Is MyBuilder worth it? What a tradesperson pays and gets in 2026

Is MyBuilder worth it? For a tradesperson, it is worth it when the work you win through it pays for every shortlist fee, including the shortlists that never turn into a job. That is the whole test, and you can run it before you spend anything.

Search "is mybuilder worth it" and the first three results are a Facebook group thread, a Reddit thread and Trustpilot, followed by a 2026 round-up that still gives a fee range from 2019 (checked 2 October 2026). This guide answers the question from MyBuilder's own rules instead: its tradesperson terms, updated 4 March 2026, and its help centre, both read on 2 October 2026.

One thing first. We build websites for trades, so we have an interest in you owning your marketing. That is not a reason to call MyBuilder bad. For some trades it fills the diary at no fixed cost. The point is to decide with the sums and the current rules in front of you.

MyBuilder fees for tradespeople: what you pay and when

MyBuilder is free to join, and showing interest in a job is free. You pay a shortlist fee when a customer's contact details are shared with you, usually when they shortlist you, and you pay it whether or not you win the work. There is no membership and no monthly fee unless you choose to pay for sponsored placement.

How it works, step by step

1. Apply and get approved. You give details about you and your company, complete an evaluation for each trade and verify your identity. MyBuilder says it aims to approve applications within 48 hours, Monday to Friday.
2. Get leads. MyBuilder sends you jobs that match your trades and work area, by email and in the app. A customer can also invite you to a job.
3. Express interest. You send the customer an introduction message, which is free. Accepting an invitation counts as expressing interest too.
4. The customer decides. They decline you or shortlist you. If they shortlist you, you get their name, phone number and email address, and the fee is charged. On some jobs the terms let you take the details straight away instead, and the fee is charged then.
5. Pay weekly. MyBuilder invoices your shortlist fees every Monday, marks the invoice due the next day and takes the money from your card.

What MyBuilder charges, from its own pages

What	How it works	Where MyBuilder says so
Joining and showing interest	Free. "There are no joining fees, membership fees or any other costs."	Help centre, What are the fees? (28 October 2024) and What is shortlisting? (25 October 2024)
The shortlist fee	Charged when the customer's contact details are shared with you after you express interest. The terms say "It is not necessary for you to be awarded the Job for the Shortlist Fee to be payable."	Terms, clause 10.1 (updated 4 March 2026)
How much	Set per job from what the customer enters, such as surface area, quantities and materials, and "can start from £7". The terms say it is based on the likely size, value and location of the job. It is shown before you act and "will never be adjusted after you have responded". No fee table or maximum is published.	Help centre, How are lead fees calculated? (4 December 2024); terms, clause 10.2
VAT	Fees are shown excluding VAT. Add it if you cannot reclaim it.	Terms, clause 10.2
When you pay	A weekly invoice on Mondays, due the next day. Card only, taken automatically.	Blog, Invoices and Payment (updated 24 August 2026); terms, clauses 12.1 and 12.3
Paying late	Interest at 4% above the Bank of England base rate, and MyBuilder can suspend your account if an invoice is still unpaid 15 days after its date. A failed or reclaimed card payment can cost a £20 plus VAT admin fee.	Terms, clauses 12.5 and 14.2
Sponsored placement (optional)	A monthly subscription to appear above the normal ranking. The price is shown when you book; MyBuilder does not publish it. Excludes VAT, renews on the first of each month, and needs three days' written notice to cancel at the end of the month. No guaranteed leads.	Sponsored Placement Terms (PDF named 03-2026); terms, clause 6.2

Two things on that table are worth knowing before you read anything else about MyBuilder's prices.

The ranges online are old. Pages that rank for this search give a fee range of £2 to £35, a figure that appears in a comparison from December 2019 and is still repeated in 2026. MyBuilder's help centre now says the fee can start from £7, and it publishes no top figure: one tradesperson's App Store review of the trade app, read on 2 October 2026, reports a £53 charge for a single customer. Treat any range you read as someone else's, and look at the fees MyBuilder shows on jobs in your own trade and area.

Go by the terms on late payment. MyBuilder's help centre says parts of your account are restricted if invoices go unpaid for 30 days. The terms, which are the contract, let it suspend the account if an invoice is still unpaid 15 days after its date. Plan on 15.

What the shortlist fee buys, and what it does not

MyBuilder's help centre is plain about it: "A lead is the contact information of a potential customer. You pay MyBuilder to be able to contact them." The fee buys the customer's name, phone number and email address, at a moment when they have said they want to hear from you.

It does not buy the job. MyBuilder's own words are that "we cannot guarantee you will always make contact, get to quote or win the job", and the terms say it "does not guarantee that you will be able to quote or secure work" for jobs you have paid a fee for.

It does not buy you the customer to yourself either. Nothing in MyBuilder's tradesperson terms or the help pages we read limits how many trades one customer can shortlist. One tradesperson's App Store review describes decent jobs drawing five or so replies within minutes, with the customer shortlisting all of them.

