Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark or Rated People: what a won job really costs

Every lead platform charges differently, so the monthly price on its own tells you nothing. Checkatrade charges a membership, MyBuilder and Bark charge per lead, and Rated People does both. The one number that lets you compare them is the cost per won job: everything you spent on the platform in a month, divided by the jobs you actually won from it.

What to trust here. The prices below are not from the platforms' own pages. Checkatrade's page refused our request on 1 October 2026, so everything comes from third-party guides that may themselves be selling something, and they may be out of date. The 20 leads and the one-in-four win rate are made up to show the method. Use your own numbers.

The reported prices

• Checkatrade: reported as Free (£0), Approved (£30 a month) and Growth (from £59 a month), with real bills of £80 to £500 a month depending on trade and postcode, on 12-month contracts.
• MyBuilder: no monthly fee; you pay when you shortlist, "from £7", typically £5 to £35.
• Rated People: about £30 to £60 a month plus £15 to £40 per lead.
• Bark: credits at £1.80 each; a typical lead costs £9 to £36 or more; credits expire after three months; you pay whether or not the customer replies.

The sums

We assumed a firm buys 20 leads a month and wins one in four, so five jobs. At the middle of each reported range:

Checkatrade is a different shape because you do not pay per lead. At the three reported bill levels, the cost per job depends entirely on how many jobs it brings:

So Checkatrade looks the cheapest or the dearest of the four, depending on a number only you know.

The method, so you can rerun it

1. Write down what you paid each platform last month, including credits that expired unused.
2. Count the jobs you won from each, not the enquiries. A job won means you were paid.
3. Divide the first by the second.
4. Compare it with what a job is worth to you. If a bathroom refit earns £800 profit, an £80 acquisition cost is fine. If it is a £150 repair, it is not.

Step 2 is where most firms fall down. Nobody records which platform a job came from. The enquiry arrives, the customer says "I found you online", and the source is lost. Without that you cannot do the sum. Keeping a one-line log of where each job came from is worth more than the sums above.

The speed point

Platforms that charge per lead make speed matter more: a lead you answer in the evening is a lead the customer has probably already given to someone else. We have not measured this ourselves, so we will not quote a figure, but it is the reason the first thing an AI Front Desk set up by Overlyft does is reply within the hour. Your quote follow-up works the same way after the reply.

Where it fits with the rest of your costs

Platform costs are one of several running costs in a trades firm. For the software side, see our sums on Tradify against ServiceM8 for a nine-person firm.

An AI Front Desk set up by Overlyft keeps the log in step 2 for you. Every Friday it lists the week's leads by source, with how many became quotes and jobs, so you can see which paid platform is worth its fee. That is a report we set up once, not something you maintain.