Buying leads vs. owning the channel
Last updated: 23 September 2026.
Both work. They fail differently, and the difference is not the one the sticker price shows. Here is the arithmetic, including the part where buying leads wins.
What a bought lead costs
| Source | Per lead | Shared with |
|---|---|---|
| Angi | $15–85, plus an annual membership | 3–8 pros |
| Thumbtack | $8–25 cleaning · $35–90 HVAC · $90–150+ remodels | 4–5 pros |
| Google Local Services Ads — HVAC | ~$51 average, $70–90 in peak metros | you alone |
| Local Services Ads — plumbing | ~$57–69 | you alone |
| Local Services Ads — roofing | $126 median, $85–151 across most campaigns | you alone |
| Source | Per lead | Shared with |
|---|---|---|
| Local Services Ads — electricians | £20–55, ~£28.70 average | you alone |
| Local Services Ads — plumbers | £15–40 | you alone |
| Ordinary Google Search, trades | £38–100+ per enquiry | you alone |
Those are market figures, not ours — sources and their weaknesses are at the foot of this page. Read them as ranges, not quotes.
What the sticker price leaves out
A shared lead is not a lead, it is a race. When the same enquiry is sold to four contractors, your real cost is not the lead price — it is the lead price times the number of times you lose. Win one in four at $60 a lead and the job cost you $240 before you drove anywhere. Industry write-ups put the true cost per booked job through the shared marketplaces above $1,000 in several trades.
You are renting the relationship. The enquirer found the platform, not you. The review they leave is the platform's asset. The phone number they called is the platform's number. Stop paying and the flow stops that day, with nothing left behind.
The price is set by your competitors' desperation, not your economics. Lead prices in a marketplace rise when a competitor decides to buy market share. You have no lever except paying more.
None of that makes marketplaces a scam. They are a fast, liquid, low-commitment way to buy work, and for some businesses that is exactly the right trade.
What owning the channel costs — honestly
Our US client pays $2,000 a month to us and a minimum of $2,500 to Google, in their own account: $4,500 a month all in. At a cost per click that puts enquiries around $120–150 in most local trades, $2,500 of budget buys roughly 17–20 enquiries from ads in month one.
Divide the whole $4,500 by those and month one costs about $225–265 an enquiry. That is more than an Angi lead and more than a Local Services Ads lead. We would rather you saw that number from us than discovered it yourself in week three.
What has to be true before the lines cross
Three things, and they are checkable in your own ledger rather than promised here:
- The enquiry is yours alone. An exclusive enquiry that converts at 1 in 3 is worth more than a shared one at 1 in 6, even at twice the price. Per job won, not per lead, is the only comparison that means anything.
- The free half grows. A Google Business Profile that is posted to weekly, answered on and photographed pulls calls and direction requests at no cost per enquiry. As that share rises, the blended cost per enquiry falls — the ad spend stops being the only source. This is the whole argument for doing the findability work alongside the ads.
- The asset stays yours. The ads account, its conversion history, the profile, the site, the tracked number, the ledger of every enquiry and what it became. Stop working with us and you keep all of it, including the bidding data that makes the next campaign cheaper.
We do not yet have years of our own data to prove the curve. We publish what we do have and we will publish the rest as it arrives — that is what the proof page is for. Anyone showing you a smooth compounding graph on a first call drew it in a spreadsheet.
When buying leads is the better answer
Genuinely, and we will tell you this on the call rather than take the work:
- You need a handful of jobs a month. Below roughly ten enquiries a month the fixed fee dominates and a marketplace is cheaper. Buy the leads.
- Your budget is under the minimum. If $2,500 a month of ad spend is not there, the guarantee cannot be sized honestly and we would be selling you hope.
- You want to test demand for something new. Marketplaces price that test in days with no commitment.
- Seasonal spikes. One busy quarter a year is a marketplace's best case and a retainer's worst.
- Nobody can answer the phone within the hour. Then neither model works, and the fix is staffing, not marketing.
When owning it is the better answer
- You want more than ten or fifteen enquiries a month, consistently.
- You are already paying marketplaces $1,500 a month or more and have nothing to show for it that you own.
- Your jobs are worth enough that winning one in three instead of one in six changes your year.
- You intend to still be trading in five years, in the same town, under the same name.
The short version
Marketplaces sell you a lead. We build you a channel and count what comes out of it. The first is cheaper this month; the second is cheaper by the year, and it is still there when you stop paying for it. If your numbers say otherwise, buy the leads — and we will say so on the call.
Where these numbers come from
Angi, Thumbtack and Local Services Ads figures are market estimates gathered in September 2026, mostly from agencies publishing their own pricing analyses; the roofing median comes from a vendor's analysis of real Google Ads billing across a dozen campaigns, which is the firmest of them. There is no independent, audited benchmark for cost per lead in these trades — anyone who tells you otherwise is quoting an agency blog too. Treat every figure as a range, check it against your own account, and ask us for the workings if you want them: hello@aeocue.com.