex VAT)
Bronze	Under £450	20%
Silver	£450+	18.5%
Gold	£1,400+	14.9%
Platinum	£2,800+	12.5%

The poster pays a connection fee at the moment they assign, banded by task price and including VAT: £4.95 under £30, rising in steps to £39.95 at £180 and above. A £49.90 yearly membership waives it. Repeat bookings of the same tasker are charged at a 1.9% service fee.

Our full breakdown, with the complete band table and worked examples, is in Airtasker fees explained.

What TaskRabbit charges, as published September 2026

TaskRabbit inverts it. Almost everything is charged to the customer.

• Taskers pay a one-off, non-refundable registration fee, published as US$25 on the US help page. A UK figure is not published. TaskRabbit's help pages state that all other fees are charged to clients, so there is no commission taken from the tasker's hourly rate.
• Customers pay a Service Fee, described by TaskRabbit as a percentage of the hourly rate applied to each hour worked. TaskRabbit does not publish the percentage; 2026 third-party reviews report around 15%.
• Customers also pay a Trust and Support Fee, again a percentage of the hourly rate per hour. TaskRabbit's own blog describes it as ranging from 5% to 15%; reviews report roughly 7.5% as typical.
• Reported all-in customer mark-up is therefore around 20% to 25% on top of the tasker's rate, an £80 job billed at about £97 in one published example.

The honest caveat: TaskRabbit deliberately does not publish these percentages, so treat every figure above as indicative and read the total on your own checkout screen before you confirm.

A worked £120 job

Take a job where the work itself is worth £120, say three hours at £40 an hour, or a fixed £120 offer.

	Airtasker (Bronze tasker)	Airtasker (Platinum tasker)	TaskRabbit (typical reported mark-up)
Customer pays	£144.95	£144.95	About £144, £150
Worker receives	£91.20	£102.00	£120
Platform take	£53.75 including VAT	£42.95 including VAT	About £24, £30

The finding most people find surprising: on a job of this size the customer pays roughly the same on both platforms. What differs is where the money goes. On Airtasker a large part of it comes out of the worker's side of the job; on TaskRabbit the worker keeps their full rate and the customer carries the whole mark-up.

That is the single most useful thing to know if you are choosing which one to work on.

Which is better for the customer

Airtasker suits you if the job is unusual, the scope is clear, and you want competing prices. You can post almost anything, offers arrive quickly, you can compare profiles, ratings and completion rates side by side, and you can negotiate. A fixed price means an overrun is the tasker's problem, not yours, and your money sits in escrow until you say the job is done.

TaskRabbit suits you if the job is standard and you would rather not run an auction. You pick a person and a time and it is booked. The IKEA relationship means assembly is a well-worn path with fixed task-based pricing. The trade-off is the meter: if the job takes four hours instead of two, you pay for four, and there is a one-hour minimum on small jobs.

Neither model is better in the abstract. Fixed price transfers overrun risk to the worker, which is why offers on vague tasks get padded. Hourly transfers it to you, which is why hourly works better when nobody can honestly estimate the job.

Which is better for the worker

TaskRabbit takes no commission from you. You set your hourly rate, the customer pays the mark-up, and you keep the rate. Against that: you compete on a published rate rather than on a bid, and reviews report deactivations without a clear explanation.

Airtasker costs you 12.5% to 20% plus VAT, and which of those you pay depends on how much you earned in the last 30 days, a fortnight off drops you down a tier, which means the taskers who most need the money pay the highest rate. Against that: it has far more UK volume, you can bid your own price, and pricing your own jobs is a real advantage if you are quick and accurate at scoping.

Verification and protection

	Airtasker	TaskRabbit
ID	Government photo ID plus a live biometric check; required before payouts	ID and background check at onboarding
Criminal record check	Optional UK badge: Basic DBS plus Right to Work, £46.12 in England and Wales, £43.72 in Scotland, paid by the tasker. Existing certificates are not accepted	Included in the onboarding check
Money held	Yes, in escrow, released when the poster confirms	No, card charged after the task
Cover	Third-party liability policy underwritten by Chubb, excess payable by the tasker and not published, excludes faulty workmanship, vehicles and the tasker's own injury, 30-day claim window, off-platform work not covered	Task Protection Program, published up to US$10,000; a UK figure is not published
Disputes	Three-stage internal process, decision within 14 business days, Airtasker decides	Support-led

Where both are better than us

We compete with both, so this section matters more than the rest.

Airtasker has the UK supply we do not. It booked 81,000 UK tasks in the year to June 2026, up 35.6%, across a category list running into the hundreds. If you need someone in a town outside a major city tomorrow, it is more likely to have them. Its app is mature and well rated, most of its taskers carry years of reviews, and it has an insurance scheme in place today.

TaskRabbit does something we do not do at all: it charges the worker no commission. If you are a tasker whose whole objection is commission, that is a real answer and you should take it seriously. Its hourly model is also simply better for open-ended jobs, and the IKEA assembly channel is smoother than any general marketplace listing.

We are London-first and much smaller than either. If neither of those is a problem for your job, our fees are the next thing to look at, and we would rather you compared them properly than took our word for it.

Airtasker figures verified from its published UK help centre and pricing pages on 5 September 2026. TaskRabbit does not publish its percentages; figures are from its own help pages and 2026 third-party reviews, gathered on the same date. Fees change frequently, Airtasker has changed its poster-side fee at least four times since 2019, so check both companies' current pages before relying on any number here.