Benchmarks, and Why Yours Looks Worse Than It Is
A loud owner in a forum says he gets fifty calls a week, and eight starts to feel like failure. Here is what is published, with sources and years, and how to read it. Where no trustworthy number exists, we say so.
Average Cost per Lead HVAC and Other Trades
LocaliQ (WordStream) published median cost per lead for search campaigns in its 2025 home-services benchmarks: 3,211 campaigns, April 2024 to March 2025. The overall home-services median was $90.92 a lead at $7.85 a click. Home-service cost per lead rose about 10.5% year over year.
| Category in LocaliQ's data | Median cost per lead (2025) |
|---|---|
| Doors and windows sales | $200.34 |
| Construction and contractors (general) | $165.67 |
| Paint and painting | $138.38 |
| Heating and furnaces | $129.02 |
| Storage | $120.30 |
| Landscaping | $117.92 |
| Blinds and window treatments | $113.30 |
| Window cleaning | $66.69 |
| Handyman services | $54.05 |
| Cleaning, maid, butler services | $46.99 |
| Pools and spas | $45.15 |
Source: LocaliQ and WordStream, 2025 Search Ad Benchmarks for Home Services. We do not have a trustworthy published figure for plumbing, electrical, garage doors or locksmith in that set, so we do not give one.
Other Numbers, From Other Sources
- SearchLight Data Lab, Q1 2026: Google Ads cost per lead in the Northeast was $104 across 207,000 leads. Local Services Ads averaged $60 per lead across 151,000 leads.
- SearchLight Data Lab, Q1 2026: HVAC Performance Max cost per lead was $73, about half the $149 for non-branded search. Whether those leads booked is not published.
- The Data-Driven Trades (SearchLight data), June 2026: Local Services Ads cost $62.56 per unique lead across 945 contractors.
Why Yours Looks Worse Than It Is
- These are platform leads. A lead there can be a call, a form or a click-to-call. Yours is a job with a name, a phone and an address, and your cost of a lead is spend divided by your jobs.
- These are medians. Half of campaigns cost more.
- They say nothing about what a job leaves. A $200 lead on a $2,400 door can beat a $50 lead on a $90 repair.
- Survivor stories. The loud owner is not the median.
Work Out Yours in Ten Minutes
- Pick a month and one platform.
- Read the spend for that platform.
- Count your jobs from that platform: those with a name, a phone and an address.
- Divide. That is your cost of a lead, in our terms.
- Compare to the table, remembering the table counts platform leads.
If you have connected Google Ads, the Cost per lead tile on Statistics does steps 2 to 4, and prints both numbers under the result. See the Statistics docs.
Questions Owners Ask
Why Is My Cost per Lead so High?
It may be a platform lead count that includes calls that never book, or your market. Compare your spend divided by your jobs instead.
Is Local Services Ads Cheaper?
The SearchLight figures above show lower per-lead prices than search. Whether those leads book is a separate question you can only answer with your own jobs.
Where Do Plumbing and Garage Door Numbers Come From?
We do not have a trustworthy published figure for them, so we do not print one. Work out yours.
A Note on Trends
LocaliQ's 2025 book showed home-service cost per lead up about 10.5% from the year before. Prices have been drifting up. That is one more reason to track your own number every month instead of comparing yourself to a figure from last year.
Two Yardsticks, One Business
Example, with made-up numbers. A shop spends $4,000 and gets 40 platform leads. By cost per lead: $100, near the median. By cost per booked job: 16 jobs, $250. A job leaves $600. The shop is fine on the second yardstick and looks average on the first. Another shop with $60 leads that book 6 times in 40 has a $400 cost per booked job and a worse month. The second yardstick is the one that pays you.
So: use the published numbers to see if your lead price is strange. Then swap the yardstick. Read Cost Per Booked Job, Explained and try the calculator. For the terms, see cost per lead. For a budget, read How Much Should a Contractor Spend on Ads?