Checkatrade Scraper — UK Tradesperson Directory Leads (No Login)

Scrape verified UK tradesperson profiles from checkatrade.com — the UK's largest vetted trades directory, covering plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers, and every other trade category.

What is Checkatrade?

Checkatrade vets and lists tradespeople across the UK, with each profile carrying a phone number, address, trade category, and a customer rating built from real reviews. It's the go-to directory homeowners use to find a vetted plumber, electrician, or builder — which makes it a strong source of structured, contactable lead data for anyone selling to or researching UK trades businesses.

• Lead generation — Build a contact list of tradespeople by trade or region for B2B outreach (tools, insurance, finance, trade accounts)
• Market research — Analyze the density and rating distribution of trades by category or postcode area
• Competitive intelligence — Track how many vetted competitors operate in a given trade or location
• Directory/aggregator building — Source structured trade listings for your own local-services product

What data does Checkatrade Scraper extract?

• Business / tradesperson name
• Trade category (e.g. "Household Water Treatment", "Condensation Control")
• Phone number
• Address, city, and postcode (outward code)
• Average rating (Checkatrade's 0-10 scale) and review count
• Full profile URL

How to scrape checkatrade.com data

Field	Type	Description
category	String (optional)	Trade keyword to narrow the walk, e.g. "plumbing", "electrician", "roofing"
location	String (optional)	Location keyword to narrow the walk
maxResults	Integer	Maximum tradesperson profiles to return (default: 100)
brightDataApiKey	String (secret)	Bright Data Web Unlocker API key — required, see below
proxyConfiguration	Object	Not used by this actor — kept for input-schema compatibility

A Bright Data Web Unlocker API key is required. Checkatrade serves a Cloudflare Turnstile "Just a moment..." challenge to plain requests. Bright Data's Web Unlocker (UK exit) solves the challenge server-side and returns the real profile page. Get a key at brightdata.com.

How discovery works: Checkatrade has no working category/location listing URL (/trades/in/london/plumbers returns 404) — every profile is discovered via the site's own XML sitemaps (/trades/sitemap/index.xml → ~48,000+ profile URLs). Profile slugs are business names, not trade-segmented paths, so category/location match loosely against the slug text (e.g. a company literally named "Giles Plumbing Services" matches category: "plumbing"). This is an honest limitation of the source data, not a bug — leave both fields empty to walk the directory unfiltered.

This is a detail-page scraper — one Bright Data request per profile. A run for a few hundred profiles finishes in minutes; a run for tens of thousands can take hours. Large runs ship with automatic resume: if Apify migrates the run to a new host mid-way, it picks up exactly where it left off instead of restarting and duplicating rows.

Output

Each tradesperson profile is returned as a structured JSON object:

{
    "businessName": "Wired Weston",
    "tradeCategory": "Electric Vehicle Charger Installation",
    "phone": "07450 564806",
    "address": "Weston-super-Mare, Somerset",
    "city": "Weston-super-Mare",
    "postcode": "BS22",
    "rating": 9,
    "reviewCount": 30,
    "url": "https://www.checkatrade.com/trades/wiredweston",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-13T09:12:00.000Z"
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Example
businessName	String	"Wired Weston"
tradeCategory	String	"Electric Vehicle Charger Installation"
phone	String	"07450 564806"
address	String	"Weston-super-Mare, Somerset"
city	String	"Weston-super-Mare"
postcode	String	"BS22" (outward code, when shown)
rating	Number	9 (Checkatrade uses a 0-10 scale)
reviewCount	Number	30
url	String	Full profile URL
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp

Cost estimate

Each profile costs one Bright Data request, so this actor uses roughly 1 compute unit per 10-15 profiles. Bright Data spend is the dominant cost for this actor — budget for it on large runs.

Limitations

• tradeCategory and postcode are not always present — some profiles ship generic location text ("Your Local Area") instead of a real postcode, and generalist profiles sometimes leave the trade category blank
• Where a profile omits the site's aggregate rating block, rating/reviewCount are derived from the individual reviews embedded on the page, which may undercount the true total review count shown elsewhere on the site
• category/location filter loosely against business-name slugs, not a structured taxonomy — see "How discovery works" above
• Data is scraped from the public website and may change without notice
• Respect Checkatrade's terms of service and use responsibly

Frequently asked questions

Do I need my own Bright Data account? Yes. Checkatrade blocks plain requests with a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge, so a Bright Data Web Unlocker API key is required to run this actor.

Why does a large run take hours? Every profile requires its own page fetch — there's no bulk listing endpoint. Set maxResults to a few hundred for a quick pull, or let a larger run continue for hours; it resumes automatically if interrupted.

Why don't category/location return an exact trade match every time? Checkatrade profile URLs are business-name slugs (e.g. /trades/rhinoplumbing), not category paths. The filter matches the keyword against that slug text, so it works best for common trade words that show up in company names.

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Disclaimer

This actor collects only publicly available business listing data from checkatrade.com for legitimate use such as lead generation and market research. Respect Checkatrade's terms of service and applicable data-protection law (including UK GDPR/PECR rules on unsolicited contact) when using the output.

Need this data on a schedule, or a custom version?

We run this scraper as a managed service for businesses: scheduled runs, deduplication, delta detection, and delivery to your inbox, Google Sheets, or API — maintenance included. We can also build a custom version with your exact fields and filters, or combine multiple sources into one feed.

See studioamba.dev/services or email hello@studioamba.dev for a free data sample. We maintain 300+ European web scrapers and answer within one business day.