HVAC cost per lead: why it misleads, and the 3 numbers to track instead

Ask ten HVAC owners what their leads cost and most will give you a cost per lead. Ask what a sold replacement costs them in marketing and most will pause. The second number is the one that decides whether marketing is making you money.

This post covers what published sources say about HVAC cost per lead, where those figures come from, and the arithmetic from a lead to a booked estimate to a sold job. We are new to the US market and have no US client results. Where we use our own numbers, they are planning assumptions, labeled as such, to be replaced by your data.

What is a good cost per lead for HVAC?

There is no single good number, because leads differ in who they are, whether they are shared and what they want. As a marker, LocaliQ's 2025 benchmark gives a median Google Search cost per lead of $127.74 for AC installation and repair. Judge any lead cost by what it produces in booked estimates and sold jobs.

A cost per lead is spend divided by leads. It treats a renter asking about a $90 repair the same as a homeowner with a 17-year-old 4-ton system who wants a new one before July. That is why it misleads on its own.

What is the difference between cost per lead, cost per booked estimate and cost per job?

They are three points on the same funnel. Cost per lead divides spend by contacts. Cost per booked estimate divides it by homeowners actually on your calendar. Cost per job divides it by sales. Each step down filters out people who were never going to buy, so the number rises and gets more honest.

A booked estimate is a qualified homeowner booked for an in-home estimate on your calendar, at a set time.

Use all-in spend in every row: ad spend, lead fees and management fees. Leaving the fee out flatters any source that has one.

What do published benchmarks say about HVAC cost per lead?

The best recent figures we found for Google Search come from LocaliQ, a marketing company, which reports medians from its own clients' campaigns. For marketplaces, Housecall Pro reports ranges for Angi and Thumbtack. Google publishes no fixed price for Local Services Ads and says lead prices vary.

Google Search. LocaliQ's 2025 report is based on 3,211 US home services search campaigns running from April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025, and its "averages" are medians (LocaliQ):

The same report says cost per lead rose for 69% of home services businesses year over year, with an average increase of 10.51%. Two cautions. These categories mix repairs with installs, and they are one company's client data, not an industry census.

Marketplaces. Housecall Pro reports Angi at "$15 to $85 per lead" plus about $300 a year (Housecall Pro) and Thumbtack at "$10 to over $100 depending on trade, job size, and market" (Housecall Pro). These are cross-trade ranges, not HVAC price lists.

Local Services Ads. Google says lead prices "may vary depending on your location, the job type, the type of lead, or your bidding mode" (Google). We found no official HVAC figure.

How do you get from cost per lead to cost per job?

Multiply down the funnel. Take leads, keep the share that qualify, keep the share of those that book, then apply your close rate. Divide spend by each result. The worked example below uses our planning assumptions at $4,000 a month of combined Google and Meta spend.

Look at how the number grows. A $115 lead becomes a $1,733 job once every filter and every fee is counted. That is not bad news. It is the real number, and it is the one to compare with what a sold replacement earns you.

Why are cheap HVAC leads often expensive?

Cheap leads are often shared with other contractors, unqualified or aimed at repair work. Each of those cuts the share that books and closes. If a lead costs a third as much but closes a quarter as often, it costs more per job, and it burns office and advisor time on the way.

The rates above are illustrative, chosen to show the mechanism, not measured results for any platform. The shared source wins on cost per lead by more than three to one and still loses on cost per job. It also sends your advisor to 8 or 9 estimates to sell about one system, against 6 estimates for about two. Advisor hours are a cost too.

Which step in the funnel moves cost per job the most?

Usually the booking rate and the close rate, not the price of the lead. Shaving 10% off cost per lead saves about 10%. Lifting booking from 40% to 60% of qualified leads cuts cost per job by a third. Speed to reply and estimate follow-up move those two rates most.

Holding spend at $4,000 and 35 leads, with 21 qualified:

All rows are planning arithmetic, not results. The pattern holds in any version of it: work on what happens after the lead before you haggle over the lead. That is why we build the 60-second reply and day 1, 3 and 7 follow-up before we raise a budget.

How do you track cost per job by source?

Tag every lead with its source when it arrives, mark every estimate booked, and mark every estimate won or lost with a reason. Then, once a month, divide each source's all-in spend by its booked estimates and its sold jobs. Use at least 60 days, because replacement buyers often take weeks to decide.

Four habits make the numbers trustworthy:

1. One source per lead. Landing page forms, tracked phone numbers and marketplace inboxes each get their own tag, set automatically, not typed in later.
2. Won or lost, always. An estimate with no outcome makes close rate look worse than it is. Review every undecided estimate weekly, and chase an outcome once it is 14 days old.
3. Same period for spend and sales. Compare a quarter's spend with jobs sold from that quarter's leads, even if some close a month later.
4. All costs in. Lead fees, platform fees and management fees all count. So do marketplace subscriptions.

If your field service software already records the lead source on the job, you may have most of this today. The gap is usually the estimates nobody marked won or lost.

What should HVAC cost per job be compared with?

Compare it with gross profit per replacement, after equipment, labor, permits and financing fees. If marketing cost per job is well under that, the source pays. If it is close to it or above it for more than a month or two, look at booking and close rates before cutting spend.

For scale, Sears Home Services puts central AC replacement at "$3,000 to $7,500" for most homes and heat pumps at "$4,000 to $8,000" (Sears Home Services, updated February 11, 2026). Those are prices to homeowners, not your margin, and other guides give different ranges. Use your own gross profit.

The break-even formula is simple: monthly marketing cost divided by gross profit per replacement equals the jobs you need to cover it. Illustration only: at $6,500 a month all-in and $3,500 gross profit per changeout, about 2 jobs covers the marketing.

What do these numbers look like with Scale Theory?

Our fee is $2,500 a month, and ad spend is at least $4,000 a month, paid by you directly to Meta and Google. Under our planning assumptions, that is about $520 all-in per booked estimate. The first 90 days are paid in two halves, and we publish every number in a Friday report.

The first 90 days: $3,750 on signing, and $3,750 once we have booked 3 central AC or heat pump replacement or installation estimates of $5,000 or more before sales tax into your calendar, or at day 90, whichever comes first. Then month to month with 30 days notice. We do not promise results. Your close rate, pricing and install capacity are yours, and they decide cost per job as much as we do.

The Friday report shows ad spend by channel, qualified leads, booked estimates, cost per booked estimate and jobs sold, so you can run every calculation in this post on real numbers instead of ours. The full breakdown is on our pricing page. For all the costs around marketing, not just leads, read how much HVAC marketing costs. For South Texas detail, see our San Antonio HVAC marketing page.

Sam

Co-founder. Audits, strategy and media buying

Sam runs every strategy call and buys every ad. Before going HVAC-only, he ran a performance marketing agency: SEO, Meta and Google ads, CRM automation.

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