AskBaily vs MyBuilder — AI scoping + zero lead fees vs £15–70 lead fees

AskBaily and MyBuilder are both UK contractor-matching platforms, but the two solve the homeowner problem through opposite economic structures. MyBuilder, operated by MyBuilder Ltd and accessible at https://www.mybuilder.com, runs a post-a-job bidding marketplace — the homeowner describes the job, tradespeople in the area express interest, and the homeowner picks one. Tradespeople pay MyBuilder a per-introduction fee for each verified contact, typically in the £15–£70 range depending on job size, trade, and region. AskBaily runs the opposite: the homeowner has an AI-structured scope conversation with Baily, exactly one verified contractor is routed, and that contractor pays AskBaily nothing until the job actually closes. Both are transactional platforms. Only one aligns the platform's revenue with job completion rather than with form-fill volume.

How MyBuilder's bidding marketplace actually works

The MyBuilder flow is: homeowner posts a job describing the work, tradespeople in the area see the post in their dashboard, interested tradespeople pay a fee to "shortlist" themselves and unlock the homeowner's contact details, the homeowner receives two to six interested tradespeople, the homeowner picks one, and the picked tradesperson does the work. Reviews are collected after the job and are a major ranking signal for future shortlisting.

The published fee structure runs roughly £15 for very small jobs and up to £70 for larger-ticket jobs — the exact figure varies with trade category, region, and job size. Tradespeople pay that fee at the moment they shortlist, regardless of whether the homeowner ultimately chooses them. If six tradespeople shortlist and one wins the job, the five who lost have still paid MyBuilder their introduction fee. MyBuilder's own pricing guidance is published at https://www.mybuilder.com/trade and the figures quoted here should be verified against their current fee sheet because per-introduction pricing moves with demand.

The mechanic for the homeowner is reasonably clean — they describe the job, they get two to six interested tradespeople, they compare, they pick. Volume is lower than the "eight phone calls in 24 hours" flood that a shared-lead model produces in the US, because tradespeople have to pay per shortlist which naturally limits who bothers. But the structural incentive remains the same as any per-lead marketplace: MyBuilder earns on the introduction, not on job completion. Whether or not the homeowner's kitchen ever gets done, the fee has cleared.

MyBuilder's vetting is lighter than Checkatrade's. There is a signup check — identity, business registration, an insurance declaration — but the platform leans heavily on homeowner reviews as the quality signal, not on a 12-point credential vetting pass. This is a deliberate design choice: MyBuilder's value proposition is volume and reviews, not depth of pre-qualification. The homeowner is expected to verify Gas Safe, NICEIC, or TrustMark registration directly themselves if the job requires it, though MyBuilder does surface declared qualifications on the tradesperson profile.

AskBaily's 1-to-1 matched model for the UK

AskBaily is structured in the opposite direction. A homeowner opens a conversation with Baily, an AI built on Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash with UK-specific domain tools layered on top. Baily conducts a scope interview: project type, scope boundaries, budget range, timeline, and the specific regulatory surface the project triggers — Building Regulations Part P for electrical work, Part L for energy performance, Part G for water, Gas Safe requirements, the Party Wall Act 1996 for adjoining-owner scopes, Article 4 Direction checks in conservation areas, and listed-building consent where the property is Grade I or Grade II.

The scope goes to AskBaily's UK matching engine, which runs four filters. First, trade and city match — London, Edinburgh, Manchester today, expanding through Phase 8 Wave 2. Second, live regulatory-body verification. For a gas engineer, the check hits the Gas Safe Register at https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk at the moment of match. For an electrician, NICEIC or NAPIT approved-contractor status is confirmed live. Third, insurance currency — public liability, employer's liability, professional indemnity where design is in scope. Fourth, prior-project-type fit against the contractor's completed portfolio.

A failure on any of those four filters aborts the match. One contractor is introduced. Not six bidders. One. There are zero lead fees paid by that contractor. AskBaily's revenue comes from an 8–15% tiered take-rate on the closed job price, paid by the contractor on completion.

The economic contrast

The per-introduction fee is not a homeowner-visible line item on MyBuilder, but it does not disappear. A tradesperson paying £40 per shortlist with a 25% win rate needs to recover £160 of shortlist cost per closed job, not counting shortlists where the homeowner picked no one at all. That £160 gets built into the quote.

On a £800 bathroom tile refresh, £160 of embedded lead cost is 20% of the quote and is significant. On a £5,000 bathroom refit, it is 3% and manageable. On a £40,000 kitchen extension, it rounds to a tenth of a percent. The economics of per-lead fees favour large-ticket jobs; for small jobs, the homeowner is paying a surprisingly material marketplace tax through the tradesperson's quote. This is not a moral critique of MyBuilder. It is how per-introduction marketplaces work in every vertical, including legal services, insurance, and home improvement.

