The best tools & home improvement apps

The Home Depot

The Home Depot is the largest home improvement retailer in the world, selling building materials, tools, appliances, garden supplies, and décor through more than two thousand warehouse stores across North America. The business serves DIY homeowners and professional trades from the same floor, pairing its product range with tool rental, installation services, and a substantial Pro offering.

Lowe's

Lowe's is a major American home improvement retailer selling appliances, tools, building materials, paint, flooring, and garden supplies across around 1,700 stores in the US. The chain serves both DIY customers and professional trades, and pairs its range with installation services, tool rental, and the MyLowe's Rewards programme.

Ace Hardware

Ace Hardware is a cooperative of independently owned hardware stores — around five thousand of them worldwide — selling tools, paint, lawn and garden supplies, plumbing and electrical parts, and household hardware. The model keeps stores small and local while giving them shared buying power, and the chain competes on convenience and staff knowledge rather than warehouse scale.

Menards

Menards is a family-owned Midwestern home improvement chain with around 350 stores, selling building materials, tools, appliances, and garden supplies under the long-running "Save Big Money" slogan. The company is known for its rebate programme, which returns a percentage of purchases as store credit, and for a range that stretches from lumber yards to groceries in its larger stores.

Harbor Freight Tools

Harbor Freight Tools is an American discount tool retailer selling hand and power tools, generators, jacks, air compressors, and workshop equipment at prices well below the major brands. The company sells its own labels — Hercules, Bauer, Icon, Pittsburgh — through more than 1,500 US stores, aimed at DIYers, hobbyists, and cost-conscious trades.

Toolstation

Toolstation is a UK trade and DIY retailer selling tools, electrical, plumbing, and building supplies through a network of more than 500 branches alongside its online and catalogue business. Like its close competitor it runs a counter-service format built for speed, serving trade professionals who need a last-minute fix as well as DIY customers planning a job.

Screwfix

Screwfix is a UK trade retailer selling tools, electrical, plumbing, and building hardware through more than 900 branches, built around a click-and-collect model where orders are ready within minutes. Part of Kingfisher, it serves tradespeople who need parts the same day, alongside DIY customers, and operates a catalogue-led business rather than browsable shop floors.

Tractor Supply

Tractor Supply Company is the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the United States, selling livestock and pet feed, fencing, tools, workwear, trailers, and lawn and garden equipment across more than two thousand stores. Its customers are hobby farmers, ranchers, and rural homeowners, and the range reflects that — animal health products and chicken coops alongside power tools and work boots.

Parts Town

Parts Town supplies genuine OEM replacement parts for commercial foodservice equipment, serving the technicians and operators who keep restaurant kitchens running. The American company built its business on same-day shipping and on holding genuine manufacturer parts rather than generic equivalents, which is what matters when a fryer or combi oven is down.

VEVOR

VEVOR is a one-stop retailer for home improvement and DIY, selling automotive tools, workshop machinery, garden equipment, restaurant supplies, and industrial gear largely under its own label. The business covers millions of products across an unusually wide span of trade and hobby categories, sold direct at prices well below branded equivalents.

WebstaurantStore

WebstaurantStore is the largest online restaurant supplier in the world, selling commercial kitchen equipment, smallwares, disposables, furniture, and janitorial supplies. The American company serves professional foodservice operators and individual customers alike, stocking hundreds of thousands of products across everything a kitchen or front of house needs.

Matco Tools

Matco Tools sells professional hand tools, power tools, toolboxes, and diagnostic equipment to mechanics, through a franchised network of distributors who visit workshops directly. The mobile-distributor model is the business: technicians buy from a van that comes to them, often on payment terms, rather than from a store.

SupplyHouse

SupplyHouse is an American online distributor of plumbing, heating, HVAC, and electrical supplies, carrying more than 180,000 products from the major trade brands. The company operates its own warehouses across the US and serves both licensed contractors and homeowners doing their own work, competing on stock depth and on service.

Floor & Decor

Floor & Decor is an American specialty retailer of hard-surface flooring, selling tile, wood, laminate, vinyl, and natural stone alongside installation materials. The chain operates warehouse-format stores holding in-stock inventory rather than ordering from samples, serving professional installers and homeowners doing their own work — which means a job can start the same day.

Victorian Plumbing

Victorian Plumbing is the UK's largest online bathroom retailer, selling suites, showers, baths, taps, tiles, and furniture, with a growing kitchen range alongside. Despite the period-styling name the business covers contemporary design as heavily as traditional, and sells direct to homeowners and trade alike — competing on range and price against the builders' merchants and high-street showrooms.

Andersons Lawn

The Andersons sells professional-grade lawn care products direct to homeowners — fertilisers, weed and pest control, grass seed, and soil treatments drawn from the agronomy business the company has run for decades. The range is built around seasonal application programmes rather than one-off purchases, aimed at people who want golf-course-grade inputs for a home lawn.

