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Cost Per Lead Calculator for Contractors

Wondering whether your cost per lead is any good?

It depends on what you sell, and most cost per lead calculators won't tell you that.

They divide spend by leads, hand you a number, then line it up against a software benchmark. A $90 lead is expensive for a gutter cleaning and cheap for a bathroom remodel.

This one puts your number next to what a lead actually costs in your trade, measured inside contractor ad accounts we run.

Put in your spend and your leads. You'll know where you stand, and what the gap is worth in leads a month.

Valentyn Svit By , Founder of Bit House Digital
8+ years running Meta and Google ads for contractors · Published
On this page
Step 1 of 2
Your Last Month of Ads
$
Which number do you have?
Every lead those ads brought in, same month as the spend.
How many of those leads you got on the calendar.

Cost Per Lead by Trade

Measured inside real contractor ad accounts, read next to the job each lead pays for.

Across eight trades and $139,167 of managed spend, Bit House Digital's cost per lead ran from $29.45 to $119.18, 2,635 leads in total.

Every one of those numbers comes from Meta Ads Manager inside client accounts we run. None of the leads behind them came from Meta's native instant forms. All are landing-page conversions.

Here's the part the generic calculators skip. Read each cost per lead next to the job it pays for. A $112 lead on an $8,000 to $15,000 window job is a good deal. The same $112 on a small repair is not.

TradeCost per leadWhat it's based onTypical job
ADU and home builders$29.451,469 landing-page leads on $43,265 of managed spend$87,000 to $118,000
Siding$58206 leads on a siding contractor account$10,000 to $30,000
Tile and shower remodeling$61.99291 landing-page leads on $18,039, across 18 months$8,000 to $20,000 for a walk-in shower
Roofing$68.8082 landing-page leads on $5,642, the account's full run$10,000 to $25,000
Fencemid-$70sA fence contractor accountVaries with footage and material
Deck$76.5558 leads on $4,440, over five months$15,000 to $40,000
Window replacement$112.17237 landing-page leads on $26,584, over three years$8,000 to $15,000
Luxury bathroom remodeling$119.1835 leads on $4,171, over four months$25,000 to $120,000 and up
Every other trade (HVAC, plumbing, solar, painting and 40+ more)$42.95Industry average for Home & Home Improvement lead campaignsYour own average job
All eight trades$29.45 to $119.182,635 leads on $139,167 of managed spend, nine client accounts, from Meta Ads Manager

So what counts as a good cost per lead?

One your average job can carry.

That sounds like a dodge until you price the alternative. Remodelers buying leads from lead sellers paid a median $372 to $396 per issued lead in Qualified Remodeler's survey of 252 remodeling companies, and those leads get sold to three or four contractors at once.

Against that, a $112 lead of your own on a $10,000 window job is not expensive. It's a bargain with your name on it.

What does Meta charge underneath those leads? CPM ran $21.30 to $43.72 across accounts. That's the price of 1,000 impressions, and it's the number most online calculators start from.

Don't see your trade in our own numbers? The calculator compares you to the industry average for home and home improvement instead: $42.95 per lead. Across every industry, the average is $27.39.

How to Calculate Cost Per Lead

One division. The trick is being honest about both numbers.

Cost per lead = ad spend ÷ leads from that spend, same period.
$3,000 of ad spend that brought in 40 leads is a $75 cost per lead.

That's the whole formula. Which is why a cost per lead calculator on its own doesn't tell you much, and why this page spends more time on the comparison than the arithmetic.

Three ways the number gets faked

Mismatched windows. A month of spend divided by a quarter of leads looks fantastic and means nothing. Both numbers have to cover the same dates.

Counting the wrong thing as a lead. Clicks aren't leads. Neither are landing page views, form opens or people who answered one question and left. A lead is a name and a number you can call.

Mixing channels. If referrals, your Google Business Profile and your ads all land in the same inbox, every lead gets credited to the ads and your cost per lead looks half what it is. Count only the leads that came from the spend you put in.

The number that matters more

Cost per booked estimate.

