What is the best alternative to Bark for tradesmen?

Taskerama charges nothing to join, nothing to quote and nothing in a quiet month, takes 0% commission on customers you bring yourself, and shows every fee up front. On marketplace work the service fee falls from 20% to 12.5% plus VAT as you earn more, and you pay it only when you are paid. Pay-per-lead and subscriptions only beat commission-on-win at a high win rate or steady high volume, so work out your cost per won job against your own numbers.

Are there free alternatives to Bark for tradespeople?

Free to quote, yes. Taskerama charges nothing to join or to make an offer and never sells leads; you pay a service fee only when a job is completed and paid. Your own website, Google Business Profile and customer reviews cost time rather than money, and on Taskerama your own customers cost 0% commission and still earn reviews on your profile.

How much does Bark cost per lead in 2026?

Reported at about £7 to £40 plus VAT per lead, bought as credits at roughly £1.20 to £1.80 plus VAT each depending on pack size, with leads priced at 5 to 20-plus credits. You pay whether or not the customer replies. Credits bought from 1 November 2025 expire after three months. Bark does not publish a price list, so confirm current pricing directly. On Taskerama, quoting is free and nothing is charged until you are paid.

Is a subscription like Checkatrade better value than paying per lead?

Only above a volume threshold. Divide the monthly cost by the jobs you actually win from it: an entry membership at about £36 a month including VAT costs £36 per won job at one job a month and £12 at three. Most UK trade subscriptions ran on twelve-month terms in 2026, so a quiet quarter is not something you can exit. Commission on win, as on Taskerama, costs nothing in a month when you win nothing.

Bark alternatives for UK tradespeople (2026): the three models, with the maths

This page is written for the person paying, not the person hiring. If you are a tradesperson deciding where to spend your marketing money, there are only three models in the UK market, and the choice between them is arithmetic.

If you specifically want the Bark break-even numbers, they are in Is Bark worth it for tradespeople. This page is about what else there is.

What Bark charges, as reported September 2026

Bark sells leads through a credit system. You buy credits, spend them to unlock a customer's contact details, and compete with the other professionals who bought the same lead. You pay whether or not you win.

Reported 2026 figures from third-party price trackers: credits list at about £1.80 plus VAT, cheaper in packs at roughly £1.20 to £1.50 plus VAT, and a lead costs 5 to 20-plus credits, about £7 to £40 plus VAT per lead. There is an "Elite Pro" tier reported at roughly £20 to £30 a month, which Bark does not publish. There is no contract, and since 1 November 2025 credits expire after three months rather than twelve. Credits are non-refundable.

The three models

	Pay per lead	Commission on win	Subscription
You pay when you lose	Full lead price	Nothing	Fixed monthly
You pay when you win	Full lead price	A percentage of the job	Fixed monthly
Cost is predictable	No	No, but it scales with income	Yes
Risk sits with	You	The platform	You
UK examples	Bark, MyBuilder, Rated People (partly)	Taskerama, Airtasker, TaskRabbit	Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Rated People (partly)

The only number that matters

Whatever the model, work out cost per won job, then compare it to your margin on that job. Not your price, your margin.

Pay per lead: lead price ÷ win rate.

Cost per lead	1 in 5	1 in 10	1 in 20
£8	£40	£80	£160
£15	£75	£150	£300
£30	£150	£300	£600

Subscription: monthly cost ÷ jobs won per month.

Monthly cost	1 job	3 jobs	8 jobs
£36	£36	£12	£4.50
£72	£72	£24	£9
£150	£150	£50	£18.75

Commission on win: the percentage, applied to the job. It is the only one of the three where the cost per won job is knowable in advance and cannot exceed the job value.

Job value	5%	10%	15%
£80	£4	£8	£12
£200	£10	£20	£30
£600	£30	£60	£90

Read those three tables together and the pattern is clear. Pay-per-lead is cheapest per won job only when your win rate is high and your job values are large. Subscription is cheapest only when your volume is steady and high enough to amortise it. Commission is the model whose cost never runs ahead of your income, which is why it suits anyone whose volume is uncertain. In the trades, that is most people most of the year.

