The Lead Cost Isn't the Lead Cost.

What does a shared lead actually cost per booked job?

Your lead price divided by your win rate. A $65 lead won 18% of the time is a $361 booked job, not a $65 one. That single division is the whole calculator, and it is the step most contractors skip because the marketplace invoice only ever shows the per-lead figure.

Why does the calculator not fill in a lead price for me?

Because there is no honest number to fill in. Marketplace lead pricing varies by trade, job size, market and platform, and on Thumbtack the pro sets the exact price themselves. Any default we printed would be a guess dressed up as a benchmark, and it would change your answer more than any other input.

How many contractors does a marketplace lead usually go to?

Marketplaces rarely publish a fixed figure, and it differs by platform and job type, so the calculator asks you rather than asserting a number. Count it from your own calls — how often the homeowner mentions they are already getting other quotes is a better estimate than anything published.

What is the break-even win rate the tool shows?

The win rate at which the lead price exactly consumes the gross profit on one job. Below it, every job you win from that marketplace loses money before overhead. It is the fastest sanity check on a marketplace contract: if your real win rate is anywhere near it, the channel is not working.

Was HomeAdvisor actually penalised over how it sold leads?

Yes. The FTC brought an administrative complaint in March 2022 alleging false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims to service providers about lead quality and source dating back to at least mid-2014, and a January 2023 order required HomeAdvisor, Inc. to pay up to $7.2 million and stop the conduct. HomeAdvisor, Inc. does business as Angi Leads.

Is Angi Leads the same thing as HomeAdvisor?

Effectively yes at the corporate level — the FTC's own filings identify HomeAdvisor, Inc. as doing business as Angi Leads and HomeAdvisor Powered by Angi. That matters because contractors often believe they are evaluating two separate options when they are looking at one pay-per-lead marketplace under two names.

Is Angi Ads the same as Angi Leads?

No, and the names cause constant confusion. Angi Ads sells placement and visibility on the Angi platform; Angi Leads is the pay-per-lead marketplace descended from HomeAdvisor where you are billed per enquiry. Different products, different bills, different risk — check which one a contract actually is before signing it.

Why is my marketplace close rate so much lower than my referral close rate?

Because you are not the only contractor in the conversation. A referral arrives pre-sold by someone the homeowner trusts; a shared marketplace lead arrives alongside several competitors, so speed and price pressure both work against you. Comparing the two close rates in the same spreadsheet is how contractors end up over-estimating marketplace performance.

What is an exclusive lead worth compared to a shared one?

More than the price difference usually suggests, because exclusivity raises the close rate rather than lowering the lead cost. That is why the comparison panel deliberately reports cost per booked job on both sides. A $41 exclusive lead at a 15% close rate is a $273 job; a $65 shared lead at 18% is a $361 job.

What cost per lead should I put in for the exclusive channel?

The default is $41.26, the Home & Home Improvement median across 726 US Meta lead campaigns running April 2024 to June 2025 (WordStream/LocaliQ). The all-industry median in the same dataset was $27.66, so home services run above average. Replace it with your own once you have 30 days of real data.

How does Google Local Services Ads compare on this maths?

It is the strongest intent channel on cost per customer in the published data. SearchLight's February 2026 benchmark, across 888 contractors and $6.72M of spend, put LSA at $233 per paying customer against $472 for Google Ads. Its constraint is volume, not economics — LSA is capped by how many people search for your trade locally.

Do marketplaces refund bad leads?

All of them have a dispute or refund process, and none of them refund everything. Build the recovery you actually achieve into your effective lead price rather than the price on the rate card — if you dispute successfully on one lead in ten, your true cost per lead is roughly 10% below the sticker, not zero.

Should I quit marketplaces entirely?

Not usually as a first move. They are a rented pipeline with a real cost of exit, and switching off before an owned channel is producing leaves you with no lead flow at all. The defensible sequence is to run the numbers here, cap marketplace spend at the volume that clears break-even, and shift the surplus into a channel you keep.

What is the single number most contractors get wrong here?

The win rate. Almost everyone estimates it well above the figure their invoices support, usually because referral and repeat work gets blended into the same average. Split it by source before you put it in, or the calculator will simply reflect your optimism back at you with more decimal places.

Are any figures in this calculator Elev8 Operations data?

No. The comparison defaults come from WordStream/LocaliQ's published Facebook benchmark and SearchLight's LSA benchmark, and the marketplace context comes from FTC filings and Thumbtack's own pro documentation. Every input describing your business is yours, because no published dataset covers it.