The decision point is when you express interest

Once you have shown interest, the fee is out of your hands: it is charged when the customer shortlists you, or at once on a job where you take the details straight away (clause 10.1). The terms count any action to get their details as expressing interest: a message, a contact request, accepting an invitation or choosing an option to get the details. So the fee is a decision you make before you act, not after:

• Read the fee first. MyBuilder shows it before you act, and it does not change after you reply.
• Only reply to jobs you would be glad to pay for. If the job is too small, too far or too soon for you, leave it.
• Watch the app. A shortlist can land days after your message, and the fee is charged whether or not you saw the notification.

The rule that catches people out

Until a customer shortlists you, the terms ban your contact details and links to other websites in anything you post (clause 5.1.3). Steering a customer away from the platform to avoid the fee, including "directing a Customer to your own website for such purpose", is grounds for ending your account (clause 10.4).

So your website cannot win the job for you before the shortlist. It does its work afterwards, when the customer has your name and goes looking.

The sum to do before you join

Nobody can tell you MyBuilder's return in general, because the fee changes with every job and the win rate depends on you. Do the sum for your own trade:

1. Find the fee. Looking costs nothing and the fee shows before you act, so look at the fees on several jobs in your trade and area before you reply to any.
2. Take the profit, not the price, of a typical job you would win there.
3. Be honest about how many shortlists it takes to win one job. You will usually be one of several quotes.
4. Multiply the fee by that number. That is what each job you win costs you in fees. If it is well under the profit, MyBuilder pays its way. If it is close to the profit, you are working for MyBuilder.

Say the fee is £25 and you win one shortlist in four. Each job you win has cost £100 in fees: £25 for the job you won and £75 for the three you did not. On a job with £300 of profit that works. On a job with £100 of profit it does not.

MyBuilder makes the same point from its side. Its help centre says the platform is "designed in such a way that the income from the jobs that you may carry out will cover all your lead fees over time", including the leads that are not successful. Whether that is true for you is exactly this sum.

Two members' numbers, for the record, from opposite ends. In a 2023 Screwfix forum thread about MyBuilder invoices, one tradesperson looking back on using it years earlier wrote "I think I paid £6.00 to lay a hall floor @ £200 but then got just under £4k in repeat work". In an App Store review of MyBuilder's trade app, read on 2 October 2026, another says every trade shortlisted on a job pays "a fee of around £10-£20 on average even if you don’t get the work". Both are true for the person writing. Your figures will differ, which is why the sum has to be yours.

Do not plan on MyBuilder's job numbers

MyBuilder's own figures do not agree with each other. Its help centre says "150,000 leads posted every month", with no footnote (11 December 2024). Its trade app listing says over 100,000 jobs a month, footnoted as the average for 2024. Its website says 90,000 a month, footnoted as the average number of jobs posted in 2025. On its own footnoted figures, fewer jobs were posted each month in 2025 than in 2024. Either way, jobs posted across the UK are not leads in your trade and postcode, so judge it on what you see in your area.

Refunds: when a shortlist fee can be credited back

MyBuilder does not refund shortlist fees in cash. Its terms say any refund is at its sole discretion and is given only as account credit (clause 12.9). Credit cannot be swapped for cash or moved to another account, and it expires 12 months after it is issued unless MyBuilder gives another date (clause 13).

Its help centre sets out when you can ask for a credit, in an article dated 10 September 2026 that applies to shortlists issued on or after 25 July 2026. You may be eligible when:

• the customer's contact details are wrong or not in service;
• the customer asked for the wrong type of work;
• you were shortlisted twice for the same job;
• the customer is looking for work rather than posting a job;
• the customer cannot be reached, but only if all four of these apply:
  • you ask between 7 and 20 days after you were shortlisted;
  • you contacted the customer within 48 hours of being shortlisted through MyBuilder;
  • you sent at least one message using MyBuilder;
  • the customer did not reply by phone, email or MyBuilder message.

For a customer who does not answer, a request before day 7 or after day 20 is not eligible. If the customer replies by phone, email or MyBuilder message, MyBuilder treats them as reachable and that shortlist does not qualify. You ask through MyBuilder's contact form with the customer's name, the job number and the reason. An approved credit is used automatically the next time you are shortlisted.

The habit that protects you is simple. Send a message through MyBuilder within 48 hours of every shortlist, even when you also ring. It is what MyBuilder uses to check you tried. Then put day 7 and day 20 in your diary for any customer who goes quiet.

Who MyBuilder suits, and who it does not

The forum threads are full of trades who are each right about their own case. The difference is usually the job size, the speed of reply and how busy they already are.

Your situation	Does MyBuilder tend to pay off?	Why
New business, no reviews yet	Possibly, after a slow start	Ranking rewards customer feedback. New accounts get a random lift for their first two months, and you can add reviews from up to five past customers, backed by a paid invoice, to start with.
Gaps in the diary, quiet months	Often	There is no monthly fee. When you are busy you stop expressing interest and pay nothing, which MyBuilder's own help centre suggests.
Small jobs worth a few hundred pounds	Check the sum first	A fee on every shortlist, shared with other trades, can take most of the profit on a small job.
Bigger jobs: bathrooms, roofs, extensions	Often on paper	One win can cover several lost shortlists. The fee is based on the likely size and value of the job, so do the sum on the real fee, not the starting one.
You cannot reply within a day	Rarely	The ranking counts how many replies you sent to comparable jobs in the week before a job was posted, and a credit for an unreachable customer needs contact within 48 hours.
Established firm, busy on referrals and Google reviews	Rarely	You would be paying for introductions you do not need.

