Website or Checkatrade profile — which does a tradesperson actually need?

The question comes up because both get sold as the way to be found, and because £30 to £100 a month only stretches to one of them. They aren't the same kind of thing. A profile is a page on Checkatrade's website; a website is a page on yours. The useful questions are what each does, what each costs, and what you're left with when you stop paying — which is where the two part company.

Everything from Checkatrade below is from its own pages and terms, checked on 5 October 2026. Terms change; read the current ones before you decide.

What a Checkatrade profile is

A page on checkatrade.com with your qualifications, reviews and examples of your work, a Call button and a Request a quote button, your trade and your town, and badges for the checks it has run. Customers can message you through it or press "show number" and ring you.

There are three tiers. The free profile collects reviews, but in the terms' words you are only visible "when you are searched for by name", and Checkatrade "will not provide you with leads". Approved, at £30 a month, is the same visibility — its product terms say your profile "will only appear on the Platform when a user searches for your business by name" — with a dedicated contact number and messaging added. Appearing in the search for your trade in your area, which is what people usually mean by being on Checkatrade, needs a lead plan: the pricing page says "prices from £59/mo", memberships run twelve months, and the figure is quoted per trade, postcode and lead volume. I've been through those numbers in how much Checkatrade costs.

Does a profile show up on Google? Yes. The profile pages are built to be indexed, each carries structured data with your rating, and Checkatrade's own marketing says a member "will rank just as a website would on Google search". Search your trade and your town and see what comes up: often it's Checkatrade's own listing page for that search, with you on it and everyone else who pays. Search your business name and your profile is usually there, stars and all.

Since May 2026 the Approved terms also say Checkatrade "may offer a website for your business" as part of membership, "on a limited or selective basis", with charges possible later and the right to take it down "immediately" when the membership ends. So a profile can now come with a site — one that is theirs in every sense that matters below.

What you keep when you stop paying

This is the part to read before you decide where your reviews live.

Checkatrade's master terms, updated October 2025, say a review belongs to the customer who wrote it. While you're a member you can use your reviews in your own material, "properly attributed", with "a link back to your listing". Then clause 51: "Your rights in relation to Reviews cease after termination of the Agreement and they must be deleted from all Your Business Materials." Checkatrade may keep your listing and reviews on its own platform after you leave, with a note that you're no longer a member, found only by name.

The renewals page puts it more plainly: cancel, and "your profile will be removed from public listings on your renewal date"; rejoin later, and "only a limited number of your previous reviews may be republished on your new profile". The Approved terms say ending that service drops you to the free profile, where you can "continue to display your Business Content and collect Reviews". Which of those applies to you is a question for Checkatrade, and worth asking in writing before you rely on the answer. The platform terms add that quotes and invoices made through it go with the membership too, so download them first.

The review widget that puts your Checkatrade score on your own website is a live embed for "vetted Checkatrade members" only. It stops showing when the membership does.

None of that is a complaint. It's how a directory works: the reviews are the asset, the asset lives on their site, and the price of membership is also the price of keeping it on show. It does mean a Checkatrade profile isn't a place to build a reputation you own.

What a website is

Yours. Your address — the subdomain or the domain you register — your pages, your photos, and an enquiry form that lands in your inbox rather than going to several trades at once. Checkatrade's own hiring guide tells customers that a quote request is sent "out to tradespeople that work in your local area" and that two or three quotes is usually enough; a form on your own site goes to you.

Being found is the other half. For the map results Google uses your Business Profile, not your site; for the ordinary results underneath — "boiler repair perth" — it's a competition between websites, and a page for each service in each town is how a small trade enters it. The long version of that is in do tradespeople actually need a website?, and the costs route by route are in how much a website costs: £90 to £200 a year if you build it yourself, £45 to £99 a month if a firm builds and runs it, £500 to £3,000 once from a freelancer or an agency. The builders and the firms are compared by name here. grafter.ly Websites is £15 a month with no contract; it's the one I sell, so weigh that as you read.

What a website can't do on its own is lend you a reputation. Nobody arrives at a new site trusting it. That's what the reviews are for, and it's why where they live matters.

The free third thing

A Google Business Profile costs nothing — Google's own help page says you manage how your business shows up on Maps and Search "at no charge". It takes photos, hours, your phone number, your services and your reviews, and it's what appears in the map results, which neither a Checkatrade profile nor a brochure site gets you into. Checkatrade's own blog grants that a Business Profile "is good to give you a presence (and a pin on Google Maps)" before arguing that anyone can create one — which is true, and which is also true of a free Checkatrade profile.

The reviews you collect on it are yours to keep for as long as the profile exists, which is free. For most local trades that's the safest place to build them.

And a sense of proportion. In Checkatrade's own 2024 survey of 3,000 adults, 69% of the people who'd hired a tradesperson found them by word of mouth. When the Federation of Master Builders asked 2,000 homeowners in December 2024 what gave them confidence in a trade, personal recommendations came top at 64%, membership of a trade body 50%, and positive reviews on directories 48%. The reviews matter; the directory is one of the places they can sit.

So which one

• Starting out, with no reviews and no work yet: the free Checkatrade profile and a free Google Business Profile, and ask every customer for a Google review as well as a Checkatrade one, so the reputation you're building isn't on a meter.
• You want leads from the platform: that's a lead plan from £59 a month on a twelve-month term, and the profile comes with it. That's a decision about buying leads rather than about having a website, and is Checkatrade worth it? is the piece for it.
• You want to be found for your trade in your town by people who don't use Checkatrade, or you want enquiries that come to you alone: that's a website, and the profile won't do it for you.
• Both, if the sums work: a site with the Checkatrade widget on it while you're a member, and your Google reviews on it whatever happens.

What you shouldn't do is treat the profile as your website. It's a page on someone else's site, found by people who use that site, and the reviews on it are yours to show only while you pay.

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Sources. Checkatrade's product terms for Approved (last updated 8 May 2026), free profiles (4 October 2025), master service terms (4 October 2025) and platform terms of use (22 September 2025); its membership renewals and reviews support pages; its pricing page; its hiring guide; and its blog posts What's best for marketing as a tradesperson: Checkatrade or Google? (6 January 2025) and Review-fluence (9 May 2022). Google's Business Profile help. The 69% figure is from Checkatrade's "State of Trust in Trades" report (Focaldata, 3,000 UK adults, 2024) as reported by Fix Radio; the 64%, 50% and 48% figures are from the Federation of Master Builders and TrustMark (Prospectus Global, 2,000 homeowners, 7–10 December 2024). All checked 5 October 2026.