News · Lead platforms · UK 2026
You don't own your Checkatrade reviews. Why it matters
Spend three years winning good work and you might gather fifty five-star reviews. Cancel the membership the day the renewal jumps from £100 to £150 a month, and every one of them stays behind. That is the part trades only discover at the exit: the reputation you spent years building on a lead platform was never an asset you could pack up and take with you. It was a tenancy. The reviews keep the lights on for the landlord, not for you.
With renewal hikes biting in 2026 and more trades weighing whether to walk, this has stopped being a small-print footnote and become the thing that decides whether you can leave at all. Here is who actually owns a Checkatrade review, why it quietly locks you in, and how to build a reputation that comes with you instead.
No, you do not keep your Checkatrade reviews if you leave. They are a permanent part of your profile on Checkatrade's platform, so cancelling your membership takes your visible rating down with it, and the reviews do not transfer to your own website or Google Business Profile. The customer owns their words, but the social proof lives with the platform. To build a reputation you keep, gather Google reviews on a free profile you control.
Who actually owns a Checkatrade review
A Checkatrade review belongs to the customer who wrote it and lives on Checkatrade's platform; the trade it praises never owns it and cannot move it, so it only works for you while you keep paying.
The customer owns the words, the platform owns the home
Checkatrade is clear that the person who wrote a review owns it and can edit or remove it, and that reviews are treated as a permanent part of a trade's profile, only removed in narrow circumstances, per its review guidelines for trades. Read that carefully and the gap appears: you control neither the words nor the home they sit in. The customer holds the words; Checkatrade holds the profile. You hold a rating you are renting.
There is no export, no transfer, no carry-over
There is no button that ports your star rating to Google or to your own site. You can retype a testimonial onto your website, but the verified third-party badge, the bit that made it persuasive, does not come with the text. So the practical truth is simple: the day your membership ends, the searchable, verified version of your reputation ends with it. That is what people mean when they say lead-platform reviews do not belong to you.
Why it matters more than it sounds
Reviews are the asset that wins your next job, so a reputation you cannot keep is the quiet lock-in that keeps trades paying a fee they would otherwise drop.
The lock-in nobody calls lock-in
Think about what a renewal hike really asks of you. Leaving does not just cost you the listing; it costs you years of accumulated proof, all at once, back to zero. That is a powerful reason to swallow the increase, which is precisely why it works. The longer you stay, the more reputation you have tied up in the platform, and the more expensive it feels to walk. We put numbers on the staying-versus-leaving sum in is Checkatrade worth it and the three-year cost in what Checkatrade costs over 3 years.
A reputation that does not travel cannot compound
Reviews are most valuable when they stack up in one place customers and search engines both trust, and keep growing year on year. Split across a platform you might leave, they never get to compound into the kind of unmistakable track record that wins work on its own. Reviews you own do compound: every job adds to a single pile that follows the business for good.
The same trap on MyBuilder and Rated People
Review ownership is not a Checkatrade quirk; reviews you build on MyBuilder or Rated People sit on their profiles too and do not come with you when you leave, so the lock-in is identical whichever platform you pay.
Different fees, same ownership problem
MyBuilder and Rated People charge in different ways to Checkatrade, but the reputation you build on any of them lives on that platform's profile, not on an asset you keep. Switch from one to another and you start your star rating from scratch each time. We laid the three side by side in Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs Rated People, and the ownership column reads the same down the line: no.
Why platform-hopping never fixes it
Trades fed up with one platform's fees often jump to another, and find they have simply moved their reputation into a new rented home. The fix is not a better platform; it is building proof on something you own, so that the next fee rise is a question of whether the leads are worth it, not whether you can afford to lose three years of reviews by leaving.
Where reviews you actually keep should live
Reviews on a free Google Business Profile and your own website belong to you, show up in the search and map results customers see first, and follow your business if you ever change how you get work.
Google Business Profile: the reputation you own
A Google Business Profile is free, it is yours, and the reviews on it appear on Google Maps and in the local pack most customers look at before they call. Crucially, they are not tied to a paid subscription: change how you get work, drop a platform, rebrand, and the reviews stay put. Our guide to getting more Google reviews walks the steps. Worth doing even if you stay on Checkatrade, because this is the half of your reputation you keep.
Your own website: where the proof does double duty
Show those Google reviews on a website you own and they work twice: as trust on the page, and as readable text that helps you rank in normal search and get named in AI answers. The same customer feedback that sat trapped on a platform now pulls its weight on an asset that is entirely yours. That is the difference between renting proof and banking it.
What this changes about staying on Checkatrade
You do not have to quit Checkatrade to fix the ownership problem; you fix it by building Google and website reviews alongside it, so that leaving later is a free choice rather than a loss.
Run your own reputation in parallel
If Checkatrade is bringing you work today, fine, use it. The mistake is letting it be the only place your reputation lives. From the next job on, ask for a Google review as well, so you are building a reputation that is yours at the same time as one that is rented. Do that for six months and a renewal hike stops being a trap, because you can leave without losing your proof.
1. Claim and verify your Google Business Profile if you have not, the only review home you actually own and the one customers see first.
2. Ask your last three happy customers for a Google review, with a direct link, today.
3. Note your current Checkatrade renewal date, so the fee jump is a decision you plan for, not a surprise that keeps you paying.
The bottom line: build proof you can pack up
Checkatrade reviews are real, and while you pay they help. They just are not yours, and a reputation you cannot take with you is a weak place to keep your whole track record. Build it where it belongs to you. I'll build you a free mockup of your actual business before you pay anything, with your reviews and accreditations front and centre, on a site you own. Like it? A one-pager is £50/month, a full site £100/month, with hosting, SSL and unlimited edits included on every plan and zero setup fee. Usually live in about a week. See the figures on the tradesman website cost page or apply at sitework.uk/#apply.