What Customer Acquisition Actually Costs, by Trade (2026 Data)

The short answer

Shared-lead marketplaces cost local businesses $600–$1,200 to acquire one paying customer on Angi/HomeAdvisor, because the same lead is resold to 3–5 competing pros and only 10–15% ever close (Ollyolly, Hook Agency, 2025). Google Local Services Ads run far cheaper, at roughly $233 per acquired customer, according to the largest published dataset in this space — 888 contractors, $6.72M in ad spend, 126,650 leads (Searchlight Digital / AccelerateYourMarketing, 2026). Google Search Ads land in between, at $312–$804 depending on how much of the traffic is branded search.

Whether any of these numbers is “worth it” for a given business doesn't depend on the sticker price alone — it depends on what that business actually keeps from the next job, which is a different (and usually much higher) number than its net profit margin. That's covered below.

How much does a customer cost on shared-lead marketplaces?

“Cost per lead” is the number these platforms advertise. It's the wrong number to budget against. The number that matters is cost per acquired customer:

Cost per acquired customer = cost per lead ÷ lead-to-close rate

Shared-lead marketplaces sell the same lead to several competitors at once, which crushes the close rate and quietly triples or quadruples the real cost of a customer.

Angi / HomeAdvisor

Angi and HomeAdvisor charge $15–$100 per lead (typically $25–$75; some markets $100+), and that lead is sold to 3–5 competing businesses simultaneously. With a 10–15% close rate, the implied cost per acquired customer works out to $600–$1,200 (Ollyolly, Hook Agency, 2025). This isn't a fringe complaint about the model — the FTC brought a formal enforcement action over it. In the 2023 consent order, the agency's Bureau of Consumer Protection director said:

“Today's order requires HomeAdvisor to refund home service providers millions of dollars and stop misleading them about the quality of its leads.” — Samuel Levine, Director, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection (FTC press release, January 2023)

HomeAdvisor was ordered to pay up to $7.2 million and stop the practice. Contracts also typically run 12 months with a 35% early-cancellation fee, which raises the effective cost further if a business exits mid-contract.

Thumbtack

Thumbtack leads run $8–$150 (most trades land at $25–$75), also shared, with a wider 15–25% typical close rate. That works out to roughly $100–$400 per acquired customer — for example, a $50 lead at a 20% close rate is $250 per customer; a $25 lead at 12% is about $208 (Pipeline On, Auto-Respond, 2026).

Yelp Ads

Yelp charges $30–$150 per leadthrough a bidding system that functions like a shared lead even though it's framed as advertising — competing businesses' profiles are shown side-by-side on the same page. Yelp doesn't publish a close rate, so the implied ~$200–$750 per acquired customer is our estimate based on a lower-intent 10–20% close range (3D Media, 2025–26).

Google Local Services Ads (LSA) — the strongest dataset here

LSA leads average ~$53 (HVAC $51, plumbing $57, electrical $39), and — unlike the marketplaces above — the reported book rate is 43.9%, because Google only charges for leads it can verify as legitimate contact attempts. That produces the cheapest cost per acquired customer of any platform in this data: ~$233, on an average ticket of $1,826 (a reported 7.84x return on ad spend). This comes from the largest sample in this entire brief — 888 contractors, $6.72M in spend, 126,650 leads (Searchlight Digital, AccelerateYourMarketing, 2026).

How much does a customer cost through paid ads?

Google Search Ads

Home-service Google Search Ads average $90.92 per click/leadacross categories (pools $45, handyman $54, up to roofing $228 and windows $200), with roughly 12% of leads converting to a paying customer. Blended, that's ~$312 per acquired customer; narrowing to non-branded search terms only (i.e., excluding people already searching your business name) pushes it to ~$804 (LocaliQ, 2025).

Meta / Facebook Ads

Meta leads are cheaper to generate — ~$41 average($12–$60 range; HVAC $15–$35, plumbing $12–$25, roofing $18–$40) — but convert at a much lower 5–12%, because the person wasn't actively searching for the service. Net: ~$125–$350 per acquired customer (WordStream, Focus Digital, 2025).

Zillow Premier Agent (real estate)

Zillow charges $223 per connection in metro markets($139 non-metro), or, under its “Flex” program, 15–40% of the resulting commission as a straight success fee instead of an upfront ad cost (HousingWire, The Close, 2025–26).

