Last updated 23 September 2026
Air conditioning leads: buy for the heatwave, not the whole year.
Short answer: a domestic air con lead from Leads.work costs £27 plus VAT, and its own quote site tells homeowners the enquiry can go to up to four engineers. A managed plan from The Trade League costs £299 to £799 plus VAT a month before the ad spend. A click on an air con search in Google costs £0.54 to £5.21.
The price matters less than the month you pay it in. UK searches for "air conditioning installation" ran to 60,500 in June and 3,600 in December. That's about 17 times the demand in one month compared with the other. A package that costs the same every month is a bargain in the first and a drain in the second.
Before you buy any air con lead
Refrigerant work needs a company certificate, sole traders included.
Gov.uk says a business fitting or servicing air conditioning for other people must be F-gas certified by an approved body, on top of each engineer's own qualification. None of the sellers we read asks for the company certificate by name, and one of the top results for "air conditioning leads" sells leads for car air con. What the rule says.
Where we stand
We don't sell air conditioning leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying air conditioning leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build air conditioning installers a website that turns visits into calls, and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, so every lead that comes in is a customer who found you, and nobody else was sold it.
Twelve months of searches
Most of the year's air con demand lands in a few weeks.
Most trades have a busy season. Air con has a few hot weeks and a long wait. Searches for "air conditioning installation" climbed to 22,200 in May, peaked in June, and had dropped to 4,400 by November. From November to April it never got above 5,400. 7 months of the twelve sat below a quarter of the peak.
UK searches for "air conditioning installation", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
There's an odd one in there too: October 2025 ran to 27,100, more than May. We can't tell you why from the data, but an installer who switched everything off at the end of August missed it. The point for buying leads is simpler. Two mistakes cost air con firms the most money: paying heatwave prices for leads you can't get to, and paying winter fees for leads that barely exist.
Packs that renew themselves
Leads.work's Smart Local pack renews as soon as its leads are delivered, "never sooner than 7 days" after the last one started. In a quiet month that's slow. In a heatwave, a pack can renew every week, and the card on file pays each time.
A pause shorter than winter
The Trade League lets you pause for £99 plus VAT a month, for up to 90 days. Past that, its terms say it can release your postcode to someone else. The quiet stretch in the search data runs from November to April, which is longer than 90 days.
Homeowners are told to wait
Checkatrade's cost guide tells homeowners installs are "sometimes" cheaper "during off-peak seasons, such as spring or autumn". Some of them will ask you in March. Your ads need to be running when they do, at a fraction of June's volume.
Service or install
A £27 lead is cheap for a split system and dear for a service.
"Air conditioning" covers a £70 filter clean and a whole house of ducting. Sellers price the lead the same. Below, each job at its published UK price, what a lead for it can cost if you win one quote in 3, and what Leads.work's £27 domestic lead does to it.
| Job | Published UK price | Ceiling per lead | Paying £27 |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-off service, one unit | £70 to £120 | about £5 | Loses money. £81 per job won, 85% of it |
| Weekday call-out, first hour included | £130 to £180 | about £8 | Loses money. £81 per job won, 52% of it |
| Wall-mounted split, one room (unit plus fitting) | £1,580 to £2,270 | about £96 | Cheap. £81 per job won, 4% of it |
| Multi-split, several rooms | £3,500 to £6,000 | about £238 | Cheap. £81 per job won, 2% of it |
| Whole-home ducted system | £3,000 to £15,000 | about £450 | Cheap. £81 per job won, 1% of it |
Service: Checkatrade cost guide, Jun 2026. Call-out: Checkatrade cost guide, Jun 2026. Single split: Checkatrade cost guide, May 2026. Multi-split: Heatable price guide, Jul 2026. Whole-home ducted: MyJobQuote cost guide, Sep 2026. The single split is Checkatrade's unit price plus its fitting price. Win rate: MyJobQuote says it would typically expect its trades to win 1 in 3.
