LSA or Meta? Split the Budget.
Move the slider and watch paying jobs, revenue and cost per paying job change on both sides. Local Services Ads defaults come from $6.72M of tracked contractor spend; the Meta close rate is yours, because nobody publishes one for home services.
Your Budget
LSA figures for all trades (blended): $53 cost per lead, 43.9% of leads booked as appointments, 7.84x closed ROAS, $1,826 average ticket — SearchLight Home Services LSA Benchmark, February 2026 (888 accounts, $6.72M spend). From those, about 22.8% of LSA leads become paying jobs (our arithmetic: CPL × ROAS ÷ ticket). Only four trades were broken out separately in that dataset; anything else should use the blended figures and expect drift.
Media spend only — exclude management fees.
$2,000 to LSA, $2,000 to Meta.
Starts at $42.95 — the Home & Home Improvement average (WordStream/LocaliQ, 2026). Replace it with your own once you have 30 days of data.
This one is yours, not a benchmark.No public dataset publishes a Meta lead-to-paying-job rate for home services, so we will not print one as though it exists. The starting value is a planning assumption; use your CRM's real figure, because this input decides the answer more than any other.
Also yours. LSA volume is capped by how many people search for your trade locally. Use what your LSA account actually spends at full budget; the starting value is a placeholder. The best-split search never puts more than this into LSA.
At this split
15.6
paying jobs a month from $4,000, worth about $28,434 at a $1,826 average ticket.
Cost per paying job
Cost per lead is not comparable across these two channels. Cost per paying job is. At the blended figures, LSA works out to about $233 per paying job — SearchLight's own published number.
Best split on these inputs
60% LSA / 40% Meta books 15.9 paying jobs, keeping LSA within your $2,500 cap — 0.3 more than your current split.
This is arithmetic, not advice. It assumes both channels scale linearly, which neither does — see the capacity note below.
Talk through your split
Free 60-second application to talk through this split with your own numbers.
Why the answer is rarely 100% LSA
Local Services Ads are capped by local search volume. You cannot spend your way past the number of people searching for your trade in your service area this month, and costs tend to climb as more contractors compete for that fixed pool. Meta's ceiling is higher and softer because it creates demand rather than capturing it (a local audience still saturates as frequency climbs); whether its leads close better or worse than LSA's in your business is something only your CRM can tell you. On your inputs LSA books a paying job for about $233 against $286 on Meta, so the sequence is to fill LSA to its capacity first, then put everything above that into Meta.
Which channel wins on cost per paying job?
Against Google Ads, LSA wins: SearchLight's February 2026 comparison put LSA at $233 per paying customer against $472 for Google Ads across the same dataset. Meta usually shows the cheapest cost per lead of the three, but no published data says how often its leads turn into paying jobs compared with LSA's. Whether Meta beats $233 depends on your own Meta close rate, which is why the calculator asks for it.
So why not put everything into LSA?
Because LSA volume is capped by local search demand and you cannot buy more of it. Once you show for every eligible query in your service area, extra budget sits unspent. The cost data is already showing the squeeze: blended cost per unique lead across 1,011 businesses climbed from $55.08 in March 2026 to $63.29 in May. Where LSA is your cheaper paying job, it stays that way only until you run out of dollars it can absorb.
What breaks this model fastest?
An optimistic Meta close rate. It is the one input with no public benchmark behind it, and moving it a few points swings the recommended split further than any other change on the page. Pull the real number from your CRM before you trust the output, and treat every default here as a starting position rather than a finding about your business.
Keep going
- Local Services Ads Statistics 2026 — adoption, CPL by trade, book rates and ranking-factor weights.
- Google Ads vs Meta Ads vs LSA — the three-way comparison behind this split.
- Google Guaranteed vs Google Ads — two Google products contractors routinely confuse.
- CPL Benchmark by Trade — what a lead should cost you across every channel.
- Budget optimization service — allocation managed against your own numbers, not averages.
Budget Split Questions.
How should a contractor split budget between LSA and Meta?
Put the first dollars into whichever channel books a paying job for less in your business — the calculator shows both. SearchLight's averages put LSA at about $233 per paying customer; whether Meta beats that depends on your own Meta close rate. If LSA wins, fill it to its capacity first and put everything above that into Meta; if Meta wins on your numbers, the calculator shows that order instead. LSA captures people already searching — 43.9% of leads booked an appointment across 888 tracked contractors (SearchLight) — but it is capped by how many people search for your trade in your area. Meta's ceiling is higher and softer — it creates demand rather than capturing it, but a local audience still saturates as frequency climbs.
Why does the calculator make me supply the Meta close rate?
Because no public dataset publishes a Meta lead-to-paying-job rate for home services, and printing an invented one would silently decide the entire output. The LSA side is derived from real measurements across 126,650 tracked leads: cost per lead × closed ROAS ÷ average ticket gives the share of leads that became paying jobs (about 22.8% blended, which reproduces SearchLight's $233 per paying customer). The Meta figure is your number, from your CRM, and the tool labels it that way on screen.
What is the average LSA cost per lead in 2026?
$53 blended across home services in February 2026, from $6.72M of tracked spend across 888 contractors (SearchLight). A separate May 2026 snapshot of 1,011 businesses put the cost per unique lead at $63.29, up from $55.08 in March — so treat $53 as a floor that is moving upward, not a stable benchmark.
What is the average Meta cost per lead for home services?
$42.95 for Home & Home Improvement lead campaigns (WordStream/LocaliQ, 2026). The same report put the category's conversion rate at 5.32% and the all-industry median cost per lead at $27.39, so home services sit well above the cross-industry figure.
