Rated People Has Closed to Tradespeople: What Happened and What to Do

Rated People closed every tradesperson account on 16 September 2026. The next day its brand and website were sold to Checkatrade Group, and jobs that homeowners post there now go to Checkatrade members.

If you were a Rated People member, nothing carries over. Your membership has ended, your lead history is gone from the account, and your reviews are sitting on a site you can no longer log in to.

This guide covers what happened, what you have lost, and what to do this week. Every fact below links to its source, and the prices sit in my UK Trade Lead Cost Tracker, which I re-verified on 30 September 2026.

Where I stand. I run Local Ladder, which builds websites and local SEO for UK trades. I earn money when a tradesperson decides to own their marketing, so I have an interest in how you read this. I have never sold Rated People leads or competed with it for them.

What Happened to Rated People

Rated People stopped trading with tradespeople in the space of three days. The company behind it went into liquidation, every trade membership was closed, and Checkatrade Group bought the name and the website without the members.

Date	What happened	Source
16 September 2026	All tradesperson accounts closed; Rated People Limited reported to have entered Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation	MyJobQuote summary, 19 Sep 2026
17 September 2026	Rated People announces it “is now part of Checkatrade Group”	Rated People
18 September 2026	Checkatrade announces it has bought “selected assets from Rated People, including its brand and website”; jobs start routing to Checkatrade members	Checkatrade
24 September 2026	Law firm Lewis Silkin confirms it advised Checkatrade Group on the purchase	Lewis Silkin
30 September 2026	No liquidation filing yet on the public record; the most recent filing is a director appointment lodged on 9 September	Companies House

A note on that last row. Rated People’s own announcement refers former members to “liquidators S&W”, so the liquidation is not in doubt. Companies House usually shows the paperwork a few weeks after the event, which is why I have labelled the 16 September date as reported, not official.

The word that matters in Checkatrade’s statement is “selected”. It bought the brand, the website and the homeowner traffic, and the memberships were left behind in the company being wound up.

What You Have Lost if You Were a Member

Four things ended on 16 September, and only one of them might come back.

Your membership

Rated People’s announcement is blunt about it: “Rated People memberships ended before the brand and website changed hands. To keep getting jobs from the platform, members need to sign up with Checkatrade.”

There is no migration. A Checkatrade account is a new account, on Checkatrade’s prices and Checkatrade’s terms.

Your leads and customer records

The trade FAQ on Rated People’s site says “leads you had on the Rated People platform will no longer be accessible through your Rated People account”. That includes jobs, contacts and invoices.

Former members who are eligible should have had an email from Checkatrade with access instructions. If you have not, there is a request form linked at the bottom of Rated People’s announcement.

Your reviews

This is the one that might come back, and the messaging is not consistent. The trade FAQ says “your existing reviews stay where they are”. The sign-up page says that if you join Checkatrade “you will soon be able to transfer your Rated People reviews to your Checkatrade profile”.

No date has been given. Until it happens, years of reviews sit on a profile you cannot edit, reply to or log in to.

Any money you had paid in advance

Nobody has said whether members will be refunded for time they paid for and did not get. Rated People directs all questions about a past membership to the liquidators at [email protected].

I am not an insolvency adviser, so take this as a pointer and check it. When a company is wound up, customers who paid in advance normally have to claim from the liquidator alongside everyone else it owes money to.

What to Do This Week

None of this takes long, and most of it gets harder the longer you leave it.

1. Check your bank for a live Direct Debit. Rated People made Direct Debit through GoCardless mandatory for new trade customers from 1 March 2026. Look for the mandate in your banking app and cancel it if it is still there.
2. Email the liquidators. Write to [email protected] with your business name, your account email and what you had paid for. Ask how to register a claim, and keep the reply.
3. Ask your bank about the last payment. If you paid by card for a period that was never delivered, ask whether a chargeback claim is possible. Banks set their own time limits, so ask now.
4. Screenshot your reviews. Your public profile may still be visible. Capture every review with the customer’s name and the date while the page exists.
5. Request your data. Use the form linked from Rated People’s announcement to ask for your jobs, contacts and invoices. You need the invoices for your accounts whatever happens next.
6. Ring your best Rated People customers. Ask them for a Google review. A customer who was happy enough to review you once will usually do it again, and this one stays on a profile that belongs to you.
7. Decide about Checkatrade on the numbers. Read the next section before the sales call.

