The short answer: yes, more than almost any other small-business category
GoodHireis our background-check pick for small business generally, and trades is arguably the category with the clearest case for it: published prices, no monthly minimum, order one check when you hire one tech. The exposure it's insuring against isn't abstract, it's a customer letting a stranger into their house based entirely on your judgment about who you hired.
Which tier actually matters for trades
Don't stop at the cheapest option. The $29.99 Basic+ tier is instant-database-only, national criminal database, sex offender registry, SSN trace, and national database searches are known to miss real records; it's not enough to hang a hiring decision on for someone who'll be alone in a client's home. The $54.99 Essential tier adds 7-year county courthouse searches and federal records, which is where most real criminal history actually shows up, that's the realistic floor. If the trade requires a state license, electrician, plumber, HVAC, the $89.99 Complete tier adds professional license verification, which matters more than it sounds: a faked or lapsed license is its own fraud, separate from the person's criminal history.
Real floor, not the sticker price
$54.99, not $29.99
The $29.99 tier is database-only and known to miss records; treat the $54.99 tier, with county courthouse searches, as the actual starting point for a hiring decision.
The cost math for a small trades crew
If you hire a handful of techs a year, $54.99–$89.99 per check with no monthly fee is cheap relative to the cost of one bad hire going into a client's home, both the direct liability and what it does to your reputation in a trade that runs on referrals. GoodHire's built-in FCRA adverse-action workflow, disclosure, consent, the required wait period before you can decline someone, also matters more than it looks: running background checks wrong procedurally is a lawsuit generator independent of what the check actually found.
Where it falls short
GoodHire is US-only, irrelevant if your crew is entirely domestic, but worth knowing if you ever bring on someone who worked or was convicted abroad. And worth saying plainly: GoodHire is owned by Checkr, so don't treat “GoodHire vs. Checkr” as real comparison shopping, it's the same underlying checks with different packaging. Checkr only becomes the better door once you're hiring at real volume and want API integration with negotiated pricing.
Bottom line
Worth it for almost any trades business that sends people into client homes or properties, skip the $29.99 tier and budget for $54.99 or $89.99 depending on whether the role is licensed. See the full background-check category if you also hire internationally, that's Certn's job, not GoodHire's.