Last updated 23 September 2026
Builder leads: a homeowner asking for a quote, or an address to write to.
Short answer: "construction leads" and "builder leads" are two different products. One is a subscription to project data, like planning applications, where you write to the owner first. BuildAlert's letter plans start at £50 a month and Buildscout at £99 plus VAT, while Glenigan and Barbour ABI quote on request. The other is a homeowner who asked for a builder, sold to you by a site like MyBuilder or MyJobQuote, often alongside other builders.
Which one pays depends on the job. A day of repairs is worth about £400. A dormer loft conversion runs £40,000 to £60,000, and a two storey extension £108,000 to £180,000. Those three jobs need three different ways of finding work.
Project data
You find the project and make the first move.
A monthly or yearly fee for a searchable list. Every subscriber covering your area sees the same applications. It's slow, and it suits big jobs.
Homeowner job leads
The homeowner asked. You pay to answer.
Charged per lead, and the fee rises with the size of the job. At MyJobQuote up to three builders can take the same one. It's fast, but you're quoting against the others.
Where we stand
We don't sell building leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying building leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build builders 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 really buying
Five kinds of seller, and only one sells a lead nobody else has.
Search "construction leads" and Google shows you project databases. Search "builder leads" and it shows you homeowner lead sites. Put the sellers in one table and sort them by who else sees the same work, and the choice gets simpler.
| What it is | Who sells it | How you pay | Who else sees it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project intelligence | Glenigan, Barbour ABI | Subscription, price on quote only | Every subscriber covering that region and sector |
| Tenders from main contractors | Constructionline | £599, memberships invoiced yearly | Every subcontractor pricing the same package |
| Planning applications, with letters | Buildscout, BuildAlert | £29 a month up, plus letters | Every subscriber in the area, and the council website |
| Homeowner job leads | MyJobQuote, MyBuilder, Checkatrade | Per lead, priced by the job | Up to 2 other trades at MyJobQuote |
| Ads run for you | Get Work (now Zapo) | £600 to £1,500 + VAT a month | Nobody: one builder per area |
Prices from each seller's own pricing page. Constructionline's page doesn't say what period or VAT the £599 covers.
The real split is who speaks first
With project data, the homeowner hasn't asked you for anything. You're writing to them cold, because their name is on a planning form. With a job lead, they've put their hand up for a quote. Those are different sales conversations, and they convert differently.
Big databases are built for suppliers
Barbour ABI's own success stories are Poly-Pac, Larsen Building Products and Hanson: a polycarbonate supplier, a mortar and tiling supplier, and a materials giant. If you build extensions for homeowners, most of what those platforms track isn't your work.
Six building jobs
A loft lead can carry a hundred times more than a repair lead.
Building covers more ground than any other trade. The same firm might patch a wall on Monday and price a two storey extension on Friday. So before asking what a lead costs, ask what the job behind it is worth. The third column is the ceiling on one lead at MyJobQuote's rate of a win for every 3 quotes.
| Job | Typical UK price | Ceiling per lead | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A builder's day of repair work | £400 | about £20 | Neither pays well. Repeat customers do |
| Porch extension | £4,500 | about £225 | A homeowner lead, if it is cheap |
| Garage conversion, integral or attached | £10,000 to £20,000 | about £750 | Either, priced per lead |
| Single storey extension, 20 square metres | £40,000 to £56,000 | about £2,400 | Planning data or a homeowner lead |
| Dormer loft conversion, 30 square metres | £40,000 to £60,000 | about £2,500 | Planning data or a homeowner lead |
| Two storey extension, 60 square metres | £108,000 to £180,000 | about £7,200 | Planning data, worth chasing hard |
Job prices from Checkatrade's cost guides (April, May and June 2026, March 2026 for the loft; its single storey table is dated May 2024) and MyJobQuote's extension guide (August 2026) for the porch. The one-in-3 win rate is MyJobQuote's own figure for its trades.
Winning a job should cost you roughly 10 to 15 percent of its value, lost quotes included. On a porch at £4,500 that's a ceiling of about £225 a lead. On a dormer loft it's about £2,500. The price of a lead barely matters on the big jobs. What matters is whether you win them, and who you're up against.
The price guides don't agree
Checkatrade's loft guide says most loft conversions cost £27,500 to £75,000. Its own extension guide puts a 30 square metre loft conversion at £50k to £95k. MyJobQuote puts a double storey extension at £82,500 on average, against Checkatrade's £108,000 to £180,000 for 60 square metres. Price your own jobs from your own invoices.
Small jobs pay back another way
A day of repairs can carry about £20 of lead cost, and nobody sells a lead that cheap. The repair customer is worth having for what comes next: the kitchen extension in two years, and the neighbour they tell. Keep their number and give them great service. Don't pay a seller for them.
