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Answered or not. Hired or not. On Afrihelps a message, a call, a quote request costs you $0, and clients pay you directly, so what you charge is what you keep.
Most pros finish in one sitting. No card, now or ever.
The math
Twenty customers contact you. Five turn into $300 jobs.
On Thumbtack
$800
in lead fees
20 contacts × $40 a lead, whether anyone replied or not. You paid $800 to earn $1,500.
On Afrihelps
$0
nothing owed
Same 20 contacts. Same 5 jobs. You keep all $1,500.
An illustration, not a forecast. $40 sits mid-range of Thumbtack’s $8 to $150+ per lead. Your trade may run higher or lower; their rates are not published, which is part of the problem.
The real question
Fair question. Here is the whole answer.
Most pros finish in one sitting. No card, now or ever.
Afrihelps never touches your money. Clients pay you directly, on terms the two of you agree. There is no payment to take a percentage of. The commission model is not something we are choosing not to do; it is something the product cannot do.
Join during the Atlanta launch and free stays free for you, for as long as you are on Afrihelps. That is the point of a founding cohort.
If paid tools ever exist, they will be optional, published on the pricing page, announced 30 days ahead, and never a condition of receiving requests. We already removed the one fee we had: there was a $99.99 activation charge, Pros across the diaspora told us it was wrong, and we took it off.
Side by side
Thumbtack facts current as of August 2026, from their public pages and complaint record. Sources at the bottom. We keep these conservative.
If one goes stale, tell us at hello@afrihelps.com and we will fix it.
| What | Thumbtack | Afrihelps |
|---|---|---|
| When you pay | Per lead, the moment a customer taps message or call, answered or not | Never. Free to join, and nothing to pay after it. |
| How much | $8 to $150+ per lead, depending on trade | $0. No joining fee, no subscription, no commission, no lead fees. |
| Published rate card | No. Dynamic, unpublished lead pricing | Yes. Every line on /pricing reads $0.00 |
| Refunds for dead leads | issued mostly as account credit, not cash | Nothing to refund. A lead costs $0 |
| Who handles your money | The platform sits in the middle | Nobody. Clients pay you directly; we never touch it |
| Verification | background checks cover the account owner only, not the workers a business sends | Every Pro shows us a government photo ID before their profile goes live. Our team reviews it themselves. |
| Built for | Everyone, weighted to home projects | The African diaspora: braiders, caterers, tailors, photographers, DJs, trades, and the clients looking for them |
| What pros say | BBB rating 1.7 out of 5 across roughly 2,000 reviews; 1,000+ complaints in three years, mostly billing | Founding cohort forming now, and you help set how it works |
The deal
Four things. Each one is why the next client finds you.
Reply within a day.
Slow replies are the number one complaint about marketplace pros. We rank on responsiveness and we show clients who answers fast, so this is the lever, not the chore.
Keep your profile true.
What you do, where you travel, the languages you speak. Clients only see Pros whose service area actually covers them, so an accurate profile means fewer wasted conversations, not more.
Show us your government photo ID before you go live.
Every Pro does, no exceptions. It is the reason a client trusts a stranger's profile enough to message, including yours.
Tell us when you are hired, and ask for the review.
Reviews on Afrihelps only come from clients who actually made contact. That makes yours worth something, and it is how the next person finds you.
Where we are straight with you
That is what a decade and a national ad budget buy, and no amount of positioning changes it. You will not get thirty requests a day here yet.
We are not trying to out-broad them. We are building density in Atlanta first, for a community every national platform serves generically, with one promise they cannot make: you will never pay for a lead.
If you want volume billed at the door, that is Thumbtack, and we would rather you know now. If you want the clients who are specifically looking for someone like you, and to keep every dollar you earn from them, this is built for you.
Community
Afrihelps recruits its first Atlanta Pros through the organizations the community already trusts.
Questions
Founding Pro Program
Free to join. Free for good. The Founding Pro badge on your profile permanently, launch placement on the Atlanta pages, and a direct line to our team.
Most pros finish in one sitting. No card, now or ever.
