Where UK therapists actually get clients: platforms and directories compared

Finding clients in private practice can often feel like an entirely separate career from actually being a therapist. When you search for guidance on where UK practitioners build their caseloads, almost every article you find is aimed at an American audience, quoting US dollars and citing platforms that do not operate here. You might have noticed a gap in the market for a straightforward, UK-focused breakdown. This article is the UK version. It is written specifically for UK-based counsellors and psychotherapists trying to decide where to allocate their marketing budget.

The honest reality, which you will spot quickly in the data below, is that there are two distinctly different bets available to a practitioner, and they fail in very different ways. A subscription directory is a bet you pay up front: you pay the exact same monthly fee whether you receive thirty enquiries or absolutely none. A commission platform, by contrast, is a bet you pay on outcome: it costs you nothing until a client actually books and pays for a session. Which model is right for your practice depends almost entirely on one crucial metric that nobody publishes, which is how many enquiries a listing actually produces.

Below, we compare the dominant platforms, the genuine costs, and the underlying arithmetic of building a UK caseload. We are one of the platforms being compared, and you should discount our opinion accordingly. Our goal here is simply to present the verified figures so you can make an informed choice for your practice.

Platform comparison table

Before we break down the mechanics of each platform, here is the raw pricing data. Every competitor figure, price and policy listed in this article was verified directly from the named platform's live website on 28 July 2026. We have not estimated or updated any figures beyond what was published on that date.

Understanding these costs in isolation is only half the picture. The structure of the agreement, the cancellation terms, and the visibility of your profile all dictate whether these fees represent a solid investment or a persistent drain on your private practice income.

Psychology Today

Psychology Today is arguably the most recognised name in the directory space. It charges a recurring fee of £19.95 per month, and it takes no commission on the sessions you book. There are no fixed plans or contracts, meaning therapists can cancel at any time. When we checked their site, they were offering a promotion of six months free for new members.

To build trust with clients, the platform uses a "Verified" symbol to mark confirmed credentials, but Psychology Today explicitly states that providers may be selectively included without the Verified seal. The primary challenge with this platform is scale and saturation. Its own London page states there are over 3,000 counsellors in London alone, noting an average cost per session of £80. Standing out in a pool of three thousand peers requires careful profile optimisation.

Despite the crowded marketplace, the platform leans heavily on its search engine dominance. Its own signup page claims the directory appears as the top Google search result for therapy-seekers 96.2% of the time. If you want to capture people searching broadly for help, this directory guarantees high visibility for the website itself, even if individual profile visibility is much harder to secure.

Counselling Directory

Counselling Directory operates on a very similar upfront model but at a slightly higher price point. It charges £24.50 per month on a rolling basis, or a discounted rate of £245 per year. They do not take a commission on your client work. The contract is rolling monthly, and you can cancel at any time provided you give 30 days of notice. Notably, the listing is completely free for registered charities.

The sheer size of Counselling Directory is a major factor to weigh. Its own online-therapy search returns an astonishing 27,481 results. For a newly qualified practitioner, appearing at the bottom of a list of nearly thirty thousand therapists can result in a very quiet inbox. The platform also places the burden of compliance firmly on the practitioner and the client. Their own disclaimer states to clients: "it is your responsibility to confirm that these details are still accurate before your first session as we do not actively monitor any changes."

If you have a highly specific niche and clients are filtering for very particular modalities, the search volume here can work in your favour. However, for general anxiety or depression counselling, the competition is fierce.

BACP Therapist Directory

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy offers its own directory, which carries a different kind of authority. However, the costs stack up differently. It requires a £196 per year registered membership, though there is a reduced rate of £98 available for some. On top of this membership, there is a £76 per year directory subscription. This brings the standard total to £272 per year just to appear in their search results.

Unlike platforms with rolling monthly terms, the BACP directory is a 12-month subscription. BACP states clearly that it cannot provide a refund or reduce the direct debit mid-term if you decide the directory is not working for you. Furthermore, this directory is exclusively open to BACP registered members. Listings and amendments are approved manually by BACP, with a target turnaround of two working days.

