MyBuilder vs Checkatrade for Electricians

For most UK electricians, MyBuilder is the better platform to start on and Checkatrade is the better platform to grow into. MyBuilder only charges you when a homeowner actively shortlists you for a job, which keeps your risk close to zero in a quiet month. Checkatrade charges a membership fee whether the phone rings or it doesn't, which only makes sense once your diary and your review profile are strong enough to make the directory work for you.

That is the short version. The longer version depends on where your business is, what your local competition looks like on each platform, and how honest you are willing to be about a third question neither company wants you to ask: why rent a spot on someone else’s page for "electrician near me" when Google will give you your own for free?

Two fee models, two different bets

The core difference between the platforms is who carries the risk of a quiet month. With MyBuilder it's mostly them, with Checkatrade it's mostly you. Everything else about the comparison flows from that.

MyBuilder: pay when you are shortlisted

On MyBuilder, homeowners post jobs and describe what they need. You browse the jobs in your area, express interest in the ones worth your time, and pay a shortlist fee only if the homeowner selects you as one of the tradespeople they want to speak to. The fee scales with the job: small jobs cost a few pounds to be shortlisted for, larger ones meaningfully more. Creating a profile costs nothing, and a month where you win no shortlists is a month you spend almost nothing.

The catch sits inside the mechanic. You are still one of several shortlisted trades quoting for the same homeowner, so a shortlist fee buys a conversation rather than a job, the same dynamic we break down in shared vs exclusive leads. Your real cost per booked job is the shortlist fee multiplied by however many shortlists it takes you to win one, and for a new profile with thin feedback that multiple can be painful.

Checkatrade: pay to be a member, work the directory

Checkatrade flips the model. You pass its vetting checks (qualifications, insurance, references) and pay a recurring membership fee, typically somewhere from tens of pounds to low hundreds per month depending on package and area. In return you get a profile in its directory, and homeowners come to you: they search the directory or land on it from Google, compare profiles and review scores, and make contact directly. There is no per-shortlist charge in the standard model, so a busy month and a dead month cost the same.

That fixed fee is a bet on volume. An electrician whose profile ranks well in their area, with a deep bank of verified reviews, can see the membership pay for itself many times over. An electrician on page three of the directory in a saturated postcode pays the same fee for a fraction of the enquiries. We cover the platform in full (vetting, profile optimisation, what makes a listing rank) in our Checkatrade guide.

Lead quality: what actually turns up

Checkatrade enquiries tend to arrive warmer than MyBuilder shortlists, because the homeowner has already read your profile and chosen to contact you specifically. On MyBuilder the homeowner wrote a job description and is now comparing the strangers who put their hands up. You start the conversation as one option among several, and price pressure is baked in from the first message.

Job mix differs too. MyBuilder skews towards small, well-defined domestic work (extra sockets, light fittings, a consumer unit swap) because that's what homeowners find easy to describe in a job post. Bigger and vaguer work, a full rewire or an extension's electrics, more often comes through a directory search or a recommendation, where the homeowner wants to size up the firm before describing the job. Neither pattern is absolute, but if your business runs on larger tickets, the MyBuilder job board will feel thin.

On either platform, the maths that decides whether the leads are any good is the same: cost per booked job, then revenue and margin per booked job. A £15 shortlist fee that converts one time in five is a £75 acquisition cost: fine on a £2,000 rewire deposit, brutal on a £90 call-out. Run the numbers properly with our electrician lead cost guide before you judge either platform on gut feel.

Reviews: both platforms run on a flywheel you feed

On both platforms your review profile does most of the selling, and the flywheel spins the same way: reviews win jobs, jobs produce reviews, and the gap between a strong profile and a weak one widens every month. On MyBuilder, feedback is tied to jobs won through the platform, so a new electrician has to win early jobs on price to build the feedback that later wins jobs on trust. On Checkatrade, the review count and score sit front and centre on your listing, and homeowners filter by them ruthlessly.

That makes the cold start real on both, and worst on Checkatrade, where you pay a full membership fee during the months your review-light profile gets skipped. If you join, treat review collection as part of the job itself: ask on the doorstep, every time, the same discipline that builds Google reviews.

Then look at who owns the flywheel. Every review a customer leaves on MyBuilder or Checkatrade strengthens a profile that lives on their domain, ranks for their benefit, and vanishes from your marketing the day you stop paying. Ten years of glowing feedback on a platform is an asset you rent. The same ten years of feedback on your own Google Business Profile is an asset you keep. We'll come back to that.

Which platform suits which stage

Match the platform to your stage: MyBuilder fits the first year or two, Checkatrade fits an established firm with capacity to fill, and running both briefly is a legitimate way to find out which one your local market rewards.

• Newly qualified or newly solo: MyBuilder. Your problem is an empty diary and no review history anywhere. Pay-per-shortlist means you only spend when there's genuine interest, and small job-board wins build feedback fast.
• Steady but patchy: probably still MyBuilder, plus your own presence. If work comes in waves, a fixed membership fee amplifies the bad months. Variable cost matches variable demand.
• Established firm with staff to keep busy: Checkatrade earns a look. You can afford the fee through quiet spells, your credentials sail through vetting, and you have the volume of happy customers to build a directory profile that actually ranks.
• Running both at once: fine as an experiment, expensive as a habit. Three months on both tells you which platform your area rewards. Keep the winner, cut the other, and put the savings into channels you own.

The third option both platforms would rather you ignored

The strongest position for a UK electrician is owning the Google results that MyBuilder and Checkatrade currently occupy on your behalf. Search "electrician in" almost any English town and you will find the platforms ranking prominently, funded by member fees and decorated with member reviews. They are proof that homeowners in your area search Google first. The platforms intercept that search and sell it back to the trades.

You can compete for the same search directly, and the entry ticket is free. A complete, active Google Business Profile puts you in the map pack (the three pinned local businesses that take most of the clicks for "electrician near me") with your own phone number and your own reviews, and every enquiry lands free. A proper website with real service pages underneath it competes in the organic results; our electrician SEO guide covers that build end to end.

The trade-off is time. A platform profile can produce an enquiry this week; a Google presence typically takes two to three months of consistent work before it produces calls. Which is why the sensible sequence is both: use MyBuilder or Checkatrade for cash flow now, build the owned presence in parallel, and let the platform spend taper as your own rankings take over. Electricians across England run this exact transition, and the ones who complete it stop having this debate entirely. The leads arrive on their own terms, with the shortlist fee and the membership renewal gone for good.

The decision, in one table

If you want the whole comparison compressed to a single glance, find the row that describes you and read across.

Whichever row you land in, hold both platforms to the same standard you'd hold any marketing spend: tracked enquiries, tracked bookings, a known cost per job. Platforms thrive on trades who never do that arithmetic. Do it quarterly and the right answer for your business tends to announce itself.