Google LSA cost per lead in 2026: what contractors actually pay

The short answer

Most home-service contractors pay roughly $40 to $60 per Google Local Services Ads lead in 2026, and roofing often costs more. Google itself only says that lead prices vary by your location, the job type, the type of lead and your bidding mode. The more useful number is cost per booked job: with about 44% of leads booking in the benchmark below, a $53 lead works out to about $121 per booked job.

LSA cost per lead by trade

Roofing isn't in that dataset. 99 Calls' campaign data puts roofing at $106.87 a lead for April to June 2026, up from $73.62 for the same months of 2025, while plumbing in the same data was $66.17. Different datasets, markets and months give different numbers, so treat any benchmark as a range and compare it with your own account.

What Google charges you for

Google's how leads work page lists what counts as a charged lead:

• Calls you answer, or calls you return that connect you with the customer.
• Missed calls during your business hours when the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds.
• Text messages and emails from a customer.
• Voicemails.
• Booking requests (US and Canada).

What you're not charged for

• Leads Google judges invalid or low quality at first contact, plus spam and duplicates.
• Missed calls where the caller hangs up at your phone menu before pressing a key.
• Contact from the same number or email within 15 days of a charged lead. After 15 days without contact, it counts as a new lead.

Why your cost per lead is different

• Location: busy metros with many contractors bidding cost more than small markets.
• Job type: a replacement or install lead usually costs more than a small repair.
• Lead type: Google says message leads are usually priced lower than phone leads, though not always, and prices message leads on how likely the customer is to book.
• Bidding mode: how you let Google bid (below) changes what you pay per lead.
• Season: demand spikes, like the first heat wave for HVAC or a hail storm for roofing, push prices up.

Bidding and budget settings

Google's bidding guide recommends Maximize leads, where Google sets bids to get the most leads for your budget. You can add a target cost per lead, and Google tries to average around it. Your weekly budget is an average, not a hard cap: some weeks you spend less, some more, and the monthly ceiling is your weekly budget times 30.4, divided by 7. Google suggests a budget of at least 10 leads a week.

What changed in 2026: LSA moves into Performance Max

Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. You still pay per lead, and ads still show only on Google Search and Maps. The rollout started in August 2026 with select US home-service advertisers, including plumbing, HVAC and roofing; businesses without a storefront and custom setups follow in late 2026, and other countries in 2027. Google emails you 14 days before your account moves.

• Manual bidding, like a maximum cost per lead, is no longer supported in Google Ads.
• A single target cost per lead applies to the whole campaign. If you want different targets per service, use separate campaigns.
• Your old LSA reports don't move over. Download them before your migration date.
• Business name, address and hours sync one way from your Google Business Profile, so edit them there.
• Google says to allow up to two weeks for performance to settle after the move.

Watch cost per booked job, not cost per lead

A cheap lead you never reach is expensive. A $70 lead that books is cheap. What you really pay for a job is your lead spend divided by the jobs you booked, and the biggest lever is usually how fast and how often you get the homeowner on the phone.

A worked HVAC example

Example numbers, using the benchmark above. Say you get 40 LSA leads a month at $51, so $2,040. Booking 44% of them gives you about 18 booked jobs at roughly $116 of lead spend each. Get that to 55%, mostly by answering faster and calling back every message and missed call, and you book 22 jobs at about $93 each. Same spend, four more jobs a month.

How to lower your cost per booked job

1. Answer calls live during your listed hours. A missed call you pay for and never return is pure loss.
2. Call back message and booking-request leads within minutes. See speed to lead for contractors for why the first few minutes matter so much.
3. Set your business hours to when someone actually answers.
4. Rate bad leads and check your credits every week. Our LSA dispute guide covers what qualifies.
5. Track cost per booked job by job type, and pause the job types that never book.
6. If you can't answer fast while you're on a job, an AI appointment setter can call back each message and missed-call lead within a minute and book the visit.