A lead is worth the gross profit of the job it might become, discounted by how often your leads become jobs. The formula: average job ticket, times gross margin, times close rate. Run typical trade numbers through it and the answer lands anywhere from about $38 for a $300 HVAC tune-up to $3,750 for a major water-damage loss. That is roughly a 100x spread, in an industry where the going rate for a lead only runs from about $94 to $228. The market sets what a lead costs. Your job mix, margin, and close rate set what one is worth, and the distance between those two numbers is your marketing math in one line.
How do you calculate what a lead is worth?
Three formulas, built on three numbers you already know.
Gross profit per booked job = average job ticket times gross margin. What a job actually puts in your pocket before marketing.
Break-even lead value = gross profit per booked job times close rate. A lead is a chance at a job, so its value is the job’s profit discounted by how often a lead turns into one. Pay more than this per lead and the work loses money before the truck rolls.
Cost per booked job = cost per lead divided by close rate. The number your ads dashboard never shows, and the one that decides whether the ads pay.
Illustrative example, not client data: at a $6,000 average ticket, 50 percent gross margin, and a 25 percent close rate, a lead is worth up to $750 at break-even. Our free Lead Value Calculator runs this math for you and checks the result against the published range for your trade.
One definition before the numbers get interesting: a lead is not a booked job. A lead is a form fill or a phone call. If you close one in four, every lead price you see quadruples on its way to becoming a job.
What is a lead worth by trade and job type?
The table runs the break-even math on typical job tickets across the trades, holding gross margin at 50 percent and close rate at 25 percent. Illustrative figures, not client data: your own three numbers move every row, and working out your own break-even takes about a minute.
| Job type | Typical ticket | Break-even lead value |
|---|---|---|
| Major water-damage restoration | $30,000 | $3,750 |
| Roof replacement | $16,500 | $2,063 |
| HVAC system replacement | $10,000 | $1,250 |
| Water heater install | $3,250 | $406 |
| Garage door repair | $700 | $88 |
| Drain clearing | $500 | $63 |
| HVAC maintenance tune-up | $300 | $38 |
Read the right column as the most a lead for that work can cost before it loses money. The spread is the story: what a lead is worth in home services is set almost entirely by which jobs the lead is for, not by the trade on the truck.
A calculator estimates. Your ad accounts know. The free audit reads your actual Google Ads, Meta Ads, and conversion tracking, then reports what a lead and a booked job really cost you. Request a Free Audit. Five business days. No cost. No commitment.
Why does the same lead price grow one shop and bleed another?
Because lead prices cluster tight while lead values do not. The published cost-per-lead benchmarks put most trades between roughly $94 and $228 per lead, about a 2.5x range. Lead value spans 100x. Nearly all the leverage in home services marketing sits on the value side of that equation.
Take HVAC at the published price of roughly $128 per lead. Pointed at $10,000 system replacements, that lead carries over $1,100 of expected gross profit against its break-even value. Pointed at $300 tune-ups, the same $128 lead becomes a $512 booked job that produces $150 of gross profit: a loss of about $362 on every job the campaign books. Same trade, same platform, same lead price. The difference is entirely which work the ads were aimed at.
This is also why we engineer ad accounts around conversion tracking that reports real job revenue. To Google and Meta, a tune-up lead and a replacement lead look identical: each is one conversion. Feed the platforms revenue instead, and bidding learns to buy the $1,250 leads, not the $38 ones. Most of the market never gets there: our 2026 study of 1,000 contractor websites found seven in ten cannot connect an ad click to anything.
How do you raise what a lead is worth?
Three levers, ordered by speed.
Close rate is the fastest. Break-even lead value moves dollar for dollar with it: a shop that closes 33 percent instead of 25 just raised the value of every lead by a third without touching the ads. The cheapest gains are operational: answer every call (a lead that rings out is worth $0, and call tracking shows you how many do), call form fills back inside five minutes, and make booking the default outcome of every conversation.
Job mix is the biggest. Campaigns, budgets, and keywords aimed at the high rows of the table buy leads worth ten to a hundred times the low rows. This matters more than the budget itself; what you spend is a smaller decision than what you point the spend at.
Margin is the slowest, and it still counts. Every point of gross margin flows straight into what a lead is worth. Pricing discipline is marketing math wearing work boots.
None of the three levers moves blind. If your tracking cannot tell which campaigns book which jobs, you cannot see the value you are buying, and neither can the ad platforms.
Frequently asked questions
Is a lead the same as a booked job?
No. A lead is a form fill or a call that your tracking counts. Divide by your close rate to get to jobs: at a one-in-four close rate, a $128 lead is a $512 booked job before the truck rolls.
What is a good cost per lead?
One safely below your break-even lead value. The published figures (roughly $94 for electrical, $104 to $129 for HVAC and plumbing, $228 for roofing) are a range check, not a target: an installer closing high-ticket work can profitably pay far above them, and a shop booking small tickets can lose money paying far below them.
Does this math matter if I buy leads instead of running ads?
More, if anything. Per-lead pricing runs from tens of dollars for shared marketplace leads to several hundred for exclusive high-ticket work, so one contract can sit on either side of your break-even. Check the price against your math before you sign, and read the pricing-model breakdown first: many per-lead arrangements also cost you ownership of the account and the data.
How do I find my close rate?
Booked jobs divided by total leads over the last 90 days, pulled from ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, or whichever back-end runs your shop. If the honest answer is that nobody knows, that is a measurement gap worth closing before any budget decision.
Every number in this guide except your own is an illustration. The free Superior Audit replaces illustrations with your account’s real figures: what a lead costs you, what a booked job costs you, and which campaigns buy the valuable ones. Request a Free Audit. Written report, video walkthrough, five business days.