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Lead generation for contractors

The default way to win construction work in 2026 is to buy a phone number that three other companies bought at the same second, then race them to the callback. Angi describes the mechanism itself, in the part of its annual report where it explains the revenue to shareholders.

Arseniy VolosevichFounder, More Quotes·Updated Sep 2, 2026·11 min read

Here is the sentence. Leads are "connections between consumers and Pros resulting from a Service Request in the period... a single Service Request can result in multiple Leads." That is from Angi Inc.'s Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025, filed in February 2026. One request from one person, several billable leads. In that transaction you are not the buyer, you are the inventory.

Contractors have worked this out on their own. The same filing puts average monthly active Pros at 122,000 for 2025, down from 152,000 the year before. Nineteen percent of the trade walked out in twelve months.

What a construction lead actually costs us

Most agencies write about lead costs without ever showing you a number they paid. We run the ad accounts, so here is ours, pulled from our reporting tables on 2 September 2026. Both accounts build for private clients, so read every figure below as a residential picture. The commercial side is handled further down.

These are the pooled figures.

Two accounts. That is the entire contractor dataset we hold, and saying so is the most useful thing on this page. Two accounts cannot produce a median, a quartile, or a sentence beginning "the typical contractor pays."

Anyone publishing those off a sample this size is guessing with decimal points attached. What two accounts can honestly show you is the shape: somewhere around sixty to seventy dollars a lead on Meta, in high-end residential construction, in the summer of 2026.

The cheaper of the two runs a specific offer. A free rough-order-of-magnitude budget for the project, plus a call with the founders. The number a buyer wants before they will talk to anybody is what their project is going to cost, and handing them a first pass at it is what makes the form worth filling in.

More often than not, the offer is the biggest lever we find on a contractor account. Ahead of targeting, ahead of creative, ahead of the landing page. "Contact us" is not an offer, it is a door with no sign on it.

Contractors cost more than architects, and we run both books

We also run paid acquisition for architecture firms, and we published those numbers in full: 16 US firm ad accounts, $96,088 of spend and 1,752 leads between 15 September 2025 and 26 July 2026. The detail sits in the architecture marketing benchmark report. Pooled, that book pays about $55 a lead. The median firm paid $57, and the median click cost $1.83.

Same agency, same channel, overlapping window, two different trades. Construction is the more expensive one. About $64 a lead against $55, and the click runs roughly one and a half to two and a half times higher: $2.75 and $4.71 on the construction accounts against that $1.83 median on the architecture side.

Two things we think are driving it, both of which you can test on your own account rather than take on faith. Construction competes for attention with every home services advertiser in the country, and that is one of the most expensive categories in US advertising. LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks put a single search click in Home and Home Improvement at $8.33, near the top of every industry they measure.

The second is the ask. Booking a design consultation is a low-stakes yes. Requesting a construction bid means the person has already decided to spend real money, which is a smaller pool of people and a more contested one.

Treat the gap as directional. The two windows do not fully overlap, Meta pricing moves with the season, and 16 accounts against 2 is not a fair fight statistically. It is still the only cross-vertical comparison we have seen anybody publish from live accounts.

The five places construction work actually comes from

Ranked by what we see them do inside a working system, not by what any one of them costs in isolation.

Paid social sits at the top for a reason that has nothing to do with what we sell and everything to do with timing. Someone typing "general contractor near me" is already three-quarters of the way through choosing, usually with a name in their head. Paid social reaches the far bigger group who have decided to do something this year and have not started calling anyone.

Search is not the enemy here. It works, we run it alongside, and for some accounts it is the better first dollar. The honest framing is that search harvests demand and paid social creates it, and a contractor booked out through winter needs both running. Every tactic the standard guides recommend, ranked by what it costs and when it starts working, sits in the marketing guide for construction companies.

Ranking for those same searches without paying per click is the slower half of the same job. It takes months rather than weeks, and it keeps working after you stop paying, which is why we treat it as the layer underneath the ads rather than a replacement for them.

Referrals deserve the same flat treatment. They are the best clients you will ever sign, and they are a terrible business plan, because you cannot decide on a Monday that you want three more projects and will them into existence. The tap belongs to other people's memory, and other people are busy.

Residential and commercial are two different businesses

Most advice for contractors quietly assumes you build houses. Roughly half the people reading this do not, and the two sides need different campaigns, different creative and different follow-up.

If you build for private clients: your buyer is a homeowner, usually doing this once in their life, deciding on feeling and then justifying it with a number. They are anxious about cost and about being taken for a ride. Finished-project creative does the selling, and a price range offered early is what separates you from the six firms who refuse to talk numbers.