Run your numbers
Test a seller's price against the jobs you actually do.
Start with the kind of job you'd like more of, or type in the value of your last few. Set how many quotes it usually takes to win one. If a seller has quoted you a price per lead, add it and see what each win really costs.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A BUILDING 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
£7,200
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £14,400 to £21,600
- Which per lead is
- £4,800 to £7,200
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
Nobody measured the 10 to 15 percent band. Use it to catch a bad deal, not to set a budget to the pound.
Product one: project data
A planning application is public. You're paying for the search.
BuildAlert's own guide describes council planning portals as "Free and high intent, but every council is different and search terms vary." That's the honest pitch for the whole category: they save you the trawl, and they post the letters. They don't sell you a project nobody else can see.
BuildAlert: cheap to start, you pay per letter
Plans run from £50 a month for 25 letters up to £500 for 250, with extra letters at £2 and postcards at £2.50. It prints, posts and tracks them, and can send follow-ups after 7 or 14 days or when permission is granted. There's a data-only plan from £29 a month. "There are no long-term contracts or cancellation fees." Its pricing page doesn't mention VAT.
BuildAlert says customers have reported "4-8%" of homeowners replying to its letters. Take that at face value and a reply costs £25 to £50 in letters, before the subscription. Its own site also calls 1 to 2 percent "a solid baseline", which would make a reply dearer. And a reply is a conversation, not a job.
Buildscout: priced plus VAT, cheaper for FMB members
The self-serve Find Leads plan is £99 plus VAT a month on a rolling contract, with homeowner, architect and agent details for your own outreach. The plan that sends letters for you is from £2,998 plus VAT a year, or £249 plus VAT a month "exclusively for FMB & FCA members", with letters from 80p plus VAT. It calls itself "around two-thirds the price of ABI or Glenigan", but neither of those publishes a price, so there's no way to check that.
Glenigan and Barbour ABI: a year at a time, price on request
Glenigan says its price depends on the regions and sectors you pick, and "As you add more criteria, the price will rise", across "your twelve-month subscription" with five logins as standard. Barbour ABI says its pricing "is entirely bespoke". Both are built for teams: 45 researchers at Barbour ABI, bidder histories, exports to a CRM. For a builder doing domestic work, that's a lot of subscription for a small share of relevant projects.
Constructionline: tenders, not homeowners
Constructionline's Premium Leads are invitations to tender from main contractors "actively seeking subcontractors to submit pricing", plus expressions of interest and researched project leads with estimators' details. It advertises "over 15,000+ Invitations To Tender sent each month" and its Marketplace for £599. That's subcontract work for firms that want to price packages for bigger contractors. It isn't a route to a homeowner's extension.
The calendar nobody mentions
A planning lead fills next season, not next week.
Gov.uk says most applications are decided within 8 weeks, or 13 for large or complex ones. If the job cuts into or builds on a party wall, the owner must give the neighbour notice between 2 months and a year before work starts. Write to an applicant today and the earliest realistic start is months away. That's fine for a firm booking next spring. It's no help to a firm with a gap in three weeks' time.
Product two: homeowner job leads
The bigger the job, the more the same lead costs to buy.
Homeowner lead sites don't charge a flat price for building work. Their own terms say they price each lead on how big and valuable the job looks, so the extension leads you most want are the dearest, and they're still going to more than one builder.
MyBuilder: priced on the job, paid on the share
MyBuilder's terms say "Each Shortlist Fee is calculated based on the likely size, value and location of the Job", shown excluding VAT before you commit. So a loft lead costs more than a ceiling fix on the same site. You owe the fee once the homeowner's details reach you, and clause 10.1 is plain that winning the job has nothing to do with it.
The fee is non-refundable except at MyBuilder's discretion, and any refund comes back as account credit rather than money. Its terms also say it "does not guarantee that you will be able to quote or secure work". More in is MyBuilder worth it.
MyJobQuote: priced on budget and competition
MyJobQuote gives you a free first month, then prices each job in credits. The things it weighs include "Budget", "Timescale" and "Competition for the lead". Its builder jobs run "from simple odd jobs like ceiling fixes or chimney repairs to bigger jobs like extensions and loft conversions". Up to three trades can take each lead, disputes have to be in within 48 hours, and credits expire after six months.
Checkatrade: "all yours", and "your share"
Checkatrade's 2024 post for builders is titled "How to increase your share of job leads for builders". The body promises "the jobs you get are all yours", then invites you to "get your share of Checkatrade job leads for builders". The shared model is set out in is Checkatrade worth it, and what a shared lead does to your win rate in the shared-lead trap.
