--- title: "Is Checkatrade worth it? The question every trade should be asking differently | Frively | Websites for Local Businesses" description: "Is Checkatrade worth it? A local SEO specialist explains what trades give up by renting visibility, and why owning your Google rankings pays better." canonical: "https://www.frively.com/blog/is-checkatrade-worth-it" last_updated: "2026-07-16T12:48:54.840Z" --- # Is Checkatrade worth it? The question every trade should be asking differently ![](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fcolin-64x60.jpg%3Fprefix%3Dtenants%252F691b30e96e6ad8298234a312%26v%3D1783939683174&w=128&q=75&dpl=dpl_GpfLCefDyU814f74kzfmwGPtuZrb) Colin Shove PublishedTuesday, 14 July 2026 _Colin Shove works daily with local service businesses on how customers find, choose and book them online._ Is Checkatrade worth it? For many trades, honestly, yes. The leads are real, the work is real, and the platform does what it promises. But it is the wrong question. The better question is this: why does Checkatrade outrank you on Google for your own trade in your own town, and what is it costing you to keep renting visibility you could own? ## What really happened to trade lead generation There is an invoice that lands every month, and it rarely gets questioned. Membership fees. Lead fees. It works just well enough that nobody asks how it came to this. Here is how. Twenty years ago, directories like Checkatrade, MyBuilder and Rated People worked out something the trades themselves never got round to: how Google decides who gets seen. They built pages for every trade in every town, gathered reviews at scale, and climbed to the top of the results. They did not invent better plumbing or rewire a single house. They simply became better than tradespeople at being found. Then they sold that visibility back to the trades, one lead at a time. That is not a con. It is a business model, and a clever one. But it is worth being clear about what you are buying: a click, once. When the same person needs you again next year, you may well pay for them again. ## Three things you will never own on Checkatrade **Your ranking.** When Checkatrade appears at the top of Google for "plumber in Horsham", that is their domain ranking, not yours. Stop paying and you disappear from that page overnight. Ten years of membership builds you no position of your own. **Your reviews.** Years of hard earned reputation sit on a profile you cannot take with you. Reviews on your own website and your Google Business Profile belong to you wherever you go. Reviews on a directory belong, in every practical sense, to the directory. **Your cost per customer.** Lead fees move in one direction, and you are often quoting against several other trades who paid for the same lead. You have no control over what the next job costs you to win. ## The opportunity hiding in plain sight Now for the part almost nobody in the trades has noticed. Most industries face brutal competition on Google. Trades do not. The typical local trade website is a neglected brochure site: a homepage, a phone number, perhaps a gallery last updated years ago. Many trades have no website at all. That means the bar for ranking locally is lower for trades than for almost any other local business. We see this in the data every day. Sites built properly for search typically rank for around 300% more keywords than the standard local sites they replace. Three times the searches you appear in, and the enquiries follow. A plumber in a mid sized town, up against five tired brochure sites, can realistically build page one rankings in months. A salon or a restaurant fighting a crowded market cannot say the same. So test it yourself. Three questions: First, how many jobs did your own website bring in this month? Not Checkatrade. Your site. Do you actually know? Second, if someone searched for your best paying job type in your town today, would your website appear, or would Google send them to a directory? Try it in an incognito window, so you see what a potential customer sees rather than results shaped by your own history. Third, what happens when someone skips Google entirely and asks ChatGPT to recommend a tradesperson near them? ## People are already asking AI instead That third question matters more every month. Growing numbers of people now ask AI tools to recommend a local business, and Google itself answers many searches with an AI Overview before anyone sees a normal link. These tools build their answers from the open web: your website, your pages, your reviews. A trade whose entire online presence is a directory profile is a line in someone else's database, not a business an AI can confidently recommend. The gap here is stark. Across 600 local business sites we analysed, the average site is cited by AI tools once. The average site we build is cited 63 times. Same trades, same towns, same services. The difference is simply whether the web can read and trust what is there. And AI answers are less forgiving than a page of ten blue links. They tend to name one or two businesses. There is even less room at the top, and the window to claim it is open now. ## "But Checkatrade sends me work" This is the reply I hear more than any other, and it is exactly why the problem goes unnoticed. Checkatrade working is what stops trades building anything of their own. It delivers just enough that the harder question never gets asked. To be clear, this is not cancel your membership advice. If the numbers work, keep it. The mistake is letting a rented channel be your only channel. Think about the maths. Every Checkatrade lead costs you again, and the flow stops the day you stop paying. A page on your own website that ranks costs you once and then works every month, for free, and in the trades those rankings can arrive in months, not years. From that point on, every enquiry it brings is one you did not pay a platform for. One is rent. The other is an asset. We have watched this exact story play out before: [hair salons lost their retail sales to online sellers who mastered Google first](https://www.frively.com/blog/salons-lost-retail-google-clients), and the ones acting now are taking the ground back. If you want to see what that looks like for a trade, this is precisely the problem we built [our websites for tradespeople](https://www.frively.com/solution-tradespeople) to solve: one page for each job type you want to win, in the places you want to win it. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does Checkatrade cost? Checkatrade pricing varies by trade, area and membership level, with membership fees plus costs tied to leads. The published figures change, so check their current pricing directly. The more useful exercise is working out your true cost per won job across a year, then comparing that with what the same annual spend would build on your own website. ### Should I cancel my Checkatrade membership? Not necessarily. If your cost per won job stacks up, it can stay as one channel among several. The risk is dependence: your ranking, reviews and lead flow all sit on a platform you do not control. A sensible approach is building your own website presence alongside it, then letting the numbers decide over time. ### How long does it take for a trade website to rank on Google? It depends on your area and competition, but trades are unusually well placed. Local competition is often weak, with many rivals running neglected sites or none at all. With a properly structured site, one page per job type, trades in mid sized towns often see meaningful rankings within a few months rather than years. ### Do AI tools like ChatGPT recommend tradespeople? Yes, increasingly. People ask AI tools for local recommendations, and Google now answers many searches with an AI Overview. These tools draw on your website, reviews and wider visibility. A trade with only a directory profile is far less likely to be named than one with a strong site of its own. * * * Want to know exactly what Google and AI are telling potential customers about your business right now? [Request your free Online Pulse Report](https://www.frively.com/website-review) and find out where you stand, what is working, and what would bring in more enquiries. It takes minutes to request and costs nothing. 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