Professional vs DIY Pest Control: What UK Customers Buy

Monday 19/10/2026

Homeowners buy rat traps, ant bait and UV tracking powder. Pest controllers buy fly-unit glue boards, metal bait stations, rodent barrier wool and solar mesh by the roll. A year of orders shows two very different ideas of pest control.

Put a professional pest controller's order book next to a householder's basket and the difference is not price. It is the job each is trying to do. PestFix compared every order from September 2025 to August 2026, retail customers on one side and trade accounts on the other.

What households buy

The householder's top ten is a list of visible problems and quick answers. The most ordered item was not a trap at all, but UV tracking powder, a non-toxic dust used with a UV torch to reveal where mice are travelling. It was ordered 507 times. The Black Cat Rat Trap comes next with 457 orders, followed by ant bait stations (159), the smaller Black Cat Nano Rat Trap (128), Daddi Long Legs rotating bird deterrents (115 and 99), PestFix’s own rat and mouse snap traps, the SolarFix Brush for solar panels and rolls of rodent-proof mesh. Rodent products account for 23 per cent of household orders.

What professionals buy

The professional's list is about monitoring, compliance and volume. Top is the Universal EFK Glue Board for electric fly killers (950 orders), a product every food business changes on a schedule. Next comes the lockable metal bait station with key (303 orders, 3,589 units), rodent barrier wool (247), ant gel (184), and the 30-metre solar proofing kit (159). Next are lithium AAA batteries by the thousand (153 orders, 2,977 batteries) for smart monitoring solutions that can detect pest activity and send alerts directly to a phone. Solar mesh by the roll, rodent sealant, cut-to-size netting complete the ten.

Reading the two lists together

Households buy the trap; professionals buy the box the trap goes in. The lockable bait station protects children, pets and non-target wildlife, and it is the product most households skip.

Households treat ants at the nest; professionals use gel bait, which the ants carry back to the colony.

Households buy solar brush strips; professionals buy mesh and clips as a long-term solution.

Professionals buy batteries because monitoring is now an important part of pest control, alongside trapping.

The middle ground

The gap between household and professional products is narrowing. Smart traps and sensors that were only available to professionals in 2024 are now sold to consumers, and the household top ten now includes a bed bug detector and tracking powder, both used for monitoring. However, when dealing with a serious infestation, the professional’s equipment, along with their licence and training, still makes the difference.

Pest controllers such as JG Pest Control have the expertise and equipment to identify the source of a pest problem, locate entry points and put the appropriate control and proofing measures in place.

About the data

Source: PestFix sales data, January 2019 to September 2026. PestFix, Chichester, supplies professional and DIY pest control products across the UK. Household figures are orders from retail customers across all channels; professional figures are orders from trade accounts, with group-company purchasing excluded.