6 September 2026. Every quote below is from the platform's own help centre.

Oneflare checked. Airtasker doesn’t.

That’s the whole change, in one sentence.

Airtasker isn’t hiding it. It’s published, plainly, on their support site. They tell homeowners to sight the licence, search the industry database, and check the person on site is the person on the licence.

They tell tradies to go and look up their own state’s requirements.

They are not the ones checking.

To be fair to Airtasker, the badges are real. There are licence badges for electrical, gasfitting, plumbing and asbestos removal. There’s a trades insurance badge too, needing a contractor licence and a public liability certificate. All are verified with a provider and with local authorities.

They’re also optional. And Airtasker says outright that a Tasker “may still be licensed even if they don’t have a badge.”

Now compare hipages. Their own tradie help centre says this:

“We verify licences and business registrations to ensure compliance… if the work you do requires a licence, we’ll need to verify it before you can start accepting leads for those jobs.”

Two platforms, two opposite positions. On one, your licence is the price of entry. On the other, it’s a badge you have to go and claim.

The check didn’t disappear. It got handed to someone who won’t do it.

Here’s where I could give you a statistic about how few homeowners check a licence.

I’m not going to, and it’s worth saying why.

The only Australian number I can find is from 2019, and hipages commissioned it. Seven years old, no published sample size, and paid for by a company that sells licence verification. If I put that number in front of you, the first tradie who looked it up would be right to stop reading.

So here’s what I’ll say instead, and you can test it against your own last ten quotes.

Nobody has ever asked you for it.

That’s not because it doesn’t matter to them. It’s because asking a bloke standing in your kitchen to prove he’s licensed feels like calling him a liar. Most people won’t do it to your face.

So they do it the other way. Quietly. On their phone, after you’ve left, when they’re deciding between your quote and two others.

And what they find in that thirty seconds is not your licence. It’s whatever your website makes easy to find.

If that’s nothing, you haven’t failed a check. You’ve just given a nervous person no reason to pick you, at the exact moment they were looking for one.

“I’m on hipages, so this doesn’t affect me.”

Half right, and the half that’s wrong is the expensive half.

hipages verifies you. Good. That verification works inside hipages, on the leads you pay for.

Then a customer takes your name and does what everyone does. They search it. They land on your website, your Google listing, your Facebook page. They ask their phone whether you’re any good.

None of those places know that hipages checked you.

The verification you paid for doesn’t travel. It stays on the platform, attached to the leads you’re renting. The moment the conversation moves off there, you’re back to being a name and a number. And it always moves off there. That’s how you get paid.

That’s the same argument as the leads themselves, wearing different clothes. The day you stop paying, the verification stops too.

A licence number on your own website is verification you own. It works in a search result, in an AI answer, on a quote, at 9pm, and on the day you cancel every platform you’re on.

Four things. About an afternoon.

This isn’t a rebuild. It’s four pieces of text, and if someone else looks after your site you can forward this section to them as is.

1. Your licence number, as text, in your footer

In the footer, so it’s on every page. Written out, not sitting inside a logo or a photo of the certificate.

NSW Electrical Contractor Licence 123456C

A photo of your licence is invisible. Google can’t read it, an AI assistant can’t quote it, and a customer can’t copy it into a search box. It looks like proof and it functions like a decoration.

2. The state and the class, spelled out

Not “fully licensed and insured”. Every website in your trade says that, and it’s why it’s worth nothing.

Name the issuing state and the type of licence. Then link to the check itself — Service NSW publishes a builder and tradesperson licence check anyone can use.

Linking to the thing that could contradict you is the strongest move on this page. Nobody points a customer at a government database unless the answer is fine.

3. Your insurance, with a number on it

Insurer, sum insured, and the month it renews. Then: Certificate of Currency available on request.

“Fully insured” is a claim. “$20 million public liability, renewed each March, certificate on request” is a fact. One of those survives being checked.

4. The name on the licence, matching the name on the quote

This is the one that trips people, and hipages flags it too — licences have to be registered under the name on the account.

Say your licence is under your personal name and your quotes go out under a trading name. A customer who checks finds nothing. Then assumes the worst. Say so on the page. One line: Licence held by [name], trading as [business]. It takes ten seconds to write and it prevents the most damaging kind of no.

And now something has to read it that isn’t a person

Everything above has been good practice for twenty years. Here’s what changed this year.

Someone asks their phone: “is [your business] a licensed electrician on the Northern Beaches?” The answer gets built from what a machine could read on your site.

Text it can read. Not a JPEG of your certificate. Not a badge graphic. Not a PDF nobody opens.

Get it in text and you’re answerable. Leave it in an image and the honest answer a machine gives is “I can’t confirm that.” To someone deciding between three quotes, that reads exactly like a no.

That’s the whole reason to do it as text rather than a nice-looking badge. It costs the same and one version can be quoted.

Work it out on your own numbers

I don’t know how many jobs this costs you. Neither does anyone else, and anyone who gives you a percentage is guessing at you.

But you know your close rate, and you know what happens when three quotes land within $400 of each other.

When the price is line-ball, the decision moves to whoever felt safest.

Take your average job. If being the easiest one to verify wins you one extra job a quarter, put your own figure on that. On a $4,500 job it’s $18,000 a year. On a bathroom it’s more.

Put your number in, not mine. It won’t be mine.

And the cost of finding out is an afternoon of typing.

Go and look at your own site first

Before you change anything, open your website on your phone.

Search the page for your licence number. Not the words “licensed and insured” — the actual number.

If it’s not there as text, you’ve found your afternoon’s work, and nobody had to sell you anything.

Then, if you want the version that’s written down and dated. We run three questions of your choosing across four AI assistants. Twelve tests. Two pages back, plain English, with the one thing to fix first.

Free. No card. No cold call.

We ran it on our own business first and scored zero out of twelve. That log’s published and we’ve never edited it.

Questions

SOURCES

• Airtasker Support Centre — Oneflare has retired: here’s what you need to know · retirement date 30/06/2026
• Airtasker Support Centre — How do I know if a Tasker is qualified or licensed to do the work?
• Airtasker Support Centre — What are badges?
• hipages tradie help centre — Do I need a licence?
• Service NSW — Check a builder or tradesperson licence