In short: For most UK therapists, directories are the single largest marketing line item and the least examined one. Counselling Directory and Psychology Today are the two that generate the bulk of private practice enquiries, and between them cost somewhere around £45 a month. The professional body directories are cheap or included and underused. The right answer for most solo practices is two paid directories, not five, chosen on whether they rank for your town and your niche, plus the free listing your membership already entitles you to. What decides the return is the profile, not the platform.
In this guide
- What a directory is actually selling you
- The main UK options, what they cost, and what each is good for
- The five questions that tell you whether a directory is worth its fee
- How to work out cost per enquiry, and the number that matters more
- Why most profiles underperform, and the specific fixes
- How to track which directory is producing, without trusting their dashboards
What you are actually buying
A directory sells you three things, and they are worth very different amounts.
Search visibility you could not get yourself. The large directories rank for "counsellor in [town]" far better than an individual practice website ever will, because they have thousands of pages and years of authority. That is the real product. You are renting a position on Google that you cannot buy directly.
A credibility check. Most reputable directories verify professional body membership and insurance before they publish. For a client with no way to assess a therapist, that verification is doing quiet work.
A backlink. Your directory profile usually links to your website, and those links contribute to your own site's authority over time. Minor, but it compounds, and it is the part people forget they are paying for.
What a directory does not sell you is clients. It sells you the chance to be seen by someone who is already looking. Everything after that is your profile and your response time.
The main UK options
Prices are as at July 2026 and change regularly. Confirm current figures directly with each provider.
| Directory | Cost at time of writing | Best for | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counselling Directory | From £24.50 a month, cheaper paid annually | The default for UK counsellors and psychotherapists | Part of the same group as Happiful and Therapy Directory, and membership includes a Happiful profile at no extra cost. Rolling monthly plan with 30 days' notice |
| Psychology Today | Listed at £19.95 a month, first six months free | Reach, particularly for psychologists, online practices and clients who search in English from anywhere | Verifies credentials before approving a listing. New listings sometimes come with a free introductory period, so ask |
| BACP Therapist Directory | An add-on to BACP membership | Any BACP registered member | Sold separately from membership rather than included, and synchronised with your membership year. Underused given the cost |
| UKCP Find a Therapist | Included with UKCP membership | UKCP registered psychotherapists | Free with a membership you are already paying for. No reason not to have it complete |
| NCPS directory | Included with NCPS membership | NCPS registered members | Same logic as above |
| Welldoing | Subscription, tiered | Therapists comfortable with a matching model rather than a pure search listing | Positions itself around matching clients to therapists rather than listing everyone |
| Therapy Directory | From £19.50 a month, cheaper paid annually | Holistic and complementary therapy rather than talking therapy | Same group as Counselling Directory. Only relevant if you also offer body based or complementary work |
| Specialist and community directories | Varies, some free | Reaching a specific community you genuinely serve | Pink Therapy, the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network, faith based and modality specific directories. Small volume, very high fit |
Counselling Directory is where most UK counsellors start, and for good reason. It ranks strongly for location based counselling searches, it is the one most clients have heard of, and the profile is genuinely usable, with room for articles and events. If you only pay for one thing, this is usually it.
Psychology Today has the larger brand and the wider reach, and it is disproportionately useful if you work online, work with expatriates or international clients, or hold a psychology qualification that its filters surface well. It also has a well established reputation for a profile that either performs strongly or does nothing at all, depending almost entirely on how it is written.
The professional body directories are the most neglected opportunity in UK private practice. If you are paying for BACP, UKCP or NCPS membership, you already have or can cheaply add a listing that carries the strongest credibility signal of any directory, and a large share of members leave it half completed. It rarely produces the volume the commercial directories do. It produces enquiries from people who went looking for a verified practitioner, which is a different and often better enquiry.
Specialist directories deserve more attention than their traffic suggests. Ten enquiries a year from a community directory where you are one of a handful of appropriate therapists will convert far better than a hundred impressions on a general listing. Only join the ones where you can genuinely serve the community in question.
Five questions that tell you whether a directory is worth its fee
1. Does it rank for your town and your modality? Open an incognito window and search the way a client would. "Counsellor [your town]", "CBT therapist [your town]", "grief counselling near me". Note which directories appear on the first page for your area specifically, because national averages are irrelevant to you. In some towns Counselling Directory dominates and Psychology Today is nowhere. In others it is reversed.
2. Where do you appear within it? Ranking on Google is only half of it. Once a client is inside the directory and filters by your town, are you on page one or page four. Some directories order by relevance, some by proximity, some give paid placement. Ask how ordering works before you assume a listing is a position.
3. Do you receive the enquiry directly? Some directories pass the client's message straight to you. Others hold the contact and broker it, or route it through their own messaging. That difference determines how fast you can respond and whether you have a relationship or a lead.