The ceiling assumes winning a job should cost you around 10 to 15 percent of its value, lost quotes included. On a service at about £95, paying £27 three times to win one uses up 85% of the invoice. Leads.work's cheaper £15 repair and service lead still eats 47%. On a single split at about £1,925 the same lead is 4%, and on a whole-home ducted system it's 1%.
The guides don't agree on one room
MyJobQuote puts a single room at £550 to £2,100 installed. Checkatrade's unit and fitting prices add up to £1,580 to £2,270. Heatable, an installer, says £2,000 to £3,500. Use your own price in the calculator below, not ours.
Commercial is a different sum
Leads.work charges £34 for a business lead. Tradespeople answering on MyJobQuote put small office installs at around £60 to £120 a square metre, so a commercial job can carry a far dearer lead than a bedroom can. The search is dearer too: "commercial air conditioning" is the most expensive click in our set, at £5.21.
Your prices, your win rate
Check a seller's price against your jobs.
Choose a job or type in what you charge, set how many quotes you give per job won, then add the price a seller has quoted you. It opens on the whole-home ducted system; switch to servicing to see how little a maintenance lead can carry.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR AN AIR CON LEAD?
Pick a job, or type in what yours are worth
Starts on one in three, the figure MyJobQuote tells its own trades to expect. Put in yours.
You can pay up to about
£450
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £900 to £1,350
- Which per lead is
- £300 to £450
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
The 10 to 15 percent band is a rule of thumb for a sense check, not a measured industry figure.
The top results, read closely
What the air con lead sellers promise, and what their small print adds.
These are the companies Google shows first for "air conditioning leads", in their own words.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads 2 Trade | By phone only | From nobody (Hot Key) to 3 others (Qualified) | "sent out up to 4 times from our systems automatically" |
| Leads.work | £27 + VAT a lead, £11 a week | Up to 3 other engineers | "may be matched with up to four engineers" |
| The Trade League | £299 to £799 + VAT a month, plus ad spend | Nobody in your main postcode | "one air con engineer per postcode" |
| Leads Everyday | Monthly fee, not published | Nobody | "leads for vehicle air conditioning specialists" |
| Checkatrade | Membership, not published | Can be several trades | "get your share of air conditioning leads" |
Leads 2 Trade: "Exclusive" in the title, up to four in the tiers
Its air con page is titled "Exclusive Air Conditioning Sales Leads". Only the Hot Key tier is "unique leads to 1 installer". Premium goes to "a maximum of 3 installers", which its FAQ describes as "yourself and one other company", Qualified leads are sent "up to 4 times", and the Lead Vault is "first come first served". It qualifies each homeowner by phone, and one question is "Looking to purchase within 6 months?", so a June lead can be an autumn job. You can reject a lead within 72 hours on set grounds, notice periods run from 14 to 30 days, and for prices it says "Please call us". It asks installers for "all the applicable accreditations" without naming F-gas.
Leads.work: cheap per lead, shared by design
Leads.work publishes its prices, which most don't: £27 plus VAT for a domestic air con lead, £15 for repairs and servicing, and a £11 weekly fee. Its Smart Local packs of 5, 10 or 20 leads cost £58.80, £77.50 and £105.60 plus VAT, which is £5.28 to £11.76 a lead. On a pack, "Individual lead returns are not available" and payments for an active pack "are non-refundable".
The leads come from its own sites, including getairconprices.co.uk, and that site tells the homeowner "We introduce your enquiry to up to four independent local air conditioning businesses". Its pay-per-lead customers get "priority", meaning leads "are sent to Connect accounts first". So the cheap lead is a race, and on the pack you may be the fourth engineer to ring.
The Trade League: "No Small Print", then the terms
It locks one air con engineer to each postcode and runs Google Local Services Ads, Facebook and Instagram, with the ad spend paid straight to Google and Meta. Its home page comparison lists its contracts as "None. Leave Anytime." and heads its prices "No Small Print", at £299, £499 and £799 a month. Its terms add VAT to each of those, ask for 30 days' written notice, and say "You remain liable for your Management Fee during the 30-day notice period". Extra postcodes cost £25 plus VAT each and "are not exclusive". Landing pages it builds stay its property, while your Google Ads account and Business Profile stay yours.
