Last updated 16 October 2026
Car body repair work comes with a 25% cut, a monthly fee or a franchise fee.
Leads Do Work and Lead Pronto sell leads to dozens of trades and have no line for car bodywork. Fresh Car passes body shops the repairs its mobile vans can't do and keeps 25% of each one. Leads Everyday runs Google Ads for body shops for a monthly fee it doesn't publish, and ChipsAway sells a SMART repair franchise at £29,995 plus VAT with head-office enquiries included. Buy the click yourself and a car body repair search costs £1.86 to £3.60.
Put the word "car" in front of anything you buy. Plain "body shop" is also the name of a cosmetics chain on the high street, and the search data shows it.
Straight off a seller's page
"jobs that are too complex or unsuitable for a mobile SMART repair"
That's how Fresh Car describes the work it wants to hand to body shops and accident repair centres. Its own 100-plus vans keep the scuffs and dents they can fix on a drive. What reaches a body shop is the overflow, at a 25% fee. Its SMART repairers' marketplace takes 20%.
Where we stand
We don't sell car body repair leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying car body repair leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build body shops and SMART repairers 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.
What you are paying for
A cut you pay when the car is done, or a lead you pay for up front.
A marketplace like Fresh charges only once a repair is finished, and takes the same share of a scuff as of a respray. Your own ads charge for every click, so what a customer costs depends on how many leads it takes to win one. Bodywork runs from a £78 scratch to a £2,400 respray, and the two ways of paying come out very differently across that range.
Below, each job is worked both ways: Fresh's 25% taken off the price, and a lead from your own ads at about £29, multiplied by the 3 quotes it takes to win one.
| Job | Typical UK price | Fresh, 25% of the job | Your own ads, about £29 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear-coat scratch, one panel | £60 to £96 | £20 a job | £88 a win, 113% of the job |
| Paintless dent removal | £90 to £150 | £30 a job | £88 a win, 73% of the job |
| Scratches and scuffs, one panel | £120 to £180 | £38 a job | £88 a win, 59% of the job |
| Bumper respray | £280 | £70 a job | £88 a win, 31% of the job |
| Dent repair, one panel | £220 to £450 | £84 a job | £88 a win, 26% of the job |
| Respray one side panel | £400 | £100 a job | £88 a win, 22% of the job |
| Accident repair | £765 | £191 a job | £88 a win, 12% of the job |
| Full respray, minimal repairs | £2,400 | £600 a job | £88 a win, 4% of the job |
Scratch, scuff, dent and paintless dent prices are per panel, from Checkatrade's dent and paint repair guide; the resprays are from its car paint repair guide (both March 2026). The accident repair row is FixMyCar's average booked price. Ranges are worked at their middle. The own-ads lead is the "car body repair near me" click at the 7.33% conversion rate explained further down. Winning one quote in 3 is what MyJobQuote tells its own members to expect; nobody publishes an independent UK figure.
On our rough rule, not a measured one, winning a job should cost about 10 to 15 percent of it at most. A flat 25% is always over it. Your own ads are worse still on the small SMART work, at 113% of a clear-coat scratch, and pull level with the 25% cut on a job of about £352. Above that they win: 22% of a panel respray, 12% of an accident repair and 4% of a full respray.
If scuffs and scratches fill your week
Paying for leads you might lose doesn't work on a job worth under a couple of hundred pounds. A cut you only pay when the car is done is cheaper there, and so is the driver who books you again for the next scuff without anyone in the middle.
If it's panels and accident damage
A quarter of a £765 accident repair is £191. Three leads from your own ads cost about £88, and the customer has your name on their phone for next time. The bigger the repair, the more the 25% costs you.
Your numbers
How much can one car body repair lead cost and still pay?
Pick a repair, say how many quotes it takes to land one, then put in what a lead costs you. It opens on a £280 bumper respray. Switch to the clear-coat scratch and then the accident repair to see the gap.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A CAR BODY REPAIR 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
£14
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £28 to £42
- Which per lead is
- £9 to £14
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 we use across every trade. Nobody has measured it for body shops.
