Cost Per Lead by Industry: 2026 Benchmarks and Your Break-Even

What is the average cost per lead in 2026?

On search ads, the average cost per lead is $66.69 (LocaliQ and WordStream, 2026). On Meta lead campaigns it is $27.39. For home trades on Google Local Services Ads it is $53. For B2B advertisers, the median lead on LinkedIn costs $202.

Cost per lead is ad spend divided by leads. A lead is a form submit or a call that the ad account counts. The number tells you the ad got a response. It does not tell you the business made money, and the sections below close that gap.

Three cautions before you compare. The sources do not share a definition of a lead, so a $66.69 search lead and a $27.39 Meta lead are not the same event. The figures come from the ad accounts of each publisher's own customers, so they describe accounts that run ads. And an industry average mixes small local accounts with national ones.

Read each figure as a reference point for your own account, not a target. The charts below sort by price, every table folds open, and every number links to its source.

If you read one row, read your own. An owner in legal, dental or home improvement can compare directly. An owner whose industry is not listed can use the nearest neighbor and then correct it with their own account data after 90 days.

• $66.69average cost per lead on Google and Microsoft search adsLocaliQ and WordStream, 2026
• $27.39average cost per lead on Facebook and Instagram lead campaignsLocaliQ and WordStream, 2026
• $53average Local Services Ads lead for home trades, 888 contractorsSearchLight, Feb 2026
• $202median LinkedIn lead across 138 B2B advertisersMetadata, 2025

What is a good cost per lead on Google search ads?

A good cost per lead is one below your own break-even, which the calculator on this page finds. For a first comparison, use your industry. Search leads run from $26.84 in arts and entertainment to $131.63 for attorneys, a gap of nearly 5 times.

Price per click explains most of it. Attorneys pay $9.87 a click and restaurants pay $2.05. Conversion rate does the rest. Education turns 13.14 percent of clicks into leads, and finance and insurance turns 2.64 percent.

Real estate shows why a cheap click does not decide it. Clicks cost $3.22, one of the lowest, yet a lead costs $102.51 because only 3.70 percent of clicks become leads. Home improvement pays $8.33 a click and a lead costs $90.92, because 8.05 percent of clicks convert. Cost per lead rises with the click price and falls with the click-to-lead rate.

Start with your row. If your click price is above it, look at your keywords and ad targeting. If your click-to-lead rate is below it, look at the page and at how fast you answer. Each fix lowers the same number.

What is a good cost per lead on Facebook and Instagram ads?

Meta lead campaigns cost less per lead than search in 13 of the 14 industries where both are published. The exception is beauty and personal care: $50.91 on Meta against $39.25 on search. Dentists pay the most on Meta at $61.56, and career and employment pays the least at $12.30.

A lower price per lead is not a better lead. A person on search typed a need. A person on Meta was scrolling. Judge both by what happens after the form, as the piece on ads that look fine while leads are junk shows.

Meta lead campaigns average a $1.80 click and an 8.54 percent conversion rate (LocaliQ and WordStream, 2026). Treat the Meta figure as the price of a contact detail. Sales still has to turn it into a conversation.

In our view, search fits buyers with an urgent need, such as a leaking roof. Meta fits demand you create, such as a remodel someone had not planned. Many owners run both and compare cost per customer, not cost per lead.

Meta also reports a smaller sample. LocaliQ lists 14 industries for lead campaigns against 23 for search, so a Meta row is a thinner benchmark. If your industry is missing, use the all-industry $27.39 only as a rough guide.

What does a lead cost for home and building services?

LocaliQ's home services report covers 3,211 US search campaigns from April 2024 to March 2025. The median lead costs $90.92. Roofing and gutters cost $228.15, doors and windows $200.34 and pools and spas $45.15.

Our own accounts sit well below those medians. Over 12 months, a window and door retailer and a commercial flooring contractor produced 3,700+ tracked leads at about $30 to $35 each. These are form submits and calls counted in Google Ads, not closed sales, and a published median covers many kinds of account.

Click price is part of the picture. The window and door account paid about $3 a click against a median $8.76 for doors and windows. About 9 percent of its paid clicks became a tracked lead. The flooring account turned roughly 11 percent of clicks into leads.

