HVAC, Plumbing and Roofing Cost Per Lead Benchmarks

The useful lead price depends on the job you want and what happens after the enquiry. Start with a benchmark for the right trade. Then compare it with the jobs your team actually sold.

Sources checked September 14, 2026. The studies below use different accounts, dates and channels. Keep each sample separate when making a budget decision.

Search-ad lead costs by trade

LocaliQ’s 2025 report studied 3,211 US Google and Microsoft search-ad campaigns from April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025. Each category has at least 103 campaigns. These are medians in US dollars.

Category	Cost per lead
Air conditioning installation and repair	$127.74
Heating and furnaces	$129.02
Plumbing	$129.02
Roofing and gutters	$228.15

Roofing and gutters had the highest CPL in this report. That alone cannot tell you whether your roofing campaign is good value. You need the inspection, sale and job-cost results too.

Google Ads costs by campaign type

SearchLight’s January 2026 study covers HVAC and plumbing together: 816 contractors, 8,077 campaigns and $14.9 million in Google Ads spend. It reports these averages:

Campaign type	Cost per lead
Searches for a company name	$34
Searches without the company name	$149
Performance Max	$72
All campaign types combined	$104

The $104 figure is not an HVAC-only average. A campaign serving searches for your company name also reaches a different audience from one serving general service searches. A change in that mix can move your overall lead cost without improving either campaign.

Local Services Ads use a separate sample

SearchLight’s February 2026 LSA report covers 888 contractors, 126,650 leads and $6.72 million in spend. Its HVAC category reports $51 per lead across 409 accounts. Plumbing reports $57 across 230 accounts. The combined figure is $53. Costs use gross spend before credits.

The category table does not give a separate roofing benchmark. Do not label the combined $53 figure as a roofing average.

The LSA figures are lower than the search-ad figures shown above. Different months, accounts and channel mixes prevent this from proving that moving your budget to LSAs will produce the same saving.

Work out your own acceptable lead cost

Start with one service and a group of enquiries old enough to have reached a decision. Count valid enquiries, booked appointments and paid jobs. Record the ad spend for that same group.

Illustrative roofing calculation: $4,000 in ads produces 20 enquiries and four paid jobs. The CPL is $200. The ad cost per paid job is $1,000. If only two jobs close, that becomes $2,000 per job even though the CPL stays the same.

For HVAC, separate maintenance and repair work from system replacements when the data allows it. A blended figure can hide which service is producing the result. For plumbing, review emergency calls and planned work such as water heater replacement separately.

Use your own job margin to judge the cost. An average ticket from a different contractor cannot tell you what is left after your labor, materials and callbacks.

Check the enquiries before changing channels

Pull a small sample of actual calls and forms with your office. Check the service area, job type, duplicates and the time it took to answer. Write down why each enquiry did or did not become an appointment.

You might find an ad-targeting problem. You might find a full schedule or a phone nobody answered. Those need different fixes.

The contractor Google Ads statistics explain the click and conversion measures. The lead-generation platform guide can help with the broader channel choice.

Give existing website visits another chance

PipelineOn can help identify some homeowners who visit your website without contacting you. Review the available record, check for an existing customer and choose whether to follow up. An identified visit needs to be tracked separately from an enquiry.

See the examples for HVAC companies, plumbers and roofers. Start with your current traffic and judge the records on their usefulness to your office.

Correction, September 14, 2026: We corrected the LocaliQ HVAC figures and SearchLight sample labels. We removed unsourced contractor stories, unsupported return claims and comparisons that treated different studies as equivalent.