A free listing costs nothing to create and a little to keep right. Some are worth it, most are optional, and a handful of the offers that arrive by email are not free at all.
We checked five UK directories on their own public pages on 31 October 2026. For each one we looked for a free option stated by the directory, and for a paid upgrade being sold beside it. We did not create or claim any listing for this page.
The five we checked
| Listing | What the directory says | Paid upgrade offered | Outbound link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | "Creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free" | None seen on the page | Not applicable: it appears in Google Search and Maps |
| Bing Places for Business | "Listing it on Bing for FREE" | None seen on the page | Not applicable: it appears in Bing results |
| Yell | "Get a free listing" and "Create your free business profile" | Advertising sold separately, with a sales phone number shown | Not checked: listing pages sat behind a browser challenge |
| FreeIndex | "Advertise for FREE on FreeIndex" | FreeIndex Premium is promoted | One sample profile: website link had no rel attribute (it may be a premium profile) |
| Cylex UK | Registering a business is "quick, easy, and free" | Premium Entry is sold | Not checked |
Where the last column says “not checked”, we did not check it. We found the directories’ statements on their own pages. We did not test what a free profile shows after sign-up, because that means creating a listing, and we left that to your own account.
Three we could not confirm
- Apple Business Connect: the public page did not state a price in text we could read, so we have not called it free.
- Hotfrog: the page did not render for us.
- Thomson Local: the site did not load.
An unchecked directory is not a bad one. We just have not seen it ourselves, and this page only lists what we have.
Claim in this order
Google's own page puts it plainly: creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free (Google Business Profile UK, read 31 October 2026). Get that right before you touch anything else. See Google Business for trades for what to put in it, and how to get reviews once it is live.
- Write your details down once. Business name, address or service area, phone number and website, exactly as they appear on your Google profile. Save them in one note.
- Copy from that note into every listing. A different phone number or an abbreviated name is the usual way two listings end up disagreeing.
- Choose the service area honestly. If you work out of a van across a patch, say the towns you really cover. Our guide to accurate service-area pages covers how far that should go on your own site.
- Add one real photo and a short description. Use your own work and your own words.
- Note the date you did it. Listings go stale when a number changes, and you will want to know where to fix it.
How to check a listing’s link yourself
Open the listing’s public page, right-click your website link and choose Inspect. Look at the opening tag for a rel attribute. Google’s guidance on qualifying outbound links says paid placements should use sponsored and user-generated links ugc, and that nofollow is also acceptable (Google Search Central, read 31 October 2026). A link with none of those is the ordinary kind. The directory chooses what to put there, and it can change.
That is a small point. A customer who finds your phone number correct on a listing does more for you than any link does.
Offers to ignore
Be wary of bundles of directory submissions sold for a monthly fee. The free listings above are yours to claim without paying anyone. If a paid listing tempts you, apply the test from the FAQ below: name the number you will track.
For a plumber weighing paid leads against listings and a site of their own, see plumbing leads in the UK, which includes a cost-per-won-job calculator.