Leads don't pay you. Estimates on the calendar do, and the share of leads that get there swings further than cost per lead ever does. Across our contractor accounts, clients report booking 50 to 80% of the leads we generate.

Put your booked estimates into the calculator above and it works that out for you.

Want the trade-by-trade detail? See what Facebook ads cost for fence contractors, deck builders, window companies and remodelers, or read the full guide to Facebook advertising for contractors.

Five Reasons a Contractor's Cost Per Lead Runs High

In the order they usually pay to fix.

  1. The offer gives nobody a reason to act"Free estimates" is what every contractor in your market says, so it competes on nothing. A specific offer with a reason to call this month beats a cheaper click every time.
  2. The creative looks like a brochureThis is the biggest lever we have. Real footage of your own crew, your own jobs and the mess in between outruns a stock photo with your logo on it, and it keeps outrunning it for months.
  3. The page asks for too much, or too littleA form that wants eight fields loses people. A form that wants only an email fills your pipeline with tire kickers. A few qualifying questions costs a little more per lead and sends you estimates worth driving to.
  4. The same ads have been running for monthsYour market sees them, stops noticing them, and your cost per lead creeps up week after week. Fresh creative resets it. This is the single most common cause we find in an account that used to work.
  5. Targeting is doing the work the offer should doAudiences get blamed first and matter least. Once the offer, the creative and the page are right, broad targeting in a tight radius usually beats clever stacking.

Notice what isn't on that list. More budget. Pouring money behind a weak offer buys more expensive leads, not cheaper ones, because you're reaching further into an audience that was never going to call.

And if your cost per lead came in cheap, don't celebrate yet. Check what share of those leads booked. A $30 lead that never picks up costs more than a $112 lead that signs a job.

Cost Per Lead: Common Questions

Cost per lead is your ad spend divided by the leads that spend produced in the same period. $3,000 of ad spend that brought in 40 leads is a $75 cost per lead. Keep both numbers on the same window and the same campaigns, or the math flatters you: a month of spend divided by a quarter of leads looks great and means nothing. The calculator on this page does the division and then puts your number next to what a lead costs in your trade.
Judge it against your own trade and your own ticket, not a universal number. Across eight trades and $139,167 of managed spend, Bit House Digital's cost per lead ran from $29.45 to $119.18, 2,635 leads in total. ADU and home builder work came in cheapest at $29.45 and luxury bathroom remodeling the dearest at $119.18. For contrast, remodelers buying leads from lead sellers paid a median $372 to $396 per issued lead in Qualified Remodeler's survey of 252 remodeling companies. A good cost per lead is one your average job can carry.
That $29.45 to $119.18 span is what Bit House Digital measures on Facebook across eight contractor trades. None of those leads came from Meta's native instant forms. All are landing-page conversions. For trades outside our own accounts, home and home improvement lead campaigns average $42.95 per lead, against $27.39 across every industry. Underneath the leads, CPM ran $21.30 to $43.72 across accounts.
No. A $30 lead that never picks up costs you more than a $112 lead that books an estimate on an $8,000 to $15,000 window job. Read cost per lead next to the job it pays for and next to the share that books. Across our contractor accounts, clients report booking 50 to 80% of the leads we generate. If the ads bring back at least 2 to 3 times what you spend on them, you can run them profitably. Most of our clients do at least 5x.
Four levers, in the order they usually pay. The offer comes first, because a clear reason to call now beats a cheaper click. Then the creative, where real footage of your own jobs beats a stock photo. Then the page the clicks land on, where a few qualifying questions cost a little more per lead and send you estimates worth driving to. Targeting is last, and it matters least once the first three are right. Budget is not on the list: more money behind a weak offer buys more expensive leads, not cheaper ones.
It divides your monthly ad spend by the leads that spend produced to get your cost per lead, then compares it to the figure measured for your trade in Bit House Digital's own client accounts. It also runs the same spend at that benchmark, so you can see how many leads a month the gap is worth. Trades outside our own accounts are compared to $42.95, the Facebook average for home and home improvement. Every bit of the math runs in your browser.

Paying Too Much Per Lead?

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