The navigator for the trades

Who we are

We're TradeAtlas — an independent information platform built for the skilled trades. We cover the whole arc of a trades career and a trades business: getting in, growing, running it well, and eventually stepping away from it. The apprentice deciding on a trade and the fifty-year-old owner planning retirement are living the same career, twenty-five years apart. We're building for the whole arc.

What makes us different

We're not a trade school. We're not a software company selling you a subscription. We're not a PE firm sourcing deals through "educational" content. We're the resource that exists in between all of them — the one without a stake in which door you walk through.

We do make money — affiliate partnerships, and pointing you toward courses and tools we think are genuinely good. But that revenue never buys a ranking or a recommendation. No-pay-to-rank is built into how we operate, and it doesn't bend for anyone, advertiser or not. Our ownership and valuation content carries the same standard: no buy-side fee. We do not source deals; we explain the trade-offs so owners can go into a transition with eyes open.

What we cover

The trades ecosystem doesn't fit into one lane, so neither do we:

• Career Paths — 21 trade career guides covering licensing, apprenticeships, salary ranges, and entry paths, trade by trade.
• TradeStack — a software directory and evaluator indexing 597+ platforms across 23 categories, plus head-to-head comparisons and an ecosystem map, so contractors can find the right tech stack without a vendor's thumb on the scale.
• Ownership & Succession — free resources for owners thinking about their exit: valuation ranges, deal structures like strategic sales and ESOPs, and what a transition actually looks like.
• Standards & Credentials — licensing, codes, EPA 608, and OSHA compliance information by trade.
• Trades Demand Index — our own proprietary labor-demand data, tracked monthly by trade and state. This one's still in progress; we'd rather ship it right than claim it's live before it is.

Why we're here

Because the people who keep the country's lights on, pipes flowing, and buildings standing have been underserved by an information ecosystem built to sell to them, not serve them. We think that's backwards. We're building the thing we wish existed — and we're building it with the trades, not just for them.

Press & data

Reporters and researchers citing our directory counts, Demand Index figures, or survey findings — or manufacturers and distributors with a licensing question about our data — should reach us through the contact form below rather than a generic press inbox we don't yet staff.