All channels, side by side

Google LSA is the best-documented number in this table by a wide margin — the underlying sample (888 contractors, $6.72M spend) dwarfs the marketing-agency estimates behind the marketplace figures. Treat the Angi/Thumbtack/Yelp ranges as directional; treat LSA as close to ground truth for the trades it covers (HVAC, plumbing, electrical).

What is contribution margin, and why does it matter more than net margin here?

Net profit marginis what's left after every cost of running the business — rent, insurance, office staff, the owner's own pay — is subtracted from revenue. It's the right number for “how healthy is my business,” and for most trades in this data it's a thin 3–18%.

Contribution margin is a different question: of the next job that walks in the door, how much of it is profit after only the direct cost of doing that specific job(materials, parts, and the crew labor tied to it)? Overhead and the owner's salary don't change whether you take one more job this month — they're already paid for. That's why contribution margin on an incremental job is routinely 3–10x higherthan the business's headline net margin.

A concrete example: a residential painting company might report 10–18% net margin for the year, but the next paint job it books runs 50–70% contribution margin— because the crew and paint cost for that job are the only new expense; the office, the trucks, and the owner's salary are sunk costs already covered by existing volume (PCA; ServiceTitan, 2025–26).

This is the gap that decides whether an acquisition channel is rational: compare its cost per customer to the contribution margin of one job, not to net margin. A painter spending $600 to win a $4,800 exterior job at 55% contribution margin nets $2,040on that job alone — a good trade even at the high end of Angi's CAC range. The same $600 against a $275 auto repair order (at 55% contribution margin, ~$151) is underwater before the second visit. Ticket size, not the sticker price of the lead, decides whether a channel pencils out.

Contribution margins below are estimated from published gross-margin data and labor/materials splits — they are not published under that name by any source, so treat them as directional, “adjust to your own numbers,” not audited figures.

What does customer acquisition really cost, by trade?

The pattern is consistent across all ten trades in this data: net margin looks thin, contribution margin does not, and the acquisition math should be judged against the second number. The three trades below are covered in the most depth; the rest follow the same table format further down.

Auto repair: what does it cost to acquire a customer, and is it worth it?

Independent auto repair shops run 6–12% net margin, but the gross margin on a repair order is 50–60% — labor lines alone run 70–80% margin, with parts closer to 20–40% (KaizenCPA; Dynatron). The average repair order runs ~$250–$300, with complex jobs reaching $800–$850 (Cars.com).

At 50–60% contribution margin, an average repair order throws off roughly $125–$180 in contribution profit; a complex job throws off $400–$510. Few markets run Angi or Google LSA campaigns specifically for general auto repair — the closest published anchor is Google LSA's ~$233 blended average, though note that dataset is built from HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors, not auto shops, so treat it as directional for this trade, not an auto-specific number. Shops competing on Google Search Ads or Meta are working with ~$125–$350–$804 per customer depending on channel — meaning a single average repair order rarely covers the acquisition cost; the payoff has to come from repeat visits, which is why retention (not one-time lead cost) usually decides auto-repair marketing ROI.

Painting: what does it cost to acquire a customer, and is it worth it?

Painting splits into two distinct businesses. Commercial painting nets 7–12%, with gross margin around 45–55%, an average job of ~$12,000 (range $5,500–$18,500) (HomeGuide). Residential painting nets a higher 10–18%, with gross margin of 50–70%; interior repaints run $3,000–$8,000, exterior averages ~$4,839 (CertaPro).

At those margins, a single commercial job throws off $5,400–$6,600 in contribution profit; a residential exterior job throws off $2,420–$3,400. Against Angi/HomeAdvisor's $600–$1,200 cost per acquired customer, painting is one of the clearest cases in this data where the acquisition channel is cheap relative to what one job is worth — the constraint is volume and close rate, not economics.

Restaurants: what does it cost to acquire a customer, and is it worth it?

Restaurant net margins are the thinnest in this data — full-service restaurants report a median 2.8% pre-tax margin, limited-service 4.0%, per the National Restaurant Association's primary research:

“Full-service restaurants reported a median income before taxes of 2.8 percent of sales while limited-service restaurants reported a median income before taxes of 4.0 percent.” — National Restaurant Association, State of the Restaurant Industry 2025

The same report notes that “dampened customer traffic and stubbornly elevated costs combined to keep pressure on the bottom line, resulting in modest profit margins — even by restaurant standards” — a reminder that thin net margins are the industry's baseline, not a red flag specific to any one operator.

