Tradify vs Gas Engineer Software: Honest Comparison

If you're sat comparing Tradify and Gas Engineer Software trying to work out which one's worth £30 a month of your hard-earned, you're already further down the road than 80% of the trade. You've worked out the notepad isn't cutting it anymore. You've narrowed the field from twenty tools to two. Now you just need someone to tell you straight which one to pick.

Here's the problem. Every review site comparing tradify vs gas engineer software for sole trader plumbers is written by someone who's never been under a sink at half past four with a customer ringing about a leak. So you get a feature-by-feature list, a star rating, and an affiliate link - and you're no closer to knowing which one will actually save you time on a Tuesday.

This is the comparison written for the way you actually work. Tradify vs Gas Engineer Software, head-to-head, sole trader plumber edition. What they each do well, where they each fall over, what they cost in the UK in 2026, and - the bit nobody else says out loud - what most plumbers should run instead of either of them. No fluff, no affiliate angle, just the honest call.

The Short Answer Before You Read Any Further

If you're a Gas Safe registered plumber who works mostly on boilers, gas certs, and landlord renewals - Gas Engineer Software is the better fit. It was built by ex-gas engineers, the compliance side is baked in, and the LGSR forms are properly done.

If you're a general plumbing sole trader doing a mix of bathrooms, leaks, and the occasional boiler swap - Tradify is the better fit. It's broader, the diary is cleaner, the quoting is faster, and the UK support is more responsive when things go sideways.

Both cost roughly the same. Both run on your phone. Neither one will magically fix the problem most plumbers actually have - which is the bit we'll come back to at the end.

The Real Cost of Picking the Wrong Software

Before we get into the comparison, here's the bit the spec-sheet articles never put in numbers. The wrong software isn't just a wasted £30 a month - it's the hours and the jobs you lose while you're trying to get it to work the way your business actually runs.

Cost	Per month	Per year
Subscription you barely use	£30	£360
4 hrs/month config and learning (at £55/hr)	£220	£2,640
1 missed enquiry/week the tool didn't catch (avg ticket £180)	£720	£8,640
1 no-show/month the tool didn't remind	£180	£2,160
Total	£1,150	£13,800

Read that last number again. £13,800 a year is what the wrong-tool decision actually costs a sole trader plumber - not the £360 sticker price. The subscription is a rounding error. The real cost is the gap between what the tool promises and what it actually does once you're in the van and the leads are coming in.

That's not a rounding error. That's why this decision matters more than the marketing makes it look.

Tradify - What It Actually Does Well (And Where It Falls Over)

Tradify is a New Zealand-built job management platform now used widely by UK trades. It's built for the broader trade market - sparkies, joiners, plumbers, builders - rather than gas-specific work.

Strengths for sole trader plumbers:

• Clean diary view. Drag-and-drop scheduling on the phone, colour-coded jobs, easy to see what's confirmed and what's provisional.
• Fast quoting. Templated line items, decent UK pricing tools, quotes go out in under 5 minutes if you've set it up properly.
• Solid Xero / QuickBooks integration. If you're already on UK accounting software, Tradify slots in without much pain.
• UK support. Phone and email response is decent during UK hours - not always the case with international tools.

Where it falls over for plumbers:

• No gas-specific compliance. No built-in LGSR (Landlord Gas Safety Record) forms. You can build a template, but it's not certified, and it doesn't handle the cert renewal cycle.
• No customer-facing booking. Customers can't book themselves in. You catch the lead by phone or email, then you put it in Tradify.
• Reminders need configuring. Booking confirmations and reminders are there but they don't fire automatically out of the box - you have to set up the triggers.

Cost in the UK (2026): £29 + VAT per month for a sole trader, £45 for a 2-3 person team. Free 14-day trial.

Best for: General plumbing sole traders who do a mix of work and want one tool for diary, quoting, and invoicing.

Gas Engineer Software - What It Actually Does Well (And Where It Falls Over)

Gas Engineer Software is built specifically for Gas Safe registered engineers in the UK. The clue's in the name - this isn't a general trade tool that grew a gas module. The whole platform is built around the compliance, certification, and reminder cycles that gas work needs.

Strengths for sole trader plumbers:

• Proper LGSR forms. Landlord Gas Safety Records done on the phone, signed digitally, emailed to the customer, archived for the legal 2-year requirement.
• CP1, CP2, CP12 and CP14 forms. All the standard gas certificates built in, with the right fields and signing flow.
• Automatic gas cert reminders. Annual cycles tracked automatically. When a landlord's cert is due to expire, the customer gets the reminder - and so do you. This alone is worth its weight in gold if you've got any landlord work. (More on why this matters in our piece on the 5 admin tasks every plumber should automate.)
• Built by ex-engineers. The product decisions reflect the way gas work actually happens, not the way office software thinks it happens.

Where it falls over for plumbers:

• Heavier than Tradify if you're not doing gas work. The compliance side is the whole point - if 90% of your work is bathrooms and leaks, you're paying for features you don't touch.
• Less polished diary. The scheduler works, but it's not as smooth as Tradify's.
• Quoting is functional, not fast. You can do quotes, but it's not the standout part of the product.

Cost in the UK (2026): £29 + VAT per month per engineer. Free trial available.

Best for: Gas Safe sole trader plumbers with significant landlord and boiler work, where the compliance side is the daily bottleneck.

