Buying guides · Comparison · 7 min read

Tradify alternatives for UK trades in 2026

People search for alternatives for three reasons: price at team size, a missing feature, or the nagging feeling the admin should be doing itself by now. Here is an honest map, including when to just stay put.

By Connor McKay, founder of Trade PA · 30 July 2026

First, credit where due: Tradify is a good product. It is mature, reliable, well supported and widely used across UK trades, and if it is working for you and the bill feels fair, the boring correct advice is to stay. Switching software costs real evenings.

But there are three moments where the search for an alternative is rational, and they point at different answers.

Reason one: the per-user maths stopped working

Per-user pricing is kind to sole traders and unkind to growth. The month you add an apprentice, a second spark and someone part-time on the books, a per-seat bill quietly doubles or triples. If this is your trigger, compare against flat-rate models. Trade PA charges a flat £89 a month for a team of up to five with every feature included, and £129 for up to ten, so the price of adding a person is zero. Do your own maths at the team size you expect to be next year, not this month, and check every vendor's current pricing directly because it all moves.

Reason two: a specific missing capability

The gaps that most often send UK Tradify users looking are trade-specific paperwork and automation depth. If your pain is CIS statements every month, Domestic Reverse Charge invoices that need the wording right, or RAMS for every commercial job, look at the UK-native options: Trade PA drafts RAMS with AI for you to check and sign, applies the CIS deduction you have set for each subcontractor, and produces DRC invoices with the correct treatment you have configured per client. Powered Now has also always taken UK paperwork seriously and is worth your shortlist for certificates in particular. If instead your gap is customer-facing polish on iPhones, ServiceM8 is the strongest at on-the-way texts and slick client comms, with the caveats that it is Australian-first and iOS-centred.

Reason three: you suspect the admin should be doing itself

This is the structural difference between generations of trade software. Tradify, ServiceM8 and Powered Now are all systems you operate: well-designed forms that a human fills in. Trade PA is built the other way round: you tell Eve what happened and she does the forms. "Invoice Khan £580 for the second fix" is the whole workflow. She reads your inbox too, filing supplier invoices against the right job and drafting replies for your approval. If your frustration is not with Tradify's screens but with the fact that you are the one in front of them every evening, that is the difference to test.

The honest comparison table

How to switch without losing your weekends

1. Export everything first. Customers, open quotes, unpaid invoices, job history. Do this before you cancel anything.
2. Run both for a fortnight. New jobs go in the new system; old invoices get chased from the old one until paid.
3. Test the thing that made you switch. If it was CIS, run a real month-end. If it was voice, do a real Friday from the van. Trials are for your worst week, not your best.
4. Only then cancel. And keep your export files regardless.

Want the detailed feature-by-feature version? Our dated page on Trade PA vs Tradify keeps score properly, including a section on what Tradify does better. For the wider field, see our 2026 roundup of the best UK trade apps.