But food contribution margin (prime cost — food and labor tied to the meal — typically targeted at 60–65% of sales) runs a much healthier ~65–70% (Toast). On a casual-dining check of $15–$30, that's roughly $10–$21 in contribution margin per visit. Against Meta's $125–$350 cost per acquired customer, a restaurant needs roughly 9–25 repeat visitsjust to recoup one Meta-driven customer's acquisition cost — which is exactly why frequency and loyalty, not one-time acquisition, is the real profit lever for restaurants, even though the acquisition math looks fine on paper for a QSR check under $12.

The other seven trades

For reference, NYU Stern's Damodaran dataset — publicly traded companies only, so it skews toward large operators, not owner-operated shops — puts sector net margins at: Auto Retail 3.4%, Restaurant/Dining 9.4%, Insurance (General) 12.4%, Real Estate Operations & Services 1.2%, Brokerage & Investment Banking 14.5% (Jan 2026; Damodaran, NYU Stern). These are useful as an independent, methodologically consistent anchor, but the trade/CPA figures above are more representative of local, owner-operated businesses.

How do I estimate my own true cost per acquired customer?

1. Pull your cost per leadfrom whatever platform you're using (your monthly invoice ÷ leads received).
2. Track your actual close rate for 90 days — leads that became paying, completed jobs, not just leads contacted.
3. Divide:cost per lead ÷ close rate = your real cost per acquired customer. Compare it to the ranges above for your channel, not the advertised “cost per lead” number.
4. Compare that figure to your contribution margin on one job(price minus materials and direct labor for that job) — not your net margin. If the acquisition cost is smaller than one job's contribution margin, the channel is arithmetically rational, even if your year-end net margin looks thin.

FAQ

Is there a lower-cost way to acquire customers?

Everything above is the traditional menu: pay a platform per lead, absorb the shared-lead tax, and hope the close rate holds. There's another way to frame acquisition spend worth knowing about, even though it doesn't have a performance track record yet to cite alongside the benchmarks above: paying only when a job actually closes.

ShopGiv is a platform that lets a business redirect a slice of already-closed, already-paidsales into a local nonprofit, instead of paying upfront for leads that may never convert. Because the cost only triggers on a completed transaction, the “acquisition cost” in this model can't exceed what a customer actually spent — there's no equivalent of paying for a lead that ghosts you. ShopGiv is early-stage and pre-traction, so this is a projection to reason through with your own numbers, not a proven result we can point to yet. If you want to see how the math compares to the channels above using your own sales and margin, ShopGiv publishes a free calculator:

Sources

• NYU Stern / Damodaran, Operating & Net Margins by Sector, Jan 2026
• Federal Trade Commission, FTC Order Requires HomeAdvisor to Pay Up To $7.2 Million, Jan 2023
• Ollyolly, Angi for Contractors 2025
• Hook Agency, Angi Leads Reviews (Real Cost)
• Pipeline On, Thumbtack Cost Per Lead by Trade
• Auto-Respond, Thumbtack CPL 2026
• 3D Media, Yelp Ads Cost 2026
• Searchlight Digital, Google LSA Cost Per Lead by Trade 2026
• AccelerateYourMarketing, Google Local Services Ads Cost 2025
• LocaliQ, 2025 Search Ad Benchmarks for Home Services
• WordStream, Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2025
• Focus Digital, Average Cost Per Lead on Facebook, July 2025
• HousingWire, Zillow Premier Agent Cost
• The Close, Zillow Premier Agent Review 2026
• PCA (Painting Contractors Association), What Should You Be Earning
• ServiceTitan, Paint Business Profit Margin
• build-folio, Contractor Profit Margins by Trade 2026
• HomeGuide, Commercial Painting Cost
• CertaPro, Exterior House Painting Cost
• KaizenCPA, Auto Repair Markup & Margin
• Dynatron, Profit Margin on Auto Parts
• Cars.com, Average Car Repair Bill
• Elite Worldwide, Auto Repair Marketing Budgets
• National Restaurant Association, State of the Restaurant Industry 2025
• Toast, Average Restaurant Profit Margin
• NAR, Agent Income
• ZipperAgent, Real Estate Agent Marketing Spend
• SIAA, A Guide to Insurance Agency Profit Margins
• Insurance Pro Agencies, Insurance Agency Marketing Budget
• Profitability Partners, Plumbing Profit Margins 2026
• Profitability Partners, HVAC Profit Margins 2026
• Steph's Books, HVAC Profit Margins
• Grow Group, Profit Margins for Landscaping Businesses Explained
• Togal, Average Profit Margin for Construction Industry
• Schonfeld & Associates, Advertising Ratios & Budgets (via 4As)