UK business directories worth listing on in 2026

The UK business directories worth listing on in 2026 are a short list: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business, Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, Yelp, Facebook and Nextdoor, plus the trade or professional register your work calls for. Every one of the nine general directories offers a free listing, and we checked each sign-up page live on 20 October 2026. The rest of the long lists you will find online can wait, and one popular name is closing this month.

Say Gary runs a plumbing and heating firm in Chelmsford. A caller offers to put him on "over 500 directories" for a one-off fee, and it sounds like a bargain until he asks which ones. Nobody can.

Gary doesn't need 500. He needs the dozen or so places his customers and the map apps actually read, set up properly, with the same details on every one. This guide gives you that list, what each free listing includes, which registers matter in your trade, and which directories to leave alone. It is the "which ones, and how" companion to our guide on keeping your business details consistent, and one part of how local businesses get found on Google.

Key Takeaways

• Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business are all free to set up, and between them they cover Google Maps, Bing Maps and Apple Maps.
• Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, Yelp, Facebook and Nextdoor all offered a free UK business listing when checked on 20 October 2026, though Yell and Thomson Local both sell paid upgrades on the same pages.
• Scoot told visitors on 20 October 2026 that it "will be winding down in October 2026", so a new Scoot listing is wasted effort.
• Gas Safe Register, NICEIC, NAPIT, TrustMark and the Federation of Master Builders are competence or membership schemes, not free directories: you get listed by being assessed or joining.
• The Law Society's Find a Solicitor described itself on 20 October 2026 as "the official database of 218,195 legal professionals", and solicitors update their entry through a Law Society form.
• UK searches for "uk business directories" average 720 a month (DataForSEO, Google Ads data, pulled 20 October 2026).

Which UK business directories are worth listing on?

Nine general directories are worth a free listing for most UK trades and local service businesses, and the right trade register sits on top of those. The table shows what each one gave on 20 October 2026, who it suits, and what you need ready before you start.

Directory	Free listing?	Best for	What it needs from you
Google Business Profile	Yes, "at no charge"	Every local business	Your business details and address, then a verification step
Bing Places	Yes	Every local business	Your business details, or your Google profile to import from
Apple Business	Free to get started	Every business with customers on iPhones	Organisation details and Apple's verification of your organisation
Yell	Yes, a free Business Profile	Trades and home services	Contact details, photos of your work, customers to invite for reviews
Thomson Local	Yes, shows your phone number	Trades and local services	Contact details; expect an upgrade offer
FreeIndex	Yes, unless you choose Premium	Trades, services and freelancers	A profile, photos, opening hours
Yelp	Yes	Shops, cafés, salons, venues	A search for your business, then a claim
Facebook Page	Yes, free tools	Anyone whose customers use Facebook	Contact info, location, hours, profile and cover photos
Nextdoor Business Page	Yes	Home services that win on word of mouth	Up-to-date contact details and photos

The order matters. Do the three map listings first, because they feed the maps people use on their phones, then the general directories, then the register for your trade.

If you'd rather have this done properly once, with the same details everywhere and a website that backs them up, see how we help local businesses get found.

The three map listings to set up first

Start with the listings built into the maps on people's phones: Google, Bing and Apple. All three are free to set up.

Google Business Profile

Google's help page on adding your business says "You can add or claim your business at no charge." The steps, checked on 20 October 2026:

1. Go to business.google.com/add.
2. Click Add your business to Google.
3. Enter your business details, following the on-screen instructions.
4. Choose a verification option and complete the steps shown.

If a profile for your business already exists but nobody has verified it, you claim it instead of creating a new one. Our guide to setting up your Google Business Profile covers categories, photos and verification in detail.

Bing Places

Bing's sign-up page now lives at bing.com/forbusiness, and on 20 October 2026 it invited businesses to list "on Bing for FREE". Microsoft's own announcement of the new version, published on 3 October 2025, calls it "a free online platform" and says it has "made major improvements to how business owners import listings from Google". So once your Google profile is right, bring it across rather than typing everything twice.

Apple Business

Apple Business Connect has been folded into Apple Business. Apple's guide now opens with "Apple Business Connect is now Apple Business", and Apple's support page says Apple Business "is free to get started and includes features like built-in device management, place card customization on Apple Maps". The place card is how your business shows up in Apple Maps, with your logo, hours, photos and contact details.

To get on it, you sign up, add your location under Brands, then Locations, and verify your organisation with Apple. Have your phone number, opening hours and a website ready. Apple's guide marks the website as optional, and says a Facebook, Instagram or TikTok page can also be used.

Are free business listings in the UK really free?

Yes, the six general directories below all had a genuinely free listing on 20 October 2026. What varies is how much the free version shows and how hard the page pushes you towards paying.

