You don't have a lead problem.You have a delivery problem.
Most contractors who feel starved of work are already paying for enough leads. The leads arrive, ring out, sit in an inbox until Monday, and get booked by whoever called back first. Buying more of them just means losing more of them. This page is about what happens between the lead arriving and the job being signed — and what a lead genuinely costs once you measure it there.
| Time | Job | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2:04 | Water heater leaking | Google LSA | NEW LEADRINGINGANSWERED 40s · BOOKED |
| 2:11 | Panel upgrade quote | Angi · shared ×4 | NEW LEADRINGINGVOICEMAILLOST · COMPETITOR CALLED FIRST |
| 2:38 | Roof repair after storm | Google Ads | NEW LEADRINGINGMISSED · ON A JOB |
| 3:52 | Bathroom remodel estimate | Organic search | FORM SUBMITTEDUNREAD · 18 minQUOTED THURSDAY · NO REPLY SINCE |
| 5:20 | Emergency drain clear | Thumbtack · shared ×5 | NEW LEADRINGINGHOMEOWNER STOPPED ANSWERING |
| 6:47 | Fence replacement | Referral | AFTER HOURSQUEUED UNTIL MONDAY |
Sources: PipelineOn 2026 marketplace analysis for the shared-lead cost per booked job ($50 lead, 20% won, 30% closed); SearchLight Digital Local Services Ads benchmark, February 2026 — $6.72M tracked spend, 888 contractors, 126,650 leads, 43.9% book rate, $1,826 average ticket; 2026 platform reporting on shared-lead distribution; Lead Response Management Study, Dr James Oldroyd, MIT. The $833 and $233 figures are the same product — a homeowner who wants work done. The difference is how many people were sold them.
Where do contractor leads actually die?
Almost never at the point of generation, which is where nearly all the money gets spent. They die in the gap between arriving and being spoken to. Every leak below is cheaper to fix than it is to out-spend, and most of them cost nothing but a setting and a habit.
Nobody answered
You were on a roof, under a sink, or driving. The call went to voicemail and the homeowner moved to the next name. This is the single largest leak in the trades and the one most easily closed with a missed-call text-back that already exists in most phone systems.
Somebody else answered first
On a shared platform four other contractors got the same lead at the same moment. Research consistently finds 78% of customers buy from whoever responds first — not the cheapest, not the best reviewed. You paid the same price for a race you did not know you were in.
It arrived after hours
A form submitted at 7pm on a Friday sits until Monday. By then the homeowner has a quote and a start date from someone else. Emergency trades lose the most here, but every trade loses something, and the fix is routing rather than staffing.
It was quoted and then forgotten
A quote that goes quiet is not a lost job, it is a homeowner still deciding — waiting on a spouse, a bonus, or a season. Most contractors chase twice and stop. The follow-up window for bigger work is months, not days.
Nobody knows where it came from
Without call tracking per channel you cannot tell which source produced which customer, so you cannot cut what is failing or feed what is working. Most contractor budgets are allocated on a feeling, and the feeling is usually wrong.
The customer left no trace
Job done, nobody asked for a review, nobody kept the details. That customer produced one payment instead of a ranking signal, a referral and a repeat job. This is the leak that costs the most over five years and gets noticed the least.
What does a shared lead actually cost you per booked job?
Several times the sticker price, and the multiplier is how many contractors it was sold to. You are not buying a lead on a marketplace, you are buying a lottery ticket in a race decided by who dials first. Put in what you pay and how often you win that race, and this prices both sides honestly — including the case where the shared lead wins.
Shared vs Exclusive
AFC · No. 018Convert that conversation 0%
Leads bought per job 0
Convert that conversation 0%
Leads bought per job 0
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is stored or transmitted. The shared side assumes that being first to call wins the job 78% of the time and the remaining 22% is split between the others, which is the published first-responder finding applied to a race you are actually in. The exclusive side is given your same close rate deliberately, even though exclusive leads generally close better because nobody else is calling — so if anything this understates the gap rather than flattering it. One deliberate discrepancy worth naming: at the defaults this returns roughly $667 per booked job, against the $833 figure cited further up the page. That published number assumes you reach the homeowner 20% of the time; our model gives you 25%. We would rather understate our own argument.
Where can a contractor actually buy leads, and what do they cost?
Five realistic options, and the column that separates them is not price. It is whether the lead is yours alone and whether anything accumulates after the job is done. The last row costs nothing per lead and is the only one that appreciates.
Sources: 2026 platform pricing reporting for Angi and Thumbtack including membership fees and shared-lead distribution; SearchLight Digital LSA benchmark, February 2026; LocaliQ home services benchmark across 3,211 campaigns for the Google Ads figures. Ranges are wide because trade, job size and market competition all move them substantially.
The column worth staring at is the last one. Angi and Thumbtack can genuinely fill a slow week — we are not going to pretend otherwise, and plenty of good contractors use them well. But a review you earn on a marketplace is an asset that company owns. Leave the platform and it leaves with you having nothing. That is the actual cost of renting your pipeline, and it never shows up on the invoice.
How do you plug the leaks before buying more leads?
In this order, because it runs cheapest first. Everything in the first three steps costs less than a fortnight of ad spend and improves every channel at once, including the leads you are not paying for.
Missed-call text-back
An automatic text within seconds of any missed call. This alone recovers more jobs than most budget increases, because a homeowner who gets an instant reply has not started dialling the next contractor yet. Most systems have it built in and switched off.
Decide who owns after-hours
Forwarding, a service, or a shared rota. Not "we'll get to it Monday". A form submitted at 7pm on Friday is a live homeowner for about an hour and a cold record by the weekend. The fix is routing rather than hiring.