Its Tier 1 plan promises "Junk Lead Disputes Handled", and its terms say credits for disputed leads "are issued by Google directly to your ad account". On Local Services Ads, Google's own help page says "Lead credits aren't available for healthcare verticals, tax specialists or for advertisers in EMEA", and the UK is in EMEA. Ask what a dispute can get back before you count on it. The terms page is headed "Effective date: 7 April 2026" and signed off "Effective 1 July 2025".
Leads Everyday's air con leads are for cars
The third result for "air conditioning leads" is a page selling leads for "vehicle air conditioning specialists", connecting them "with motorists who need their air con blowing cold again". It's exclusive and cancellable, and it's a different trade: gov.uk exempts car and van air conditioning from the company certificate a building installer needs. If you fit split systems, ask any Leads Everyday rep which of its campaigns covers homes before you sign.
Checkatrade and Hey Jodie
Checkatrade's 2024 post for air con firms says "the jobs you get coming your way are all yours", then invites you to "get your share of air conditioning leads". It cites "over 90,000 job searches for air conditioning work" on its site, from its own data. How that works across the directories is in is Checkatrade worth it.
Hey Jodie, which sells a call-answering service, says "Paid search clicks for heating and air conditioning are some of the most expensive in the trades." For air con, the Google Ads data disagrees: the dearest search we priced is £5.21. Its range for bought leads, "around twenty to eighty pounds each", comes with no source. Why sharing costs more than it looks is in the shared-lead trap.
Everything here about The Trade League's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 23 September 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have air conditioning leads that are yours alone?
That's what we do. We don't sell leads. We build the website and run the Google Ads that bring air conditioning customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingBuying the click yourself
Air con clicks are cheap. Here's what a lead from your own ads costs.
To get from a click to a lead you need a conversion rate. The only published one for home improvement is WordStream's 7.33% of search clicks, and it comes from US campaigns, so treat it as a rough guide. Applied to each air con search:
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| commercial air conditioning | 480 | £5.21 | £71 |
| air conditioning engineer | 880 | £3.35 | £46 |
| air conditioning service | 5,400 | £3.31 | £45 |
| air conditioning repair | 9,900 | £3.20 | £44 |
| air conditioning installation | 14,800 | £3.17 | £43 |
| air con installation | 2,400 | £2.92 | £40 |
| air conditioning near me | 6,600 | £1.68 | £23 |
| air conditioning for home | 9,900 | £1.09 | £15 |
| home air conditioning | 3,600 | £1.04 | £14 |
| ducted air conditioning | 1,900 | £0.54 | £7 |
Click prices are Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. These are bid-based estimates, so most advertisers pay less per click than this. Searches a month are yearly averages; June runs far higher.
Put next to Leads.work's £27 before VAT, the answer depends on the search. 4 of these 10 searches come in under it, and they're the ones homeowners type: "air conditioning for home" at about £15 a lead. The other 6, including "air conditioning installation" at about £43, come out dearer, and Leads.work's packs, at £5.28 to £11.76 a lead, undercut nearly all of them. The whole range is £7 to £71. So a bought lead can win on price. What it can't match is what comes with your own:
- Nobody else is ringing them
- You choose which searches to pay for
- Spend follows the weather, daily
- No auto-renewal, no pause fee
- No margin on the click: you pay Google
- The ad account stays yours if you leave
Being first to ring matters most when the lead went to four engineers, and the response-time research is in our roofing leads guide. For setting a summer budget, read how much to spend on Google Ads.
Google Local Services Ads
"HVAC (heating or air conditioning)" is one of Google's UK Local Services Ads categories. You're screened first, then charged per answered call, which suits a trade that can only take so many installs in a heatwave. The full picture is in our Local Services Ads guide.
Who is allowed to take the job
An air con lead is refrigerant work, and the law says who does it.