Should You Join Checkatrade?

Checkatrade is the only place Rated People jobs now go, and it is a different deal from the one you had. Rated People’s own comparison says membership “starts at £30 per month”, but the plans that send leads are quoted by phone and run for 12 months.

Here is how the two compare on what is on record.

	Rated People (before closure)	Checkatrade (now)
How you paid	Subscription plus a fee per lead	Monthly subscription; extra leads for credits on the Opportunities Board
Reported cost	£30–£60 a month plus £15–£40 a lead	£30 a month official; members report £80–£500 a month
Trades per lead	Up to 3, reported	10–20+ reported on plan leads; 3 on the Opportunities Board
Contract	Minimum term on some plans	12 months fixed
Published price list	None	Partial

Two of those rows deserve a second look. Rated People leads were reported to go to three trades at most, while third-party analyses put a Checkatrade plan enquiry in front of ten to twenty or more members.

The contract is the other. Checkatrade’s trade FAQ on the Rated People site says plainly that “the fixed lead plan runs on a 12-month term”. Whatever term you were on before, the replacement is a full year.

The route with the least commitment is the Opportunities Board, where you browse leads for free and pay credits to unlock the ones you want. Checkatrade does not publish what a credit costs, and the leads on the board are the ones its paying members did not pick up within about four hours.

If you do take the call, my Checkatrade cost breakdown has every price on record, and the Checkatrade review covers who it tends to work for.

Rated People Alternatives for Tradespeople

If you liked Rated People because you could pick the jobs and pay per lead, only two of the big platforms still work that way.

Platform	How it charges	Typical cost	Contract
MyBuilder	Fee when a homeowner shortlists you	£5–£35 a lead, from £7 official	None
Bark	Credits to reveal a customer’s details	£1.80 a credit, roughly £9–£36+ a lead	None on standard credits
Checkatrade	Monthly subscription	£30 a month official, £80–£500 reported	12 months fixed
TrustATrader	One annual fee, paid in advance	£240–£750 a year, estimated	12 months, no exit once live

MyBuilder is the nearest match. There is no subscription, the fee is shown before you respond, and you pay only when a homeowner shortlists you. My MyBuilder review covers what tradespeople report once they are paying those fees, and the Checkatrade alternatives guide prices every other route, free ones included.

Bark is the other pay-as-you-go option. You pay to reveal contact details whether or not the customer ever replies, and credits expire after three months.

Several smaller platforms published “what happened to Rated People” guides within days, each ending with a reason to join them instead. Read those as adverts. The test for any of them is the same: how many homeowners post jobs in your trade and your postcode each month, and will they put that number in writing.

What Rated People’s Closure Shows About Every Directory

Tradespeople who had used Rated People for years lost their lead flow, their customer records and access to their reviews in a single day, with no notice period.

That is the arrangement on every directory. The profile sits on their domain and the reviews sit with it. The enquiries stop when they say so, which is usually when you stop paying and, this once, when they stopped trading.

Checkatrade’s chief executive said of the deal that its ambition is “to grow the brand”. The largest platform now owns its old rival’s homeowner traffic, and there is one fewer place to take your business when the renewal quote arrives.

Two things are outside any platform’s control: your Google Business Profile and your own website. A Google review cannot be switched off by a liquidator, and an enquiry from your own site is not sold to anyone else.

I sell that, so weigh it accordingly. Then look at what you spent on Rated People last year and what you have to show for it today.

I audit trade businesses’ local visibility for free: a grid showing where you rank across your area, who is above you, and the three changes worth making first. No obligation, and you keep it either way. See where you rank and I’ll run yours.