Is a cheaper cost per lead the same as a better channel?
No. Meta usually shows a lower cost per lead than LSA ($42.95 vs $53 on the published averages), but no published data compares how often each channel's leads turn into paying jobs, so cost per lead alone can mislead. Compare channels on your own cost per paying job, or ignore the comparison entirely.
Which trades does the LSA benchmark actually break out?
Four: electrical ($39 CPL, 43.4% book rate, $1,434 ticket), HVAC ($51, 44.0%, $2,110), plumbing ($57, 44.5%, $1,714) and drain/sewer ($59, 39.5%, $1,521). Everything else sits inside the blended figure. If your trade is not one of those four, use the blended defaults and expect meaningful drift.
Why does drain and sewer look weakest of the LSA trades cited here?
Of the four trades SearchLight Digital broke out (electrical, HVAC, plumbing, drain/sewer), it has the lowest book rate at 39.5%, the highest cost per lead at $59, and the lowest closed return on ad spend at 5.50x — though 5.50x is still a strong return, and the sample was only 23 accounts. A likely reason: drain emergencies push homeowners to call several listings, so the same job is contested by more contractors.
How does Google Search compare to both of these?
Worse on cost per lead than either. WordStream's 2026 benchmark, covering 13,474 US search campaigns from April 2025 to March 2026, put Home & Home Improvement at $90.92 per lead and $8.33 per click. SearchLight's February 2026 comparison put LSA at $233 per paying customer against $472 for Google Ads — roughly half the cost per customer.
Can I spend an unlimited amount on Local Services Ads?
No. LSA volume is bounded by local search demand, and once you are showing for every eligible query in your service area, extra budget buys nothing. That is the point at which additional spend has to move to a demand-generation channel.
Does the best split the calculator finds account for LSA running out of volume?
Yes, through the 'Most LSA spend your market will absorb' input: the best-split search never puts more than that into LSA. Below the cap it still assumes both channels scale linearly, which neither does, so set the cap from what your LSA account has actually been able to spend in a full month.
What raises the LSA book rate?
Answering the phone. LSA ranks partly on call answer rate, and the leads are phone calls rather than form fills, so a missed call is both a lost job and a ranking penalty. Google says reviews, responsiveness and proximity all affect LSA ranking. The 43.9% figure is an average, so your own book rate depends heavily on how reliably calls are answered.
Should a brand-new contractor start on LSA or Meta?
If the trade is eligible and the review base supports it, LSA is a strong start: SearchLight's averages put it at about $233 per paying customer, well below Google Ads. Nobody publishes the equivalent for Meta, so check it against your own cost per paying job once you have one. The catch is verification — licence, insurance and a background check — which takes weeks and can fail. Meta has no gate and works immediately, which is why contractors waiting on LSA verification typically start there.
How does the average ticket in this calculator affect the answer?
The ticket is fixed to the LSA benchmark's measured figure for each trade — $2,110 for HVAC, $1,714 plumbing, $1,434 electrical, $1,521 drain/sewer — because the LSA lead-to-paying-job rate is derived from it (cost per lead × closed ROAS ÷ ticket). It scales revenue on both sides equally, so it doesn't move the split. If your own ticket is very different, treat the revenue figure as a rough guide and compare on cost per paying job.
Does this replace running both channels and measuring?
No. It is a planning model built on other contractors' averages, and your market, offer and answer rate will move every number in it. Its real job is to stop budget being allocated on a hunch for the first 90 days, after which your own data should replace every default in it.
Are any of these figures Elev8 Operations data?
No. Every default is from a named third-party dataset linked in the Sources block — SearchLight's LSA benchmark, The Data-Driven Trades' May 2026 snapshot, and WordStream/LocaliQ's Facebook and Google Ads benchmarks. The one number with no public source, the Meta close rate, is an input rather than a printed benchmark.
Sources
Every default value in this calculator comes from one of the public datasets below. The one figure with no public source — the Meta lead-to-paying-job rate — is an input you supply rather than a benchmark we print. Last verified 2026-07-28.
- 1SearchLight Digital — Home Services LSA Benchmark — Google Local Service Ads Cost Per Lead by Trade
February 2026 · 888 contractors, $6.72M tracked Local Services Ads spend, 126,650 leads, $52.7M closed revenue. Source for every LSA default in the calculator: blended $53 cost per lead, 43.9% book rate, $1,826 average ticket, and the by-trade figures for electrical ($39 / 43.4% / $1,434), HVAC ($51 / 44.0% / $2,110), plumbing ($57 / 44.5% / $1,714) and drain-sewer ($59 / 39.5% / $1,521).
- 2The Data-Driven Trades (Jon Torrey) — Google Local Service Ad Benchmarks: May 2026
9 June 2026 · 1,011 home services businesses on the SearchLight platform, $9.8M spend, 154,593 unique leads in May 2026. Source for the cost trend quoted in the capacity note — blended cost per unique lead of $63.29 in May, up from $55.08 in March.
- 3WordStream / LocaliQ — Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2026
2026. Source for the $42.95 Meta cost-per-lead default (Home & Home Improvement) and the 5.32% conversion rate quoted in the FAQs.
- 4WordStream / LocaliQ — Google Ads Benchmarks 2026
April 2025 – March 2026 · 13,474 US search advertising campaigns; minimum 52 active campaigns per subcategory. Reference point for the Google Search comparison in the FAQs: $90.92 cost per lead, and $8.33 cost per click for Home & Home Improvement.
Related Tools & Guides
Keep going — these pair well with this calculator.