Your cost per lead is lying to you.

Ask ten contractors what a lead should cost and you’ll get ten guesses, plus one guy who swears anything over 50 bucks is a ripoff. Meanwhile the roofer paying $228 a lead is eating everyone’s lunch, and the handyman paying $54 is going broke. Same year, same town, opposite outcomes.

So here’s the straight version: what leads actually cost in 2026, by trade and by channel, every number sourced. Then the part almost nobody does, which is the math that tells you whether YOUR number is good or garbage.

TL;DR: A home services lead from search ads averages $90.92, with roofing at $228 and handyman work at $54 (LocaliQ, 2025). Google Local Services Ads run cheaper, about $53 blended, and roughly 44 of every 100 of those leads book (SearchLight Digital, 2026). But cost per lead alone can’t tell you anything. Divide it by your booking rate to get cost per booked job, then check that the profit on that job is at least double the cost of booking it. Pass that test and your “expensive” leads are fine. Fail it and your cheap leads are bleeding you.

What does a contractor lead cost in 2026?

Across 3,211 US home services search ad campaigns, the average lead costs $90.92 and the average click costs $7.85 (LocaliQ, 2025). That’s the benchmark number for the trades, and it isn’t getting cheaper: the same report clocked lead costs up about a tenth over the past year.

For context, the average across every industry is $66.69 per lead (LocaliQ, 2026). Home services costs more than almost everything else because the jobs are worth more and every contractor in town is bidding on the same searches.

The trade you’re in moves the number a lot. From the same LocaliQ dataset:

Trade	Cost per lead (search ads)
Roofing and gutters	$228.15
General contractors	$165.67
Plumbing	$129.02
AC install and repair	$127.74
Landscaping	$117.92
Electricians	$93.69
Handyman	$54.05

Notice the pattern. The bigger the ticket, the pricier the lead. A roofing lead costs four times a handyman lead because the job behind it is worth fifty times more. Keep that in your head, because it’s the whole story of this post. It’s also why your ad budget should start from job value, not from a percent of revenue.

Why are LSA leads cheaper than search leads?

In February 2026, across 888 contractors and $6.72M in ad spend, Google Local Services Ads averaged $53 per lead, and about 44 of every 100 of those leads booked (SearchLight Digital, 2026). By trade: electrical came in around $39, HVAC $51, plumbing $57.

A second agency’s client data, this one from 100+ accounts, showed the same shape with roofing again on top: roofing $162, HVAC $80, plumbing $69, painting $40 (The Media Captain, 2025). And LocaliQ pegs LSA leads around $60 against their $66.69 search average (LocaliQ, 2026). Three separate datasets, same verdict: LSA leads cost less than search leads for most trades.

Why? You only pay when someone actually calls or messages you, not when they click. The person calling off an LSA listing already saw your reviews and your Google Guaranteed badge. That’s a warmer call than a click that might bounce.

The catch is you can’t just turn it on. There’s licensing, insurance checks, and background screening, and not every trade qualifies. Here’s the full LSA versus Google Ads breakdown by trade if you’re deciding where to start.

What do Facebook ads and lead-selling sites cost?

Facebook leads look cheap on paper. Home improvement campaigns average $41.26 per lead, against $27.66 across all industries (WordStream, 2025). But read the fine print: that’s a form fill, not a phone call. Facebook interrupts people who weren’t shopping, so those leads need fast, persistent follow-up before they turn into booked work. The same report shows the category’s conversion rate fell by more than a third in a year. Cheap lead, colder lead.

Then there are the lead-selling sites. ServiceTitan’s roundup puts Angi at $15 to $100 per lead, HomeAdvisor around $300 a year plus $30 to $60 per lead, and Thumbtack at $10 to $50 per lead for home improvement pros (ServiceTitan, 2026). And you pay whether or not you win the job, on a lead they’re also selling to the other guys.

Contractors have receipts on this. One pro got “charged $68 for a lead that never even read my message” (smartcustomer.com, 2024). One local search guy reading the pro forums summed it up: “plumbers paying $120 per shared lead” (@boringlocalseo, 2026). And it’s not just forum anger. The FTC ordered HomeAdvisor to pay up to $7.2M for deceptively marketing its leads (FTC, 2023), then mailed refund checks to 110,372 service providers (FTC, 2023). That’s not a bad review. That’s a federal case.

The lesson isn’t “never buy leads.” It’s that the sticker price per lead tells you nothing about what you’ll pay per JOB. Which brings us to the number that actually matters.

Why cost per lead is the wrong number to chase

One cleaning business owner posted his real Thumbtack month, straight P&L: $3,038.89 spent, 113 leads, 25 booked, $10,777.85 in front-end revenue (@cleanbizguy, 2025).

Run his numbers. That’s $26.89 per lead. Sounds amazing, right? Half the price of a Facebook lead. But he only booked 25 of the 113, so his real cost was $121.56 per booked job. Still worked out fine for him, about 3.5 times his spend back in revenue, but only because he did the second division. Most guys stop at the first one.