Who sends the work
Nine routes into car body repair work, and the big lead sellers aren't one of them.
Search "body shop leads" and Google shows job adverts for team leaders at a cosmetics chain. The work reaches body shops and SMART repairers through the nine below instead, each quoted from its own website. "Not stated" means the firm doesn't say.
| Who | What it costs | Who else gets the job | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh Car, body shops | 25% of each completed job | Not stated | "You keep 75%." |
| Fresh Car, SMART repairers | 20% of each completed job | Not stated | "You keep 80%." |
| Leads Everyday | Monthly fee, not published, clicks on top | Nobody | "never shared with competitors" |
| FixMyCar (WhoCanFixMyCar) | £120 + VAT a month and 10% of jobs won, or £250 to £999 a month flat | Garages that quote against you | "10% flat fee on jobs won" |
| Checkatrade | £30 a month, lead plans from £59 | Not stated | "Pick a plan that fits" |
| TrustATrader | Yearly fee, not published | A limited number per area | "Never pay for your leads" |
| Bark | £1.80 a credit, under Car Mechanics | Up to 5 professionals | "up to 5 responses" |
| ChipsAway (franchise) | £29,995 + VAT to join | Your own territory | "lead generation through national advertising campaigns" |
| Revive! (franchise) | £60,000 to get started | Not stated | "Repeat work comes from dealerships and national accounts" |
Fresh sends body shops the jobs its vans can't do
Fresh Car started in mobile valeting and says it has "over 100 vans on the road and more than 85,000 customers served". Its vans do SMART repairs on drives. The rest, the work that needs "a spray booth, a jig, more space", goes to partner body shops through its bodyshop marketplace: "We charge a flat 25% fee on the value of each completed job. You keep 75%." It pays weekly, and you can accept or decline each job. It also offers to handle the customer and the quote, which saves you time and leaves Fresh holding the customer. For the valeting business it grew out of, see our car valeting leads guide. A colour change without paint goes to a wrapper, covered in car wrapping leads.
Mobile SMART repairers get their own marketplace at 20%, with jobs sent to an app as "a job card notification for repairs in your area". You need liability insurance and "a fully equipped van". Neither page says how many repairers see the same job.
Leads Everyday charges by the month, and now so does FixMyCar
Leads Everyday has a page for "bodyshops and smart repair technicians", covering "dent removal, scratch repair, bumper scuff fixes, paintless dent repair, or full panel respray work". It builds you a landing page, runs Google Ads, and says the leads are "never shared with competitors", with campaigns live "within 48 hours on average". Its terms charge "a flat monthly fee as agreed during your consultation", with the ad spend "paid directly to Google" on top, and ask you to answer each lead within 30 minutes. No price is published.
FixMyCar, the WhoCanFixMyCar site, works the other way round: drivers post a job, garages and body shops quote, and the driver picks one. A body shop on Starter pays £120 a month plus VAT (after a £99 sign-up) and a "10% flat fee on jobs won", which on an average SMART repair is about £35. The £250 to £999 plans drop the percentage and tie you in for twelve months. Its car body repairs page puts the average SMART or scratch repair booked through it at £350.99.
ChipsAway and Revive! sell a franchise with the work attached
ChipsAway's franchise is £29,995 plus VAT, from £20,000 plus VAT of your own money, and includes "your own exclusive ChipsAway territory, and lead generation through national advertising campaigns" along with training and kit. It says head office took over 280,000 enquiries in 2023, more than 1,000 for the average one of its circa 200 franchisees, and that franchisees are also trained to build their own local customers. The pages we read don't give the ongoing fees. Revive! puts the cost of starting at £60,000, including the deposit on two vans, and says its repeat work comes from dealerships and national accounts as well as private owners. Either way you pay up front for a brand and a patch, and the enquiries come with them.
