--- title: "What Does a Contractor Lead Cost? The Math That Actually Matters" description: "Contractor lead cost varies wildly by source: platforms, LSA, ads, SEO. Learn the cost-per-booked-job math that finds your real number. Free lead-flow audit." canonical: https://trydigitaldynamics.com/blog/what-does-a-contractor-lead-cost/ date: 2026-08-01 site: Digital Dynamics - trydigitaldynamics.com --- # What Does a Contractor Lead Cost? The Math That Actually Matters Straight answer: a contractor lead costs anywhere from lunch money for a shared form fill to roughly **$1,000 for an exclusive water damage call in San Diego**. Both of those numbers are stickers. Neither tells you what a job actually costs you, and the gap between sticker and real cost is where contractors bleed money without noticing. This post teaches the math itself, so you can price any lead source anyone ever pitches you. If you want the per-source rundown for your specific trade, we've already written it for [plumbing leads](/plumbing-leads/) and [water damage leads](/water-damage-leads/). This is the framework those pages run on. ![Progress bar joke about shared leads never finishing the race](/memes/loading-shared-leads.svg) ## Why is cost per lead the wrong number? Because a lead is not a job. A lead is a maybe: a phone that might ring, a homeowner who might answer your callback, a quote that might get signed. You don't deposit maybes. The number that belongs in your books is **cost per booked job**: everything a source billed you in a month, divided by the jobs you actually booked from it. Two sources can charge identical stickers and produce wildly different job costs. Sticker price is what the vendor advertises; job cost is what you pay. ## What turns a lead price into a job price? Three multipliers sit between the sticker and the truth. Every lead source gets marked up by all three. The only question is by how much. **The race.** Shared platforms sell the same homeowner to several contractors at once, and **50% of consumers hire the contractor who responds first**. You paid full sticker for a fraction of a chance, and the sticker forgot to mention it. **The answer rate.** Every lead that hits voicemail is money billed with no job attached, and its cost gets quietly added to the jobs you do book. This multiplier is self-inflicted, which also means it's the only one you can fix by Friday. **The close rate.** An exclusive caller who chose your company closes differently than a form fill comparison-shopping in another tab. Same sticker, different odds, different real price. Multiply honestly and low-sticker leads stop looking low. That's the whole trick of the pay-per-lead economy: the sticker is the marketing. ## What does a lead cost on each platform? It depends on the platform, and here are the numbers we actually see in the accounts we run. **Shared platforms** (Angi, Thumbtack, and similar) charge per lead. Low stickers, high multipliers: the race eats your close rate, and the resale model means the price of admission buys a sprint, not a customer. **Pay-per-call platforms** (33 Mile Radius, eLocal) charge per call instead. Calls are exclusive and phone-first, and priced like it: in restoration, expect **$1,000 to $1,200 per call**. How the two models differ in practice (screening, credits, contracts) is in our [33 Mile Radius review](/33-mile-radius-leads/) and our [eLocal breakdown](/blog/elocal-leads-for-contractors/). **[Local Service Ads](/services/local-service-ads/)** charge per lead through Google itself, and the price fluctuates by service and market. At the friendly end: San Diego plumbers can see calls around **$40 each**. Junk leads can be disputed for credit, which quietly protects your denominator. **Meta ads** vary too, but across our accounts leads land anywhere from **$30 to $90 each**. Earlier-stage than search leads, so the follow-up has to be instant, but the sticker is the lowest on this list. **Your own Google Ads** have no per-lead sticker at all, because Google charges per click. What a call costs is your click price times how many clicks it takes to make the phone ring. In the markets we run (San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside County) plumbing calls land around **$300 to $800** depending on the campaign: drains price differently than emergency work. Restoration runs about **$300 to $500 per mold lead** and **$800 to $1,400+ for water damage**, driven by keywords and bid strategy. Roofing sits around **$500**, give or take. **Organic search** inverts the whole model. The program fee is flat while calls grow with rankings, so the per-job cost falls the longer it runs, the only source on this list that gets less expensive with age.
Cost per lead by source (accounts we run, Southern California)
Meta ads (per lead)$30–$90
Shared platforms: Angi, Thumbtack (per lead)$30–$150
LSA, San Diego plumbing (per call)about $40
Google Ads, restoration mold (per lead)$300–$500
Google Ads, roofing (per call)about $500
Google Ads, plumbing SoCal (per call)$300–$800
Pay-per-call platforms, restoration (per call)$1,000–$1,200
Google Ads, water damage (per lead)$800–$1,400+
Scale runs $0 to $1,400+. Bars show the ranges we see in live accounts; squares mark single typical prices.
## How do you project an ad budget before spending a dollar? Here's the method we use to build projections for clients, and you can run most of it yourself. Start with the mechanics: Google bills clicks, not calls, so your cost per lead is cost per click divided by your conversion rate. Our accounts convert clicks to leads at **10% on the low end and 25% when dialed in**. A $50 click at 10% is a $500 lead; the same click at 25% is a $200 lead. That's why account quality matters more than the auction.
Cost per clickLead cost at 10% conversion (starting)Lead cost at 25% conversion (dialed in)
$30$300$120
$50$500$200
$80$800$320
For projections, we open Google's Keyword Planner, pull the county we're targeting, and do the keyword research: search volume per term, plus the low and high end of the click-price range. Then we project on purpose with the pessimistic pair, the **high-range click price and the 10% conversion floor**. If the campaign beats the projection, the client gets a happy surprise instead of an excuse. The last piece is a starting sample size. We recommend budgeting for **at least 10 leads** before judging anything, because three leads tell you nothing about a market. So if your projected cost per conversion is $300, that's a **$3,000 ad spend budget** to start. Under-fund that and the campaign dies before the data arrives. ## How do you run the math on your own numbers? You need one month of records and a calculator. No consultant required. 1. **Pull a month of spend per source:** platform invoices, ad spend, program fees, all of it. 2. **Attribute your booked jobs.** Ask every new customer how they found you, or better, run a separate tracking number per source so the phone system does the remembering. 3. **Divide spend by booked jobs, per source.** That's your real price list: the one no vendor will ever show you. 4. **Add the revenue lens.** Divide each source's revenue by its spend, too. A source can look pricey per job and still be your workhorse if it delivers the five-figure tickets. Repeat it monthly and watch the trends, not just the totals. Rented sources drift upward as competition bids in; owned sources fall as rankings and Quality Scores mature. The trend line tells you where next quarter's budget belongs. ## What does the math usually reveal? Three findings show up over and over when contractors run this for the first time. Missed calls turn out to be the single most expensive line item. Fixing answering beats buying more leads, every time. Shared leads turn out to cost several times their sticker per booked job. And the owned sources turn out to be the only ones with improving math. Rented demand never goes on sale: the platform's price is the platform's price, this year and every year after. ## Which mix should you build? Rent for speed, own for economics. A capped platform budget can fill this month's board while your own ads, LSA profile, and rankings grow into the permanent supply, and because none of the rented sources leave anything behind, the cap matters as much as the mix. Want the math done on your actual numbers? [Request a free lead-flow audit](/contact/). Bring your last few months of spend, and we'll show you your real price per booked job from every source you're paying today.