What do these directories actually cost?
Less than the trade press suggests at the entry level, and more than most owners realise once the term is counted.
Checkatrade publishes its tiers openly. A free profile is £0 a month and gets you a business profile page and the ability to collect and display reviews. Approved is £30 a month and adds the Checkatrade tick, review request tools and a place in the printed directory. Growth starts from £59 a month and is the one that brings enquiries, priced by your trade, your chosen postcode areas and how many leads you want a year. The same page states that memberships are for 12 months, so the entry Growth price is £708 across a year before anything else.1
Yell is a different order of money. Its own site prices Amplify from £299 a month and Accelerate from £699 a month, which at the Amplify starting price is £3,588 across a year.2 Worth noting that Yell's product page answers the same question with a lower figure, saying Amplify starts from £249 a month, so ask which one applies to you before signing anything.
Those are the published numbers, checked on 23 August 2026. What actually lands on your card depends on your trade and your postcode, which is exactly why comparing directory fees against each other is a dead end. The better question is what the fee is buying.
Do customers still start on a directory?
Some do, but far fewer than start on Google, and almost nobody uses only one.
BrightLocal asked 1,227 US consumers about their most recent search for a local business, publishing on 9 July 2026. 52% started on Google Search and another 9% on Google Maps. Review sites were used by 19% at some point in the journey, social media by 30% and AI tools by 23%. 75% used more than one channel before deciding.3 This is US data and no UK equivalent has been published, so treat the split as a shape rather than a British number.
The same survey found only 18% felt ready to contact a business an AI tool recommended without checking further.3 People are cross-referencing, and a directory profile is one of the things they cross-reference against. That is a real job, and it is not nothing. It is just not the job the sales call describes.
What does an AI assistant take from a directory listing?
Mostly the plain facts and the reviews, and it takes them whether you paid or not.
BrightLocal ran 20 searches across 10 kinds of business through Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and ChatGPT search and logged which sites the answers used. Directories and listing sites turned up across every industry it looked at, and Yelp was a source in 33% of the searches, mostly as the place the reviews were summarised from. Businesses' own websites were still the most common source overall.6 That work is US based and covers trades such as dentistry, legal and self storage, so the percentages are an indication rather than a UK measurement.
There is a second, quieter route. Google states that Business Profile information is compiled from several sources, one of which is "licensed data from third parties", alongside crawled web content and contributions from users.7 Directory data is part of what flows through that pipe. Google also says that how well known you are is part of local ranking, and describes that as including "how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have".8
So a listing does work for you. The point worth holding on to is what kind of work: it corroborates. It is another place where your name, trade, area and phone number appear and agree with each other. Nothing in that description requires a paid tier.
What happened when we asked 18 UK directories for a page
Most let us in, several would not talk to us at all, and three of the ones that served a browser refused a named AI reader.
On 23 August 2026 we requested a page from 18 UK directories and trade registers, first as an ordinary browser and then as three named automated readers: OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI's ChatGPT-User and PerplexityBot. We also read each site's robots.txt file, the small file at the top of nearly every website that tells automated visitors what they may look at.10
10 of the 18 served our ordinary browser request. Of those 10, three refused at least one of the named AI readers. Thomson Local served a browser normally and refused OAI-SearchBot on three separate attempts, on its homepage and on its plumbers listing page, while its robots.txt does not disallow that reader at all. The UK Yelp site refused both OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, which is consistent with its robots.txt, a 26 line file that disallows every automated reader and says crawling is "prohibited, except as expressly permitted by Yelp". Rated People refused PerplexityBot while serving the others.
| Directory or register | Served our browser | Served OpenAI's search reader | What its robots.txt file says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomson Local | Yes | No, refused three times | Turns away six named AI readers, but not this one |
| Yelp UK | Yes | No | Turns away every automated reader |
| Rated People | Yes | Yes, but refused Perplexity's reader | No rule naming AI readers |
| Seven others that answered | Yes | Yes | No rule turning these readers away |
| Six that refused us outright | No | No | Cannot say, our browser was refused too |
| Trustpilot and Tripadvisor | No | At least one reader got through | Tripadvisor turns away the readers used for training |
Two details are worth pulling out. First, OpenAI states that OAI-SearchBot is "used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features", and that sites opted out of it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers".9 A directory that refuses that reader is a directory whose listings are not doing the one job people now assume listings do.
Second, the robots.txt file and the server do not always agree. Thomson Local's file names GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot and Google-Extended and turns each of them away, yet leaves OAI-SearchBot alone, and then the server refuses OAI-SearchBot anyway. Whatever the intention, the published policy and the actual behaviour are different.
Eighteen sites on one afternoon is not a study and we are not presenting it as one. It is a snapshot, taken from one network, on one day, and any of these settings could change next week. It is enough to establish the thing that matters: you cannot assume a listing you pay for is readable by the assistant your customer is asking.
UK directories that served us an ordinary browser page refused at least one named AI reader on the same day.
So is the fee worth paying?
It depends entirely on whether the enquiries pay for themselves, and not at all on AI.
Look at what separates the tiers. On Checkatrade's own pricing page, the free profile already includes a business profile page and the ability to collect and display reviews. Approved adds the tick, review request tools and the printed directory. Growth adds lead volume, direct booking and higher placement inside Checkatrade's own search.1 Every one of those upgrades is about being chosen inside that platform, or about getting work sent to you. None of them changes what an outside reader can see about you.
What the fee adds
- Enquiries sent to you
- Higher placement inside that directory's own search
- A trust badge on your profile
- Booking, quoting and payment tools
- A place in the printed directory
What an outside reader sees either way
- Your business name and trade
- The area you cover
- Your phone number
- Your reviews and star rating
- Whether all of that agrees with your own site
So judge the fee the way you would judge a van livery or a local paper advert. Count the enquiries it brings, work out what they are worth, and compare that with £360 or £708 or £3,588 a year. That is an honest calculation and plenty of trades come out of it in profit. Just do not let anyone tell you the membership is what gets you into an AI answer, because our own test says you cannot even be sure the listing is readable.
What to spend the money on instead, or as well
Claim the free listings, get the facts identical everywhere, and put the effort into the two things you own outright.
The free profiles are worth having. They cost nothing, they corroborate you, and Google says how well known you are is part of local ranking, including how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.8 Claim them, fill them in properly, and make sure the phone number, trading name and area match your own site exactly. Conflicting details are the thing that makes every version of you look less certain.
Then spend the real attention on your Google Business Profile and your own website, because those are the two surfaces you can correct the same day. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found 47% would not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews and 31% would only use one rated 4.5 stars or higher, so asking every finished customer for a review does more for you than a placement upgrade.4 The same survey found 45% had used an AI tool to find a local business, up from 6% a year earlier, and that 88% of those AI users check afterwards by reading the reviews or opening the source.5 US figures, no UK equivalent published, and the behaviour is recognisable enough to act on.
Frontpage AI is a UK studio that builds and manages websites for independent service businesses, structured so that Google and AI answer engines can read, trust and name them. We work only with UK service businesses such as trades, clinics, salons and instructors, and charge from £148 per month on a 30 day rolling contract with no setup fee. Hosting, structured data, Google Business Profile upkeep, monthly reporting and ongoing changes are included, and listings upkeep is part of the work rather than a separate bill.
If you want to see what is currently being said about you across all of this, our guide to checking what AI actually says about your business walks through the test, and why your own site is now the record covers the surface a listing gets checked against.