Stop Buying Leads from Angi and HomeAdvisor. Here's the Math.

I'm going to show you numbers that Angi, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack hope you never sit down and calculate.

Every week I talk to contractors who are spending $500 to $2,000 a month on lead generation platforms. They tell me the leads are "okay." Some are garbage. A few turn into jobs. They can't quite tell if it's working or not, but they're afraid to stop because "where else would the calls come from?"

That fear is the entire business model. And the math doesn't support it.

The real cost per customer on Angi

Angi charges $15 to $85 per lead depending on your trade and market. In competitive areas like Detroit, Grand Rapids, or the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, roofing and HVAC leads regularly push $80 to $100 each.

And a "lead" on Angi is just the name and phone number of someone who clicked a button. That lead gets sent to you and three or four of your competitors simultaneously.

Let's do the math for a typical roofing contractor in Michigan:

• Average cost per lead: $65
• Leads per month: 20
• Monthly spend: $1,300 (plus the $300/year membership fee)
• Leads that actually answer the phone: 12 out of 20 (60%)
• Leads that schedule an estimate: 6 out of 12 (50%)
• Jobs won: 2 out of 6 (33% close rate, which is generous when you're competing against 3-4 other bids)

So you spent $1,300 to win 2 jobs. That's $650 per customer acquired.

And that's the optimistic version. Real-world data from agencies tracking this puts the actual cost per booked customer on Angi at $1,000 to $1,400 when you factor in the leads that never answer, the tire-kickers, the people who were just comparison shopping, and the jobs you bid but didn't win.

For a $5,000 roofing job, you just spent 20-28% of the revenue on acquiring the customer. Before materials, labor, insurance, and overhead.

Why the leads are getting worse

Angi's parent company, Angi Inc. (formerly ANGI Homeservices), reported declining revenue throughout 2024 and 2025. Their response? Selling the same leads to more contractors.

In 2020, a homeowner's request might go to 2-3 contractors. Now it's common to see 4-5 contractors bidding on the same lead. More competition per lead means lower close rates. Lower close rates mean higher cost per customer.

But the per-lead price hasn't dropped. In many markets, it's gone up.

There's also the quality issue. Multiple contractor forums and review sites report that Angi leads increasingly include:

• Wrong phone numbers or disconnected lines
• Homeowners who "didn't mean to request a quote"
• People looking for free advice, not a contractor
• Leads outside your stated service area
• Duplicate leads you've already paid for

Angi's Trustpilot rating sits at 1.3 stars from contractor reviews. That's a pattern, not a fluke.

The comparison nobody makes

Here's what drives me crazy: contractors will spend $15,000 to $20,000 per year on Angi leads without blinking, but they'll tell me $5,000 for a website is "too expensive."

Let's compare the math over 12 months.

Angi leads: year one

And next year? You pay the same thing again. There's no compounding. No asset building. The moment you stop paying, the leads stop coming.

Website + SEO: year one

Year two? Your website is paid for. SEO compounds. Your Google rankings get stronger. Your cost per customer drops to $100-$200 because you're not rebuilding from scratch every month.

By year three, contractors with good websites and SEO are generating 30-50 leads per month at a cost per customer under $150. Some of the best-optimized contractor sites we've built generate leads at under $50 per customer.

Try getting a $50 customer acquisition cost on Angi. It doesn't exist.

"But I need leads right now"

Fair point. SEO takes 3-6 months to ramp up. You can't wait that long.

You don't have to. Here's the bridge strategy:

Month 1-3: Run Google Ads targeting your core services and service area. Google Ads leads cost $25-$75 per lead for contractors, similar to Angi. The difference is that the lead goes only to you. No shared leads. No competing against four other contractors for the same homeowner.

A Google Ads lead that's exclusive to your business closes at 2-3x the rate of a shared Angi lead. Your cost per customer drops immediately.

Month 1-6: Build your website and start SEO. Get your Google Business Profile fully optimized. Start collecting reviews aggressively.

