Guide
Trade job management software cost: what a UK business pays
Updated
Four pricing shapes are in play in this market, and picking the wrong one costs more than picking the wrong software.
The four shapes
- Per user
- Tradify (£34 to £44), Gas Engineer Software (from £18), Powered Now (£28 to £40), Joblogic (from £45), Okappy (£29 to £39 plus VAT). Cheap for one person, linear forever. At ten users a £40 product is £400 a month, which is a real line in a small builder's overhead.
- Per business
- YourTradebase at £29 a month with additional users at £15. The second user is a known number rather than a doubling, which is the shape that suits a husband-and-wife operation with two people on site.
- Per job volume
- ServiceM8, free for 30 jobs a month with one user, then £25, £59, £119 and £269 a month for 50, 150, 500 and 1500 plus jobs, with unlimited users on every paid plan. A five-van firm doing a hundred jobs a month pays less than a two-van firm doing four hundred, which is the right way round for some businesses and the wrong way round for others.
- Per band
- Not common at this end of the market, but it appears as soon as you look at the products aimed at larger operations, where the price steps at 5, 10 and 15 users rather than rising per person.
Every figure above was read on the supplier's own pricing page on 15 August 2026. VAT treatment varies and several suppliers do not state it at all: check before you budget.
The costs that sit outside the subscription
- Text messages. Tradify charges 10p per message for quotes, invoices and appointment reminders, ServiceM8 5p per SMS beyond the plan allowance. On two hundred reminders a month that is real money, and it is the feature customers notice most.
- Onboarding and training. Okappy publishes training from £250 and configuration from £100. Products aimed at bigger firms often carry four-figure onboarding, so ask early rather than at contract stage.
- Tier creep. The feature you are buying the software for is frequently one tier above the price you were quoted. Certificates sit on Tradify's Pro tier and Powered Now's Professional tier; adding your team is itself a Professional feature on Powered Now.
- Card fees. Every product here that takes payments does it through a payment provider, and those fees are separate from the subscription in all cases.
What it is worth
There is no published market figure for what UK trades save by moving off paper; any page giving one has invented it. Size it with your own arithmetic: hours a week on quoting, chasing and invoicing, and what an hour of your time on the tools is worth.
Count too the jobs a year you lose because a quote went out three days late. If a £34 per user product removes two hours a week of admin, it has paid for itself before you get to the software's other claims.
Start with the trial, not the demo
Five of the eight products state you can start a trial without giving a card number, and four state there is no minimum term. That is unusually buyer-friendly for business software, so use it. Put two products on the same real job in the same week, send both quotes, and see which one you actually opened on site.
The one you dread opening will not get used no matter what the feature table says.