If you build for businesses: your buyer is an owner, a developer or a property manager, and they will buy again. They care about schedule, downtime, change-order discipline and what the finished space earns. Same channel, different play: target the decision makers, lead with completed projects of the same type and size, and retarget patiently through a bid cycle that can run months.

Commercial leads are typically fewer and cost more, and they are worth more each, which is why a blended cost per lead is a poor way to judge that side of the business. Cost per signed contract is the number that matters.

Both accounts in our table above are residential-side, so read those costs as a residential picture. We will publish commercial construction numbers when we have run enough of them to mean something, and not before.

What we would fix first

In this order, cheapest and fastest first. Most contractors start at step four and wonder why the leads are bad.

1. Call your own list. Every quote you sent last year that went quiet is a warm lead you already paid for. This costs nothing and it is the only channel that can produce a signed job this week.
2. Write an actual offer. A budget range, a walkthrough, a design fee credited back, something with a name. Do this before you spend a dollar on traffic, because traffic sent to "contact us" converts at a rate that will make you quit advertising. What a good one looks like on each side of the business is worked through in the offer section of the marketing guide.
3. Fix the callback. If a form fills at 11am and you call at 6pm, you are competing with whoever called at 11:05. On the shared-lead marketplaces you are literally in a race, and even off them the first real conversation usually wins the frame.
4. Run paid social as the engine. Finished work, a clear offer, a form that asks for project type and rough budget. This is the part that lets you decide how many conversations you want next month.
5. Layer search on top. Once the offer converts, buy the people already looking and start ranking for the same terms organically. The free half of that, a complete Google Business Profile and real review volume, is where the top three local slots are actually won.
6. Keep the marketplaces as overflow. They are a floor under a slow quarter. Read Angi's own definition again before you build a year on them.

A few honest answers

How much does a construction lead cost?

On Meta, across the two construction accounts we run, about $64. The individual accounts came in at $62.67 and $70.49 per lead across $9,236 of spend and 144 leads between June and September 2026.

On search, LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks put the average cost per lead in Home and Home Improvement at $90.92 with an 8.05% conversion rate. Your own number will move with your market, your offer and your season, so treat both as a starting expectation.

What the click costs before it becomes a lead, and what the two largest US homebuilders put in their SEC filings for advertising, is broken down in the construction advertising guide.

How do I get more construction leads?

Pick one channel you control and make the offer good enough that strangers will hand over a phone number for it. For most contractors that means paid social with finished-project creative and a specific offer, plus same-day callbacks.

Before any of that, work your existing list. Old quotes that went quiet are the cheapest pipeline in the business and almost nobody calls them.

If you are weighing whether to buy them instead, we broke down the difference between a bought, a shared and a generated construction lead and what a federal enforcement action turned up in that market.

Are Angi leads worth it for contractors?

As overflow, sometimes. As a plan, the economics are against you. Angi's own 10-K states that a single Service Request can result in multiple Leads, so you are buying a share of someone's attention rather than their attention.

The trade has voted with its feet: average monthly active Pros fell from 152,000 in 2024 to 122,000 in 2025 on the same filing. Use them to fill a quiet month while you build something you own.

Do Facebook ads work for contractors?

They are the engine on both of the construction accounts we run, at $62 to $70 a lead. Meta works here because the people who will spend six figures with you this year are not searching yet, and it is the cheapest reliable way to reach them before they are.

It works for commercial contractors too, with different targeting and different creative. Business owners and property managers use the same apps as everybody else.

How long before contractor ads produce signed work?

Leads usually arrive in the first week. Signed contracts take as long as your sales cycle takes, which in residential construction is typically weeks and in commercial can be a quarter or more.

Judge the first month on cost per qualified conversation, not on revenue. Judging a construction campaign on signed contracts at day 30 is how good campaigns get switched off early.

Where these numbers come from

Contractor figures: two US construction ad accounts we manage, all Meta spend recorded in our reporting tables, pulled 2 September 2026. Totals of $9,236 in spend, 208,426 impressions, 3,074 link clicks and 144 leads. Cost per click is per link click. Pooled figures divide total spend by total results.

Architecture figures: 16 US architecture and design firm accounts, $96,088 and 1,752 leads between 15 September 2025 and 26 July 2026, published in full with its own method notes. Third-party figures: LocaliQ's 2026 search advertising benchmarks (last updated 1 June 2026) and Angi Inc.'s Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025.

Limits, stated plainly because a benchmark without them is marketing. Two accounts is a small sample, both are residential-side, and neither has run a full year. Every contractor we add makes this page more useful, and we will update it rather than quietly leave it standing.

If you want this run for you

We build the offer, run the ads, qualify the calls and put booked consultations on your calendar. Details, pricing and the current program are one click away, and the numbers on this page are the same ones we will show you on the call.

Start with the guides on this site if you would rather build it yourself. Both routes work; one of them is faster.