• Yell. The free Business Profile puts you on Yell and lets you invite customers to review you and show photos of your work. Yell says it shares your details with Apple, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft, but it "cannot guarantee that your data will appear across all networks". The same site sells paid marketing packages, so expect to be offered one.
• Thomson Local. The home page offers "free business advertising" to "display your business phone number to customers searching in your area", with an Enhanced Listing to "unlock more". The free-listing button takes you to a partner sign-up page, which says paid listings appear above free ones in Thomson Local's own results.
• FreeIndex. Its advertiser page says listing is "completely FREE unless you upgrade to our optional Premium Package". The free profile takes photos, opening hours, offers and reviews, and FreeIndex sends nearby businesses quote requests by email and text with "no success fees".
• Yelp. Yelp's business site says "It's free to be on Yelp". You search for your business, then claim it, or add it if it is missing.
• Facebook. Meta's help page says a Page "gives you access to a suite of free professional tools". During setup you add contact info, location and hours, then profile and cover photos.
• Nextdoor. The UK business site offers a free Business Page where neighbours can leave recommendations and "Faves", and you can post updates without paying.

The free versions are enough for most trades. Pay for an upgrade only when you can see enquiries arriving from that site, and count them before you renew.

Which trade and professional registers matter for your sector?

The register that matters most is the one your customers or the law expect you to be on. Most of these are not directories you sign up to for free: they are competence schemes, regulators or trade associations, and the listing comes with passing their checks or paying to join.

Register	What it actually is	How you get on it
Gas Safe Register	The register HSE tells the public to check gas engineers against	Registration of the business, with a licence number for each engineer
NICEIC	A certification body for electrical businesses	Apply, pass an on-site assessment, pay an annual fee
NAPIT	A UKAS-accredited certification body for building services	Join a trade scheme such as electrical, heating or plumbing
TrustMark	The Government Endorsed Quality Scheme for work in and around homes	Register through one of TrustMark's licensed Scheme Providers
Federation of Master Builders	A trade association for builders	Apply to become a member; members are vetted
Law Society Find a Solicitor	The Law Society's official database of legal professionals	Solicitors and firms update their details through a Law Society form
ICAEW and ACCA directories	Searches of chartered and ACCA-qualified accountants and firms	Membership of ICAEW or ACCA
RICS Find a Surveyor	A search of RICS surveyors and surveying firms	RICS membership; firms change their listed details through the RICS Contact Centre
GDC register	The register dental professionals must be on to work in the UK	Registration with the General Dental Council

Gas. Regulation 3(3) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 says no employer shall let employees do gas work, and no self-employed person shall do it, unless the business is "a member of a class of persons approved for the time being by the Health and Safety Executive". HSE's own page on checking an engineer sends the public to the Gas Safe Register, by postcode search, by text to 85080 or by phone. For a gas engineer, this is the listing careful customers check before they let you in.

Electrical. NICEIC calls itself "the UK's largest certification body for electrical businesses". Its joining page says you must "pass an on-site assessment with one of our approved assessors", that the process typically takes seven to eight weeks, and that certified businesses pay an annual certification fee. NAPIT runs similar schemes and has a public "Find a tradesperson" search at search.napit.org.uk.

Building and home improvement. TrustMark says it "covers work a consumer chooses to have carried out in or around their home", and businesses join through Scheme Providers, the "accreditation bodies and trade associations" it licenses. The Federation of Master Builders describes itself as "the UK's largest trade association for the construction industry" and says its members are "vetted and their work inspected".

Professional services. Find a Solicitor calls itself "the official database" of legal professionals, and solicitors or firms who need to change their details complete a Law Society online form. ICAEW runs Find a Chartered Accountant, and ACCA runs both a directory of members and a search for ACCA accountancy firms. RICS runs Find a Surveyor, and on 20 October 2026 it warned visitors about "fraudulent, AI-generated websites" falsely claiming links to RICS. For dental practices, the GDC says it ensures "all dental professionals are registered before they work in the UK", and its register is updated daily.

Take Amira, an electrician in Leicester who has been NICEIC certified for six years. She changed her trading name two years ago and updated her van, her website and her Google profile. The NICEIC search still shows the old name, so a customer who checks her certificate finds a business that seems not to exist. One email to the scheme fixes it, and it is the listing customers trust most.

If your sector register and your Google profile disagree, the consistency guide shows how to settle on one version and roll it out. And if you want your website to show those memberships and match your listings word for word, see how we work with local businesses.

What about Checkatrade, Rated People and the lead sites?

