Plumplot vs HouseCheckup 2026: When Free Area Stats Are Enough, and When They Are Not
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Quick answer
Plumplot is a free statistics site covering "England and Wales facts in maps and graphs", running since 2015. It costs nothing, asks for nothing, and its longitudinal series are better than anything we publish: new-build versus established price splits, sales volumes by price band, national rankings across 105 postcode areas, and energy-efficiency data going back to 2008. It refreshes monthly and prints the publication date next to the data, which is more transparency than most paid tools manage. We are not going to attack it, and you should not expect us to — it is a free public-good stats site and it is good at its job. There is exactly one thing it cannot do, and it is structural rather than a shortcoming: Plumplot's smallest unit is a postcode sector. It has no address-level anything. HouseCheckup covers the same England and Wales footprint but works the other way round — one address, screened for flood including surface water, coal mining, radon and ground stability, for a one-off £24.99. All Plumplot observations below are dated 28 July 2026.
| Feature | HouseCheckup | Plumplot |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free checkers; one-off £9.99 Lite or £24.99 Complete report | Free — no pricing anywhere on the site, no paid tier |
| Signup | None for the free checkers; email given at purchase | None on the area pages we used — no account, no email. Plumplot wins |
| Smallest unit of data | The individual address | The postcode sector — no address-level data of any kind |
| Geographic coverage | England and Wales | England and Wales — the same footprint |
| New-build vs established price split | No | Yes — Cambridge (CB) showed established £462k vs new-build £491k (28 Jul 2026). Plumplot wins |
| Sales volumes and trend | No | Yes — Cambridge showed 4.8k sales, down 29.2% year on year. Plumplot wins |
| National rankings | No | Yes — ranks postcode areas nationally (Cambridge 24th of 105). Plumplot wins |
| Long-run energy-efficiency series | EPC for the specific address, current certificate | Home features and energy efficiency 2008–2025 at area level. Plumplot wins |
| Refresh cadence and dating | Report compiled at the time you order it | Monthly, with publication dates printed — housing market May 2026 published 29 Jun 2026; crime May 2026 published 9 Jul 2026. Plumplot wins on transparency |
| Flood risk | Address-level screen including surface water, via NaFRA2 | No — not a hazard dataset |
| Coal mining | Yes — keyless CON29M-style screen on the address | No |
| Radon | Yes — UKHSA/BGS Radon Indicative Atlas screen | No |
| Ground stability / shrink–swell | Yes — screened on the address | No |
| What you end up with | A PDF report on one address, 15+ checks, human-checked and emailed within 24 hours, usually faster | On-screen charts and maps for an area, free, immediately |
Our verdict
Use Plumplot. It is free, it is fast, it needs no email, and for area research it produces series we do not — the established-versus-new-build price split, sales volume by price band, postcode-area league tables, energy efficiency from 2008 to 2025. If your question is about an area, Plumplot may well be the best free answer available and there is no version of this page where we tell you otherwise. Use HouseCheckup when your question stops being about an area. Plumplot's Cambridge (CB) page shows the problem better than we could argue it: within one postcode area the cheapest sector, CB9 8, averages £222k while the dearest, CB2 7, averages £2.7M. If a postcode area can span that range, a postcode sector still contains houses on different geology, different flood paths, different mining histories and different EPCs. Nothing in an area statistic tells you which one you are buying. That is the job of an address-level screen: 15+ checks on the exact property, hand-checked by a person, emailed within 24 hours, usually faster, for a one-off £24.99. Read Plumplot to choose the area. Buy one report on the house.
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One report, one price — £24.99 Complete, no subscription. 15+ checks on the exact address from official sources (HM Land Registry, Environment Agency, MHCLG EPC, police.uk and more), reviewed by a person before it's sent.
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Plumplot is free and good, and we are not going to pretend otherwise
Plumplot is a small independent site — the footer reads "© 2015 - 2026 plumplot" — publishing "England and Wales facts in maps and graphs". There is no pricing page, no paid tier, no account and no email capture. It is a public-good statistics site, and attacking one would be both dishonest and pointless: we lose nothing to Plumplot, because the person reading a postcode-sector chart is usually not yet at the point of buying anything.
So this page is not a takedown. It is a description of where one kind of data stops and another has to start.
What Plumplot does better than we do
- It costs nothing and asks for nothing. No signup, no email, no card, no trial. Instant.
- Longitudinal depth we do not produce. New-build versus established price splits, sales volumes by price band, and an energy-efficiency series running from 2008 to 2025.
- National context. It ranks postcode areas against each other — Cambridge sat 24th of 105 postcode areas when we looked on 28 July 2026.
- Fast, dated refreshes. Housing-market data to May 2026, published 29 June 2026. Crime to May 2026, published 9 July 2026. Population using 2024 estimates published November 2025. Salary and unemployment to October 2025. Printing the publication date beside the data is better practice than a great many paid tools manage.
If your question is "what has this area been doing for the last decade", Plumplot answers it free, and we do not have a better answer to sell you.
The Cambridge page, and the argument it makes for us
Observed on 28 July 2026, Plumplot's Cambridge (CB postcode area) page showed an average price of £463k and a median of £395k, up £2.2k year on year; established homes at £462k against new-builds at £491k; 4.8k sales, down 29.2%; and a price map broken down by postcode sector in which the cheapest sector, CB9 8, averaged £222k and the dearest, CB2 7, averaged £2.7M.
Look at that last pair again. Inside a single postcode area, the spread between sectors is more than twelvefold. Plumplot handles that honestly by breaking the area into sectors — that is exactly the right thing for a stats site to do. But the same logic does not stop at the sector boundary. A postcode sector contains hundreds of houses sitting on different ground, at different elevations, with different mining history beneath them, different EPCs, and different planning designations attached to them. The average of that sector describes none of them individually.
