Electrician leads.
One firm per area.
Most electrician leads are shared: £15-40 a lead on Rated People on top of a £30-60 monthly subscription, and the enquiry still goes to up to 3 trades. We sell the opposite. A consumer brand we run takes the enquiry, and when it passes five published checks, confirmed by SMS in the homeowner's own words, it is warm-referred to exactly one electrician in that area, never resold. The market anchor for an exclusive intent-confirmed referral is £45-120. Fail a check, it is not sent and not billed.
What does an electrician
referral look like?
It is 1 of 1: one homeowner, one firm, one area. The job is not pinged out to a panel for whoever rings first; it is passed to the electrician who holds that area, after the homeowner has confirmed the detail over SMS.
Electrical work is certificated work, and that changes what the homeowner is actually shopping for. A consumer unit swap, a rewire, an EICR before a let, Part P notifiable work, an EV charger on the drive: none of it is a job they want to hand to whoever quoted cheapest at 9pm. They are choosing a firm they will let near the board, whose certificate has to stand up afterwards. A recommendation carries further in that decision than a listing does.
It also keeps the arrangement clean. You are not paying for a place in a list of electricians; you are paying for a referral that passed the same published standard every time. The five published checks are the rule behind the handover, and they are the same rule the billing system enforces.
What a referral arrives with
- The homeowner’s name and direct mobile
- The job in their own SMS words: fuseboard, rewire, EICR, EV charger
- Their stated timeline
- “Nobody else booked”, confirmed
- Consent on record
- Delivered in real time
What do electrician leads
cost in the UK?
£15-40 a lead on Rated People, before the £30-60 monthly subscription, and the price buys a race: the same enquiry reaches up to 3 trades, and whoever rings first wins.
The published picture is patchy on purpose. None of the five biggest UK platforms publishes a full price list, and Rated People and TrustATrader publish nothing at all. What is public still shows the mechanism clearly enough: directories sell access to an enquiry, shared, and they take the money in whichever shape suits them. Exclusive electrician leads are a different unit, with one destination from the start and no silent resale after delivery.
| What matters | Shared-leads directory | OptiMAX |
|---|---|---|
| Rated People | £15-40 a lead on top of a £30-60/mo subscription, shared with a maximum of 3. | One electrician per area. The referral is 1 of 1, never resold. |
| MyBuilder | Shared leads £5-35 typical, £50+ on larger jobs, shared with 3-5 trades. | The homeowner is given one name: the firm that holds the area. |
| Checkatrade | £30-500+/mo subscription, no per-lead fee. One enquiry is shared with 10-20+ trades. | No retainer, no lock-in. Pay only for referrals that pass five published checks. |
| TrustATrader | £240-750 a year upfront, capped at 10 trades per category per area. | Nothing upfront. The area is held by one firm, not shared between ten. |
| What the money buys | Auction access, or a listing, before anyone has confirmed the job is real. | An SMS-confirmed homeowner, stated timeline, nobody else booked, consent on record. |
The anchor maths is blunt. A shared lead anchors at £15-40 across the UK market; an exclusive intent-confirmed referral anchors at £45-120. The higher unit price buys the absence of the race. On a shared enquiry you are quoting against everyone else who bought the same number, and a Checkatrade enquiry can be shared with 10-20+ trades. On an exclusive referral the homeowner gets one name back, yours, and has already confirmed nobody else is booked.
Trades are not quiet about how that feels. Bark holds a 1.2-star rating on PissedConsumer from 223 reviews, on the bark-com.pissedconsumer.com listing updated 22 April 2026, where fake leads and credit or refund complaints are the dominant themes. We have gone through that record in Bark reviews from tradespeople.
Shared electrician leads can still suit a firm that wants volume and will win on response speed. This page is for the other kind: the electrician who would rather hold an area, take fewer, checked referrals, and stop paying to lose. The definitions are laid out properly in shared vs exclusive leads.
What gets an electrical enquiry
through the five checks?
Five published checks stand between an enquiry and your phone, and the rule is mechanical: fail one, and it is not sent and not billed.
First, real and reachable. A number that rings out is not a referral, so contact is established before anything moves. Second, the job in their own words. “Need an electrician” gets binned. “Fuseboard trips every time the shower runs, old board, three-bed semi” does not. The check is not a lead score; it is whether a real electrical problem has been described by the person who owns it.
Third, timeline stated. A dead ring main and an EICR before a tenancy starts carry different urgency, and the homeowner says which, in writing. Fourth, still an open job: a homeowner who has already signed with another firm is binned, and one still comparing quotes arrives with that stated, not discovered on your first call. Fifth, one buyer only. Pass every check and the referral goes to exactly one electrician, in real time, and it is never sold again afterwards.
That is the whole of our electrician lead generation model, and it is the same standard that runs across the one tradesperson per area model. The electrical version just stays specific to electrical work: boards, rewires, EICRs, EV chargers, and the notifiable jobs that need a certificate at the end.
What do you pay
before a job lands?
£240-750 a year, upfront, is what TrustATrader takes for a listing capped at 10 trades per category per area, and none of that fee depends on a single enquiry being real.
Checkatrade runs £30-500+ a month with no per-lead fee, so one enquiry can go to 10-20+ trades and the subscription is charged either way. Bark sells credits at £1.80 each, £9-36+ for a typical lead, and those credits expire after 3 months whether you spent them well or not. Our billing has one trigger and no calendar: five checks pass, the referral goes to one electrician, and that is the only thing you are charged for. Fail a check, it is not sent and not billed.
What do electricians ask
before holding an area?
£45-120 is the market anchor for an exclusive intent-confirmed referral, and every answer below follows from one mechanism: five published checks, one electrician per area, never resold.
What do electrician leads cost?
Why only one electrician per area?
Do referrals say whether the work is notifiable?
What happens if a referral is rubbish?
Is there a contract or a retainer?
How does an electrician referral reach me?
Is your area
still open?
One electrician per area, first come. Every referral passes five published checks; fails one, it is not sent and you are not billed. If your area is taken, we tell you straight.