FAQ
Straight answers.
The questions other planning-letter tools ask — answered for Tradecue, without a sales call.
How much is Tradecue?
Search is free within one mile, no card. Everything else — alerts, watchlist, pipeline and letters on your own letterhead — is £29.99 a month. No VAT to add; we are not VAT registered.
Is there a contract?
No. It is a monthly subscription and you can stop it whenever you like. If you stop, you drop back to the free one-mile search rather than being locked out.
Do I have to send letters?
No. You can use Tradecue as the register, alerts and lists only, and print letters yourself. Posting through us is optional credit, not a campaign you must buy before you see jobs.
Is there a minimum letter spend?
No. Some planning-letter platforms sell a monthly campaign pack before a letter goes out. Tradecue lets you buy a round when you need one. Unused postage credit does not expire.
How much is a letter if you post it?
£1.30 a letter, all in — printing, the envelope, the stamp and postage. No VAT to add. Only to targeted addresses already on your lists (planning, a recent sale, or a poor EPC). Packs are 10 letters for £13, 20 for £26, or 50 for £65.
Do I get the homeowner’s phone number or email?
No. You get the site address and what the council published. We do not harvest personal contact details out of planning portals.
Can I search inside planning PDFs and drawings?
No. We do not OCR or keyword-search the documents on the council file. We do search and filter the proposal and decision text the council published — notes and tags on a watchlist included.
How far does a search go?
Twenty miles from any postcode we cover, not limited to one postcode. One price for as many postcodes as you wish. England only — not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Coverage lists every authority in the feed.
Do you only sell nationwide or FMB packages up front?
No. Tradecue is £29.99 a month, cancel any month. There is no FMB-only price, and no requirement to pay a year of letters up front.
Can I use it just for the data, like a research feed?
Yes. Letters are optional. The paid plan is the alerts, lists, pipeline and letter templates. Compare Tradecue with BuildScout and Planning Signal on /compare.
Is it per person or per firm?
Per account. Passing a job to your team by WhatsApp, text or email is built in, so a small outfit generally runs on one subscription.
Do I need a card to look?
No. The free one-mile search is not a trial that expires.
Whose record is authoritative?
The council’s, always. Every application we show links back to the authority’s own page. If we disagree with them, they are right.
See the tick table against BuildScout.
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