Get Work and Houzz Pro: a monthly fee instead
Get Work, which is rebranding as Zapo, runs Google Ads to a website it builds for your firm and sends you the calls and messages, one builder per area. Plans run £600 to £1,500 plus VAT a month, and half of each is Google Ads spend. Subscriptions renew automatically. It says a typical building website "converts 1 in 30" and that its own do six times better. It also says "Over 3.6 million people search Google for a builder each month", and further down the same page, "over 3.2 million".
Houzz Pro is £139 a month after a 30-day free trial, with advertising from £119 a month. Neither page gives a close rate, and nor does anyone else we read.
Everything here about MyBuilder'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 building 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 building customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingBuying the click yourself
People search for the job, not for a list of planning applications.
Every month in the UK, "loft conversion" is searched about 14,800 times, "house extension" 6,600 and "garage conversion" 6,600. "Builders near me" gets 18,100. Each of those people is asking for exactly what you do, and none of them has been sold to anyone yet.
Turning clicks into leads takes a conversion rate. WordStream puts home improvement at 7.33% of search clicks, measured on American accounts, so for UK building work it's a starting point. The last column applies it to each search.
| Job | Search | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renovation | home renovation | £6.73 | £92 |
| Loft conversion | loft conversion | £6.61 | £90 |
| Extension | house extension | £5.90 | £80 |
| Kitchen extension | kitchen extension | £5.81 | £79 |
| Garage conversion | garage conversion | £5.67 | £77 |
| Builders | builders | £4.74 | £65 |
| Building contractors | building contractors | £3.98 | £54 |
| Single storey extension | single storey extension | £3.63 | £50 |
| Local builders | local builders | £3.60 | £49 |
| Finding a builder | builders near me | £3.26 | £44 |
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.
On the cheapest measure, a letter wins. If BuildAlert's reply rates hold, a reply costs £25 to £50 in postage, around the £44 to £92 a lead from your own ads works out at here. And a free month on MyJobQuote costs nothing at all. What those figures leave out is what arrives:
- Someone asking for a builder today
- Sold to nobody else
- Only the jobs you bid on
- Aimed at lofts, not ceiling fixes
- No markup on your clicks
- The ad account stays yours
A letter reply is from someone you contacted who might hire a builder in a few months. A search lead is from someone who went looking for one this afternoon, and found you rather than a shortlist. On a £50,000 loft, the difference between winning one quote in three and one in two is worth far more than a few pounds either way on the lead. For setting the monthly budget itself, see how much to spend on Google Ads.
Google Local Services Ads
Google's UK list of Local Services Ads trades includes a General contractor category. You pass Google's checks, then pay for answered calls instead of clicks. Advertisers in the UK get no lead credits when a call turns out to be rubbish. How it works, step by step: Google Local Services Ads for trades.
Before you quote an extension
Three sets of paperwork stand between a lead and a start date.
No lead seller mentions any of this, but every big building lead runs into it. The builder who explains it at the first visit sounds like the one who has done it before.
Building regulations
Gov.uk says approval "is different from planning permission. You might need both." It comes from the council's building control or a private approver. "The person doing the work could be prosecuted and fined" for not complying, and the owner won't have the certificates they need to sell.
Party wall notice
In England and Wales, building on the boundary, cutting into a party wall or digging near a neighbour's foundations needs notice to the neighbour, given 2 months to a year ahead. Build that into the start date you quote.
14 days to cancel
Agree an extension at the customer's kitchen table and the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give them 14 days to change their mind. Leave out the written notice of it and the period can stretch by 12 months, and it's an offence. Get written sign-off if they want you on site within the 14 days.
What the FMB badge tells a homeowner
The Federation of Master Builders vets trading history, credit history and insurance, then sends an assessor to inspect one of your sites. Membership is £62.69 plus VAT a month, with an inspection fee of £14.85 plus VAT a month in the first year, and joining takes two to three weeks.
Its own guide to qualifying leads suggests five questions before you drive out to price anything: what they're planning, whether they have drawings or planning permission, when they want to start, whether they have an architect, and whether they've set a budget. They cost nothing to ask, whichever way the lead came in.
When homeowners go looking
The quietest month runs straight into the busiest.
UK searches for "builders near me" bottomed out in December and hit their high in January, about 2.2 times higher. After that they held at a steady level through spring and eased over summer.
UK searches for "builders near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Have the website ready before Christmas
The rush lands in January. Photos of finished extensions, your prices and your reviews should already be on your website by then, not going up in February.
January searchers start in spring
Someone looking in January for a loft conversion may still need drawings, approval and a party wall notice. Price them in January, stay in touch, and you're the builder they already know when the paperwork clears.
Writing to strangers
A letter to a planning applicant is marketing, and the rules apply.
Post isn't covered by the marketing rules in PECR. The ICO lists legitimate interests or consent as the likely lawful basis. Using a name and address off a public planning file is still using personal information, though. The ICO says of public sources that "you must tell people that you have their information and what you want to do with it", and people have "an absolute right to object to direct marketing".