Track calls by source before anything else
A separate tracking number per channel. Until that exists you are guessing which source produced which customer, and every budget decision after this point depends on it. It is also how you catch a platform charging you for leads you generated yourself.
Build the follow-up nobody builds
Every quote enters a sequence that keeps you present for months, offering something useful rather than asking whether they are ready. The window on larger work is measured in months, and most contractors chase twice and write the lead off.
Ask for the review on your own profile
Every completed job, regardless of where the lead came from. Reviews on a marketplace are that marketplace's asset; reviews on your Google profile feed your map pack position and stay yours. This is how you convert rented leads into owned visibility.
Shift the ratio toward channels you own
Keep buying while the owned side builds — cash flow beats theory. But every month that map position and organic rankings improve is a month you need the marketplace less. The goal is making paid spend optional rather than structural.
If you're losing leads, selling you more is malpractice.
We generate leads for a living, so understand the incentive when we say this: if nobody answers the phone at 6pm, buying more leads makes your cost per booked job worse, not better. You'll pay more and lose more. The first call we have will establish which problem you actually have, and if it's delivery rather than volume we'll tell you to fix that first — even though the other answer is the one that pays us this month.
Get a free lead auditWhat does contractor lead generation include?
Generating exclusive leads through channels you own, and building the delivery system that stops them leaking on arrival. The second half is what most agencies skip, and it is usually where the larger gain is.
Speed-to-lead systems
Missed-call text-back, after-hours routing, instant alerts and a rota that survives a busy Friday. Published data puts booking at 28% on a 42-minute response against 62% inside two minutes — on the same leads, at the same spend.
See the playbook Exclusive, immediatelyLocal Services Ads & Google Ads
The fastest route to leads that are yours alone. LSA at a $53 average and 43.9% book rate is the strongest published economics in contractor paid search, and unlike a marketplace the reviews accrue to your own profile.
Google Ads & LSA Exclusive, free per leadMap pack & organic leads
Slower and permanent. A lead from the map pack or an organic ranking costs nothing per lead and the asset appreciates. This is the row in the table above where cost per lead falls over time instead of rising with the auction.
Local SEO for contractors MeasurementCall tracking & attribution
A number per channel, conversion tracking that records booked work rather than form fills, and reporting in cost per booked job. Without it you are optimising toward the cheapest lead, which is exactly how shared leads look like a bargain.
Run the comparison The long windowFollow-up & nurture
Quotes that go quiet are not lost jobs. Sequences that keep you present for months with something useful rather than a nudge, running automatically because the reason follow-up fails is never intention — it is that you were on a job site.
Contractor SEO Free, no emailLead & job tracker
A spreadsheet with the formulas already written: cost per lead, close rate, cost per booked job and revenue by channel. Most contractors cannot say which channel produced last month's customers. This answers it, and it costs nothing.
Download the trackerWhat can a contractor fix this week without spending anything?
Four things, and any one of them may beat a budget increase. If you do only these and never call us, this page has done its job.
Turn on missed-call text-back
Check your phone system or CRM. It is almost certainly there and switched off, and it is the single cheapest recovery of leads you have already paid for.
Count last month's leads against last month's jobs
Two numbers on a scrap of paper. If the gap is large, your problem is delivery and no amount of extra lead spend will fix it.
Ask for a Google review on every job
Including the ones that came from a marketplace. That is how you turn a rented lead into an asset that keeps working on a profile you own.
Call every quote from the last three months
Not to ask if they are ready — to tell them something useful. Some of them are ready, and you have already paid for all of them.
Where can a contractor check lead pricing independently?
Straight from the platforms and the published datasets. None of these pay us to be listed, and two of them are companies we are arguing against on this page — read their own pricing rather than our summary of it.
SearchLight LSA Benchmark
The $6.72M dataset behind the $53 and $233 figures, broken down by trade. The most transparent contractor lead cost data currently published.
Local Services Ads Help
Setup, the Google Verified badge, and the lead dispute process. Disputes are refunds rather than credits, and almost nobody files them.
LocaliQ Home Services Benchmarks
Cost per lead across 3,211 home services campaigns split by trade. The source of the $90.92 average and the roofing outlier.
Angi for Professionals
Their own pricing and terms, including how leads are distributed and what the dispute policy actually covers. Worth reading before signing rather than after.
Thumbtack Pro
The credit model explained by the company running it. Note specifically what triggers a charge, because it is not the same as receiving a job.
Harvard Business Review
The replication of Dr James Oldroyd's MIT lead response research, and the origin of the five-minute finding that decides most shared-lead races.
Contractor lead generation questions
How much do contractor leads cost in 2026?
What is the difference between shared and exclusive contractor leads?
Is Angi worth it for contractors?
What is a good cost per booked job for a contractor?
How do I get exclusive contractor leads?
Why do my leads never answer the phone?
Do reviews from Angi or Thumbtack help my Google ranking?
Should contractors buy leads or generate their own?
More plain-English definitions in the contractor marketing glossary.
Find out whether you need more leads or fewer leaks
We look at where your leads come from, what they cost you per booked job rather than per lead, and what happens to one after it arrives — including submitting your own form and timing how long it takes to hear back. That last part is usually the finding that changes the budget.
About a day to turn around. You keep the findings whether you hire us or not. If the answer is that you should spend less and answer faster, that is what the report will say.
Prefer to talk? 1-800-481-8638 — a person answers. Or email info@eyetoad.com.
Request your free lead audit
No cost, no contract, no pitch deck.
Stop buying leads you're going to lose.
One call. We'll work out your real cost per booked job and tell you whether the fix is more leads or a faster phone. Often it's the second one, and that's cheaper.