The authority of a professional body directory often appeals to clients who have read How to find a therapist in the UK: A step-by-step guide and are looking for guaranteed professional standards. But as a marketing spend, you are locked in for the year regardless of performance.

UKCP

The UK Council for Psychotherapy functions similarly as a professional body, but their fee structure is different. For the 2026-27 period, membership fees are structured by tier: full clinical membership is £330, non-clinical is £285, trainee is £82, student is £28, retired is £80, and affiliate is £77. They offer a £10 discount for full clinical members who pay by annual direct debit.

Crucially for practitioners trying to budget their marketing, whether the find-a-therapist listing is included in the membership fee or costs extra is not published on their fee page. The £330 gives you the credential and the clinical standing, but you must factor in that professional body membership serves a primary regulatory purpose, with client generation acting as a secondary benefit.

welldoing

The welldoing directory uses a slightly more complex upfront billing model. The platform charges £45.00 plus VAT billed quarterly, alongside a £15 plus VAT annual verification fee. They advertise an annual plan as offering two months free, but the actual annual price is not published. While they charge no commission on the sessions themselves, in-platform client payments run through Stripe. This incurs a 3.95% charge with a minimum of £2.50 per transaction.

Verification on welldoing is strict. Professional membership is verified at the point of joining and re-checked every year. They do accept final-year trainees provided specific declarations are made. In terms of scale, the platform claims to have 1000 therapists and asserts that over 40,000 people have connected through them since 2014.

A significant point of friction for practitioners testing this platform is the cancellation policy. No refund is given for any portion of the subscription period. Welldoing publicly replies to feedback by stating that one to three months is a very short time to make a decision about a listing, which is a difficult stance to navigate while simultaneously running a strict no-refund policy.

Harley Therapy platform

Moving away from upfront directories, the Harley Therapy platform operates on a pure commission model. There is no sign-up fee and no ongoing subscription. Instead, the platform takes a heavy commission on the initial work. They take 100% including VAT of the session fee on the first session with a new client. After that, they take 10% plus VAT, meaning 12% total, on all follow-on sessions.

To use their own worked example: if your fee is set to £50, the commission on the initial session is the full £50, and then you pay £6 for each follow-up session. If a therapist invites their own existing clients to the platform, the fee is a flat 12% on all sessions including the first. The client also pays a separate service fee of 6% of the session fee, with a minimum of £5.95 including VAT.

Payouts are handled efficiently, going into the therapist's Stripe account immediately after the client is charged. However, joining is not guaranteed. Harley Therapy is currently invite-only, stating that due to high demand they are operating an invite-only process for new practitioners.

BetterHelp

BetterHelp operates a completely different model, functioning more like a contractor network than a traditional directory. No fees are collected from the therapist at all. Instead, the platform pays the practitioner directly for their time. However, the actual pay rate is not published anywhere on their recruitment materials, making it difficult for a therapist to forecast their earnings without entering the application process.

The requirements to join are strict. We found these details via a third-party job board listing rather than betterhelp.com. You must be MBACP accredited or senior accredited, or hold NCS accredited equivalents. Psychologists need BPS chartered status plus HCPC registration. Furthermore, you need at least three years of experience, professional insurance, a clean background check, and you must be currently residing in the UK.

If you want to read more about how clients view these larger networks, you might find Best online therapy platforms in the UK (2026): an honest comparison useful, though it is geared heavily toward the client experience rather than the practitioner side.

MatchyMatch

We are MatchyMatch, and we also operate a commission platform. As mentioned in the introduction, we are one of the options in this list and you should absolutely discount our opinion accordingly. We charge no monthly fee and no listing fee. You only pay when a client actually pays you.

Our commission is a flat 25% of each session fee. The therapist has complete control over their pricing and sets their own session fee. Payouts are processed via Stripe and go directly to the therapist's own bank account. We require registration with a recognised professional body (such as HCPC, BACP, BPS, UKCP, AFT, NCPS, or an equivalent recognised body in the therapist's own country), professional indemnity insurance, and a legal practice setup. This is followed by a short video call and a digital contract. We accept therapists in the UK plus English-speaking therapists abroad, provided sessions are delivered online in English.

