Cost per lead in home services, and what each sold job costs you

Home and home improvement companies paid a median of about $91 for one lead from search ads between April 2025 and March 2026 (WordStream's 2026 benchmarks). In the year before, roofing was the highest of 16 home services at $228 a lead (LocaliQ). That price buys a name and a phone number. To see what a job costs you, divide what you spent on each lead source by the jobs it sold.

A source with cheap leads can still be your most expensive way to win work.

What does a lead cost in home services?

A search ad lead cost a home and home improvement company about $91 at the median from April 2025 to March 2026, the newest year WordStream has measured. In LocaliQ's newest study by trade, from a year earlier, roofing leads and window and door leads cost more than twice that.

The $91 comes from WordStream's 2026 benchmarks: medians from 13,474 US search campaigns on Google and Microsoft, across 23 industries, from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026. It was the same the year before. A click cost more, $8.33 against $7.85, but more of the clicks turned into leads.

The trade numbers come from LocaliQ's study of 3,211 US search campaigns from April 2024 to March 2025, the newest that splits home services by trade.

$228

Source: LocaliQ, 3,211 US search ad campaigns on Google and Microsoft, April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025. They are medians: half the campaigns paid more, half paid less.

Google's Local Services Ads charge by the lead instead of the click. In September 2026, SearchLight, a marketing data company, tracked 948 contractors on them. Counting each caller once, a lead cost $62.88 across all of them, $60.66 on HVAC campaigns and $67.05 on plumbing, and about 4 in 10 of those leads became booked customers (The Data-Driven Trades).

Facebook has its own report. LocaliQ's 2026 Facebook benchmarks give an average of $42.95 per lead for home and home improvement. Whether that is cheap depends on how many of those leads book and buy.

Lead sellers set their own prices. Angi's help center says its lead fees "change based on task, homeowner location, and demand for the work." RGR Marketing, another lead seller, says it prices leads "based on project type, exclusivity, and market." So the lead price that counts is the one on your own invoices.

Why doesn't cost per lead tell you which source works?

Cost per lead can't tell you which lead source works, because it counts every lead you pay for. Only some leads become appointments, and fewer still become signed jobs. So a source with cheap leads that rarely book or buy can cost more per sold job than one with expensive leads that do.

You may have had the month that shows it: more leads than ever, and fewer signed contracts.

One bath franchise's filing shows how big that drop is. In its 2025 franchise filing, Five Star Bath Solutions reported that its 47 franchisees open for all of 2024 averaged 278 leads and 71 appointments a month. Worked out from those averages, that is about one appointment for every four leads, at bath companies averaging about $1.7 million in sales a year. The other three leads in four did not turn into an appointment.

Many leads are lost on the first call. Invoca's 2026 report found that only 52% of callers to home service businesses speak with a person, and 55% of the businesses don't ask the caller to book the job. The lead still costs you. Angi, for one, says you are charged for leads "whether or not you open or respond to them." The fix starts in your office. Call back within minutes, and ask for the appointment.

The cheapest lead can cost the most once you count who could be booked. In September 2026, SearchLight graded 231,904 calls, forms and chats at 140 home service businesses, mostly HVAC, plumbing and electrical. A lead counted as bookable when it was a real homeowner in the service area asking for a service the company offers. Leads from pay-per-lead marketplaces cost $83.10 each, 44% less than Google Ads leads. But 80.1% of them could not be booked, so each bookable one cost $417.99, the most of any paid channel and 35% more than Google Ads (The Data-Driven Trades).

Facebook ads did the same in that data. At $65.28 a lead they looked 56% cheaper than Google Ads, yet each booked customer cost 38% more: $435.15 against $316.18.

That is why a report that shows a cheap cost per lead can sit next to an empty schedule. If an agency runs your ads, ask it for cost per sold job by source. It is one of the questions to ask a marketing agency before you sign.

Cost per lead tells you what you paid. Cost per sold job tells you what worked.

How do you work out cost per appointment and cost per sold job?

Cost per appointment is what you spent on a lead source divided by the appointments that ran. Cost per sold job is the same money divided by the jobs that signed. Work them out for every source, next to cost per lead, to see what each step from the lead to the signed job costs you.

Plumbing and HVAC service companies call the last number "cost per booked job," because the booked call is the sale. When you sell bathrooms, roofs or windows in the home, a booked appointment is not a sale yet. Count the jobs that sign.

The two halves of this math usually live in different places. The spend is on the invoice, and the sales are in your CRM or on your job board. Put them side by side once, and the cheap source can turn out to be the costly one.

What are you really buying from each lead source?

Each lead source charges for something different, and only some of what you buy is yours alone. Lead sellers and marketplaces like Angi charge for each lead and can send the same homeowner to several companies. With your own Google and Facebook ads, you pay for clicks or views, and nobody else gets that lead.

From each seller's own pages: Angi Help Center, RGR Marketing, Google Local Services Help.

A shared lead costs less because the seller sends one homeowner to several companies. It can still pay off for a company that calls first and books well. An exclusive lead is sold to you alone. Which one is cheaper per job depends on your office, so give each its own column in the worksheet below and let the numbers decide.

A third route is your own ads, with leads only you get. Judge them by the same number.

How do you fill in the numbers for your own company?

To work out cost per sold job for each lead source, give every source its own column in a worksheet and take 90 days of leads. Fill in four things for each: what you spent, the leads, the appointments that ran and the jobs sold. Your office manager can pull most of it from your CRM or job board.

Send this:

Subject: Lead numbers for the last 90 days

Hi [name], can you pull these numbers for every lead source we paid for? Use leads that came in from [start date] to [end date].

For each source:

1. What we spent: lead fees, monthly fees, ad spend and any agency fee.
2. How many leads came in. Count each homeowner once.
3. How many of those leads had an appointment that ran.
4. How many signed a job, and the total dollars sold.

If a lead has no source in the system, put it in an "unknown" row so we can see how big it is.

Thanks, [your name]

Then fill one column per source. Add columns if you have more sources.

Why do lead costs keep going up, and what part can you control?

Lead prices move with demand, and you don't set them. What happens after the lead comes in is yours to fix. In WordStream's data, a search ad lead for home and home improvement companies held at a median of about $91 from one year to the next. Yet one home improvement company's own cost per lead kept climbing.

Both numbers come from RGS Exteriors, which expected about $16 million in sales in 2025. When its cost per lead nearly doubled, Tim Brown Jr. of RGS Exteriors told Pro Remodeler: "Yes, it's almost double, but the profits are making up for it." His sales, closing rate and average job were all up, so he judged the leads by what the jobs earned.

The price kept climbing in 2025. Builder Prime's write-up of the company's year names three levers that sit inside the company: bigger tickets, harder follow-up on no-sales, and more referrals. The company was already building referrals through a brand ambassador program. None of the three needs a cheaper lead.

For scale, look at one bath operation's books. In 2023, one Five Star Bath Solutions location covering six territories spent 20% of its $11 million in sales on advertising and marketing. The line its filing calls "online affiliates" took 9.51% of sales on its own. When marketing takes a fifth of every dollar sold, what you get from each lead matters as much as what you pay for it.

What should you do once you know your cost per sold job?

Once you know your cost per sold job, compare each lead source's number with what you make on an average job. Keep a source whose jobs cost less to win than you make on them, and cap or cut one whose jobs cost more. If a source sends cheap leads but few appointments, fix your office before you cut it.

Start with how fast you call a new lead back and the booking call itself. For visits that end without a sale, use this estimate follow-up plan.

Keep the sources that win jobs at a cost you can live with. Fix your office before you blame the seller. The worksheet tells you which one needs the work.