The directories list you, and Bark files you under car mechanics
Checkatrade has a Smart Repairs category and a Vehicle / Car Body Repair category. On 1 October 2026 its London pages listed 4 SMART repairers and 6 body repairers. Its Approved tier is £30 a month and lead plans start "from £59/mo"; see is Checkatrade worth it. TrustATrader has a Car Body Repairs category, a yearly fee it doesn't publish and a limit on members per area. Bark's vehicle body shop pages now open its Car Mechanics category, where a credit costs £1.80, up to 5 professionals can answer one customer and credits last 3 months; more in is Bark worth it. What five quotes on one dented door does to your price is in the shared-lead trap.
The firms that sell per-lead to other trades don't cover bodywork. Leads Do Work's price list has no vehicle row, Lead Pronto's only motoring pages are car finance, and Zapo's motoring pages are for servicing garages, driving instructors and taxi firms. PromoSEO and TextBadger Marketing have no bodywork page, and ClickMechanic tells drivers it is "unable to assist" with bodywork. Mechanical repair on a driveway is a different market, covered in our mobile mechanic leads guide.
Everything here about Fresh Car's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 1 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have car body repair 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 customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingWant to know how many people near you search Google for what you do each month? Message us your town and we'll send you the real numbers.
Check my areaBuying the click yourself
Put "car" in every keyword, or pay for cosmetics shoppers.
Google puts "body shop leads", the search a body shop would type to find a seller, at about 10 searches a month, but it recorded none at all in 11 of the last 12 months, and nobody bids on it. The driver's side is where the clicks are, and one of them is a trap. "body shop near me" gets 33,100 searches a month at £2.23 a click, and rose to 40,500 last December. In the same December, "car body shop near me" fell to 18,100. The plain phrase is also the name of a cosmetics chain, and we read that December rise as Christmas shoppers. That's our reading, not Google's, but it's why every search in the table below says car, SMART, dent or respray.
The last column turns each click into a lead using the 7.33% conversion rate WordStream measured for home improvement search ads in the United States. Bodywork isn't home improvement and the UK isn't the US, so read that column as a ballpark.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| mobile smart repair | 480 | £3.60 | £49 |
| car bodywork repair | 1,000 | £3.06 | £42 |
| mobile dent repair | 880 | £2.76 | £38 |
| smart repair near me | 2,900 | £2.74 | £37 |
| mobile car body repair | 1,300 | £2.66 | £36 |
| car dent repair | 3,600 | £2.51 | £34 |
| car paint repair | 4,400 | £2.49 | £34 |
| car bumper repair near me | 1,900 | £2.29 | £31 |
| car scratch repair near me | 4,400 | £2.19 | £30 |
| car body shop near me | 22,200 | £2.18 | £30 |
| car body repair near me | 12,100 | £2.16 | £29 |
| accident repair centre | 1,300 | £1.99 | £27 |
| car respray near me | 1,900 | £1.95 | £27 |
| paintless dent removal | 6,600 | £1.86 | £25 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 1 October 2026. The click prices are Google's estimates from what other advertisers bid, so what you actually pay will land near them rather than on them.
That makes your own lead about £25 to £49. The dearest searches are the mobile SMART ones, with "mobile smart repair" at £3.60 a click, and the cheapest is "paintless dent removal" at £1.86 across 6,600 searches a month. On a scratch, the table further up shows a 25% cut beating these prices. What your own ads buy you is the choice of which repairs you pay to hear about:
- Bid on panels, resprays and accident work
- Keep "car" in every keyword
- Ask for a photo of the damage before you quote
- Set your own price, not a marketplace quote
- Clicks paid to Google, with nothing added
- An ad account that leaves with you
Google's Local Services Ads have no vehicle or bodywork category in the UK, so ordinary search ads are the paid route. Picking a monthly budget is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads, and setting up the campaign in the Google Ads guide for tradesmen.
Before you quote it
SMART spraying stops short of a whole panel. The rest belongs in a booth.
HSE says "almost all MVR bodyshops use 2-pack or '2K' isocyanate-containing paints", that "'Water-based' does not mean 'isocyanate-free'", and that vehicle paint sprayers have long been the group most at risk of occupational asthma. In a body shop, all spraying should happen in a booth or spray room, with air-fed breathing equipment, urine samples to check exposure, and regular health checks on the sprayers.
