About KiwiChecked
An independent New Zealand comparison site for local services, built on records you can check yourself.
Why this exists
Searching for a tradesperson mostly returns two things: businesses advertising themselves, and lists assembled by someone who never checked anything. Neither tells you whether the person turning up at your house holds a current licence.
That information is public. It sits in registers maintained by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, the Electrical Workers Registration Board, the Building Practitioners Board and others. It’s just scattered, awkward to search, and nobody joins it up with the reviews and company records that tell the rest of the story.
That’s the whole idea here: join it up, and show our working.
How it’s funded
Businesses can pay for a labelled listing or to sponsor a category. They cannot pay for a score, a ranking, or a recommendation. Our editorial policy sets out how that separation is enforced, and our methodology shows exactly how every score is calculated.
Where we are
We started with licensed trades, because that is where the public records are richest and the difference between a checked and an unchecked business matters most. We have since added categories with no licence register at all: painters, cleaners, accountants. A directory that only covers licensed trades is not much of a directory.
Those categories are not presented as the same thing, and there are three of them rather than two. Where we hold a register we check it and say so.
Where a register exists but we do not check it, the page says so and names the register, rather than implying a check we never made. That covers dentists, who are registered with the Dental Council, and building work that needs a consent, which requires a Licensed Building Practitioner.
Where none exists, the page says that outright, shows no licence column, and is scored on public reviews and Companies Office registration instead. There is no register of hairdressers or accountants in New Zealand. Saying “verified” everywhere would make the word meaningless where it was earned.
Contact
Corrections, questions and claims: hello@kiwichecked.co.nz