Last updated 23 September 2026
One carpentry lead is a staircase. The next is a door.
Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for joiners from £400 a month plus VAT, which its own estimate puts at about £40 a lead. Houzz Pro charges a flat £139 a month. Buy the click yourself and a carpentry search costs £1.80 to £16.92.
That flat price is the problem in carpentry, because the jobs run from two hours to several days. Checkatrade puts hanging a door at £100 to £140, about two hours' work. Win one lead in 3 at £40 each and that door has cost you £120 to win. A staircase lead costs exactly the same.
Look at the samples
MyBuilder's first sample carpentry lead is a single door.
The carpenter sign-up page shows five example leads. Top of the list is "Easy internal door job": repair one door, fit a latch and a handle. Two more are internal doors, and one is a bathroom skirting board and a toilet box. Every seller, quoted.
Where we stand
We don't sell carpentry leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying carpentry leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build carpenters and joiners 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 buying
A staircase and a single door cost the same to buy.
MyJobQuote's list of the carpentry jobs homeowners post puts "Flat-pack furniture assembly" in with "Constructing wooden staircases". TopTradespeople's live feed on 23 September 2026 had "Need two wood steps fitted" and a cupboard to remove for a fridge freezer a few lines from "New fitted wardrobes from ceiling to floor". Every one of them counts as a carpentry lead.
Here is what the jobs are worth, how long they keep you busy, and what a lead costs per job won at Zapo's price, winning one quote in 3.
| Job | Typical UK price | Time on the job | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hang a new internal door (labour only) | £100 to £140 | About two hours | £120 a win, 100% of the job |
| Build a fitted wardrobe (carpenter) | £800 to £1,400 | Two to five days | £120 a win, 11% of the job |
| Straight staircase, supplied and fitted | £750 to £1,500 | One to two days | £120 a win, 11% of the job |
| Oak staircase, supplied and fitted | £1,450 to £1,950 | Two to four days | £120 a win, 7% of the job |
| 3-door fitted wardrobe | £2,500 to £4,000 | One to two days to install | £120 a win, 4% of the job |
Prices and timings from Checkatrade's cost guides: May 2026 for the door and the wardrobe build, September 2026 for the staircases, November 2024 for the 3-door wardrobe. Each is worked at the middle of its range. One win in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its trades, and Zapo's per-lead figure is its Launch plan over its own lead estimate, before VAT.
On the wardrobes and staircases, the lead works out at 4 to 11 percent of the job, at or under the 10 to 15 percent a won customer should cost. On the door it's 100 percent. A 3-door fitted wardrobe is worth about 27 hung doors, and a seller charging per lead charges both the same.
If you build wardrobes and stairs
Before you pay, ask the seller whether you can refuse single doors, shelves and flat-pack jobs, and get the answer in writing. A carpenter who also fits kitchens will find the pricing for that work in kitchen leads.
If you take the small jobs
Checkatrade notes that some carpenters "will only work on full-day rates". Bundle small leads into a full day or they won't pay. Joiners who work for builders on extensions and loft conversions should read builder leads too.
Your numbers
What can you afford to pay for a carpentry lead?
Choose the job, set how many quotes it usually takes you to land one, then type in what a seller wants per lead. Try the door, then the staircase, and watch the answer change.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A CARPENTRY 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
£56
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £113 to £169
- Which per lead is
- £38 to £56
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 rough rule of thumb, not a measured figure.
Who sells them
Five carpentry lead sellers, quoted from their own pages.
Each company below is quoted from its own carpentry or joinery page, its pricing and its terms. Where a seller contradicts itself, you get both versions.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get Work (now Zapo) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody in your area | "exclusive to your business" |
| Houzz Pro | £139 a month after a 30-day trial | Not stated | "a flat rate instead of making you pay per lead" |
| MyJobQuote | Per lead, carpentry price not published | Up to 3 trades | "You'll only pay for the carpentry and joinery leads that you want" |
| MyBuilder | A fee when you are shortlisted | Whoever the homeowner picks | "customers decide who to share their details with" |
| Checkatrade | Membership, Growth from £59 a month | Not stated | "carpentry leads will be sent directly to you" |
Zapo sells joinery, and shows two prices per lead
Zapo, formerly Get Work, has a joinery page and no carpentry page. It promises joinery leads "exclusive to your business" from search ads aimed at "local homeowners", arriving "within the next 14 days", while the pricing page says "1-4 weeks". A sample dashboard on the joinery page reads "£6.40 Cost per lead". The real Launch plan is £400 a month plus VAT, £200 of which is ad budget, for an estimated 10 leads, so £40 a lead on Zapo's own estimate. You can pay month to month or sign up for a year.
Get Work's joinery page counts the market twice
The older getwork.co.uk joinery page opens with "Over 3.6 million people search Google for a joiner or carpenter each month". A few paragraphs on, it's "over 3.2 million". Neither comes with a source. In Google's own keyword data, the single busiest carpentry search, "carpenter", runs at 40,500 a month. The page also claims its pages turn "1 in 5 visitors into joinery leads" against "1 in 30" for the average, and offers £250 off the first month.
