MyBuilder vs Checkatrade (2026): pay per shortlist or pay per month?

MyBuilder and Checkatrade both connect UK homeowners to tradespeople, both are free to the homeowner, and neither holds your money. The difference is entirely in how the tradesperson pays, and that shapes who you end up talking to.

We run a task marketplace, so we compete with both at the small end and not at all at the large end. This is written to be useful rather than flattering to us.

The one-line difference

MyBuilder charges per introduction. Checkatrade charges per month.

On MyBuilder a trade pays only when a homeowner shortlists them, so a quiet month costs nothing. On Checkatrade a trade pays a membership whether the phone rings or not, and appears in a browsable, vetted directory.

Side by side, as published or reported September 2026

	MyBuilder	Checkatrade
Model	Pay per shortlist	Monthly membership
Monthly cost to the trade	£0	Published from £30 + VAT for the entry tier; from £59 for the tier including leads; members report £80, £500 depending on trade and postcode
Per-lead cost to the trade	From about £7, typically £5, £35, more on large jobs	None on the entry tier, which carries no lead stream
Contract	None	12 months
Cost to the homeowner	Free	Free
How you find a trade	Post a job, trades express interest, you shortlist	Browse the directory and call
Vetting	Trade checks and reviews	Vetting, ID and an insurance check; members must hold their own public liability cover
Money held until the job is done	No	No
Trustpilot, September 2026	4.3 from 56,352 reviews	4.6 from 86,167 reviews

What each actually costs a tradesperson

This is the decision, and it is arithmetic.

MyBuilder is variable. If shortlists cost you an average of £18, a figure one group of trades cited after several of them were charged for the same job, then six shortlists a month is £108, and two is £36. You pay in the months you are busy, which is the months you can afford it. You pay whether or not the shortlist becomes work, which is the complaint: a well-documented pattern in trade reviews is several trades each being charged for the same job, so the platform can collect several times over on one homeowner.

Checkatrade is fixed. The entry membership is published from £30 a month plus VAT, roughly £36 including VAT, and does not include a lead stream, you are paying to be findable, not to be sent work. The tier that includes leads is published from £59 a month plus VAT. Real prices depend on trade and postcode, and members report a wide spread. The twelve-month term is the thing to weigh: a quiet quarter is not something you can exit.

The break-even

Assume an average MyBuilder shortlist fee of £18 including VAT, and Checkatrade entry membership at about £36 including VAT.

Introductions per month	MyBuilder cost	Checkatrade entry membership
1	£18	£36
2	£36	£36
4	£72	£36
8	£144	£36

On these assumptions the crossover is around two introductions a month. Below that, pay-per-shortlist is cheaper. Above it, the membership is, but only if the membership actually generates those introductions, and the entry tier is explicitly not a lead stream, so on that tier the comparison is really "being findable" against "being introduced". Run the same table with your own real numbers before you sign anything, because both sides of it move with trade and postcode.

Rated People, the third option

Worth including because it is the hybrid of the two, and the search for one of these usually turns it up. As reported in 2026: roughly £35 plus VAT a month billed annually, plus roughly £15 plus VAT per lead in a £15 to £40 range, with an "unlimited" tier reported around £72 a month. Twelve-month term, auto-renewing. Prices roughly doubled during 2025.

A hybrid means you carry both risks: the monthly floor in quiet months and the per-lead cost in busy ones. It can work if the lead quality is good in your postcode. Buy the shortest commitment available and measure it.

What each gives a homeowner

Both are free to you and neither holds your money, so on the two things that most protect a customer, a fixed price agreed in advance and funds held until the job is done, they are the same: you get neither, and you arrange payment directly with the trade.

MyBuilder works better when you know what you want done and want interested trades to come to you. You describe the job, trades express interest, you shortlist a few, they visit and quote.

Checkatrade works better when you want to look someone up. The vetting is more thorough on paper, ID and an insurance check, and members must carry their own public liability cover, and the directory format lets you form a shortlist yourself rather than waiting.

One honest caveat on both: reviews on a paid directory are reviews of paying members. The most common homeowner complaint about Checkatrade in our sample was that ratings felt undifferentiated, and trades on both platforms describe pressure around negative reviews. Read the three-star reviews and ask for two recent references you can actually ring.

Which suits which job size

• Under about £200, a door, a couple of hours of handyman work. Neither, really. Most members of either will not turn out, and the introduction economics do not work for them. A task marketplace is the better shape for jobs this size.
• £200 to £2,000, a bathroom refit, a fence, rewiring a room. Either. Post on MyBuilder and look up two or three on Checkatrade, and get all of them to attend.
• Over £2,000, an extension, a roof, a full rewire. Checkatrade or MyBuilder, three written quotes in person, references, and check the relevant registration yourself. At this value the directory is a starting point, not a guarantee. Our guide to checking a tradesperson covers what to verify.

What the complaints say about each

Both platforms have strong overall scores and a consistent seam of trade complaints underneath them. In our September 2026 sample of visible one-star reviews:

• MyBuilder: most were tradespeople on lead fees, charged when shortlisted regardless of outcome, several trades charged for the same job, stale listings, and no refunds.
• Checkatrade: most were on the contract and lead quality, the twelve-month lock-in, auto-renewal, annual price rises, and thin leads relative to the monthly cost.

These are the predictable failure modes of each model rather than evidence that either company behaves badly. A per-introduction model will always produce "I paid and got nothing" complaints; a subscription will always produce "I paid all year for this" complaints. Choose the failure mode you can live with.

Where both beat a task marketplace like ours

Straightforwardly: anything structural. Directories are built for jobs where the right answer is a vetted business with a VAT number, its own liability cover, and a paper trail, and where a homeowner needs three people to attend and quote properly rather than bid off a photograph.

They also cover the whole country, which marketplaces do not. And for a trade doing £3,000 jobs, a fixed monthly cost or a £20 shortlist fee is a smaller share of the job than any commission would be, the arithmetic genuinely favours them at that end. That is why we do not pretend to compete for extension work.

Where a marketplace earns its place is at the other end: small, fast, fixed-price jobs where the money should be held until the work is done. Our structure and current rates are on our fees page.

MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People do not publish full price lists. Figures here are from 2026 third-party price trackers with stated verification dates and from published entry pricing, gathered 5 September 2026, and vary by trade and postcode. Trustpilot scores and review counts were read on 5 September 2026. Prices in this category change frequently, get a written quote for your trade and area before committing to anything, particularly anything with a twelve-month term.