The whole difference in one line: Plumplot's smallest unit is a postcode sector. HouseCheckup's smallest unit is a house. Neither is a better version of the other — they answer different questions, and only one of them is the question you ask on the day you make an offer.
What changes when you move from the sector to the address
Four hazard categories are worth spelling out, because each varies house by house within a single sector and none of them appears in area statistics anywhere.
Flood, including surface water. We screen the address using NaFRA2, which covers surface-water flooding as well as rivers and the sea. Surface water is the type buyers most often miss, because the map most people check is the rivers-and-sea one, and because it depends on very local topography — which side of a road you are on, whether the ground falls towards your plot. An area-level flood statistic cannot express that; an address-level screen can.
Coal mining. We run a keyless CON29M-style mining screen on the address. Mining reporting areas have hard edges that cut across streets. Being told that a town has mining history tells you nothing about whether your house sits inside the reporting area.
Radon. We screen against the UKHSA and BGS Radon Indicative Atlas. Radon potential is mapped on geology, which does not follow postcode boundaries.
Ground stability and shrink–swell. We run a ground-stability screen on the address. Clay shrink–swell — the mechanism behind most domestic subsidence claims — tracks the geology under the plot and the trees near it, not the average of the sector.
One point of precision that matters more than the marketing: we run these screens and report what comes back, and we say plainly when a reading is not available for a given property. We do not promise that every address returns a definitive answer on every hazard. Anyone who does is overpromising.
How to read a number like "sales down 29.2%"
Plumplot's Cambridge page showed 4.8k sales for the period, down 29.2% year on year, against an average price that had barely moved — up £2.2k. That pairing is worth understanding rather than skimming, and it is the sort of thing a free stats site is genuinely good at surfacing.
Volume and price often move independently. A sharp fall in transactions with flat prices usually means fewer people are choosing to move, not that values have collapsed — sellers who do not need to sell withdraw rather than discount. For a buyer that matters in two directions: less competition on the properties that are listed, but also a thinner set of recent comparables to price against, which makes the sold-price evidence for any individual house older and looser than it looks. It is a good argument for checking comparables on the specific address rather than leaning on an area average.
Sector data vs address data, side by side
| Question you are asking | Best answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Which area should we look in? | Plumplot (free) | Trends, rankings, new-build splits, sales volumes — all free, all area-level. |
| Is this area getting more or less expensive? | Plumplot (free) | Longitudinal series with dated monthly refreshes. |
| How does this postcode area compare nationally? | Plumplot (free) | League tables across 105 postcode areas. We do not produce these. |
| Is this specific house at flood risk? | HouseCheckup | Address-level NaFRA2 screen including surface water. Try the free flood checker first. |
| Is this house over old coal workings? | HouseCheckup | CON29M-style mining screen on the address — free coal-mining check. |
| Should I worry about subsidence here? | HouseCheckup | Ground-stability screen on the address — see how we assess subsidence risk. |
| I have chosen a house and I am about to offer | HouseCheckup Complete (£24.99) | 15+ checks on that address, human-checked, emailed within 24 hours, usually faster. |
The sequence we would actually recommend
Nothing here requires you to pay us until the last step, which is the point. Start on Plumplot and narrow to two or three areas using its free trend data. Shortlist houses. Run our free checkers — area score, house check, crime, radon, ground stability — on the addresses that survive. Then buy exactly one Complete report at £24.99 on the house you intend to offer on, so the address itself has been screened before your money is committed. One payment, at the only moment the answer changes a decision.
Where both of us stop
Plumplot is not a hazard dataset and does not claim to be. HouseCheckup is not a survey, not a mortgage valuation and not a set of conveyancing searches — your solicitor orders the lender-accepted local-authority, drainage-and-water and environmental searches after your offer is accepted, and a RICS surveyor inspects the building itself. Both of us sit before that stage. And both of us cover England and Wales only: if you are buying in Scotland or Northern Ireland, neither site covers you.
Key takeaways
- Plumplot is free, needs no signup, and is good. Use it for area research; we are not competing for that.
- It publishes series we do not — new-build vs established, sales volumes, national postcode-area rankings, energy efficiency 2008–2025 — and dates every refresh.
- Its smallest unit is a postcode sector. Its own Cambridge page spans £222k in CB9 8 to £2.7M in CB2 7, which shows how much an area average can hide.
- We work at the address: flood including surface water via NaFRA2, coal mining, radon and ground stability — with a plain statement when a reading is not available.
- They are complementary. Free area stats first, one paid address report at the point of offer.
- Read next: best UK property reports 2026, or our data sources.
Done with the area? Now check the house.
15+ checks on the exact address — flood including surface water, coal mining, radon, ground stability, planning, EPC, crime, schools and comparables — hand-checked by a person and emailed within 24 hours, usually faster. One payment, no subscription.
References
- Plumplot — England and Wales facts in maps and graphs (observed 28 July 2026) — Plumplot
- Price Paid Data — search sold prices — HM Land Registry
- Check the long term flood risk for an area in England — Environment Agency / GOV.UK
- Check if a property is affected by coal mining — GOV.UK
- UK radon maps — Radon Indicative Atlas — UK Health Security Agency
- BGS GeoSure — ground-stability hazard data — British Geological Survey
Done comparing? Check a real property.
The £24.99 Complete report runs 15+ official-source checks on the exact address you're considering — flood, subsidence, coal mining, radon, crime, EPC, sold-price history and more — with a plain-English read on every one.
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£24.99 one-off · no subscription · Human-checked and emailed to you. See a sample report