Jobs that are large and rare cost more per lead and convert fewer clicks. Roofing converts 3.70 percent of clicks, doors and windows 4.41 percent and general contracting 2.61 percent. Small, frequent jobs convert far more: cleaning 17.65 percent, window cleaning 13.58 percent and handyman work 13.45 percent.

A higher lead price on a large job can be the better buy. A $228 roofing lead is cheap if a roof is a five-figure sale, and the break-even math below shows exactly how cheap.

Local Services Ads are a separate product. SearchLight's February 2026 sample of 888 contractors averaged $53 a lead: electrical $39, HVAC $51, plumbing $57 and drain and sewer $59. Those leads booked at 43.9 percent.

• 3,700+tracked leads across two home and building accounts, 12 monthsMegawebvision, Google Ads, read 5 Nov 2026
• $30 to $35cost per tracked lead, form submits and callsMegawebvision, Google Ads
• $200median doors and windows search leadLocaliQ, 2025 edition

Why does every source give a different cost per lead?

Four things move the number. The channel, because search, Meta and Local Services Ads price differently. Who is counted, because a median of ad accounts differs from an agency's client blend. What counts as a lead, from a click-to-call to a qualified inquiry. And the period.

HVAC shows it. One home trade, six numbers from $51 to $129. Use one source for direction, two for the range and your own ad account for the decision.

First Page Sage splits paid, organic and blended. Blended is weighted by each channel's share of leads, so an industry that gets most leads from organic search looks cheaper. A blended number answers what the whole program costs. A paid number answers what one more ad lead costs. Use the paid number for ad decisions.

Averages and medians also differ. LocaliQ's home services figures and Metadata's lead costs are medians across accounts. SearchLight's $53 is an average across contractors. A median ignores a few very expensive accounts, so it usually runs lower than a pooled average in an uneven market.

Dates matter too. LocaliQ's home services report covers April 2024 to March 2025, its search and Meta reports cover the year to early 2026, and First Page Sage runs to August 2026. A figure from one window will not match a figure from another, even for the same industry.

What does a B2B lead cost?

B2B leads cost several times more than local service leads. Blended across paid and organic, First Page Sage reports $249 for B2B software, $505 for IT and managed services and $627 for software development in 2026. Its data runs from January 2022 to August 2026 across 30 industries.

By ad channel, Metadata's 2025 data on 153 B2B advertisers and $57.6M of spend gives a median lead of $202 on LinkedIn, $145 on Facebook, $138 on Instagram and $524 on Google Ads. Clicks cost about the same on LinkedIn ($9.39) and Google ($9.76). The lead price differs by 2.6 times.

A lead price means little without deal size. If a customer is worth $50,000, a $500 lead is cheap. If a customer is worth $2,000, it is not. That is why B2B owners should judge channels on customers and pipeline, not on the lead.

Metadata's CRM-connected advertisers show it. Across them, a customer costs $31,939 and the close rate is 22.3 percent. LinkedIn advertisers sourced 10.2 times their spend in pipeline against 7.97 times for all CRM-connected advertisers, yet their cost per customer was higher at $58,572.

Treat B2B channel numbers as a spread, not a price list. Metadata's sample is B2B advertisers who chose to be measured, and a median across 56 Google Ads accounts is a small base. The pattern holds in direction: Meta and Instagram cost less per lead than LinkedIn, and Google Ads cost the most.

• $970blended lead, higher education, the highest sectorFirst Page Sage, 2026
• $554blended lead, financial and professional servicesFirst Page Sage, 2026
• $464blended lead, technologyFirst Page Sage, 2026
• $172blended lead, consumer and local servicesFirst Page Sage, 2026

Did cost per lead go up or down in 2026?

On search ads it fell. LocaliQ reports cost per lead decreased for the first time in five years, to $66.69 from $70.11 in the 2025 edition, a drop of 4.9 percent. Clicks cost more, with the average at $5.42, but more clicks turned into leads.

On Meta, cost per lead eased from $27.66 to $27.39. Cost per click fell to $1.80 from $1.92, and the conversion rate rose to 8.54 percent from 7.72. First Page Sage, which blends paid and organic, shows a split: paid cost per lead fell in 15 of 30 industries and rose in 15, organic rose in all 30, and blended rose in 24.

