What Tradify Actually Does (And What It Costs)
Tradify is a cloud-based field service management platform built for small trade businesses. It handles job scheduling, quoting, invoicing, time tracking, purchase orders, and customer management in one place. It integrates with Xero, MYOB, and QuickBooks, which makes it genuinely useful if you have a team of two or more people, or if your accountant is already on one of those platforms.
Pricing in the UK sits at around £35 per user per month on the standard plan at the time of writing. There is a 14-day free trial, but no permanent free tier. Once the trial ends, you pay or you lose access to your data in active use. For a sole trader turning over £40,000 a year, that is roughly £420 a year for software that includes a lot of features you may never touch.
Tradify's strongest use case is a small business with two to six people on the tools. Scheduling across a team, GPS tracking, and job costing across multiple operatives are all things Tradify handles well. If you are a one-person operation, you are paying for capacity you will never use.
- •Job scheduling and calendar management
- •Customer relationship management (CRM)
- •Quoting and invoicing with Xero/QuickBooks sync
- •Time tracking and job costing
- •Purchase orders and supplier management
- •Mobile app for iOS and Android
- •No permanent free tier, 14-day trial only
What TradeDoc AI Actually Does (And What It Costs)
TradeDoc AI is a document generation tool built specifically for UK tradespeople. It generates trade-specific compliance documents, certificates, job sheets, quotes, and invoices in about two minutes. The focus is narrow and deliberate: producing the paperwork you are legally or professionally required to hand to a customer, quickly and correctly.
TradeDoc AI is free for your first 100 documents a month. No credit card is required at sign-up. That is not a trial period with a countdown clock. It is a permanent free tier. For a typical sole trader who raises perhaps 15 to 30 documents a month, that limit is effectively unlimited. Pro is £15 a month, which adds your logo on PDFs, one-tap customer email, unlimited document storage beyond 90 days, and no document cap.
TradeDoc AI does not do scheduling, does not track your van, does not connect to your Xero account, and does not manage a team. It does one thing: generate professional, compliant documents for all four main UK trades from a short prompt or form input. If you need job management software, TradeDoc is not a replacement for that. If you need correct paperwork fast and free, it is.
- •CP12 landlord gas safety records
- •Electrical Installation Condition Reports (EICR)
- •Certificates for new installation and minor works (EICNC, MEIWC)
- •Plumbing and heating job sheets and service records
- •Quotes and invoices for all four trades
- •Building work completion notices and certificates
- •Free tier: 100 documents a month, no card required
- •Pro tier: £15/month for branding, email, and vault
Key Differences: A Direct Side-by-Side
The comparison below is not a marketing exercise. Both tools have genuine strengths and genuine gaps. The honest answer is that they solve different problems, and the right choice depends on whether your main pain point is organising a team or producing correct paperwork quickly.
Where Tradify wins: if you have employees or subcontractors, if you need real-time job costing across multiple operatives, or if your accountant requires a Xero sync, Tradify is the more capable platform. It is built for small business management, not just document production.
Where TradeDoc AI wins: if you are a sole trader who primarily needs to produce compliant certificates, job sheets, and quotes, and you do not want to pay £35 a month for features you will never use, TradeDoc AI is the more practical choice. The free tier is genuine, and the document output covers the compliance requirements that actually matter for your trade.
- •Price: Tradify from ~£35/month per user. TradeDoc AI free up to 100 docs/month, Pro £15/month
- •Free tier: Tradify has none (14-day trial only). TradeDoc AI has a permanent free tier
- •Document compliance focus: TradeDoc AI. Job and team management focus: Tradify
- •Scheduling and CRM: Tradify only
- •Xero/QuickBooks integration: Tradify only
- •Trade-specific certificates (CP12, EICR, EICNC): TradeDoc AI only
- •Card required to start: Tradify yes (after trial). TradeDoc AI no
- •Mobile app: Tradify yes. TradeDoc AI browser-based on mobile
When Tradify Makes Sense for a UK Tradesperson
Tradify earns its cost when you are running a small operation with moving parts. Take a scenario: a Manchester-based heating engineer with two employed engineers and a part-time office administrator. Scheduling three engineers across 12 jobs a day, logging time against each job, and producing end-of-month job cost reports is exactly the kind of task Tradify handles without you having to use three separate spreadsheets and a calendar app.
