What Is Cost per Lead?
What you spend to get one enquiry, before you know whether it becomes a job. Useful for comparing channels, misleading on its own.
The short answer
Cost per lead is what you spend to get one enquiry, before you know whether it becomes a job.
Cost per lead is the average amount you pay for each enquiry a marketing channel produces. You work it out by dividing what you spent on a channel over a period by the number of enquiries it brought in over the same period. It's useful for comparing channels, but on its own it can mislead: a cheap lead that never converts costs you more than a dearer one that does. The figure that matters most is cost per job won.
Here's how to calculate it, what published UK figures look like, and how to use the number properly.
Working it out
How to calculate cost per lead
Pick one channel and one period
A month or a quarter, for a single platform, campaign or listing. Don't mix sources together, or you won't know which one is earning its keep.
Add up everything you spent
Membership, per-lead fees, credits, ad spend, and any setup or management fees. Leave nothing out.
Count the enquiries
Every enquiry the channel produced in that period, including the ones that went nowhere.
Divide
Spend divided by enquiries is your cost per lead. Purely to show the arithmetic: £300 spent on a channel that produced 15 enquiries works out at £20 per lead.
Repeat it regularly
Work it out every month or quarter for each source. A channel that was good value last year may not be now.
Published figures
What leads cost in the UK
Published UK pricing. A membership has no fixed cost per lead: that depends on how many enquiries it produces for you.
Platform pricing as published by Trades Grow, One Base Media, Sleepless Tradesman and SwiftLead, 2026. Rates change, so check current pricing before relying on these figures. Google Ads figures as published by PositionWorks (2025 UK home services benchmarks, roofing) and Aimpro Digital (2026). Click prices vary by area, service and how well the account is run.
The catch
Why cost per lead isn't the whole story
Cost per lead tells you what an enquiry costs, not what a job costs. If you win one job from every handful of enquiries, that job has to carry the cost of the whole handful.
That's why published estimates put the true cost per job won on paid platforms at £150–£1,000, well above the price of any single lead. True cost per job won shows how to work out your own. Platform pricing as published by Trades Grow, One Base Media, Sleepless Tradesman and SwiftLead, 2026. Rates change, so check current pricing before relying on these figures.
Shared leads widen the gap. If the same enquiry goes to several trades, fewer of your leads can become jobs however good your quote is. Why are leads sold to multiple traders? explains how that model works.
Two different numbers
Cost per lead and cost per job won
Use both. They answer different questions.
Cost per lead tells you
- What each enquiry costs
- Which channel is cheapest to hear from
- Whether prices are creeping up
Cost per job won tells you
- What each paying job cost to win
- Which channel is actually worth the money
- How much marketing cost your price has to carry
What pushes it up
Why some leads cost more than others
Competition
Busy trades and busy areas tend to push prices up, because more contractors want the same enquiries. More on this in why are my leads so expensive?
Job value
Enquiries for larger jobs are generally priced higher than enquiries for small repairs, which is why published roofing lead prices cover such a wide range.
Exclusivity
Where a lead company offers an enquiry to one contractor only, it's usually priced higher than one shared between several.
Track every lead from each source through to won or lost for a few months at least. Then compare cost per job won, not cost per lead. That's the number that tells you where to spend. For what the platforms charge in more detail, see what do lead companies charge?
A different model
When there's no cost per lead at all
Some routes don't charge per enquiry. Referrals don't, and nor does a contractor network that earns only on work that goes ahead.
Mortaro's network works that way: no joining fee, no subscription, nothing per enquiry. Our fee is added on top of your trade rate in the customer's quotation, and you're paid your rate in full. A quote that doesn't convert costs you the time on the visit and nothing else. See do you charge for leads?
Straight answers
Cost per lead questions
What's the difference between cost per lead and cost per job won?
Cost per lead counts every enquiry. Cost per job won, sometimes called cost per acquisition, counts only the enquiries that became paid work. The second is always higher, and far more useful.
How do I work out cost per lead on a membership?
Divide what the membership cost you for the period by the number of enquiries it produced in that period. If it produced none, the whole fee was spent without a lead.
What is a good cost per lead?
One that leaves an affordable cost per job won once your conversion rate is taken into account. That depends on your trade, your margins and how many leads you win. See what is a good lead conversion rate?
For contractors
Tell us about your business
Your trade, the areas you cover and the size of work you take on. A person reads every enquiry, and if it looks like a fit we will send you the full application.