Solar rose most: 10.2 percent blended and 12.0 percent paid. Hotels and resorts fell most: 6.0 percent blended and 13.0 percent paid. No one source explains every industry.

Check your own trend before you change anything. Compare the last 90 days with the 90 days before, by channel, and look at click price and click-to-lead rate separately. Then you know whether the market moved or your account did.

Read a falling average with care. LocaliQ's drop came with higher click prices, which means advertisers paid more per visitor and got more leads from each visit. If your click price rose and your lead rate did not, your cost per lead rose even while the market average fell.

What is a lead worth? From cost per lead to cost per customer

A cost per lead only means something next to what a lead becomes. Divide it by your close rate and you have your cost per customer. A $90.92 lead at a 20 percent close rate makes a customer cost $454.60.

Flip it to find your limit. Multiply the gross profit on one sale by your close rate. That is the most one lead can cost before the first job loses money. An $8,000 job at a 35 percent margin and a 20 percent close rate gives $560.

Close rate moves the answer more than the ad does. Count leads that became customers, not quotes sent. If you do not know it, match 30 recent leads to outcomes, as step two of the plan explains.

The test uses the first sale only. If customers buy again, lifetime profit is higher and your limit is higher, but the first-sale test keeps you safe. A lead that pays on the first job is a gain from then on.

• $233average cost per paying customer on Local Services Ads, home tradesSearchLight, Feb 2026
• $31,939cost per customer, CRM-connected B2B advertisersMetadata, 2025
• 22.3%close rate reported across those advertisersMetadata, 2025

1. Take your average first sale, for example $8,000.
2. Multiply by gross margin, 35 percent, to get $2,800 of profit per customer.
3. Multiply by your close rate, 20 percent, to get $560. That is your break-even cost per lead.
4. Compare it with your actual cost per lead and the benchmark for your industry.
5. Aim to stay under half of break-even. The other half covers overhead and months with a weak close rate.

Should I track cost per lead, cost per appointment or cost per sale?

Track all three and manage on the one closest to money. Cost per lead is the price the ad charges. Cost per held appointment shows what the ad and your phone handling deliver together. Cost per sale is your real cost of winning a customer.

Cheap leads can be junk. In the B2B data, a LinkedIn lead costs $202, yet a LinkedIn customer costs $58,572 against $31,939 across all CRM-connected advertisers in the same dataset. If the ad account counts every form fill as a win, it finds the cheapest form fills. Reply speed decides how many of them you keep.

Tell the ad account what a win is. Report booked and sold jobs back to Google and Meta so they optimize toward customers, not toward the cheapest form fill. How fast a person replies decides how many leads reach an appointment. See what changes when you answer in five minutes.

Cost per held appointment is the number most owners lack. Count appointments that took place, not appointments booked. The gap between the two is your no-show and follow-up gap, and it is often cheaper to close than a new ad.

A simple rule: use cost per lead to compare ads, cost per held appointment to compare your follow-up, and cost per sale to compare channels. Review all three monthly on one page, with the same time window, so a gap points to one place to fix.

How do I find my own maximum cost per lead?

Use the calculator below the action plan. Type your industry, channel, close rate, job value and gross margin. It returns your leads, your cost per customer and the most you can pay per lead.

Your ad budget should come out of the same math. For a revenue-based starting point, see marketing budget as a percentage of revenue and the marketing budget calculator. Then set the ad budget your break-even supports.

Work backward from the customers you want. Ten customers a month at a 20 percent close rate needs 50 leads. At the $90.92 benchmark, 50 leads cost about $4,546 a month. If your break-even is $560, that budget is safe.

Three inputs are easy to get wrong. Use gross margin, not net. Use the average first sale, not your best one. And measure close rate on 30 real leads, not on a guess.

• $560break-even cost per lead at a 20% close rate, $8,000 job, 35% margin
• $280the same job at a 10% close rate
• $140the same job at a 5% close rate

What should I do about my cost per lead this week?

Do the first three steps this week. They take about one afternoon and change how you read every number above.

The rest build a habit: one number per channel, checked against the same break-even every month. You do not need a marketing team for this. You need the sale to flow back to the ad account and a person who owns the number.