Tradify also makes sense if your customers expect a more formal quotation process with follow-up reminders, and if your accountant wants to pull invoices directly into Xero without re-keying them. The integration saves real hours at month end, and at the right scale that saving pays for the subscription.
If you are currently on Tradify and happy with it, there is no strong reason to leave. This article is for the sole trader who is being sold Tradify as the only option for professional paperwork, when in reality they may not need the full platform at all.
When TradeDoc AI Makes More Sense
The clearest case for TradeDoc AI is a sole-trader gas engineer who needs to hand a CP12 to a landlord at the end of every job, raise an invoice, and move on. That engineer does not need a CRM, does not have a team to schedule, and does not need Xero integration because their accountant works from a simple spreadsheet. Paying £35 a month for software that meets those needs is simply the wrong product.
The same logic applies to a sole-trader electrician completing periodic inspection work. The job output is an EICR, a Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate, or an Electrical Installation Certificate. Those documents need to be correctly structured to be valid. TradeDoc AI generates them in the right format, free, without requiring you to build a template from scratch in Word or buy a pad of paper certificates.
TradeDoc AI is also the practical choice for a builder who takes on small domestic jobs and needs a written quote, a contract summary, and a completion certificate without setting up an account with a full job management platform. The barrier to generating a document is low: you describe the job, the tool produces the document, you send it.
The Compliance Side That Most Comparison Articles Ignore
Both tools produce documents, but not all documents are equal from a legal standpoint. For UK tradespeople, the paperwork you hand to a customer is not just an administrative nicety. In several cases it carries a direct legal duty or exposure.
Under the Finance Act 2004 and the Income Tax (Construction Industry Scheme) Regulations 2005, sole traders working in the construction sector must handle CIS correctly. From 6 April 2026, the reformed CIS rules introduced a 'knew or should have known' test for supply-chain liability, a five-year ban on Gross Payment Status reapplication following revocation (up from one year), and penalties of up to 30 per cent of lost tax. If you are raising invoices and statements for construction clients, those documents need to reflect whether deductions apply. TradeDoc AI accounts for this in its invoice and quote outputs for builders and contractors.
From 6 April 2026, sole traders with qualifying income above £50,000 must use MTD-compatible software for quarterly digital filing under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD ITSA). The £30,000 threshold follows in April 2027. This does not mean Tradify is required. Any MTD-compatible method of keeping digital records satisfies the obligation. But it does mean that the invoices and job records you produce need to be in a retrievable digital format, not on scraps of paper. Both tools satisfy this if used consistently.
For gas engineers, the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, Regulation 36, requires that a landlord gas safety record (CP12) is issued to the tenant within 28 days of the check and to a new tenant before they move in. A handwritten record that misses required fields is not compliant. TradeDoc AI's CP12 output is structured to include all fields required under Regulation 36, which is the part that actually matters when a landlord is chasing a certificate.
A Worked Example: Sole-Trader Electrician, 20 Jobs a Month
Consider a sole-trader electrician based in Birmingham, working mostly domestic periodic inspection jobs and small installation work. In a typical month he completes 12 EICR inspections, 5 minor works jobs, and 3 new circuit installations. He needs to produce: 12 EICRs, 5 Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificates, 3 Electrical Installation Certificates, 20 invoices, and perhaps 8 quotes. That is 48 documents in a month.
On Tradify at £35 a month, he gets a job management platform with scheduling, CRM, and Xero sync. He uses the scheduling for himself (one person, so minimal value), does not use the CRM because he gets repeat work from letting agents who already have his number, and his accountant does not use Xero. He is paying £420 a year for integrations and features that do not apply to his working pattern.
On TradeDoc AI, he generates those 48 documents free. His EICRs and installation certificates are structured correctly. Under BS 7671:2018 Amendment 4:2026 (the 'Orange Book', in force from 15 October 2026), the wiring regulations have been updated with new sections including a major revision to Section 710 for medical locations, new provisions for stationary battery energy storage systems under Section 826, and Power over Ethernet requirements. TradeDoc AI's electrical certificate outputs are updated to reflect the current standard, so he is not handing over a certificate that references superseded requirements.
The saving is £420 a year for this electrician. If he ever needs scheduling or team management, he can add a dedicated tool then. For now, the free tier of TradeDoc AI covers his document workload entirely.