AskBaily inverts that. A contractor pays AskBaily only on closed revenue, which means a contractor on a slow month pays nothing. The fee structure is tiered at 8% to 15% depending on job size and contractor tenure, and it is baked into the contractor's finance model, not into a line item of per-introduction cost that the contractor has to amortise across a pipeline of both wins and losses.

The second-order effect is that AskBaily's tiered take-rate moves in the same direction as homeowner interest — AskBaily only makes money if the homeowner's job actually gets done, which means the platform's incentive is alignment with project completion rather than with form-submission throughput. MyBuilder makes money at the moment of introduction, which means the platform's growth metric is introductions per postcode. Both are legitimate business models. Only one has incentive alignment with job completion.

Side-by-side comparison

MyBuilder's review depth and secondary-city coverage are real advantages. The platform has built strong tradesperson supply in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, and the North West generally — places where Checkatrade's density is weaker and where AskBaily's Wave 1 coverage outside Manchester has not yet reached. For a homeowner in Wakefield or Stoke looking for a bathroom fitter in 2026, MyBuilder is likely the strongest tool available. For a homeowner in London or Edinburgh looking for a £40,000 kitchen extension with Party Wall and Building Regs complexity, AskBaily's structural model is a better fit.

The matching contrast — 1-to-1 vs bid-and-pick

MyBuilder's "shortlist and pick" model is genuinely lower-friction than American shared-lead marketplaces like Angi, because the homeowner gets two to six interested tradespeople rather than eight. The homeowner does still have to compare, still has to describe the job two to six times on initial calls, still has to triangulate quotes that are not directly comparable when the job has scope ambiguity, and still has to perform whatever credential due diligence the job requires (Gas Safe, NICEIC, TrustMark, insurance certificates, Companies House).

AskBaily compresses all of that into the AI scope conversation. Baily handles the job description once, pre-verifies credentials, and introduces one contractor. The homeowner's time from first form-fill to sitting on a sofa with a briefed contractor in front of them is materially shorter on AskBaily than on MyBuilder for scope-ambiguous jobs. For scope-clear jobs — "install a combi boiler, same location, 24kW, Worcester-Bosch" — MyBuilder's bid-and-pick flow is arguably faster because the quotes are directly comparable and the homeowner has agency.

The verification contrast

MyBuilder's credential verification at signup is lighter than Checkatrade's. The tradesperson declares their Gas Safe or NICEIC number and provides insurance documentation, and MyBuilder does sanity-check these at signup, but the platform's primary quality signal is homeowner reviews, not deep pre-qualification. The homeowner is implicitly expected to verify credentials directly — Gas Safe's own website has a public search tool, NICEIC has a public roster, and the Companies House free lookup is open to anyone.

AskBaily's matching engine calls the regulator's register API at the moment of match. If a gas engineer let their Gas Safe registration lapse last week, a MyBuilder tradesperson profile may still show "Gas Safe registered" until the next refresh, while AskBaily's live check will fail the match and route to a different verified engineer. Part P self-certification under Building Regulations Schedule 3 depends on current competent-person scheme membership — the register is updated in real time by NICEIC, NAPIT, and ELECSA — and AskBaily's design treats that live register as the source of truth rather than a cached badge.

TrustMark, the government-endorsed quality scheme at https://www.trustmark.org.uk, works the same way. AskBaily's matching engine treats TrustMark registration as a live-queried attribute, not a cached one.

The scope coverage contrast

MyBuilder's sweet spot is single-trade and small-multi-trade jobs in the £200–£15,000 range where the job description is clear enough for a tradesperson to quote without an in-depth scope conversation. Bathroom refits, garden walls, flat-roof replacements, kitchen fitting where the cabinets are already chosen, rewires, central heating swaps. MyBuilder has strong supply across these categories in most UK cities and particularly strong depth in secondary cities where Checkatrade's density is weaker.

AskBaily's sweet spot is the £25,000+ renovation market where scope structure is the hard part. A side-return extension in Islington with Party Wall obligations on both adjoining owners. A basement dig in Edinburgh's New Town where Grade II listed status blocks most façade modifications and Conservation Area consent shapes the external plant locations. A full Victorian refurbishment in Chorlton, Manchester where the work package includes electrical rewire, Part L-compliant insulation upgrade, new MVHR under Part F, gas combi replacement under Gas Safe, and structural steelwork under Part A. These jobs are not bid-and-pick jobs — they are scope-and-match jobs, and a bidding marketplace is structurally the wrong tool for them.

The homeowner experience contrast

On MyBuilder, the homeowner is the project manager. They post the job, compare two to six interested tradespeople, pick one, manage the relationship, and handle any disputes directly with the tradesperson after the fact. MyBuilder's customer service sits behind the platform, not in the middle of the project relationship.

On AskBaily, the AI scoping layer and the 1-to-1 match compress the management overhead. Baily handles scope definition. The verified contractor arrives already briefed. If the project goes off the rails, AskBaily's L2 dispute mediator agent sits in the middle of the conversation — not as a replacement for proper contracts, but as a structured first-response mediation layer backed by a 1.5% trust-and-safety reserve on every closed job.

