Unbiased vs VouchedFor for advisers: cost, refunds and fit in 2026
A side-by-side for UK IFA firms choosing a directory: what each costs per attended first meeting, how refunds and contracts differ, and where pre-booked pay-per-show sits alongside them.
On this page
Quick picks (pick one and skip the rest)
- You want the most enquiries, across every wealth level: Unbiased. It claims "10,000+ monthly enquiries" and lets you accept or reject each one before paying.
- You want reviews, the Top Rated guide and a cheap entry point: VouchedFor Verified (£60 + VAT a month, 12 months).
- You want enquiries at a price you can read on the website: VouchedFor Unlimited. Unbiased publishes its per-enquiry table but not its subscription.
- You're a multi-location or national firm: Unbiased (extra locations, a Nationwide tier with an Intelliflo integration).
- You'd rather pay only when a £250k+ pension client turns up: neither. That's a pre-booked, pay-per-show service like InvestmentsBooked (£500 per qualified show), usually run alongside a directory.
How do Unbiased and VouchedFor compare, line by line?
All figures from each company's own pages, checked 27 September 2026. Prices exclude VAT. VouchedFor's enquiry prices are the ones it has announced for 1 October 2026.
| Unbiased Pro | VouchedFor | InvestmentsBooked (for reference) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built around | Matching consumers to advisers; enquiries | Client reviews; enquiries on Unlimited | Pre-booked first meetings |
| What you pay for | Each enquiry you accept | Each enquiry received (Unlimited) | Each qualified show |
| Price set by | Client's stated wealth (pensions, cash, investments) | Your minimum wealth setting | Flat across £250k–£3m DC pensions |
| Price per enquiry, £250k+ tiers | £193 / £260 / £405 / £524 / £857 (levels 5–9, from £250,001 stated wealth) | £239 / £319 / £599 (£250k+ / £500k+ / £1m+) | £500, no VAT added |
| Fixed cost | Subscription, price on request; mandatory credits of at least £40 per location per month | Unlimited £96 a month (Verified £60) | None; minimum purchase 10 credits (£5,000) |
| Minimum term | 6 months, then 3 months' rolling notice (Enhanced 12 months) | 12 months, auto-renews | None; credits valid 6 months |
| See it before you pay? | Yes: area, location, stated assets, message | No: charged per enquiry received | You choose filters (pot band, region, meeting type) |
| No-shows | Not refundable | Not refundable | Credited |
| Wealth lower than stated | Not refundable without documentary evidence | Not refundable if it "later transpires" | Credited if pensions are under £250k on the call |
| Refund window and form | 10 business days; credits only; decision final | 3 working days | Flag within 72 hours; credits only; decision can be reviewed again |
| Exclusivity | "Exclusive to you once accepted" | Not stated on the pages we checked | One firm per appointment |
| Reviews | Not the core product | Core product; Top Rated guide | None (we're not a directory) |
| Auto-accept new enquiries | SmartAccept (AI, beta, free; needs 30+ accepted in 200 days) | Not applicable (charged per enquiry received) | Not applicable |
The full detail on each is on our Unbiased Pro page and VouchedFor page.
Which costs less per attended first meeting?
Enquiry prices only tell you half the story. What you want to know is what it costs to get a client at your chosen wealth level into a first meeting that actually happens, and neither platform publishes the rate at which enquiries become attended meetings. It varies by firm, by how fast you call and by how much of your book sits at the lower end. So here's the maths with the assumptions spelled out, and three attendance scenarios rather than one invented number.
Assumptions. Your firm wants 4 attended first meetings a month. "Attendance rate" means the share of paid enquiries that end in an attended first meeting. Unbiased clients are priced at a single level (in practice they'd be spread across levels). Prices are ex VAT. Unbiased's subscription is left out because it isn't published; VouchedFor's £96 Unlimited fee is included. Your staff time is left out of all three.