Houzz Pro: a flat fee, on a plan its price list doesn't name
The carpenter page says Houzz's lead programme is "Included with any Ultimate subscription", charged at "a flat rate instead of making you pay per lead", and that a concierge team "phone screens carpenter job leads" and confirms budgets. The pricing page shows £139 a month after a 30-day free trial, advertising from £119 a month, and no plan called Ultimate. Find out which plan brings the leads before the trial runs out.
MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and Checkatrade share the work out
On MyJobQuote, up to 3 trades can take the details for one job. On MyBuilder you express interest, the homeowner shortlists, and you pay for their contact details whether or not you get the work; more on that in is MyBuilder worth it. Checkatrade says there were "over 810,000 job searches for carpentry jobs" on its own website in 2025. That counts people searching Checkatrade, which is not the same as jobs sent to you. Why a lead split between several carpenters costs more than its price is explained in the shared-lead trap.
Everything here about Zapo'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 carpentry 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 carpentry customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingBuying the click yourself
Your own ads can bid on wardrobes and skip the hinges.
"joiner near me" is the busiest search here at 14,800 a month, and costs £3.60 a click. The dearest is "bespoke fitted wardrobes" at £16.92, because the job behind it runs into thousands. Clicks become leads here at WordStream's 7.33% conversion rate for home improvement search ads. That rate comes from US campaigns, so treat the last column as a guide.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| bespoke fitted wardrobes | 1,000 | £16.92 | £231 |
| fitted wardrobes near me | 3,600 | £13.80 | £188 |
| fire door installation | 1,600 | £11.99 | £164 |
| bespoke staircases | 390 | £7.36 | £100 |
| bespoke carpentry | 480 | £5.64 | £77 |
| door fitters near me | 2,400 | £5.61 | £77 |
| carpentry services | 590 | £5.47 | £75 |
| carpenter near me | 12,100 | £4.78 | £65 |
| staircase installation | 320 | £3.89 | £53 |
| roof carpentry | 210 | £3.68 | £50 |
| joiner near me | 14,800 | £3.60 | £49 |
| internal door fitting | 880 | £1.80 | £25 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. Click prices are bid-based estimates, so most advertisers pay less per click.
The sellers pay more to find you than you'd pay to find a customer. "carpentry leads" costs £52.03 a click, about 3 times the dearest homeowner search above, for 20 searches a month.
Your own leads come out at £25 to £231 each. The wardrobe end costs more per lead than Zapo's £40. What it buys you is the choice of which jobs you pay for:
- Bid on wardrobes and stairs only
- Leave single doors out
- Add fire doors if you do them
- Nobody else is sold your lead
- Pay Google direct, no markup
- The ad account is in your name
One straight staircase at £750 to £1,500 pays for a lot of clicks at £3.89. Joiners who want to test that can start with how much to spend on Google Ads.
Google Local Services Ads
Google's UK Local Services Ads have a "Carpenters" category, with "Handyman" listed separately. You pay for each answered call rather than each click, and UK advertisers get no lead credits. How screening works is in our Local Services Ads guide.
Work nobody is selling
Fire doors come with a customer the law keeps checking.
"fire door installation" is the third dearest search in the table, at £11.99 a click and 1,600 searches a month. The rule that keeps fire doors on a checklist is regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022. In a building of flats above 11 metres, the responsible person "must undertake checks of any fire doors in communal areas of the building at least every 3 months", must try to check each flat's front door "at least every 12 months", and the checks must cover the self-closing devices.
Who the customer is
The duty falls on the building's owner or manager, not the people living there. Every seller above pitches homeowner jobs: Zapo's "local homeowners", MyJobQuote's "Homeowners post jobs". A managing agent with a block to keep compliant is a customer you find by advertising for that work yourself.
Staircases and building control
Checkatrade's staircase guide says the regulations cover tread size, headroom, the gaps in the balustrade and the angle of the stairs, and puts a building control inspection at around £200. Price that into a staircase quote, and say on your website that you work to the regulations.
Regulation 10 applies in England, to blocks of flats over 11 metres. It says nothing about fire doors in a house, so neither does this guide.
Through the year
Carpenter searches dip in December and hold steady the rest of the year.
"carpenter near me" hit its highest in September, October and January and its lowest in December. The remaining months all sat in one band just below the peak, so there is no quiet season to sit out.
UK searches for "carpenter near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Autumn and January lead
September, October and January share the top spot. December is only about 1.5 times quieter than the busiest months.
Christmas is the one to trim
A monthly lead plan costs the same in December as in September, October and January. An ad budget you control can ease off over Christmas and come back for January.
Time and the paperwork
Two hours on a door won't fill a day.