Its guidance for SMART sprayers is the one exception to spraying outdoors, and it draws a line a lead never mentions. SMART spraying is coating parts of a car "usually outside the customer's house or place of work", and "The parts coated should not extend to a complete panel or panels."
What you can spray on the drive
A scuff, a scratch, a corner of a bumper. A lead for a whole door or wing is a booth job, so a mobile repairer should quote it as one or pass it on.
Who has to stand back
Isocyanate paint outdoors needs air-fed breathing equipment rated APF 20 or higher, and "Filtering RPE is not suitable". Keep anyone without it 5 metres away, preferably 10. On a road or in a car park, wear a hi-vis vest.
When the shop needs a permit
Re-spraying road vehicles with 1 tonne or more of organic solvents a year is a Part B activity. Defra's guidance note says the permit comes from your district, borough or unitary council.
The road outside is not a workshop
Section 4 of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 makes it an offence to carry out "works for the repair, maintenance, servicing, improvement or dismantling of a motor vehicle" on a road in England and Wales. The defence for unpaid work doesn't cover anyone working "for gain or reward". Accident repairs are defended only "where repairs on the spot or elsewhere on the road were necessary", within 72 hours. On our reading, a cosmetic repair never meets that. Councils can issue a £100 fixed penalty, and the court fine goes up to £2,500. The customer's own drive is fine. The same law catches mobile mechanics.
None of this shows up on a lead. When the customer finds you through your own website, the form can ask for a photo of the damage and where the car is parked, before you set off.
Through the year
SMART repair searches more than doubled from December to spring.
Leads Everyday's terms mention "seasonal demand" without saying when, so here is the search data. "smart repair near me" went from 1,600 in December to 3,600 in March and April, about 2.25 times as many. "car body repair near me" moved less: its lowest month was December at 9,900, and it hit 14,800 in September, October, January and March, a swing of about 1.5 times.
UK searches for "smart repair near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
UK searches for "car body repair near me", by month
The same twelve months, for the biggest car body repair search in our table.
December is the quiet month
Both searches bottomed out in December. That's the month to finish booked work and keep bids steady rather than chase volume.
Spring is when SMART picks up
SMART searches held at their peak through March and April and stayed above the winter level all summer. One year of data can't say whether that repeats, so treat it as a guide for the budget.
Where the lead came from
Ask where a car body repair lead came from before you ring it.
A marketplace booking arrives with the driver already signed up to the marketplace's terms. A bought repair lead is only a driver's details, and the Information Commissioner's Office puts the checking on the body shop using them, sized to the risk, not on the seller's word. A text about a dent quote needs consent that names your business.
Before you pay for car body repair leads, ask:
- Which ad or website did the driver fill in?
- Does the consent name my business?
- How many other repairers get it?
- Is it a SMART job or a whole panel?
- Where will the car be parked?
Where the car will be parked tells you before you set off whether it is a drive-side job or one for the workshop.
Which way to go
Fill quiet days with a cut. Win the panels and accident work under your own name.
Take marketplace jobs if
- Scuffs and scratches are the work
- There is no ad budget yet
- You have quiet days to fill
- A 25% cut leaves a margin
Think twice if
- The lead is a whole panel
- Up to 5 repairers get the call
- Nobody says where it came from
- The car lives on the street
Run your own if
- Panels and accident work pay you
- You want to set the price
- You want the call to yourself
- The ad account is yours to take
Plenty of body shops will mix the two: marketplace jobs on a slow week, and their own ads bringing in the panels, resprays and accident repairs that carry a proper margin. How the same choice plays out in other trades is in our guide to trade leads. Servicing and MOTs are in our garage leads guide, car glass in our windscreen leads guide, and buying end-of-life cars in our scrap car leads guide.
Our sources
Where every car body repair figure here came from.
You should know who's talking: we get paid to build body shops' websites and run their Google Ads, not by any marketplace or franchise. That's why each firm is quoted in its own words, and why the job table shows a 25% cut beating your own ads on the small repairs.