Two separate things are needed, and the trade often calls both "having my F-gas". Gov.uk says: "Your company, including sole traders, must be certified by an approved body to service stationary equipment containing F gas operated by others. This includes: air conditioning". That covers installing, repairing, maintaining and decommissioning. The approved bodies are Refcom, the F-Gas Register (Quidos) and Bureau Veritas, and the certificate must be renewed every 3 years.
Then each engineer: "You must have your own qualifications to work on equipment containing F gas, even if you work for someone else." A category 1 certificate covers everything; category 2 covers installing and servicing systems holding less than 3kg of F gas. Gov.uk says working without the right certification is against the law and "you could receive a civil penalty".
What the sellers check
Leads 2 Trade asks for "all the applicable accreditations". Leads.work asks for insurance and photo ID, and extra documents for work "involving gas appliances". The Trade League's terms make it your job to hold "all licences, certifications, and insurance". Nobody asks for the company certificate by name.
Make it easy to check you
The Refcom register can be searched "by postcode or company name". Put your certificate number on your website and every quote, so a customer comparing four engineers can see yours in seconds.
For buying leads, this cuts one way. An electrician or handyman without the company certificate shouldn't buy air con install or service leads at any price. A certified firm is selling something the others can't legally do, and should say so first. If the customer wants heating as well as cooling from an air-to-air heat pump, that's covered in our heat pump leads guide.
The outdoor unit
Don't tell a customer they won't need planning permission.
Homeowners arrive having read that air con doesn't need permission. MyJobQuote tells them "you can normally fit one without planning permission" and that "The outdoor unit can't exceed 0.6 cubic metres". That limit comes from the permitted development right for air source heat pumps, and the Planning Portal lists a condition that a cooling-only unit can't meet: the pump must be "Not used solely for cooling purposes".
So a cooling-only unit doesn't sit inside that right, in England at least. That doesn't mean every job needs an application. It means the honest answer on the survey is "check with your council", and the installer who says it first sounds like the one who knows the job.
- Cooling only: check with the council
- Flat: ask the freeholder too
- Listed or conservation area: apply
- Heating too: heat pump rules may apply
- Put it in the quote, not after
Checkatrade tells flat owners they may need "permission from the freeholder" for the external condenser. MyJobQuote adds that "A good installer should also warn you if you might need consent." Customers have been told to expect that warning from you.
Before you hand over a card
The day a lead arrives, its data is your responsibility.
Leads 2 Trade puts it bluntly: "On receipt of a lead provided by Leads 2 Trade you automatically become the Data Controller". The ICO expects a business buying marketing data to do "proportionate checks and due diligence", and says the seller's word isn't enough.
What the ICO has fined
We found no ICO fine that names air conditioning. The nearest cases are in home improvement generally. On 6 November 2025 the ICO fined Lead Pronto Ltd £30,000, a lead seller in "the energy and home improvements sector", for 76,605 texts sent on consent bundled into a privacy policy that named none of the 18 clients it generated data for. In January 2024 Skean Homes was fined £100,000 over home-improvement calls, having blamed its lead generation provider.
Five questions for any air con lead seller before the first payment:
- Which site did the homeowner fill in?
- Does the consent name my business?
- How many engineers get each lead?
- How old is it? Checked against TPS?
- What can I reject, and how fast?
The third question has a written answer on most of these sites already. Leads.work's consumer site says four. If a rep tells you something different on the phone, ask them to put it in an email.
Which route
Match the route to the season and the job.
Buy leads if
- You fit systems, not just service
- It is June and you have free days
- Your company certificate is current
- You ring back inside the hour
Stay clear if
- Most of your work is servicing
- You have no company F-gas cert
- The pack renews on its own
- The seller won't say who else gets it
Run your own if
- You want the homeowner to yourself
- You want spend to follow the heat
- You want installs, not filter cleans
- You plan to be here next summer
Plenty of installers do both: a short burst of bought leads in a heatwave while their own ads and website take over the rest of the year. The difference by next June is who owns the customer list. A system you fitted this summer is a service next spring, and that customer only rings you back if they found you in the first place. If a directory is on your list too, read is MyBuilder worth it and is Bark worth it first.