Fleet Farm

Fleet Farm is a Midwestern American retailer selling farm equipment, sporting goods, hunting and fishing gear, tools, outdoor power equipment, workwear, and pet supplies. The chain serves rural and small-town customers across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas, with a range stretching from livestock supplies to grills and footwear.

Blain's Farm & Fleet

Blain's Farm & Fleet is a Midwestern American retailer selling farm supplies, tools, automotive parts, workwear, and household goods across Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan. Family-owned since 1955, it serves rural and small-town customers with a range spanning tractor parts to work boots, and operates automotive service centres alongside its stores.

Leroy Merlin

Leroy Merlin is the South African arm of the French DIY and home improvement retailer, selling across garden, bathroom, kitchen, storage, building materials, tiles and flooring, décor and lighting, paint, electrical and smart home, solar, plumbing, hardware, and tools. The catalogue runs to more than 150,000 products and services, sold in large-format stores and online under the group's stated mission of making your home the best place to live.

Kent Building Supplies

Kent Building Supplies is a Canadian home improvement retailer operating 48 stores, selling building materials, tools, hardware, paint, kitchens, and garden supplies to renovators, tradespeople, and homeowners. Part of the J.D. Irving group, the chain serves Atlantic Canada and sells both in store and through kent.ca with delivery and in-store pickup.

City Plumbing

City Plumbing is a British plumbing and heating merchant selling boilers, bathrooms, pipework, radiators, and heating supplies through a national branch network. Part of the Highbourne Group, the business serves trade installers primarily, combining same-day branch collection with delivery to site — the two fulfilment routes that matter when a job is already underway and a part is missing.

PexUniverse

PexUniverse is an American online supplier of plumbing and HVAC materials, selling PEX tubing and fittings, boilers, radiant heating, valves, and water heaters. The business serves contractors and serious DIY installers, competing on technical range rather than on the general hardware a big-box store carries.

McCoy's Building Supply

McCoy's Building Supply is an American building materials retailer selling lumber, roofing, tools, hardware, and farm and ranch supplies across Texas and neighbouring states. Family-owned since 1927, the chain serves professional builders and rural customers, with a range weighted toward construction materials rather than home décor.

ITS

ITS is a British tool supplier selling hand and power tools, accessories, workwear, and storage to trade and DIY customers. The business offers next-day delivery to home or site, and runs a Kit Builder tool that lets customers assemble a bespoke tool kit or storage set rather than buying a fixed bundle.

Parts Town UK

Parts Town UK supplies genuine OEM spare parts and downloadable service manuals for commercial catering and refrigeration equipment. The business holds the UK's largest stock of OEM foodservice parts, serving the engineers and operators who keep professional kitchens running — a trade where a failed fryer or walk-in fridge costs money by the hour and a generic part will not do.

The Metal Store

The Metal Store is a British online supplier of metal and steel products, trading for more than a decade with UK industry and consumers. The business sells cut-to-size sheet, tube, bar, and section across steel, aluminium, and stainless, serving fabricators, engineers, and home workshop users alike.

Metric Fasteners & Hardware｜BelMetric

BelMetric supplies metric fasteners and hardware — bolts, screws, nuts, washers, and specialist fixings — to mechanics, engineers, restorers, and manufacturers working on metric equipment and European vehicles. The company differentiates on technical depth, publishing drawings, data sheets, and 3D CAD models for its parts, and handles both single-item orders and bulk quote requests.

Machine Mart

Machine Mart is a British retailer of tools and workshop machinery, selling power tools, compressors, welders, generators, and woodworking and metalworking equipment. Trading through branches across the UK alongside its catalogue and online business, it serves professional workshops and serious home users rather than casual DIY buyers.

Fusion Tools Store

Fusion Tools Store supplies tools and equipment for installation trades, covering the hand tools, power tools, and accessories fitters need on site. The business positions itself around install work specifically rather than general hardware, stocking the specialist kit those jobs require and organising its range by the task rather than by the manufacturer — which is how a fitter actually looks for something.

Plumbing Solder Shop

Plumbing Solder Shop is a British supplier of solder wire, flux, and jointing consumables for plumbing and gas soldering work. The business is a deliberate specialist, concentrating on the consumables a plumber gets through constantly rather than carrying a general plumbing range — the sort of focused supplier a trade merchant's broad catalogue tends to bury.

Caswell Inc

Caswell Inc has supplied do-it-yourself metal finishing since 1990, when it set out to change the electroplating industry with a small nickel plating kit that still sells largely unchanged today. The range covers anodizing and electroplating kits, metal polishing supplies, bronzing and antiquing products, and the company's ethanol-resistant gas tank sealer. It remains family owned and operated by five family members and a small core team.

Lee's Tools

Lee's Tools is an American retailer specialising in Milwaukee Electric Tool products, carrying the FUEL cordless line, drills, grinders, saws, rotary hammers, press and expansion tools, and heated gear. The business is a single-brand specialist rather than a general tool merchant, stocking depth across the Milwaukee catalogue including the less common professional lines.