Our contract includes a strict confidentiality and non-circumvention clause: a client introduced through MatchyMatch stays on the platform. This is a real constraint you should weigh carefully when deciding to apply as a therapist.

To be entirely transparent, let us look at a genuinely unflattering comparison between our structure and Harley Therapy. On a six-session course of therapy at £50 per session, the total client spend is £300. Harley Therapy takes the entire first £50, plus £6 for the next five sessions, totalling £80. That is 26.7% of the total revenue. We take a flat 25%, meaning we keep £75. We are barely cheaper than Harley over a long course of therapy. We are much better on a short one, because Harley takes the entire first session. We do not claim we produce more enquiries than anyone else. We are a young platform and we have no published referral figures to stand on. Where we genuinely differ is the shape of the bet, not proven volume.

Doing the arithmetic: how many sessions pay for a directory listing?

Let us sit down and look at the maths of the upfront directory bet. We will use Psychology Today's own published London average of £80 per session to run these calculations. This is our calculation based strictly on their published figures, not a claim made by the directories themselves.

A £19.95 per month listing on Psychology Today costs £239.40 a year. At £80 a session, that listing pays for itself at roughly three sessions a year. The BACP directory route costs £272 a year, which equates to about 3.4 sessions. The UKCP full clinical membership costs £330, which requires about 4.1 sessions to break even.

When you look at the maths this way, the fees sound incredibly reasonable. Three sessions across an entire twelve-month period seems like a microscopic hurdle to clear. But the real point is this: the question was never whether £19.95 is too much money. It is whether a listing produces even three sessions a year.

The critical flaw in the directory model is the denominator. How many of Counselling Directory's own 27,481 results receive zero enquiries in a given year? No platform publishes that denominator. If you are one of the profiles buried on page fifty of a saturated postcode, your listing might not generate a single email. If that happens, your £239.40 is simply gone. You took a bet, paid up front, and lost. If you conclude a directory is better for you because you have a highly defined niche that will stand out, that is a legitimate outcome of this article. But you must enter that agreement understanding that the platform takes your money whether they deliver a client or not.

Frequently asked questions

Practitioners trying to fill their diaries often search for very specific answers regarding less common platforms and legal constraints. Here are the facts based on the platforms' own documentation.

Can UK therapists join Talkspace?

No, Talkspace does not recruit UK-resident therapists at all. According to their joining requirements, they require an active US state board-approved clinical licence and current residence in the USA.

Is Kooth a private practice directory?

No, Kooth is not a directory or a marketplace. It is salaried employment. According to a recent job board listing for a CYP counsellor at Kooth, the salary is £25,251 to £30,000 depending on experience, offering a permanent contract with rota'd shifts.

Should I pay for multiple therapy directories at once?

Many therapists try this approach to cast a wide net, but listing on Psychology Today, Counselling Directory and the BACP directory at the same time comes to £756.40 a year at the prices above (£239.40 plus £245 plus £272), before a single enquiry arrives. If you lack the time to optimise three separate profiles with unique copy, you run the risk of failing to stand out on all of them. It is generally safer to test one upfront directory alongside a commission-based platform where you only pay on outcome.

How long should I stay on a directory before cancelling?

Directories like welldoing publicly argue that one to three months is too short a time to make a decision about a listing's effectiveness. However, if a platform requires a 12-month lock-in or refuses mid-term refunds (like the BACP directory), your decision timeline is dictated by their contract, not your results.

What is a non-circumvention clause in therapy platforms?

A non-circumvention clause is a legal requirement found in the contracts of commission-based platforms, including MatchyMatch. It means that if a platform introduces you to a client, you are contractually obligated to keep that client's billing on the platform for the duration of your work together. You cannot move them to your private, fee-free calendar to avoid paying the platform's commission. If you have further questions on how this works practically, you can check our frequently asked questions page.