The Real Difference: Who Charges Twice, and Who Rations Leads
Most comparisons of these platforms argue about which is "best". That's the wrong question. The question that actually decides whether one works for a roofing business is simpler: do you pay a monthly fee and then pay again for each lead. And is the number of leads capped by what you've agreed to buy?
On that test the three split cleanly:
- Rated People charges twice. A monthly plan fee, and then a cost for each lead on top. Some of the plan fee comes back as credit to spend on leads, but the standing fee is there whether you buy leads or not.
- Checkatrade charges once, for a lead volume you commit to in advance. A monthly tier price, where the paid tier's cost is set against the postcodes and the number of leads a year you tell them you want. The leads are rationed to what you've bought.
- MyBuilder charges neither. No membership fee at all. You pay a fee only at the point a customer's contact details are shared with you, and you see that fee before you commit to it.
For roofing, a trade where demand arrives in weather-driven bursts rather than a steady trickle, that difference matters more than any headline price. A standing monthly fee has to be earned back in quiet months as well as busy ones, and a pre-agreed annual lead allowance can't stretch to meet a storm.
Here is what each company's own terms and pricing pages say, as at July 2026. Check them yourself before committing; all three change their commercial models periodically.
MyBuilder: pay only when a customer shortlists you
MyBuilder's tradesperson terms define a "Shortlist Fee" as the amount you owe when a customer's contact details are shared with you after you express interest in a job. The terms state the applicable fee is clearly displayed before you take any action that could result in details being shared, and that the fee becomes payable at the point those details are shared. There's no membership fee to pay before that happens.
MyBuilder doesn't publish a fee table, and it doesn't publish roofing-specific rates. The fee varies by job, and you see the number for a given job before you commit to it, so treat the price on the screen as the only reliable figure, not any range you read in an article.
Rated People. A plan fee, plus a cost per lead
Rated People describes its model plainly: you sign up to a plan, "there's a monthly fee, and there's a small cost for each lead", and every month they give you money back as credit you can spend on leads. When you buy a lead you get the contact details immediately. Which leads you see depends on your trade and the area you've set.
So there are two charges, not one: the plan fee arrives whether or not you buy a single lead, and each lead you do buy costs on top of it. The credit softens that, but it can only be spent on more leads. It isn't money back. The practical consequence for roofers is that you fund the plan in quiet months as well as busy ones, which suits steady year-round work and hurts a business whose demand is concentrated around a handful of storms.
Checkatrade: tiered membership, with the lead volume chosen up front
Checkatrade no longer sells a single membership. Its pricing page lists three tiers: a Free profile at £0/month for collecting reviews, Approved at £30/month, and Growth from £59/month. Growth is where the lead flow sits: the sign-up flow asks for your trade, the specific postcode areas you want to work in, and the number of leads you want to receive each year, then quotes a fixed monthly cost against that. Growth also includes Checkatrade Pay with fees quoted at 1.29%–1.79%.
That's a single charge rather than two, which is cleaner. But it means your lead flow is a quantity you commit to in advance rather than a tap you open when the weather turns. Set the annual number against a normal year and a bad storm season won't be met by it; set it against a storm year and you're paying for that ceiling every quiet month.
Checkatrade's vetting is a genuine differentiator, but describe it accurately: the company says tradespeople must pass up to 12 checks relevant to them (identity, address, insurance and the rest) before it gives its approval. That badge does work with homeowners who research carefully before a five-figure roof spend.
Sources: MyBuilder: Tradesperson terms and conditions (Shortlist Fee), Rated People. How our service works for tradespeople, Checkatrade: Join Checkatrade pricing, Checkatrade: Our 12 checks
Why Roofing Doesn't Behave Like Other Trades on These Platforms
Two things make roofing unusual on lead-generation platforms like MyBuilder, Rated People, and Checkatrade, and both cut against a fixed monthly cost.
Demand is weather-driven, not evenly spread. A single autumn or winter storm can produce more roofing enquiries in a couple of days than a quiet month produces in total. A charging model where you pay only when a customer picks you lets you lean in hard during those bursts and pay nothing during a dry spell. A model with a standing monthly cost asks you to fund the quiet months in the hope the busy ones repay it.