Neither experience is universally better. MyBuilder is better for homeowners who enjoy managing the process and want agency on tradesperson choice. AskBaily is better for homeowners who want scope and matching done for them and are trading some of that agency for time saved.

Regulatory-specialist capability

UK Building Regulations are the same whichever platform a homeowner uses — Parts A, B, E, F, G, L, M, P of the Approved Documents, plus the separately-notified registration stacks (Gas Safe, NICEIC, NAPIT, ELECSA, MCS, TrustMark, FMB), plus London's Party Wall Act 1996 obligations, plus Scotland's parallel Building Standards regime under local authority Verifiers, plus Article 4 Directions in conservation areas, plus listed-building consent.

MyBuilder surfaces declared qualifications on tradesperson profiles. AskBaily's scoping engine identifies the specific regulatory triggers of the project during the Baily conversation and then matches only to a contractor whose verified portfolio includes that exact regulatory pattern. For a Victorian rear extension where Part L airtightness drives a mechanical ventilation requirement under Part F, and where the floor structure modification triggers Part A, AskBaily matches to a contractor who has demonstrably cleared Building Control on that exact combination — not to a general builder who happens to be available.

Hostility rating — and who should use what

We rate MyBuilder as hostility level 2: the products compete in the same UK contractor-matching category but for largely non-overlapping job types. MyBuilder is primarily a single-trade and small-multi-trade marketplace; AskBaily is primarily a renovation matching engine at £25,000+. They share the phrase "find a builder" and diverge everywhere else.

Use MyBuilder when: the job is single-trade or small-multi-trade in the £200–£15,000 range, the job description is clear enough that two to six tradespeople can quote without a deep scope conversation, the homeowner wants agency on tradesperson choice and enjoys the comparison process, the postcode is in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, or the North West where MyBuilder's density is particularly strong, or the homeowner already has MyBuilder tradespeople they trust and want to rehire.

Use AskBaily when: the job is a renovation at £25,000+ with real scope questions, Building Regs apply, the property is in a conservation area or is listed, a Party Wall Award is likely, the homeowner does not want to be the project manager, or the homeowner wants AI-driven scope structure before talking to anyone. London, Edinburgh, and Manchester have live AskBaily partner-GC coverage as of 2026-04-20; other UK cities follow in the Phase 8 Wave 2 rollout through 2027.

Citations and verify-for-yourself

MyBuilder's per-introduction fee model is published at https://www.mybuilder.com/trade and the details of what tradespeople pay per category are disclosed in their pricing guidance. Gas Safe Register membership can be independently verified at https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk. NICEIC approved-contractor status at https://www.niceic.com. TrustMark at https://www.trustmark.org.uk. Building Regulations are published by the UK government at https://www.gov.uk/building-regulations-approval and the Scottish equivalent at https://www.gov.scot/policies/building-standards. Party Wall Act 1996 guidance is at https://www.gov.uk/party-walls-building-works. AskBaily's 1-to-1 routing, live verification, and take-rate are codified in the AskBaily Terms of Service and in the Phase 7.N matching algorithm specification.

Frequently asked questions

Does MyBuilder charge the homeowner? No. Posting a job is free. Tradespeople pay the per-introduction fee when they shortlist themselves for a specific job. That fee is absorbed into the quote the homeowner ultimately receives, to a degree that depends on the tradesperson's overall win rate and job-size mix.

Is MyBuilder reliable? For appropriately-scoped jobs in the £200–£15,000 range, yes — the review system has 15+ years of depth, the tradesperson supply is strong in most UK cities, and the per-introduction fee naturally filters out spam. For £25,000+ renovations with regulatory complexity, the structural model is a worse fit than a scope-first matching platform regardless of individual tradesperson quality.

Is AskBaily available outside London, Edinburgh, and Manchester? Not yet. Phase 8 Wave 1 goes live across those three UK cities alongside Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Auckland, and Dubai. Additional UK cities — Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow — are staged in Wave 2 through 2027. For postcodes outside current coverage, MyBuilder or Checkatrade are the obvious alternatives.

What if I've already had a bad MyBuilder experience? AskBaily is not a retry of MyBuilder's matching with a different brand on top. It is a structurally different model — AI scope, 1-to-1 routing, live regulator-register verification, and revenue aligned with closed jobs rather than with introductions. A prior bad experience with a bid-and-pick marketplace does not predict AskBaily outcomes because the underlying match mechanic is different.

How does AskBaily verify Gas Safe and NICEIC at match time? The UK matching engine hits the Gas Safe Register API and the NICEIC approved-contractor roster at the exact moment a homeowner is being matched. Lapsed or withdrawn registrations fail the match outright and the engine routes to a different verified contractor. Same pattern for NAPIT, ELECSA, MCS, and TrustMark.

Relevant further reading on AskBaily: /for-pros/london, /for-pros/manchester, /for-pros/edinburgh, /safety/london, /methodology, /regulatory/uk-building-regs.