Whether to stop buying leads from Angi and HomeAdvisor comes down to one number: what you pay for each job you win. Not each lead. Each job.
Most contractors who leave haven’t decided the leads are bad. They’ve done the math, and the math was uncomfortable. Our view is that you shouldn’t cancel on impulse and you shouldn’t keep paying on habit. Find the cost per job, build a second source of inquiries, then cut the lead budget in stages. We’ll use what Angi itself has published about how its leads work now.
Find the cost of each job you win
Take a paving contractor in Allentown who spends $2,000 a month on purchased leads. These are made-up numbers, there only to show the arithmetic. That buys 40 leads. Twenty-five answer the phone, 10 let him come out for an estimate, and 4 become jobs. Each job cost $500 in lead fees.
Is that fine? For a full driveway replacement, it may be. If most of the four were patch repairs, it looks very different.
Then there’s the time. Someone drove to those ten estimates and made calls to the 15 people who never answered. Those afternoons belong in the cost.
So the numbers you need are three: leads bought, estimates given, jobs won. Add one more column for whether the job was the kind you want. If you can’t fill those in, fixing that comes first, because every other decision leans on it.
What Angi changed, and what the price leaves out
A shared lead starts in a different place than a call from someone who went looking for you. The homeowner described a project on a platform. They may not know your name when you ring, and they may be hearing from other companies the same afternoon. Price becomes the easy thing to compare.
The platform has changed here. In Angi’s first-quarter 2025 shareholder letter, the company says it moved to homeowner choice in late January 2025: “a pro only receives a lead when the homeowner chooses that pro from a list of pros.” Before that, a significant portion of leads came from automatic matching. Angi also reported that the share of paid leads pros said they won rose by 10% after the move.
That’s the company’s own figure, based on what pros reported, and the letter doesn’t say what the win rate was to begin with. A homeowner can still choose several companies from the list. So the useful question is about your own leads. How many are you winning, and at what cost?
The lead price also leaves things out. The Angi Help Center says it plainly: “Lead fees apply when you receive a lead.” Whether it turns into an estimate, a contract or three voicemails is a separate matter. The same page explains that an opportunity taken beyond your monthly budget is charged on top of that budget, without the subscription discount.
And nothing accumulates. When the spending stops, the leads stop. None of this makes the platforms a mistake. Contractors do win good jobs there, especially when they answer fast and have a clear plan for the first call.
Where your own inquiries come from
When a contractor asks us for better leads, we ask what better means. Bigger projects? Jobs closer to home? Customers who aren’t collecting five quotes? The answers change what we’d build first.
Local search. This is the work of showing up when someone nearby searches for what you do, in the map results and the regular listings below them. There’s no fee per inquiry, but there is ongoing work, and it builds slowly. Our page on SEO for contractors describes it, and our article on SEO for general contractors goes deeper.
Your Google Business Profile. Many contractors claimed theirs years ago and haven’t touched it since. Accurate services, a correct service area, recent project photos and replies to reviews all help a homeowner decide to call. Here is how to improve your business listing on Google.
Local Services Ads. If you want a paid source that you control more, look at these. Per Google’s Local Services help pages, you “pay only for leads related to your business and the services you offer.” A customer taps the ad to call or send a message request, and screened businesses can show a Google Verified badge. They still cost money, Google sets the terms, and a homeowner can contact other advertisers too. Check the current eligibility rules for your trade before budgeting.
Your website and reviews. A homeowner searching for basement finishing who lands on one paragraph listing 14 services, no photos and a buried phone number can’t tell whether you do what they need. Give each main service a page, show finished work, name your areas, and keep the phone number visible on a phone. Ask for a review after every job, with a direct link. Then check what happens after someone sends the form. Who sees it, and how soon do they reply?
How to step away without an empty calendar
The worry we hear most is the gap. Picture a septic installer in Bethlehem who gets about half his jobs from purchased leads. Cancelling on Friday could leave April empty. A steadier route looks like this.
- Keep the leads running while you set up the basics: the profile, the service pages, and a habit of asking for reviews.
- Write down where every inquiry comes from. Asking each caller how they found you is enough to start.
- If you need work sooner than search can supply it, consider Local Services Ads or Google Ads as a bridge.
- Check that your website works on a phone.
- Cut the lead budget in stages, starting with whatever performs worst. That might be one service or one part of your territory.
How long this takes depends on where you start and how many established competitors work your area. We’ve written about how long SEO takes to work if you want a realistic picture before you plan. You may also keep a small lead budget for a category where it earns its place. That’s a reasonable outcome, even if it makes a less tidy headline.
Own it or rent it: a fair comparison
Count the same thing on both sides: cost per job won, over a year or more. These numbers are invented to show the method, not to forecast anyone’s business.
Say the platform costs $2,000 a month and brings four jobs a month, as above. Over twelve months that’s $24,000 for 48 jobs, or $500 a job. In month thirteen it’s still $500, and the jobs stop if the payments do.
Now say you put $1,500 a month into your website and search visibility. The first months may bring very little. By the end of the year, the total might be 30 jobs for $18,000, or $600 a job. On those numbers the owned route cost more in year one. The question is year two, when the pages, the profile and the reviews are already in place and still bringing inquiries.
Your numbers could point either way. That’s why you track them.
Pull three months of lead records
This week, pull three months of lead records from your account and write down leads bought, estimates given and jobs won. It takes about an hour and costs nothing. Mark the jobs you were glad to win.
Then send us the numbers with the jobs you’d like more of, and the towns where the calls keep being for work you don’t do. We’ll look at your website and Google Business Profile and tell you what we’d change first. We can’t promise a number of calls by a date, and we’ll need your photos and your word on which inquiries were good. Your first consultation is free. You can send us a message or call (215) 368-8900.