4. Can you be found for your actual niche? If your work is with a specific presentation or population, check that the directory's filters include it and that clients can search that way. A directory that only sorts by location and modality will bury a specialist.
5. What does it cost to leave? Rolling monthly with notice, or an annual commitment. Annual is usually cheaper and locks you into a decision you have not tested yet. Start monthly, prove it, then switch to annual.
The maths
Work out cost per enquiry, not cost per month. Take twelve months of fees for a directory and divide by the number of enquiries it produced. Then divide by the number that became clients, which gives cost per client. Then compare that against what a client is worth to you: your fee multiplied by the average number of sessions a client stays.
For most private practices the arithmetic is not close. At around £25 a month, a directory costs £300 a year, and a single client who stays twelve sessions at £60 covers it several times over. Directories very rarely fail on cost. They fail on producing nothing at all, which is a different problem and usually a profile problem.
The number that matters more than cost per client is response time. Clients enquiring through directories almost always contact several therapists at once, and the research on this is unambiguous in one direction: whoever replies first has a substantial advantage. A cheaper directory you answer within an hour will outperform an expensive one you answer in three days. If your enquiries arrive in a personal inbox you check in the evening, fix that before you add another listing.
Why most profiles underperform
The single most common failure is that the profile is written for other therapists. It names the modality, lists the training, describes the approach in the profession's own language, and never once uses the words the client typed into Google.
The fixes are specific.
Open with the client's problem in the client's words, not with your credentials. Someone searching at eleven at night is not looking for an integrative practitioner with a diploma in person centred counselling. They are looking for someone who understands why they cannot stop crying at work.
Put the fee in. Profiles that hide the fee get fewer enquiries, not more, because a large share of people will not make contact without knowing whether they can afford it. You save yourself the enquiries that were never going to convert and you look straightforward.
Say whether you have availability, and keep it current. Nothing wastes an enquiry like a client discovering after two emails that your waiting list is three months.
Use a photograph of your face, taken in reasonable light, looking at the camera. This is a decision about whether to trust a stranger with something painful. Your face is the most persuasive thing on the page.
Write for the search filters as well as the reader. If the directory lets you tick specialisms, tick the ones that are genuinely true, because that is how you appear in filtered results.
And keep it alive. Directories that publish articles and events generally reward members who use those features with better internal visibility. Whether or not anyone reads the article, it moves you up.
Tracking which one is working
Do not rely on the directory's own dashboard. Profile views are not enquiries, and every directory has a commercial interest in the number looking healthy.
Ask every single enquirer how they found you, and write the answer down in the same place every time, ideally in the client record rather than a note to yourself. If you use practice management software with an enquiry field, use it, because after six months you will have the only data that actually answers the question. Use a distinct contact route per directory if you want precision, such as a dedicated email alias, which costs nothing and removes the guesswork.
Then review it annually. Cancel the one that produced nothing, and put the money into the one that did.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to be listed in a UK therapy directory?
Counselling Directory starts at £24.50 a month at the time of writing, with a discount for paying annually. Psychology Today lists at £19.95 a month. Professional body directories are either included with membership or a modest add-on. Confirm current pricing directly, as all of these change.
Is Counselling Directory or Psychology Today better?
They are good at different things. Counselling Directory tends to be stronger for location based searches by UK clients looking for a counsellor near them. Psychology Today has broader reach and is often stronger for online practices, psychologists and international or expatriate clients. In most towns the answer is decided by which of the two actually ranks for your area, which you can check in five minutes with an incognito search.
How many directories should a therapist be listed in?
For most solo practices, two paid listings plus any free listing your professional body membership already includes. Beyond that you are usually adding cost without adding reach, because the directories overlap heavily on the same searchers.
Do therapy directories take a percentage of my fees?
The established UK directories charge a flat subscription and do not take a cut of session fees. Some newer matching platforms and therapy marketplaces operate differently and do take a percentage or set the fee themselves. Read the terms, because these are quite different commercial arrangements.
Are professional body directories worth using?
Yes, particularly because you are usually already paying for the membership that entitles you to the listing. Volume is lower than the commercial directories, but the enquiries come from people who deliberately sought a verified practitioner, and they tend to convert well.
Why is my directory profile not getting enquiries?
The three usual causes, in order. The profile is written in professional language rather than the client's. The fee and availability are missing, so people self-select out. Or you are not visible in the filtered results for your town because your listing is incomplete and the directory ranks completeness. Fix the profile before cancelling the subscription.
About this guide
Written by the team at My-Therapy-Suite, a UK practice management platform for talking therapists. We are not a directory and we have no commercial relationship with any directory listed here. Prices and features change frequently, so verify current costs directly with each provider. Last updated September 2026.