The UK alternatives, by model

Commission on win

Taskerama. Free to join, free to quote, and we never sell leads or credits. You pay a service fee only when you are paid: 20% plus VAT, falling to 12.5% plus VAT as your 30-day earnings rise, deducted at payout so you never pay up front. The full ladder is published and your tier is on your dashboard, recalculated daily. Customers you bring yourself cost 0% commission, with a processing and protection charge of 2.9% plus 20p. Tips go to you in full. Cancelling before the task starts costs you nothing. The customer's money is held until they confirm the job is done, so you know it is there. Customers pay a booking fee too, and it is shown on every offer before they accept. Every rate is on our fees page.
Airtasker. You bid a fixed price and pay a service fee only if you are assigned: 12.5% to 20% plus VAT as published September 2026, set by your earnings over the previous 30 days and your completion rate over your last 20 assigned tasks. The fee also applies to tips and bonuses. The customer pays a connection fee, charged at assignment.
TaskRabbit. Takes no commission from taskers, charging a one-off registration fee instead, US$25 on the US page, with no UK figure published, and putting the fees on the customer side. You compete on a published hourly rate rather than a bid.

Pay per lead or per introduction

MyBuilder. No monthly fee. You are charged when a homeowner shortlists you, reported from about £7, typically £5 to £35, more on large jobs. Non-refundable, no contract. The recurring complaint from trades is being charged on shortlist regardless of the outcome, and several trades paying for the same job.
Rated People. A hybrid: roughly £35 plus VAT a month billed annually, plus roughly £15 plus VAT per lead, in a reported £15 to £40 range, with an "unlimited" tier reported around £72 a month. Twelve-month term, auto-renewing. Prices roughly doubled during 2025.

Subscription

Checkatrade. Published from £30 a month plus VAT for the entry membership, which does not include a lead stream, and from £59 a month for the tier that does. Actual price depends on trade and postcode; members report anything from £80 to £500 a month. Twelve-month contract. Members must hold their own public liability cover.
TrustATrader. Reported at £240 to £750 a year, twelve months, paid in advance.

Your own channel

The only route where the leads do not stop when you stop paying: a website, a Google Business Profile, and asking every finished customer for a review. It is slow to build, and most trades build it alongside a platform rather than instead of one.

Taskerama is built to work with it. Send your own customer a payment link and you pay 0% commission. Their money is held until they confirm the job is done, and the job earns a review on your public profile, so the regulars you already have help win the customers you have not met yet.

Why commission on win, and why Taskerama

The problem with pay-per-lead is not that it is a scam. It is that you pay per lead indefinitely, the same lead is sold to several professionals, and the cost per won job is only knowable after the fact. In our sample of UK one-star Bark reviews mentioning leads, the large majority were professionals describing leads that never answered. The same pattern appears on every pay-per-lead platform in the sample, including MyBuilder, so it is a property of the model rather than of one company.

Subscriptions fix the unpredictability and add a floor. Checkatrade, Rated People and TrustATrader all reported twelve-month terms in 2026, so a quiet quarter costs you money for nothing.

On Taskerama:

A lost quote costs nothing. No credits, no leads, no shortlist fee.
A quiet month costs nothing. No subscription and no contract.
Your own customers cost 0% commission.
The fee falls as you earn more, from 20% to 12.5% plus VAT.
You see the job before you quote, and can ask questions publicly or message the customer privately.
Payment is held before you start and released when the customer confirms the job is done.
Disputes keep the money on hold while both sides add evidence.

Before you move any money

Work out your margin per job, not your price. Everything above is measured against it.
Ask for the win rate in your category and postcode, in writing, before buying anything.
Buy the smallest commitment available. Smallest credit pack, monthly if monthly exists, no annual term.
Log every lead: date, cost, answered or not, quoted, won, value. Twenty rows is enough to decide.
Do the division at twenty leads and act on it. Sunk cost is what keeps people on the wrong platform.
Add a commission-on-win profile alongside whatever you use now. On Taskerama it costs nothing until you are paid, so you can compare on your own numbers.

Join Taskerama as a tasker. It is free to join and free to quote, and you pay nothing until you are paid.

Bark, MyBuilder, Checkatrade, Rated People and TrustATrader do not publish full price lists. Figures here are from 2026 third-party price trackers with stated verification dates, gathered 5 September 2026, and vary by trade and postcode. Airtasker figures are from its published UK pages, same date. TaskRabbit does not publish its percentages. Taskerama figures are from our fees page. Prices in this category change frequently, so get a written quote for your trade and area before you commit.