Lead sites are a different kind of listing, because you pay for the enquiries. Checkatrade's joining page says you "get a regular flow of leads for a monthly cost", that on its fixed plans "Memberships are for 12 months", and that you do an ID, address and documentation check before leads unlock. Rated People's home page says it "is now part of Checkatrade Group".

They can earn their place for some trades in some areas. We have already done the sums in is Checkatrade worth it, and the wider trade-off in buying leads vs being found, so we won't repeat them here. The short version: treat a lead site as a paid channel to measure, not as a free directory listing.

Which directories should you skip?

Skip any directory you cannot check, any that is closing, and any that hands your details to others without saying who. These are the ones that failed our checks on 20 October 2026, and why.

1. Scoot. Its home page says "Scoot will be winding down in October 2026, after which this site and its listings will no longer be available." The add-listing form was still live, and it says you will be "automatically added to our network of directories including Scoot and Touch Local", with your details also open to suppliers who "may wish to provide services to businesses like yours". There's no reason to start a listing there now.
2. Cylex, Hotfrog and 192.com. All three showed bot-protection screens to our checks, so we could not read their sign-up pages and can't tell you what a free listing includes today. A copy of the Cylex home page we read through a separate fetch service showed paid products for businesses and no free sign-up we could confirm. Hotfrog's own help page says profiles are free, but the figure on that page is marked "correct as of end October 2010".
3. Any "submit to 100 directories" package. Several pages on the first page of Google for "uk business directories" on 20 October 2026 offered lists of 50 or 100 sites. If a seller cannot name each directory and show you the live listing afterwards, you can't fix those details when you move or change number.
4. Paid upgrades you cannot measure. If a directory cannot show you calls or enquiries it sent, the free version is the right one to keep.

None of this says a skipped directory harms you. It says your afternoon is better spent on the nine that work and the register that proves you are qualified.

How do you set up your directory listings in one afternoon?

Write your details down once, then copy them into each site in a set order. Most of the time goes on the first two listings; the rest are copy and paste.

1. Write a master copy. Business name exactly as it appears on your van and invoices, address or service area, one phone number, website, opening hours, a two-sentence description and a longer one. Save five good photos of your work.
2. Google Business Profile. Add or claim it, verify it, and fill in every field.
3. Bing Places. Import from your Google profile, then check what came across.
4. Apple Business. Add your location, verify your organisation, set your hours.
5. Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex. Claim or add the free listing. Decline upgrades for now.
6. Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor. Pick the ones your customers use. A plumber may get more from Nextdoor than Yelp; a café the other way round.
7. Your register. Check your entry on Gas Safe Register, NICEIC, NAPIT, TrustMark, the FMB, the Law Society, ICAEW, ACCA, RICS or the GDC, and correct any old details.
8. Keep a list. Site, login, date checked. When something changes, you work down the list.

Before you add anything, search your business name and your phone number to find listings that already exist. Claiming an old one beats creating a duplicate.

What we found when we checked every directory on 20 October 2026

We opened the sign-up page of every directory named in this post on 20 October 2026, rather than copying another list. Of the 13 general directories we started with, nine had a free listing we could confirm, one was closing, and three blocked our checks.

Result	Directories
Free listing confirmed	Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business, Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor
Closing in October 2026	Scoot
Blocked our checks, so not recommended here	Cylex, Hotfrog, 192.com

Two smaller things stood out. Three of the big names have moved address: Bing Places redirects to bing.com/forbusiness, Apple Business Connect now lives inside Apple Business, and Yelp's UK business site forwards to business.yelp.com. Old guides send you to the old addresses, which still work for now, but it is one more reason to trust a list only when it says the date it was checked.

The gas register was the hardest to read: its site showed a bot check to every tool we tried, so the gas facts above come from HSE and the regulations themselves. The legal duty doesn't depend on what a website shows a robot.

Picture Joe, a roofer in Swindon, at the end of a working week. He has two hours, his phone and a master copy of his details. Google is already done. He imports it into Bing, adds Apple, claims Yell and FreeIndex, and sets up a Nextdoor page because half his jobs come from neighbours of past customers.

By the end he has eight listings that say the same thing, and a list of where they are for the day he changes his number.

The short list, and what to do next

Most local businesses need nine general listings and one register, all checked, all saying the same thing. Everything beyond that is optional.

• Set up Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business first. All three are free.
• Add Yell, Thomson Local and FreeIndex on their free tiers, and turn down upgrades you cannot measure.
• Choose between Yelp, Facebook and Nextdoor by where your customers already are.
• Check your trade or professional register entry matches your current name, address and number.
• Leave Scoot alone, and skip any directory or package you cannot verify.

Listings tell people you exist. Your website and your Google profile are what turn that into a phone call. If you would like both working together across every area you cover, see how we help local businesses get found.