Do You Have to Show the Full Price on Your Website?
Put "from £45" on your homepage and add a £3 admin fee once someone has filled in your form, and you haven't quoted two prices. You've quoted one price twice, and the second one is the one that counts. The Competition and Markets Authority has spent 2026 fining exactly this pattern.
Do you have to show the full price on your website?
Yes, for anything a customer has to pay to get what they're buying. The CMA's own guidance on unfair commercial practices says the price shown to a shopper has to be "the total price of the product, including any mandatory fees, taxes, charges or other payments that the consumer must pay", stated at the point they first see it rather than revealed later in the process. A booking fee, a delivery charge, VAT, a card fee you don't waive for cash: if the customer has no real way to avoid it, it belongs in the number they see first.
What counts as a mandatory charge?
Anything the customer can't opt out of and still get what they came for. A driveway cleaner charging "from £120" plus an unavoidable £15 call-out fee has one real starting price, £135, and that's the figure that should sit on the page. A florist who only adds a charge if the customer picks delivery is different: that cost is genuinely optional, so it can stay off the headline price as long as it's shown clearly before checkout.
The test isn't what's convenient to show first. It's whether the customer could walk away from the extra and still buy what they wanted.
What if you don't know the exact price until you've seen the job?
You don't have to invent a number. Where a final figure genuinely can't be worked out in advance, a boiler that needs opening up, a garden that needs measuring, the same guidance asks instead for the way the price will be calculated: the day rate, the call-out fee, what triggers an extra charge. A mobile hairdresser whose price depends on hair length can say so plainly, "from £35, priced on the day by length and colour", rather than picking a number and hoping it holds.
What actually happens if you don't show it?
The AA and BSM driving schools found out this year. The CMA's own account of the case says more than 80,000 learners booking lessons between April and December 2025 were shown a price online that didn't include a mandatory booking fee, added only once they'd chosen a time and entered their details. The businesses were fined £4.2 million, reduced from an original £7 million for settling early, and ordered to refund customers over £760,000, an average of roughly £9 each.
A local trade site isn't heading for a seven-figure fine. The point of naming a big one is that this is now an ordinary check the CMA runs, not a rare exception saved for national brands, and it reads a one-page site the same way it reads a driving school's.
Does this apply if you invoice businesses rather than the public?
Mostly not in the same way. This guidance protects consumers, someone buying for themselves rather than for their own business, so a plumber quoting a letting agent or a designer billing another company is working under ordinary contract terms rather than this specific rule. Where a business also takes bookings from members of the public through the same site, that half of the site is the half this applies to.
What to check on your own site
Three places on most trade sites tell the whole story.
The number on the homepage. Does it already include VAT and any charge every customer pays, or does the real total only turn up once someone has filled in a form?
The booking or enquiry form. If a fee gets added once it's submitted, that fee needed to be on the page before the click, not after it.
The quote wording. Where the final figure genuinely depends on the job, say what it depends on. "Priced after a free site visit" is honest. A number you plan to quietly raise once you're through the door is not.
None of this is about pricing yourself down. It's the same honesty the ASA expects from what a website is allowed to claim elsewhere on the page, just applied to the number rather than the boast. If your own site could do with a proper look at what it shows before a customer ever rings, that sits well alongside the rest of getting a website working for you. ByRender previews a full rebuild from £495 before anything is owed, so start there if the fix turns out to be bigger than one page.
Frequently asked questions
Does the total price have to include VAT?
Yes. The CMA's own wording lists mandatory fees, taxes, charges and other payments together as part of the total price, so a figure shown without VAT for a customer who owes it isn't the full price.
Can I still offer a discount code at checkout?
Yes. A saving a customer chooses to use is different from a charge they can't avoid. The rule is about what a customer has to pay, not about whether they can end up paying less.
Does a card payment surcharge count as a mandatory charge?
If cash or a free payment method genuinely isn't on offer, yes, because the card fee can't actually be avoided. Where a free option exists alongside it, the surcharge is optional and can stay off the headline price.