What tradespeople say about MyBuilder

Nobody has surveyed every member, so these are the complaints that keep coming up in reviews of MyBuilder's trade app and in the forum threads that rank for this search, with the fair reply to each.

Paying when you do not win. The most common complaint by a distance. The fair reply is that this is the model, written into the terms: the fee is for the contact details, not the job. It is a reason to count shortlists as introductions, not as work.

Several trades shortlisted for one job. App reviewers describe customers shortlisting everyone who replied. Nothing we read in MyBuilder's terms or help pages limits it. The defence is your own: read the job and the fee before you express interest, and be the first to call.

Hard to get shortlisted with no reviews. A reviewer of the trade app found it hard to get shortlisted as a new member with no feedback. MyBuilder's answer is the random lift new accounts get in the ranking for their first two months, which is automatic, and the five reviews you can add from past customers. Add those in your first week, while the lift lasts.

Customers who never answer. MyBuilder now has written rules for this. For shortlists from 25 July 2026 there is a route to a credit, with the 7 to 20 day window above, as long as you messaged through MyBuilder within 48 hours.

Jobs too small or too far away. You choose your trades and your work area, but one app reviewer found that narrowing the radius cut the number of leads. That is a real trade-off, and only a few weeks of watching your area will show you which way it falls.

Support is a form, not a phone call. The terms give an email address as well as the contact form: info@mybuilder.com. If a dispute with MyBuilder itself cannot be settled, the terms offer mediation through CEDR, which does not charge you to complain.

To be fair to MyBuilder, the same places carry members it works for. In the 2010 Screwfix thread that ranks for this search, one member writes "My bill with My Builder is over £100.00 per month but it pays over and over", and an app reviewer who complains about lead costs still calls it worth trying if you are short on work or starting out.

How to decide before you join

1. Look at real fees in your trade and area. Joining and looking cost nothing.
2. Do the sum above with your real profit and an honest win rate.
3. Check what you already have. If your Google Business Profile brings in calls and your diary is full on referrals, MyBuilder is competing with free.
4. Be honest about reply speed. The ranking, the credit rules and the customer all reward the trade that answers first.
5. Set yourself a test. There is no fixed term, so give it a few weeks, log every shortlist with its fee and outcome, and stop if the cost per job won is too close to the profit.

The other option: be the trade they find after the shortlist

After a shortlist, the customer has your name and number. What they find when they look you up decides a lot of what happens next, and that part is not on MyBuilder.

• A website of your own with the work you want more of, the towns you cover, your accreditations and photos of finished jobs, and a phone number that works one-handed. It keeps working in the months you pay no fees. Our guide to how much a tradesman website costs sets out UK prices.
• A Google Business Profile that is free to claim and keeps its reviews whatever you pay anyone else. Ask for a review the day each job finishes.
• Other platforms on different terms. Checkatrade charges a fixed monthly fee on a 12 month contract instead of a fee per shortlist, and our Checkatrade vs MyBuilder guide compares the two. TrustATrader, Rated People and Bark each charge differently again, compared in Checkatrade alternatives.

You do not have to choose. MyBuilder can fill gaps while your own site and Google profile grow alongside, so that more of the work comes direct over time.

If you do join

Some members clearly make it pay, and they do the same few things.

• Fill the profile on day one. Trades, work area, photos of finished work, and up to five reviews from past customers. MyBuilder publishes those only once you send a copy of the paid invoice.
• Reply fast and often. The ranking counts your replies to comparable jobs in the week before each job is posted.
• Message every shortlist through MyBuilder within 48 hours, then ring. It is your evidence if you need a credit.
• Answer every review, good or bad. MyBuilder's own advice is to respond within a day, two at the latest.
• Log every shortlist: the job, the fee, whether you quoted and whether you won. After a month you will know your cost per job won.
• Think hard before paying for sponsored placement. It renews every month, the price is only shown when you book, and its terms promise no leads, shortlists or jobs.

Leaving MyBuilder

There is no membership to cancel. If you are busy or done with it, stop expressing interest and you take on no new fees, apart from any job you already replied to where the customer has not decided yet. MyBuilder's help centre says as much: "you can simply stop showing interest in new leads".

• To end the agreement, the terms say you pay all outstanding invoices and then contact MyBuilder to say you no longer want to use it (clause 17.8).
• To delete your account, all invoices must be paid. Then go to My account, Profile, Manage account and Delete account, and choose to delete rather than pause notifications. MyBuilder says your profile, photos and personal information are then deleted permanently. Nothing in its terms or help pages offers a way to take your reviews with you.
• Take the MyBuilder logo and any mention of MyBuilder off your marketing, such as your van, website and paperwork, within 28 days if your account is closed (clause 7.2).
• Sponsored placement needs at least three days' written notice, by email to info@mybuilder.com or the contact form, and ends at the end of that calendar month.