You set the budget. Businesses compete.

Post your job with a budget. Local businesses compete by offering more value at your price — not by bidding lower. Pick the best offer and pay. OutValue holds your money and releases it to the business when you approve the completed work, or automatically 48 hours after their completion report if you don't respond.

OutValue is a buyer-led marketplace. Instead of you searching and requesting quotes, you post your job with your budget and local businesses compete to offer you more value at your price. A business cannot bid below your budget, so nobody wins your job by undercutting — they win it on what they include. You choose which offer to accept, and you never pay more than the offer you picked.

Posting a job is free, and there's no booking fee or service charge on top of the offer you accept. We're paid by the business — a 12% commission taken out of their payout after a job completes.

The price on an offer is the price you pay. Nothing is added at checkout. Whether that price has VAT inside it depends on the business: one that's VAT registered prices its VAT into the offer and shows it as a separate line, and one that isn't registered doesn't charge any. Either way, the number on the offer is the number that leaves your account.

Not at the moment you book. Your payment is held by OutValue from that point, and released to the business when you approve the completed work — or automatically 48 hours after the business submits its completion report, if you have neither approved nor raised a dispute by then. So the 48 hours after a completion report is the window to act in. OutValue holds these funds in its own business account with Stripe — they are not held in a segregated client account and are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Raise a dispute before the 48-hour auto-release window closes. That stops the payment being released, and OutValue reviews the evidence from both sides and decides between releasing the payment, a partial refund, or a full refund. We aim to decide within 72 hours, and your money stays held until that decision is made. Your statutory rights against the business under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are unaffected.

The business you picked — not OutValue. We introduce you and hold the payment until the work is done, but the job itself is an agreement between you and that business, and your consumer rights apply to them as the people doing the work. We don't carry out the work, employ the tradespeople or set their prices.

Every business completes an onboarding process in which it gives us its business details and company or UTR number, and uploads a public liability insurance certificate. These are details the business supplies about itself — OutValue does not warrant that a business's insurance is current or that it is competent, and your contract for the work is with the business, not with us. A business's first three offers are held for manual review before any customer sees them, and reviews on the platform can only come from jobs that actually completed.

OutValue covers cleaning, handyman work, gardening and landscaping, painting and decorating, plumbing, electrical work, and removals and delivery across the UK.

Yes. OutValue operates across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. When you post a job, your postcode is used to match you with local businesses in your area.