Installers ask
Air conditioning leads, the short answers.
- How much do air conditioning leads cost in the UK?
- Leads.work charges £27 plus VAT for a domestic air con lead, £34 for a business one and £15 for repairs and servicing, with a £11 weekly service fee on top. Its prepaid packs work out at £5.28 to £11.76 a lead. The Trade League charges £299 to £799 plus VAT a month, with the ad spend paid to Google on top. Leads 2 Trade gives prices by phone only. A click on an air con search costs £0.54 to £5.21, going by Google Ads data for the UK.
- Are air conditioning leads exclusive?
- Only some of them. Leads 2 Trade calls its air con leads exclusive in its page title, but only its Hot Key tier goes to one installer: Premium goes to up to 3 and Qualified "up to 4 times". Leads.work's own air con quote site tells homeowners their enquiry may go to "up to four engineers". The Trade League gives one air con engineer each postcode, but any extra postcodes you add "are not exclusive".
- When is demand for air conditioning highest?
- June, by a distance. UK searches for "air conditioning installation" hit 60,500 in June against 3,600 in December, a swing of about 17 times. 7 months of the year sit under a quarter of the peak. There was also a rise in October 2025, to 27,100.
- Do I need F-gas certification to take air conditioning leads?
- To do the work, yes. Gov.uk says every company, including sole traders, must be certified by an approved body to install, repair, maintain or decommission air conditioning for other people, and renew it every 3 years. Every engineer also needs their own F-gas qualification. Working without them is against the law and can bring a civil penalty. None of the sellers we read asks for the company certificate by name.
- Does my customer need planning permission for the outdoor unit?
- Maybe, and it's not safe to promise they don't. In England the permitted development right people quote is written for air source heat pumps, and the Planning Portal says the unit must be "Not used solely for cooling purposes". A cooling-only air con unit isn't covered by it, so tell the customer to check with their local planning authority, and a freeholder too if they live in a flat.
- How can I get free HVAC leads?
- Hey Jodie's playbook ranks a complete Google Business Profile, customer reviews, referrals and maintenance plans ahead of paid channels. Maintenance plans suit air con well: Checkatrade puts annual maintenance cover for one unit at £40 or more a month, which turns a one-off install into a customer who stays in touch.
- Is it legal to buy air conditioning leads?
- Yes, but the ICO says a business buying marketing data must do proportionate checks and due diligence, and can't just accept the seller's assurances. Leads 2 Trade says that when you receive one of its leads you automatically become the data controller. We found no ICO fine naming air conditioning, but in November 2025 it fined Lead Pronto, a home improvement lead seller, £30,000 because the consent behind its texts was not informed.
- Is running my own Google Ads cheaper than buying air con leads?
- On some searches it is. At WordStream's 7.33% conversion rate, which is US data, a lead from "air conditioning for home" works out at about £15, under Leads.work's £27 before VAT. A lead from "air conditioning installation" works out at about £43, which is dearer. The lead from your own ad goes to nobody else, though, and you decide which months it runs in.
How we got here
We're not neutral, so check our sources.
We run Google Ads and build websites for trades, so we've got a side. That's why every seller above is quoted from its own pages, the places where their own pages disagree are pointed out, and the searches where a bought lead is cheaper than your own ads are left in the table.
Sellers' prices and terms were read on their own websites on 23 September 2026. Click prices and search volumes are Google Ads data for the UK, pulled the same day. Job prices come from Checkatrade's, MyJobQuote's and Heatable's published guides. The rules come from gov.uk, Refcom, the Planning Portal and the ICO, and the Local Services Ads rules from Google's help centre.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
A summer diary full of installs, from homeowners nobody else was sold to.
We build the website and run the Google Ads in your own account, on the air con jobs you want, turned up for the heat and down for the winter. See what it costs, or message us with a question first.