Before you ring a plumber, book a care home visit or hire an agency, can you see what it will cost? We check this sector by sector, on the firms’ own websites, and keep every count here with its date.
Most “how much does it cost” pages are written by firms selling the service. This page does something different: it counts how many firms actually put a price where you can see it.
The tracker
| Sector | What we counted | Result | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency plumbers | Websites showing no call-out price at all (eight towns) | 117 of 179 | 2 Oct 2026 |
| Emergency electricians | Websites showing no call-out price at all (eight towns) | 113 of 135 | 2 Oct 2026 |
| Emergency locksmiths | Of the 70 websites showing any emergency price, those that said only “no call-out charge” | 43 of 70 | 2 Oct 2026 |
| Care homes (England, older people) | Homes showing a weekly fee for that home on their own site | 17 of 120 | 12 Oct 2026 |
| Funeral directors | Independent and smaller-group firms linking their price list from the homepage | 26 of 31 we could assess | 31 Oct 2026 |
| Solicitors (probate) | Probate price pages still showing an out-of-date court fee | 26 of 36 | 12 Oct 2026 |
| Vet practices | Websites showing clinical prices | 72% of 68 we could assess | 19 Aug 2026 |
| Small business websites, ten trades | Websites showing any price at all | 45.5% of 200 | Aug 2026 |
| Marketing agencies | Agencies showing no price anywhere (top five in ten cities) | 47 of 50 | Jul 2026 |
| Agency pricing pages | Pages that do not say when and how you can leave | 19 of 39 | 29 Sep 2026 |
| Headshot photographers | Photographers showing a price for an individual session (four cities) | 17 of 29 | 1 Nov 2026 |
| Google Ads agencies | Agencies showing their own management price | 14 of 33 | 1 Nov 2026 |
Each row links to the study, with its full method, sample, limits and evidence.
How to read it
- Read each row on its own. Each sector was counted with its own definition of “a price”, so the rows are not a league table. A call-out fee and a weekly care fee are different things.
- Some rows count firms that show a price, some count firms that do not. The middle column says which.
- A “from” price is not a full price. Where a study counted “from” prices separately, the study page says so.
- No firm is named as failing. The tracker is about sectors. It is not a ranking of businesses.
What it shows so far
The highest share in the tracker is among funeral directors, who must show a standardised price list online under the Competition and Markets Authority’s funerals order. Among emergency plumbers, emergency electricians and marketing agencies, where there is no price-list rule of that kind, most firms we counted show no price.
That is a pattern across separate studies, not a measured cause. We will only say more once the same sectors have been re-counted.
How it is updated
We plan to re-count each sector every three months with the same searches, towns and rules as the first count. New figures are added beside the old ones. Old figures are never overwritten or reworded, and any change to a method is written down with its date. Corrections are listed on What we got wrong.
Run a business in one of these sectors?
If your customers cannot see a price, they have to ask before they can compare you. The free Visibility Check looks at what a customer, or an AI assistant, can find on your site in about 20 seconds.
Related: The Whito Truth Index, what price transparency means, data and sources.
If your business is named here and you think we have a fact wrong, email hello@whito.co.uk and we will check it and correct it. If you want to respond, send us a statement and we will publish it alongside. Full detail: Corrections, right of reply and removals.