- Say where you got their address
- Say what you will use it for
- Give an easy way to opt out
- Stop at once if they object
- Check TPS before any phone call
The last one matters because BuildAlert's guide suggests following a letter with a quick phone call a few days later. Phone marketing is PECR territory. In January 2024 the ICO restated that a marketing call to anyone on the TPS "do not call" register is against the law without their explicit consent, and fined Poxell £150,000 and Skean Homes £100,000 for doing it. Skean Homes pointed at its lead generation provider, and was fined regardless.
Buying homeowner leads instead
We found no ICO fine naming builders, extensions or loft conversions. The nearest are home-improvement calling cases, like Thermotech Wall and Loft Surveys, fined £240,000 in July 2026. Lead sellers in the wider home-improvement market haven't escaped either. Lead Pronto Ltd was penalised £30,000 for boiler-grant texts sent in 2023 and 2024, having given the ICO a list of 18 client companies that its privacy policy never named. Before you buy from any seller, ask how each lead was collected and whether the homeowner agreed to hear from you by name.
Pick by the job
Match the lead to the work you want next year.
Planning data suits you if
- You want lofts and extensions
- You can wait months for a start
- You will follow up by post
- You run a proper opt-out
Job lead sites suit you if
- You need work in weeks
- You can quote against two others
- You check each fee first
- You ring back straight away
Your own ads suit you if
- You want leads nobody else has
- You pick which jobs to pay for
- You want the January rush
- You want to own the customer
Most builders won't pick just one. A planning list can build a pipeline for next spring while your own ads answer the people searching today. Whichever route a lead arrives by, call it back fast. The roofing leads guide sets out the research on how much the first hour matters.
Where this comes from
Our trade is websites and Google Ads for builders, so we have a side in this. That's why the cheaper options above are priced honestly, including the ones that beat a click on cost. Each seller is quoted from its own site, and the places where a seller contradicts itself are pointed out rather than smoothed over.
Everything here was read on 23 September 2026: seller pricing and terms pages, the Checkatrade and MyJobQuote cost guides, and the Google Ads keyword pull behind the click prices and search counts. The rules are from gov.uk, the FMB and the ICO.
Straight answers
What builders ask about construction leads.
- What are construction leads?
- Two different things are sold under the name. One is access to project data: Glenigan, Barbour ABI, Constructionline, Buildscout and BuildAlert sell subscriptions to planning applications, tenders and project contacts, and you make the first approach. The other is a homeowner job lead: MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and Checkatrade pass you someone who asked for a builder, usually alongside other builders.
- How much do builder leads cost?
- BuildAlert's letter plans start at £50 a month, with extra letters at £2 each, or £29 a month for the data alone. Buildscout starts at £99 plus VAT a month. Constructionline advertises its Marketplace for £599. Glenigan and Barbour ABI price by quote only. MyBuilder shows a shortlist fee on each lead, worked out from the likely size, value and location of the job. Get Work charges £600 to £1,500 plus VAT a month. Google Ads data for the UK puts a click on a building search at £3.26 to £6.73.
- Are planning application leads exclusive?
- No. A planning application is public, and BuildAlert's own guide calls council planning portals "Free and high intent". Any builder who subscribes to the same area, or checks the council website, can see the same application. What you pay a database for is the search, the filters and the letters.
- How long does a planning application lead take to become a job?
- Months, as a rule. Gov.uk says most planning applications are decided within 8 weeks, or 13 for unusually large or complex ones. If the work touches a party wall, the owner has to give the neighbour notice between 2 months and a year before the work starts.
- Is it legal to write to people who have applied for planning permission?
- Post isn't covered by the marketing rules in PECR, and the ICO lists legitimate interests or consent as the likely lawful basis. But it also says you must tell people you have their information and what you want to do with it, and people have an absolute right to object to direct marketing. Ringing them is another matter, because marketing calls to a number signed up to the Telephone Preference Service are unlawful unless the person has consented.
- Which building jobs are worth buying leads for?
- The big ones. At one win in three, a day of repair work worth about £400 can carry about £20 a lead. A dormer loft conversion can carry about £2,500, and a two storey extension about £7,200. The one-in-three figure is MyJobQuote's own.
- Does FMB membership help win leads?
- The FMB says members are vetted and have their work inspected, and suggests showing the badge on your website and quotes. It costs £62.69 plus VAT a month, plus an inspection fee in the first year, and joining takes two to three weeks. Buildscout also offers FMB members a monthly price on plans otherwise sold by the year.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Lofts and extensions in the diary, from homeowners who came looking for you, not a shortlist.
Your website, plus Google Ads in an account opened in your name, set up and run by us and aimed at the lofts, extensions and conversions you want rather than the odd jobs. Check the price, or ask us anything before you do.