Tradify vs Gas Engineer Software - Head to Head

Feature	Tradify	Gas Engineer Software
Built for	General trades	UK gas engineers specifically
Diary / scheduler	Excellent	Good
Quoting speed	Excellent	OK
Invoicing	Excellent	Good
LGSR / gas certs	Not built in	Built in, signed digitally
Cert reminders	Manual setup	Automatic by cert expiry
Customer-facing booking	No	No
Missed call capture	No	No
Xero / QuickBooks	Native integration	Native integration
UK support	Phone + email, UK hours	Phone + email, UK hours
Monthly cost (sole trader)	£29 + VAT	£29 + VAT

The headline: similar price, similar feel, fundamentally different fits. Tradify wins on breadth and polish. Gas Engineer Software wins on gas-specific compliance and the automatic certification cycle.

Neither one solves the bigger problem - which is the gap between the job management software handling what you put into it, and the leads, calls, and follow-ups that never make it that far in the first place.

The Bit Nobody Tells You About Either of These Tools

Here's what we see again and again when we audit plumber setups, including a couple of guys I work with locally around Glasgow. The plumber signs up to Tradify or Gas Engineer Software, uses it for quoting and invoicing, and leaves the rest untouched. The cert reminders never get switched on. The booking confirmations don't fire. The follow-ups on unanswered quotes are still on the kitchen table where you wrote them last Tuesday.

The £30 a month tool is doing maybe £8 of actual work. The leak hasn't moved. And the bit that's actually costing you jobs - the missed call that goes to voicemail while you're under a sink, the quote that sits unanswered for two weeks because nobody chased it, the landlord who let his gas cert lapse because the reminder went to your inbox and not theirs - none of that is what either of these platforms is built to fix.

The honest answer for most UK sole trader plumbers isn't Tradify or Gas Engineer Software. It's a custom automation system built around the way your specific business runs - missed call replies, automatic quote follow-ups, booking confirmations, gas cert reminders to the customer not just to you - all running in the background while you're on the tools. (We broke this down in detail in our piece on the best plumbing software UK guide.)

That's what The AI Income Project does. I'm based in Glasgow, I work with sole trader plumbers across the UK, and we build the automation system that handles what these off-the-shelf tools promise but rarely deliver. You don't log in to anything. It just runs.

If you want to know which bits of your business would benefit most from automation - and whether the £30 a month you'd spend on Tradify or Gas Engineer Software is the right call for your situation - take the free 2-minute audit. Ten short questions, one honest result, no call required.

How to Choose Between Tradify and Gas Engineer Software

The decision comes down to four honest questions:

1. What's the actual mix of your work?
If more than 40% is gas work or landlord work, Gas Engineer Software pays for itself on the LGSR side alone. If it's under 40%, Tradify is the better all-rounder.

2. Where's your bottleneck right now?
If quoting is slow and you're losing jobs to the response time, Tradify's quoting is the better fit. If it's gas cert tracking and missed renewals, Gas Engineer Software fixes that specifically.

3. What's already in your stack?
Both integrate with Xero and QuickBooks. If you're already paying for a UK accounting platform, factor in which one plays nicest with what you've got.

4. Are you growing past sole trader?
Tradify scales smoothly to small teams - 2 to 5 plumbers - with proper user permissions. Gas Engineer Software is built more around the individual engineer model.

If you're still on the fence after that, the truthful answer is that the software decision is less important than the system you build around it. Both will do a passable job. Neither will turn a leaky business into a leak-proof one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tradify or Gas Engineer Software better for a UK sole trader plumber?

Depends on your work mix. If you do a lot of gas work, landlord renewals, and CP12 certificates, Gas Engineer Software is the stronger fit because the compliance is built in. If you're a general sole trader doing bathrooms, leaks, and the occasional boiler, Tradify is the cleaner all-round tool. Price is roughly the same, so the choice is purely about the type of work you do.

Can I do LGSR landlord gas safety records in Tradify?

Not properly. You can build a template, but it's not a certified gas form and it doesn't track the annual renewal cycle. If LGSRs are part of your weekly work, this alone is reason enough to pick Gas Engineer Software instead - or run a separate gas certs tool alongside Tradify.

How much do Tradify and Gas Engineer Software cost in the UK in 2026?

Both come in at around £29 + VAT per month for a sole trader plumber. Tradify offers a 14-day free trial, Gas Engineer Software offers a free trial too. Watch for VAT on the listed price, and check whether the cheapest plan includes the features you actually need - some integrations sit on higher tiers.

Do either of them send missed-call replies or quote follow-ups automatically?

Neither does, properly. Both have email and SMS templates you can fire manually, but neither catches a missed call and replies within 60 seconds, and neither chases unanswered quotes on a sequence without you remembering to set up each one. That's the gap most plumbers don't realise until they've been using the software for 3 months.

What's the alternative to Tradify and Gas Engineer Software for a sole trader plumber?

The honest alternative for most plumbers is a custom-built automation system that handles the bits these tools don't - missed call replies, automatic quote follow-ups, gas cert reminders to the customer, booking confirmations - tied to whatever job management tool you already use. That's the model we run at The AI Income Project. Done-for-you, monthly retainer, no software to learn. See more in our breakdown of the 5 admin tasks every plumber should automate.

This isn't theory - we build exactly these systems for UK plumbers every day. One of our clients was losing an estimated £10,900 a year to slow enquiry responses and missed follow ups before we built their automation stack. Now it runs on its own while they're on the tools. If you want to know what your number looks like, take our free 2 minute audit and we'll show you exactly where the money is leaking: theaiincomeproject.com/audit

Written by Alex McVicar