Leads for contractors: where to buy them and what each costs

Advertised prices, checked

Choosing a lead source when most will not publish a price

1. Start from the published band, not from zero. Fresh exclusive leads run $80 to $225 by trade and shared leads roughly half that. Walking into a sales call already knowing that band changes the conversation more than any negotiating tactic.
2. Ask the same four questions of every source. How many contractors get this lead, how fast does it reach me, what happens when it is bad, and what is the minimum I can buy. Price is the fifth question, not the first.
3. Buy small from two sources at once. One source at volume tells you nothing about whether the price was good. Two sources at the smallest volume each will sell tells you which one your close rate likes, in about a month.
4. Keep your own cost per job. Every seller quotes cost per lead because it flatters them. The number that decides your year is what you spent to win a job, and only you can compute it.

The four kinds of source

Rate-card sellers publish a price per trade and tier and sell you leads at it. Marketplaces put your bid against other contractors and let the price find its own level. Pay-per-call networks charge for a connected phone call rather than a form. Aged resellers sell you a list of homeowner enquiries from weeks or months ago.

Those four are priced on incomparable bases and are constantly quoted at each other. Sorting a quote into the right one is the first useful thing you can do with it, and it is why this site keeps fresh and aged prices in separate columns everywhere.

What the five publishers actually say

Fixr prices seven trades by tier. 99 Calls prices the wider roofing market and names which platforms sit in the shared band and which in the exclusive one. Aged Lead Store publishes a full ladder by lead age and order size. Work Aged Leads publishes average bands across the aged providers it lists. Thumbtack publishes no price and explains why: there are no subscription fees and the pro sets their own lead prices.

That is the entire published record for this market in the United States as this site found it. It is not much, and it is considerably more than a contractor can normally assemble in an afternoon.

What the other twelve say

33 Mile Radius, Porch, eLocal, Contractor Appointments and LeadPoint all serve pages that read perfectly well and carry no price. That is a finding about how they sell: the price is a conversation, not a number.

Angi, HomeAdvisor, BuildZoom, Modernize, Service Direct, Bark and Networx returned a 403, an empty body, a bot challenge or a 404 at the address their own sites point to. That is a finding about our fetch and nothing else, and this site refuses to dress it up as a finding about their prices.

Common questions

Where can a contractor buy leads?

From rate-card sellers, bidding marketplaces, pay-per-call networks and aged-record resellers. Seventeen US sources across those four categories are recorded on this site with what each publishes about price.

What is the cheapest source of contractor leads?

Aged records, at $0.15 to $10 depending on age and volume. They are also the only category where most of the people on the list have already hired somebody, so cheapest per record and cheapest per job are different questions.

Do any lead companies publish their prices?

Five of the seventeen checked. Fixr and 99 Calls for fresh leads, Aged Lead Store and Work Aged Leads for aged records, and Thumbtack for its charging model rather than a price.

Should I use more than one lead source?

Almost always, at least at the start. Running two small orders in parallel is the only cheap way to learn which source your close rate actually likes.

Prices by trade

• Roofing leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• HVAC leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• Solar leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• Home Improvement leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• Window leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• Siding leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• Kitchen leads: what the sources that publish a price charge
• Bathroom leads: what the sources that publish a price charge