Common Confusion Points When Switching
The most common misconception is that Tradify and TradeDoc AI are direct competitors trying to do the same thing. They are not. Tradify is primarily a job management and business operations tool that includes document generation as one of its features. TradeDoc AI is primarily a document generation tool for trade compliance paperwork. The overlap is real but partial.
A second confusion point is around data portability. If you have been using Tradify and decide to stop, your historical job data sits in Tradify's system. You can export it, but you need to do so before you cancel. TradeDoc AI stores your documents in the vault for 90 days on the free tier, and indefinitely on Pro. Neither system holds you hostage, but it is worth downloading your records before you close any account.
A third confusion point concerns what 'free' actually means. Tradify's 14-day free trial is time-limited. TradeDoc AI's free tier is not a trial. There is no countdown. You stay on free for as long as you stay under 100 documents a month. The distinction matters because a tradesperson evaluating tools during a quiet period may not realise the Tradify trial clock is running.
Some tradespeople also assume that a free tool must produce lower-quality documents. In the case of TradeDoc AI, the document structure is the same whether you are on the free tier or Pro. The Pro tier adds branding, email sending, and extended storage. It does not add compliance content.
CIS, MTD, and Making Sure Your Paperwork Is Tax-Ready
If you work in construction, your invoices and records are not just for your customers. They are part of your tax record. The Construction Industry Scheme, governed by the Finance Act 2004 and the Income Tax (Construction Industry Scheme) Regulations 2005, requires subcontractors to have the correct deduction status reflected in their payment records. Under the 6 April 2026 reforms, HMRC can now revoke Gross Payment Status immediately if it has grounds, and the reapplication ban is five years. A sole trader who loses GPS and does not update their invoice format is creating problems.
MTD ITSA from 6 April 2026 requires sole traders earning above £50,000 to file quarterly digital updates to HMRC using compatible software. The qualifying income threshold drops to £30,000 in April 2027. This means that the documents you produce, whether quotes, invoices, or job records, need to be in a format you can pull into your quarterly filing. Keeping your documents in a digital tool rather than on paper is the practical starting point.
Neither Tradify nor TradeDoc AI is an accounting package. If you need to file MTD ITSA returns, you will need a compatible tool such as QuickBooks, Xero, FreeAgent, or a bridging software. What TradeDoc AI gives you is a clean, consistent digital record of every invoice and job document, which makes the handoff to your accountant or accounting software significantly easier than hunting through email attachments or a pad of paper invoices.
Building Safety Act Duties and Why Your Documents Matter More Than You Think
The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced competence duties that extend to all contractors and sole traders carrying out building work in England and Wales. From 27 January 2026, the Building Safety Regulator became an independent statutory body, and the competence framework it oversees applies to you as a sole trader, not just to large contractors. Competence is not just about qualifications. It is also about maintaining records that demonstrate the work was done to the required standard.
A job completion certificate or a signed-off building notice is a document that can be called upon if a dispute arises about whether work met the required standard. The Limitation Act 1980 gives a claimant six years from breach to bring a contract claim, which means a job you completed in 2025 could be disputed in 2031. Having a clear, dated, professionally formatted document from the day of the job is your best defence.
This is not a scare tactic. It is a practical reason why the quality of your paperwork matters. A document produced through TradeDoc AI is timestamped, includes the required fields for the relevant trade, and sits in a digital vault you can access. A handwritten job sheet you cannot find three years later is worth nothing in a dispute.
TradeDoc AI: The Free Starting Point for UK Sole Traders
TradeDoc AI generates a compliant CP12, EICR, installation certificate, quote, or invoice in about two minutes. It is free for your first 100 documents a month, no card required at sign-up, and all four UK trades are covered in one place. If you want your logo on the PDF and one-tap email send to the customer, Pro is £15 a month.
Sign up at tradedoc.co.uk, you land on the free tier automatically, and you can generate your first document in the time it takes to make a brew. For a sole trader who is currently paying for a job management platform they barely use, or producing certificates in Word and hoping the fields are in the right order, that is a straightforward switch.
If you decide later that you need scheduling, team management, or Xero integration, Tradify or a similar platform is a reasonable addition. But start with the thing you actually need every day: correct, professional paperwork, free.
