If you've ever watched a Bark credit balance drain away and wondered how much do leads cost for tradesmen in real terms, you're asking exactly the right question. The honest answer is that there's no single number, because every platform prices leads differently and most of them hide the true cost behind credits, subscriptions and shortlist fees. This guide lays out typical UK prices side by side, gives you a simple rule for judging whether you're overpaying, and explains why the cheapest lead on paper is very often the most expensive one once you count the jobs you actually win.
What a lead actually costs on each major platform
Most trades use one of four big lead sources: Bark, MyBuilder, Rated People or Checkatrade. They all work differently, so comparing them honestly means converting everything into a roughly comparable "cost to make contact with one potential customer". Prices move around by trade, job size and location, so treat the figures below as typical ranges rather than fixed quotes — and always check the current pricing for your own trade and area before you commit.
| Platform | How you pay | Typical cost to reach one lead | Exclusive? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bark | Buy credits, spend them to "respond" to each lead | ~£1.50–£3.50 per credit; a single response often costs 5–20+ credits, so roughly £10–£50+ per lead | No — sold to several pros |
| MyBuilder | Pay a "shortlist fee" when a customer shortlists you | ~£15–£40 per shortlist, depending on job size | No — usually around 3 trades shortlisted |
| Rated People | Monthly subscription plus per-lead fees | ~£10–£40 per lead on top of the plan | No — shared with competitors |
| Checkatrade | Annual membership; "leads" come via your listing | ~£70–£140+ per month membership, no clean per-lead figure | No — customers contact several listings |
The pattern jumps out fast. On every one of these, the figure you pay is for a shared lead. The same enquiry is usually sold or shown to three, four, sometimes five trades at once. So your "£25 lead" isn't really a job — it's the right to compete for one, against people who are looking at the same form you are, often quoting on the same evening.
The rule of thumb: lead cost vs job value
Here's the test that cuts through all the credit maths. A sensible marketing spend usually sits somewhere around 5–15% of the revenue it brings in. Where you land in that band depends on your margins and how competitive your trade is — a high-margin restoration job can carry more marketing cost than a tight, price-sensitive fitting job, and a builder chasing extensions will think about this very differently to an electrician doing fault-finding call-outs.
The number that matters isn't the price of a single lead. It's your cost per won job: total spend divided by the jobs you actually closed. Run that against your average job value and you'll know in about thirty seconds whether you're fine or quietly bleeding money.
Key takeaways
- Almost every "per lead" price on the big platforms is for a shared lead resold to multiple trades.
- Judge spend on cost per won job, not cost per lead — aim for marketing to be roughly 5–15% of the revenue it generates.
- A £20 shared lead you win 1 in 6 times costs £120 per job; a £50 exclusive lead you win 1 in 2 costs £100.
- Add up your annual lead spend before judging any platform — the monthly figures hide the real total.
Why a cheap shared lead can cost more per won job
This is the trap. A lead that looks cheap can be the dearest one you buy, because the price per lead and the price per job are two completely different things.
Say you buy shared leads at £20 each. Because four other trades got the same enquiry, the customer is busy comparing quotes and you win one job in every six leads. That's £120 in lead cost for a single won job. Now compare an exclusive lead at £50 where nobody else was sent the enquiry and the customer was screened before it reached you — you close one in two. That's £100 per won job, for work you didn't have to win a bidding war to land. The "expensive" lead is actually the cheaper route to a paying customer.
- Shared leads: low headline price, low conversion, lots of wasted quoting time, downward pressure on your prices.
- Exclusive, screened leads: higher headline price, far higher conversion, less time chasing tyre-kickers, no race to the bottom.
The hidden cost of cheap leads is also your time. Every quote you write for a job that goes to someone else is an hour you didn't bill — an evening on the laptop pricing up work you'll never see. Multiply that across a feast-and-famine month and the "cheap" platform starts to look properly expensive once your own labour is in the sum.
The yearly figure most trades never add up
Most tradespeople judge a lead platform by what it costs this week. That's exactly why the bill quietly gets out of hand. The monthly subscription, the membership, the top-up of credits when work goes quiet — add them across twelve months and the number is usually far bigger than anyone realised.
Try the sum yourself. Take everything you paid one platform last year: membership or subscription, every credit top-up, every shortlist fee. As a worked example, picture £110 a month on a membership (£1,320 a year) plus £40 a month in credit top-ups (£480), for £1,800 all in. If you can honestly trace nine won jobs back to it, that's £200 per won job — even though every individual lead "only" cost you £20 or £30 at the time.
Now divide that £200 by your average job value. On a £1,300 job it's a sane 15%. On a £600 job it's a third of the revenue gone before you've bought a single fixing. Plenty of trades discover their real cost per won job is north of £150–£200 once it's all added up. If you've never run that calculation, it's the single most useful half-hour you'll spend on your marketing this year.
Pay-per-lead vs membership vs directory listings
It helps to separate the three models, because they fail in different ways.
Membership and subscription (Checkatrade, Rated People)
You pay whether or not the leads come. In a quiet month you're still paying the fee, which is the exact opposite of what a struggling business needs. The cost isn't tied to results, so the risk sits entirely with you.
Credit and shortlist platforms (Bark, MyBuilder)
You pay per contact, not per job — and the contact is shared. You can spend a real amount of money responding to enquiries that were always going to go to whoever quoted lowest, and there's nothing to stop your credits emptying on leads that never had your name on them.
Pay-per-lead done properly
You pay a fixed price only for a lead that's been screened by a human and sent to you alone. No monthly fee, no credits to burn, no five-way scramble. The risk sits with the provider to deliver something worth paying for, not with you to gamble credits and hope.
What a fixed-price exclusive lead costs instead
This is the model My2ndBrand is built on. Instead of buying shared leads, you get a complete second brand — its own name, logo and full website on an aged domain — with Google Ads, SEO and a 24/7 call centre behind it. Enquiries are screened by a real person before they reach you, and every lead is exclusive to you and your coverage area. You pay a fixed fee per qualified job enquiry, typically around £50 depending on trade, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. You can see the full breakdown on our pricing page.
Run that through the rule of thumb. At £50 a lead with the higher conversion you get from an exclusive, pre-screened enquiry, your cost per won job stays comfortably inside the 5–15% band for most trades — and the customer comes to your brand, so the repeat work and the reviews are yours, not a platform's. If you want to see exactly how the brand, the ads, the call centre and the lead screening fit together, how it works walks through it step by step.
So when someone asks how much leads cost for tradesmen, the better question is what they cost per job won — and whether you're paying for a real, exclusive enquiry or just the right to bid against four other people. If you'd rather stop topping up credits and start paying only for leads that are genuinely yours, take a look at how it works and see whether a second brand makes the maths work in your favour.