Formula. Monthly spend = (4 ÷ attendance rate) × price per enquiry + monthly fee.
| If 75% attend | If 50% attend | If 25% attend | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unbiased, level 5 (stated £250,001–£500k) | £1,029 | £1,544 | £3,088 | + subscription (not published) |
| VouchedFor, £250k+ setting | £1,371 | £2,008 | £3,920 | incl. £96 Unlimited fee |
| Unbiased, level 7 (stated £1m–£1.5m) | £2,160 | £3,240 | £6,480 | + subscription (not published) |
| VouchedFor, £1m+ setting | £3,291 | £4,888 | £9,680 | incl. £96 Unlimited fee |
| InvestmentsBooked, any pot £250k–£3m | £2,000 | £2,000 | £2,000 | 4 × £500; no-shows credited, no VAT added |
Not like-for-like on client quality. Unbiased's tier is the client's self-stated total wealth (pensions, cash and investments); VouchedFor's price follows the adviser's minimum wealth setting; InvestmentsBooked requires £250k–£3m in defined contribution pensions, reconfirmed on the call. The figures compare cost per attended meeting from enquiries at each stated tier, not meetings of equal value. Unbiased figures are list prices for match and directory enquiries. Its Regional plan advertises a 5% enquiry discount and Nationwide up to 5%, subscription credits come with a 5% monthly boost, and Marketplace enquiries are cheaper (£135 to £600 at levels 5 to 9), so your effective price may be lower.
What the table says, plainly:
- At the £250k–£500k level, Unbiased is the cheapest of the three on enquiry spend unless attendance falls below about 39%, and VouchedFor matches our £2,000 at roughly 50%. If your firm turns three in four enquiries into attended meetings, both directories cost less than we do.
- Over £1m, the order flips. Enquiries at £405 (Unbiased level 7) or £599 (VouchedFor £1m+) cost more per attended meeting than £500 at every attendance rate in the table.
- Head to head, Unbiased beats VouchedFor on enquiry price at both levels shown, but only before its subscription, which could close or reverse the gap. Get a quote and add it.
- VAT. Competitor prices exclude VAT. If your firm can't recover VAT, the cost to you is up to 20% higher; your accountant will know which applies. Our price is £500 per show, no VAT added.
The one number that settles it is your own: total spend over six months divided by first meetings that actually happened. Run it on the pricing calculator, or read the reasoning in leads vs appointments.
Which brings more enquiries?
Probably Unbiased, though neither publishes a like-for-like figure. Unbiased says "10,000+ monthly enquiries", reported "over 2.1 million matching events in 2025" and runs a consumer matching service that MoneySavingExpert and MoneyHelper both link to. Those are platform-wide numbers across all the services it covers, not £250k+ pension enquiries. VouchedFor doesn't publish enquiry volumes; its headline numbers are about reviews (411,180 verified reviews in its March 2026 guide) and the 2,784 advisers who qualified for the 2026 Top Rated guide.
Two structural points matter more than the headline claims. Unbiased lets you choose each enquiry, so volume is something you control with your filters and your credits. VouchedFor Unlimited charges per enquiry received and opts you into "Matched" enquiries from affiliate partners by default, whose consumers, VouchedFor says, are often "earlier on in the process of deciding to work with an adviser". On Verified, you get a quota of enquiries (size not published) and then stop showing as available by default.
How do refunds and contracts compare?
Both platforms sell enquiries, and neither controls whether a meeting gets booked, so neither refunds no-shows. Past that, the detail differs:
- Window. Unbiased gives 10 business days from purchase and asks for evidence of at least five contact attempts. VouchedFor gives 3 working days, with three attempts (the first within one working day) for an uncontactable claim.
- Form. Unbiased refunds in credits, never cash, and says its decision "is final and cannot be overruled on appeal". Top-up and refunded credits expire after 3 months.
- Wealth. Both put a lower-than-stated wealth figure on you once the enquiry is bought (Unbiased allows it with documentary evidence). VouchedFor will consider a refund where the assets shown on the form itself are below your criteria.
- Contract. Unbiased: 6-month minimum, then 3 months' rolling notice, notice due 3 months before renewal. VouchedFor: 12 months, automatic renewal. Unbiased's is shorter to start; VouchedFor's price is published.
Which is better for reviews and reputation?
