Ask a roofer what a lead costs and you will get a number. Ask what it is worth and you get a blank look. That gap is where marketing budgets are wasted, because the cost of a lead and the value of a lead are almost unrelated. Here is what roofing leads actually cost by channel in 2026, and the single calculation that tells you which ones are worth your money.
The one number that matters: cost per booked job
Start here, because everything else is noise without it. The cost of a lead is meaningless on its own. What matters is your cost per booked job, which is your cost per lead divided by the rate at which you actually close that kind of lead.
Watch how it inverts the obvious answer:
- A 50 dollar shared lead you close 10 percent of the time costs you 500 dollars per booked job.
- A 200 dollar exclusive lead you close 35 percent of the time costs about 571.
- A 40 dollar shared lead at an 8 percent close costs 500 per job, while a 120 dollar exclusive lead at a 30 percent close costs only 400.
The cheapest lead can be the most expensive job, and the pricey exclusive lead can be the cheapest. Sticker cost per lead hides all of that. Cost per booked job is the only number that tells the truth, so track it by channel and rank your marketing by it.
What leads cost by channel
These are industry and agency benchmarks, and the spread is wide enough that you should treat them as orientation, not gospel. Your own account is the real data.
- Shared aggregator leads from the big platforms: commonly 20 to 75 dollars, and often more for roofing specifically, sold to three to five contractors at once.
- Exclusive leads, sold only to you: roughly two to three times the shared price, often 50 to 150 dollars and past 200 at the top.
- Google Local Services Ads: pay-per-valid-lead, with roofing figures ranging widely, from the mid-double-digits to over 160 dollars depending on the market.
- Google search ads: the most expensive and lowest-converting channel for roofing, more below.
- Facebook and other social: cheaper per lead, often 30 to 60 dollars, but lower intent because you interrupted the person rather than being searched for.
- SEO: not priced per lead but as a monthly investment, expensive per lead early and very cheap per lead once it ranks.
The benchmark worth trusting
One figure here is more solid than the rest, because it discloses its methodology. Analyzing over 3,000 US campaigns, LocaliQ found that roofing and gutters paid search ran a cost per lead of about 228 dollars, at a 10.70 dollar cost per click, converting at just 3.70 percent, the highest cost and one of the lowest conversion rates of any home-services category.
That is the reality of roofing search ads: expensive clicks and a low conversion rate, because roofing is high-value and fiercely competitive. It does not mean avoid search, it means go in with eyes open and measure your own cost per booked job rather than trusting a rosy blog average. Across agencies, quoted roofing search cost per lead ranges anywhere from about 90 to 350 dollars, and a 3-to-4-times spread like that is itself the lesson: benchmarks are unreliable, so measure your own account.
Close rate is the hidden variable
The reason cost per booked job diverges so hard from cost per lead is close rate, and close rate tracks almost perfectly with how the lead was generated:
- Shared marketplace leads close in the low teens of percent at best, because you and four competitors are calling the same overwhelmed homeowner.
- Organic and exclusive leads close meaningfully higher.
- Referrals close highest of all, commonly 30 to 50 percent, because trust is already established.
The pattern is consistent across every source: referral beats exclusive and organic, which beat shared, often by three to five times on close rate. Two levers explain most of it, exclusivity and intent, and they are the levers to shop for.
The math that makes it make sense
Put it against the value of the work. The average roof replacement runs somewhere around 9,600 dollars nationally. A healthy customer acquisition cost is generally considered to be under about 10 percent of the job value, so a 600 to 1,000 dollar cost per booked job on a 9,600 dollar roof is sustainable. A blended cost per booked job of 2,500 dollars, which is what heavy reliance on cheap shared leads can quietly become once you account for the low close rate, is over 25 percent of the job, and that usually does not pencil.
For a home-services business, total marketing spend in the range of 5 to 10 percent of revenue is a common healthy band, higher in the early growth years and lower once a referral engine is carrying you. If your acquisition cost is eating a quarter of every job, no volume fixes it. You are working to feed the lead seller.
This is the same discipline as pricing the work itself, which is why it pairs with how to price a roofing job profitably.
How to actually evaluate a lead source
You do not need a marketing degree, you need a spreadsheet and the discipline to fill it in:
- Tag every lead by its source.
- Log the close rate for each source separately.
- Compute cost per booked job per source each month, cost per lead divided by close rate.
- Divide revenue by spend to get ROI per channel.
- Shift money toward the lowest cost per booked job and the highest-value jobs, and away from the rest.
Do that for three months and your opinions about which channels work will get replaced by facts, which is the entire point. Most roofers never do it, which is exactly why most roofers overpay for leads.
Where higher-intent leads fit
The two levers that most improve close rate, and therefore cost per booked job, are exclusivity and intent. A lead resold to five contractors is low on both. A homeowner who actively posts the job they want done, on a platform where they can see contractors’ ratings and reviews, is high on both. That is the structural reason referrals and reputation-based sources outperform shared leads: the customer already wants to hire, and they are choosing on track record rather than on who called first.
That is the category Hommy sits in. Homeowners post the job, contractors are vetted, and every contractor carries real ratings from real homeowners. It puts you on the favorable side of both levers, higher intent and reputation over recycled contacts, which is exactly what pulls cost per booked job down over time. Whatever mix of channels you run, weight it toward the ones where the homeowner came looking for you.
“A cheap lead sold to five roofers is not cheap. Divide by the close rate and the truth comes out: the only price that matters is what you paid for the jobs you actually won.”
The bottom line
Stop shopping for the lowest cost per lead and start measuring cost per booked job, because they can rank channels in opposite orders. Know that roofing search is expensive and low-converting, that shared leads close poorly because you are one of five, and that exclusivity and intent are the levers that actually move your economics. Keep acquisition under about 10 percent of job value, track every channel, and pour your effort into the sources you own and the leads where the homeowner came to you.
Hommy is a marketplace where homeowners post roofing jobs and vetted contractors respond, each with real ratings from other homeowners. It is built around exactly the two levers that make a lead worth having.