Checkatrade gives three different carpenter day rates across three of its guides: £300, £270 and £250. A door at £120 is under half of even the lowest, £250. Checkatrade also says in-demand carpenters are "often booked up for months in advance". If your diary looks like that, the leads you want are the ones that fill whole days.
Get Work's joinery page says you're "100x more likely" to reach a lead in the first five minutes, and gives no source. The published study on reply times, and what it really measured, is in our roofing leads guide.
Quote a wardrobe at the kitchen table and the customer can cancel
A price agreed in the customer's home is an off-premises contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and for fitting work that means:
- 14 days to cancel a fitting job
- Give the cancellation form with it
- Skip it: up to 12 months more
- Early start? Get the request in writing
Leaving out the cancellation information is also a criminal offence. The regulations exclude goods "made to the consumer's specifications", which sounds like bespoke joinery, but most wardrobe jobs include the fitting, and fitting is a service. Put the cancellation wording on every quote you write in someone's home, and don't cut timber for a made-to-measure job until you have the customer's go-ahead in writing.
Where the lead came from
Before you pay, find out how the customer said yes.
The Information Commissioner's Office puts the checking on whoever buys the data, and a seller telling you it's fine does not count as a check. We found no ICO fine naming a carpentry or joinery business. The home improvement cases, including a lead seller fined in 2025, are covered in roofing leads.
Put these to any carpentry lead seller:
- What ad or website did it come from?
- Does the consent name my business?
- Is it one door or a whole room?
- How many carpenters get it?
- Can I turn down the small jobs?
Which way to go
Decide which carpentry you want, then who should find it for you.
Buy per lead if
- Small jobs suit you
- You have gaps to fill
- You ring back fast
- You check the consent
Think twice if
- You only do bespoke work
- You charge a day minimum
- Up to three trades per lead
- The plan name is unclear
Run your own if
- You want wardrobes
- You want staircases
- You want fire door work
- Your account, kept if you leave
Plenty of carpenters do both: a few bought leads to fill a slow week, and their own ads bringing in the wardrobe and staircase work they would rather be doing. If a directory is also on the table, read is Checkatrade worth it first. The other trades we have priced up this way are listed in trade leads.
Our sources
Where these figures come from.
We build websites and run Google Ads for trades, so we aren't neutral here. That is why the table above shows where a lead from your own ads costs more than a bought one, and why every seller speaks in its own words.
Seller pages, pricing and terms were read on their own sites on 23 September 2026. Click prices and search volumes are Google Ads data for the UK, pulled the same day. Job prices and timings are from Checkatrade's carpentry, staircase and fitted wardrobe cost guides. The fire door duty is from legislation.gov.uk, and the cancellation rules from the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. The fire door rules described are England's.
Questions carpenters ask
Carpentry leads, answered.
- How much do carpentry leads cost in the UK?
- Zapo, formerly Get Work, sells search ads for joiners from £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT, and its cheapest plan comes to about £40 per estimated lead. Houzz Pro charges a flat £139 a month after a 30-day free trial. MyJobQuote and MyBuilder charge per lead but don't put a carpentry price on their pages. Buying the click yourself, a carpentry search in Google costs £1.80 to £16.92.
- Is a door-hanging lead worth buying?
- Rarely on its own. Checkatrade prices hanging a new internal door at £100 to £140, about two hours' work. At £40 a lead and one win in 3, the door you win has cost £120 to get, roughly what it pays. Door leads make sense when several doors, or other small jobs, add up to a full day.
- Are carpentry leads exclusive?
- It depends who you buy from. Zapo says its joinery leads are "exclusive to your business", and Get Work's joinery page says they go "to you, and only you" once you've secured your location. On MyJobQuote up to 3 trades can take the same lead, and on MyBuilder the homeowner picks who gets their details. Houzz Pro says it introduces you by phone but doesn't say how many carpenters it introduces.
- Who pays for fire door checks in a block of flats?
- The building's responsible person, usually the owner or the managing agent. Under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, in a block of flats over 11 metres they must check communal fire doors at least every 3 months, try to check every flat's front door at least every 12 months, and make sure the self-closers work.
- When do people search for carpenters most?
- UK searches for "carpenter near me" peaked in September, October and January and were lowest in December, about 1.5 times quieter. Every other month sat in between, so carpentry has no real off-season.
- Can a customer cancel a fitted wardrobe?
- Usually, if the deal was agreed in their home. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give them 14 days to cancel, and up to 12 months more if you never gave them the cancellation information. Goods made to the customer's own specification are excluded, but a fitted wardrobe normally includes fitting, which is a service, so don't count on that exclusion without advice.
- Is buying carpentry leads legal?
- Yes, provided you check how the seller got the customer's consent. The ICO expects buyers of marketing data to do proportionate due diligence and says a seller's assurance on its own is not enough. We found no ICO fine that names carpentry or joinery.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Get the wardrobes and staircases, and keep them to yourself.
Tell us which carpentry jobs you want more of. We build the website and run Google Ads for that work from an ad account opened in your name, which stays with you if you ever leave. See the price, or ask us something first.