VouchedFor, clearly. Reviews are its core product: it says it verifies every reviewer's identity and never removes or edits negative reviews, and the Top Rated guide (10+ reviews since January 2025 averaging 4.5 or more, plus Verified membership) is distributed in The Times and The Telegraph. For a firm that wins most of its business by referral, a strong VouchedFor profile makes those referrals easier to convert.
Unbiased's product is built around matching and enquiries rather than reviews. Its strength is being the place consumers are sent to find an adviser. If you're searching "unbiased reviews" as an adviser, the useful question is whether its enquiries turn into meetings for your firm, which is the cost section above.
Which fits which kind of firm?
Sole adviser with diary gaps
- VouchedFor Verified for reviews at a low monthly cost.
- Be wary of any enquiry product that needs fast call-backs you can't staff.
- Pre-booked meetings suit you if chasing is the bottleneck.
Small firm (2–10 advisers) with admin support
- Unbiased, if someone can call new enquiries within minutes; SmartAccept can auto-accept eligible enquiries out of hours, though someone still has to call them.
- VouchedFor Unlimited at £250k+ if you prefer a published price.
- Track cost per attended meeting monthly and cut what doesn't pay.
Chartered planners taking £500k+ or £1m+
- VouchedFor reviews matter a lot to wealthier clients checking you out.
- Per-enquiry prices climb fast here (£260–£857 Unbiased; £319–£599 VouchedFor).
- This is where a flat £500 per show compares best.
Multi-office or national firms
- Unbiased: extra locations, the Nationwide tier, Intelliflo integration.
- VouchedFor Elevation for firm-wide review management.
- Restricted advisers who can go off-panel can list on Unbiased; we only sell to independent firms.
Where does pre-booked pay-per-show fit alongside a directory?
Alongside, not instead. Directories do things we don't: reviews, a consumer brand, enquiries at every wealth level, and a profile clients can find. InvestmentsBooked does one narrower thing. We run the consumer adverts (each one approved by an FCA-authorised firm under section 21 of FSMA before it runs), qualify people who self-declare £250k–£3m in defined contribution pensions, and book them into your diary. You pay £500 when a qualified prospect turns up, and a no-show goes back on your balance as a credit. No subscription, no minimum term; the commitment is a minimum purchase of 10 credits (£5,000), valid for 6 months.
A sensible way to decide: keep the directory that works, measure its cost per attended meeting for six months, and compare it with ours. If the directory comes out cheaper for your firm, keep it and don't buy from us. We'd rather you knew that before you spent anything.
Two honest caveats. We don't publish conversion claims or testimonials; we publish the price, the show test and the credit rules instead. And pay-when-they-attend isn't unique to us; the IFA lead generation companies comparison covers the others. See how it works, the pension leads page and the high net worth leads page for what the appointments look like.
How we compared these (and why we're on the list)
This page is written by InvestmentsBooked, which sells a different product from both directories, so we have an interest in how this comparison reads. To keep it useful: every Unbiased and VouchedFor fact comes from their own help centres, pricing pages and press releases, checked on 27 September 2026, and we've quoted their wording where it matters. We haven't bought either platform's financial-advice enquiries ourselves. The monthly-spend table uses stated assumptions and three scenarios because neither platform publishes attendance rates. Where a directory comes out cheaper, we've said so.
Sources, all checked 27 September 2026. Unbiased: enquiry pricing; Pro pricing; Unbiased Pro; credits; credit expiry; cancellation; terms; refund policy; SmartAccept; press release, 4 Feb 2026. VouchedFor: enquiry pricing; membership costs; refund policy; Unlimited; enquiry quota; Top Rated criteria; homepage. MoneyHelper directory closure: MoneyWeek, 23 Dec 2025. Competitor prices exclude VAT; VouchedFor enquiry prices are announced for 1 October 2026. InvestmentsBooked is not authorised by the FCA and does not give financial advice. Unbiased and VouchedFor are trade marks of their respective owners. InvestmentsBooked is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to either company. Their prices and terms can change at any time, so check their current terms before you decide. If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll correct it.