We read each seller, marketplace and franchise on its own website, most recently on 1 October 2026, and pulled the UK search and click data from Google Ads on 1 October 2026. Job prices are from Checkatrade's dent and paint and car paint repair guides and FixMyCar's booking averages. The paint rules are HSE's, from its bodyshop pages and SMART spraying guidance; the permit threshold is from legislation.gov.uk and Defra; the street repairs offence from the Act itself; and lead consent from the ICO. The permit and street rules quoted are England and Wales; check your own nation's rules in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Questions body shops ask
Car body shop leads, answered.
- How much do car body repair leads cost in the UK?
- Very little bodywork is sold by the lead. Fresh Car keeps 25% of each job it passes a body shop and 20% of each one it passes a mobile SMART repairer. FixMyCar's cheapest plan is £120 a month plus VAT and 10% of each job won, after a £99 sign-up fee; its flat plans run £250 to £999 a month. Leads Everyday runs Google Ads for body shops for a monthly fee agreed with you. Bark files body shops under Car Mechanics at £1.80 a credit. Your own click on a car body repair search costs £1.86 to £3.60, about £25 to £49 a lead at a 7.33% conversion rate.
- Which lead sellers cover car bodywork?
- Leads Everyday has a bodyshop and SMART repair page, and Fresh Car runs marketplaces for body shops and SMART repairers. Leads Do Work's price list has no vehicle row, Lead Pronto's only motoring pages are car finance, Zapo's motoring pages cover garages, driving instructors and taxis, and PromoSEO and TextBadger Marketing have no bodywork page. ClickMechanic says it is "unable to assist" with bodywork.
- Is a ChipsAway franchise a way of buying leads?
- Partly. The £29,995 plus VAT franchise includes "your own exclusive ChipsAway territory, and lead generation through national advertising campaigns", along with training and equipment. ChipsAway says its average franchisee got over 1,000 enquiries through head office in 2023, and it also trains franchisees to build their own local customers. Revive!, another SMART franchise, puts the total cost of starting at £60,000 and says its repeat work comes from dealerships and national accounts.
- Can a mobile SMART repairer respray a whole panel on the drive?
- Not as SMART work. HSE's guidance describes SMART spraying as coating parts of a vehicle "usually outside the customer's house or place of work", and says "The parts coated should not extend to a complete panel or panels." Outdoors, isocyanate paint needs air-fed breathing equipment, and anyone without it should stay at least 5 metres away, preferably 10. A whole panel is a job for a spray booth.
- Does a body shop need a permit to spray cars?
- Yes, once it is likely to use 1 tonne or more of organic solvents in 12 months. Re-spraying road vehicles at that level is a Part B activity under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, and the permit comes from your district, borough or unitary council.
- Should a body shop bid on "body shop" in Google Ads?
- Only with "car" in front of it. "body shop near me" gets 33,100 searches a month and rose to 40,500 last December, the month "car body shop near me" fell to 18,100. The plain phrase is also the name of a cosmetics chain, and we read that December rise as Christmas shoppers. Keep "car" in the keyword and add the shopping searches as negatives.
- When do people search for SMART repairs most?
- In spring. UK searches for "smart repair near me" went from 1,600 in December 2025 to 3,600 in March and April 2026, about 2.25 times as many. "car body repair near me" moved less, from 9,900 in December to 14,800 in its busiest months.
- Can I repair a customer's car on the street?
- Not for money, in England and Wales. Section 4 of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 makes repairing, maintaining or improving a vehicle on a road an offence, and the defence for unpaid work doesn't cover anyone working for gain. Accident repairs are defended only where fixing it on the spot was necessary and it is done within 72 hours; on our reading a scuffed bumper never is. Councils can issue a £100 fixed penalty. The customer's own drive is fine.
- Is it legal to buy car body repair leads?
- Yes, as long as you can show where each one came from. The ICO puts the checking on the business buying the data and says a seller's assurances on their own are not enough. For texts and emails, the consent has to name your business.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Panels, dents and accident work in the diary, from drivers who searched for you.
We build your website and run Google Ads from an account in your own name, aimed at searches with "car" in them and the repairs that carry a margin. See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll build the campaign around the work you want more of.