So here’s the formula. It’s one line:

Cost per booked job = cost per lead ÷ booking rate.

Now watch it flip a decision. A plumbing LSA lead at $57, booking around 44 of every 100, costs about $128 per booked job. A plumbing search lead at $129, if you book 1 in 4, costs $516 per booked job. The “cheap” and “expensive” labels just swapped, and nothing changed except you did one extra division.

It cuts the other way on shared leads. A $35 shared lead sounds harmless until you’re winning 1 in 10 because four other pros got the same name. That’s $350 per job won, plus the hours you burned chasing the other nine. The cheapest leads you can buy are routinely the most expensive jobs you’ll ever book.

So what’s a good cost per lead? Run the payback test

Here’s the test we run before any campaign goes live: the profit on a booked job has to be at least double what it costs you to book one. Twice, minimum. If the math clears, the lead price is good no matter how big it looks. If it doesn’t, walk.

You need three of your own numbers: average job value, booking rate, and rough gross margin. For job value, real 2026 anchors: a roof replacement averages $15,439 (This Old House, 2026), central AC replacement runs $6,736 to $20,099 installed (This Old House, 2026), and a water heater install averages $1,950 (This Old House, 2026).

Now the roofing math that scares everyone. A $228.15 lead, booking 1 in 4, is about $913 per booked job. Brutal, until you finish it: on a $15,439 roof keeping, call it, 30 cents of gross margin on every dollar, that job carries about $4,600 in gross profit. $4,600 against $913 is five times payback. That “insane” lead price is one of the best deals in your business.

Flip it. A handyman lead at $54.05, booking 1 in 4, is $216 per booked job. If the job is a $300 repair, you just paid $216 to earn maybe $150 in margin. Dead on arrival. A cheap lead on a small job can be worse than a $228 lead on a $15K roof. That’s also why the answer to “am I getting enough leads” starts with job math, not a lead count.

If your trade mixes small and big tickets, run the test on the jobs you WANT the ads to bring, not your average. Ads pointed at water heaters and ads pointed at repipes are different businesses.

When should you actually worry about your cost per lead?

Worry when the payback test fails, or when your own trend breaks, meaning the same campaign that cleared the bar in spring quietly doubles by fall. Don’t worry because a number “feels high.” Feelings aren’t math.

But before you blame the ads, check the thing that silently doubles your cost per booked job: how fast you answer. You’re about 21 times more likely to qualify a lead when you respond in 5 minutes instead of 30 (Lead Response Management Study, 2007). Harvard Business Review’s follow-up audit found the average company took 42 hours to get back to a lead, nearly 1 in 4 never responded at all, and firms answering within the hour were about 7 times as likely to reach the decision maker as those even an hour slower. The full breakdown, with the study links, lives in the speed to lead post.

Remember the formula. Cost per booked job is cost per lead divided by booking rate. Let your booking rate get cut in half by slow callbacks and every lead just doubled in price without the ad platform touching a thing. Speed to lead is the cheapest fix on this whole page, and most “bad lead” problems are really follow-up problems wearing a disguise.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the average cost per lead for contractors in 2026?

About $90.92 from search ads across home services (LocaliQ, 2025), around $53 blended on Google Local Services Ads (SearchLight Digital, 2026), and $41.26 on Facebook for home improvement (WordStream, 2025). Your trade swings it hard: roofing runs $228 on search while handyman work runs $54.

Is a $200 cost per lead too high?

For a roofer or a remodeler, usually no. Booking 1 in 4 puts you around $800 per booked job, and the margin on a five-figure job covers that several times over. For small-ticket work, $200 a lead is a fire alarm. The lead price is never the answer by itself; the payback math is.

How do I lower my cost per lead without wrecking lead quality?

Carefully, because chasing a cheaper lead usually buys a colder one. The moves that lower cost per BOOKED job: get on LSA if your trade qualifies, tighten your service area so you stop paying for towns you won’t drive to, answer inside a minute, and follow up until they book or say no. Fixing your booking rate beats squeezing your lead price every time.

Should I buy leads from the shared-lead sites?

If you’re new and hungry, they can fill a slow week, and some pros make the math work. Go in with open eyes: you’ll pay $10 to $100 a lead whether or not you win the job (ServiceTitan, 2026), you’re racing other pros to the same phone number, and you should track your cost per booked job from week one. The day you have your own lead flow, those sites become the expensive option.

The bottom line

Cost per lead is a price tag, not a verdict. In 2026 the honest benchmarks are roughly $91 for a home services search lead, $53 for LSA, and $41 for Facebook, with roofing paying triple and loving it. Divide your lead cost by your booking rate, hold it against the profit on a real job, and don’t run ads that can’t pay you back double. Then protect that math by answering fast, because a slow callback is the most expensive thing in your marketing.

If you want a second set of eyes on your numbers, that’s literally what I do all day for contractors. Bring your lead costs to a quick 15-minute Growth Chat and we’ll run the payback test on your real jobs together. If your setup is already clearing the bar, I’ll tell you that and you can get back to work.

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