That doesn't make the subscription models wrong. It makes them a bet on your own consistency. If you do steady planned re-roofing and maintenance work all year, a plan or a Growth tier with the lead volume set to match is straightforward to justify. If your business is storm-led, a pay-per-shortlist model carries far less risk.
Speed decides emergency work. A homeowner with water coming through a ceiling is not running a six-week procurement process. They will call the first credible roofer who answers. Whatever platform you use, being first to respond does more for your conversion than anything you write in your profile. And it is the single thing most roofers lose work on, because they are up a ladder when the call comes in.
Two practical moves before storm season: make sure your profile says plainly that you do emergency and storm-damage work, with photos of that kind of job rather than only finished re-roofs; and make sure enquiries that arrive while you're working actually get answered rather than sitting until the evening.
Measure Your Own Numbers, Not Someone Else's Benchmarks
You will find a great deal of confident-sounding data about roofing lead platforms like MyBuilder, Rated People, and Checkatrade. Leads per month, conversion percentages, cost per job won. Almost none of it comes from the platforms themselves, and none of it is specific to your trade, your area, or your pricing. Treat all of it as marketing.
What's worth tracking is your own, and it takes three numbers:
- What you spent on the platform in a given period: plan fees plus every lead or shortlist fee, not just the subscription line.
- How many of those leads became quoted jobs, and how many of those you won.
- What those won jobs were actually worth to you: margin, not turnover.
Run that for a full quarter, including at least one busy period, and you will know whether a platform works for your business better than any comparison article can tell you. Run it per platform if you're on more than one, because the answer is often that one earns its keep and another doesn't.
The mistake to avoid is judging on a single month. Roofing demand is lumpy enough that one storm can make a bad platform look excellent, and one quiet month can make a good one look like a waste.
NFRC Membership: A Credibility Signal, Not a Lead Source
The National Federation of Roofing Contractors is the UK's largest roofing trade association, and membership is a different kind of investment from a lead platform: it's a trust signal rather than a source of enquiries.
What NFRC publishes about joining: contractor applicants pay a non-refundable application fee of £250 + VAT, and annual membership subscriptions vary depending on your staff wage bill, so there's no single published price. Members appear on the NFRC's Find a Contractor directory. If a homeowner has a complaint, NFRC's process is conciliation rather than formal arbitration: the homeowner goes through the member's own complaints procedure first, after which a regional manager will try to reconcile the two sides.
Where it earns its money is in the comparison stage of a large job. A homeowner deciding between three quotes for a full re-roof is looking for reasons to trust one of them. Trade association membership, a Checkatrade tick, genuine reviews and photographs of comparable work all stack up. None of them generate the enquiry. They win it once you have it.
Source: National Federation of Roofing Contractors: Become a member
Building Demand You Don't Have to Rent
Every one of these lead-generation platforms — MyBuilder, Rated People, Checkatrade — is rented demand. That's a reasonable thing to buy, particularly when you're building up or filling gaps in the diary. But a business whose entire pipeline depends on it is exposed to somebody else's pricing decisions and somebody else's algorithm.
Google Business Profile. Most homeowners searching "roof repair" plus their town see local map results before they see any platform listing. A complete profile with a steady flow of genuine reviews costs nothing per enquiry. Asking every satisfied customer for a review, at the moment you finish the job, is the highest-return marketing habit available to a roofing business.
Your past customers. A roof you repaired several years ago belongs to someone who now needs more work doing and already knows you turned up and did what you said. Almost no roofing business contacts past customers systematically, which is precisely why it works. It requires only that you keep a record of who you worked for, when, and what you did.
The street you're already on. A board on a re-roof, a word with the neighbours while the scaffold is up, and before-and-after photos posted locally generate work in the one place your travel time is already paid for.
The goal isn't to abandon platforms. It's to reach the point where they're topping up a diary that's already partly full. Because a roofer who needs the next lead is in a much worse negotiating position than one who doesn't.