Month 4-6: Organic leads start coming in. Google Ads are generating exclusive leads. You reduce or eliminate Angi spend.

Month 7-12: SEO is generating consistent organic traffic. Google Ads are optimized with months of data. Your cost per customer is dropping every month.

Year 2+: You own your lead generation. Nobody can take it away. Nobody can raise prices on you. Nobody is selling your customers to your competitors.

What you own vs what you rent

This is the part that matters most, and it's the part most contractors never think about.

Angi leads are rented. You pay per lead, per month, forever. You build nothing. You own nothing. If Angi raises prices (they have, repeatedly), you pay more or you leave. If Angi changes their algorithm (they have, repeatedly), your lead flow drops. If Angi decides to compete with you directly by acquiring companies in your trade (they have, and they do), you're funding your own competition.

Your website is owned. You paid for it. It's yours. It works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Every blog post you publish, every review you earn, every month your domain ages, it gets more valuable. That's an asset, not an expense.

A contractor who invested $15,000 in a website and SEO three years ago is now generating 40+ leads per month from Google without paying a dime for those leads. The investment paid for itself in year one and has been pure profit since.

A contractor who spent $15,000 per year on Angi for three years has spent $45,000 and owns nothing. If they stop paying tomorrow, the leads stop tomorrow.

Which sounds like a better business decision?

The leads you get are different

There's a quality difference that the math alone doesn't capture.

When someone finds you on Angi, they're comparing you against four other contractors on the same screen. They're price shopping. They requested a quote from a platform, not from you. They have no loyalty to you and no real connection to your brand.

When someone finds you on Google, clicks your website, reads about your work, looks at your project photos, sees your reviews, and calls you, they've already decided they want to work with you. They're not calling four other contractors. They're calling you.

These leads close at a much higher rate. They negotiate less on price. They leave better reviews. They refer friends.

The lifetime value of a customer who found you through your own website versus a customer who found you through a lead generation platform is not even close.

What contractors in Michigan and Texas should do this month

If you're currently spending money on Angi, HomeAdvisor, or Thumbtack, I'm not telling you to cancel today. Start building the alternative now so you can cancel in 6 months.

Here's the checklist:

This week:

• Log into your Angi account and calculate your actual cost per booked customer. Not cost per lead. Cost per customer. Include leads that didn't answer, didn't book, and didn't close. The number will be higher than you think.
• Check your Google Business Profile. Is it complete? Is every service listed? Do you have 20+ photos? Are you responding to reviews?

This month:

• Get a real website if you don't have one. Not a Wix template. A custom-built site designed to rank on Google and convert visitors into calls.
• If you already have a website, test it. Load it on your phone. Is it fast? Can someone call you in one tap? Does the contact form work?

Next 3 months:

• Start basic SEO. Get your service pages targeting "[your trade] in [your city]." Add location pages for every city you serve. Publish one useful blog post per month.
• Set a budget cap on Angi. Don't increase it. Let the new channels start filling the gap.

6 months from now:

• Compare your cost per customer from Angi versus your website. The website should be winning. If it's not, something needs fixing. But it's almost always cheaper.

The bottom line

Lead generation platforms made sense when building a website and getting found on Google was expensive and complicated. It's 2026. That's not the case anymore.

A well-built website with solid local SEO is the most cost-effective lead generation tool a contractor can have, and it's one you own outright instead of renting.

Every dollar you spend on Angi is a dollar that could be building an asset you control. An asset that gets cheaper and more effective over time instead of more expensive.

The contractors who figure this out now will spend the next five years generating leads at a fraction of what their competitors pay. The contractors who keep renting leads will keep wondering why their margins are thin.

Your call.

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We help contractors in Michigan and Texas build websites and SEO strategies that replace lead generation platforms entirely. If you want to see the math for your specific trade and market, get in touch. We'll show you exactly what it would take to stop renting leads and start owning them.