GetTheCall vs Checkatrade: What You Actually Pay Per Job
Checkatrade charges a subscription whether work comes or not. GetTheCall charges £80 only on a confirmed job. The real cost per booking, compared.
Most tradespeople on Checkatrade don't calculate their real cost per booking until they've been on the platform six months. By then they've already paid £840 in subscription fees, closed a variable number of jobs, and have a rough sense that the maths isn't as clean as the £140/month headline suggested. This article does that calculation upfront, before you commit.
| GetTheCall | Checkatrade | |
|---|---|---|
| You pay | Only on a confirmed job | Fixed monthly subscription, win work or not |
| Call connection | Connected call is exclusive to the first member to answer | Shared, customers contact several listed trades |
| Upfront cost | £0 | Monthly fee from day one |
| Calls without a confirmed job | No Platform Fee | Fee paid regardless of bookings |
| Emergency suitability | High, simultaneous live call routing | Passive, customer browses profiles |
What £140/Month Actually Costs Per Job
Checkatrade and GetTheCall both connect UK tradespeople with customers who need work done. Beyond that surface similarity they share almost nothing in common, not their payment model, not their risk structure, and not the type of demand they serve well. Understanding exactly how they differ is worth doing before committing to either.
Checkatrade is a browse-and-compare directory. It charges a fixed monthly subscription to appear in its marketplace, and customers find you by searching the platform and browsing profiles. GetTheCall is an active emergency trades platform. It funds and runs advertising, screens every incoming call for genuine urgency, rings nearby eligible available members at once, and connects the first to answer. There are no monthly fees. You pay only when a customer confirms they have chosen you on the call.
The Core Comparison
| Feature | GetTheCall | Checkatrade |
|---|---|---|
| Payment trigger | Only when customer confirms you on the call | Monthly, before any jobs arrive |
| Upfront cost | £0 | £80-£200 per month |
| Lead exclusivity | Eligible members ring; first answer connects privately | Shared, customer contacts several tradespeople |
| Emergency screening | Human-verified before connecting | None, self-reported by customer |
| Quiet month cost | £0 | Same monthly fee regardless |
| Contracts | None, pause or cancel by WhatsApp | Annual contracts are standard |
| Best suited for | Emergency callouts, immediate active demand | Planned project work with longer research phases |
The Real Cost Per Job, Where the Comparison Actually Lands
Checkatrade's subscription fee looks modest at £140/month until you account for how that fee behaves across a full year of trading. In a strong October, delivering eight jobs, the implied cost per booking is £17.50. In a dry January delivering two jobs, it rises to £70. In a month where you take a week's holiday and close two fewer jobs than usual, you have paid the same subscription for a fraction of the output.
The subscription model transfers all demand risk to the contractor. You pay regardless of whether the platform delivers. GetTheCall's pay-per-job structure inverts this entirely, slow months cost nothing, and the platform only recovers its fee at the moment you have already earned far more than it from the job itself.
The real cost comparison: A Checkatrade subscription at £140/month across a year with variable job counts averages out to an implied cost of £25-£50 per job in a year with consistent job flow. But quiet months (e.g., 2‑3 jobs) push cost per job to £50-70, and shared leads reduce win rates further. Most tradespeople report average effective cost per booked job between £30-80 across a full year. GetTheCall charges a fixed flat fee per confirmed job with zero variance and zero quiet-month overhead.
Why Shared Leads Are a Problem for Emergency Work
Checkatrade's directory model is built for customer choice. When someone searches for a roofer or plumber, they see multiple results, browse profiles, and contact several tradespeople before making a decision. This is deliberate, Checkatrade's value proposition to customers is comparison and assurance through reviews.
For planned project work this makes sense. A customer organising a kitchen refurbishment has time to compare quotes and read reviews. For emergency work it creates a structural problem. A customer whose boiler has failed at 9pm in January is not browsing multiple profiles. They are calling the first available Gas Safe engineer who picks up. When four engineers call back simultaneously because they all received the same shared directory lead, the urgency premium the situation should support evaporates into price competition.
On GetTheCall, nearby eligible available members ring simultaneously and the first contractor to answer connects. From that point the customer speaks only with the connected member, and GetTheCall does not resell the conversation. The routing rewards availability and speed without distributing customer contact details for multiple callbacks.
What Checkatrade Is Actually Good For
Checkatrade's review system is genuinely useful for planned project work where customers research and compare over days or weeks. If you are doing large planned jobs, full re-roofs, bathroom refurbishments, rewires, a strong Checkatrade profile with a high review count helps you win those projects, and the cost per job on planned work can be very reasonable if the platform delivers consistent calls.
The gap is emergency callout routing. Checkatrade has no active mechanism to put you in front of a customer at the moment their emergency surfaces. It relies on the customer already being on the platform. A customer with water coming through their ceiling at 10pm after a storm is not opening Checkatrade. They are searching Google and calling whoever answers.
The most effective approach for experienced contractors is running both in parallel: Checkatrade for planned project credibility and review accumulation, GetTheCall for emergency callout volume where the pay-per-job model makes every pound spent directly traceable to a won booking. See how GetTheCall's roofing compares in practice.
Emergency trade callouts across the UK
GetTheCall routes homeowner emergency calls to tradespeople in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Nottingham and Glasgow, plus 85+ other UK cities.