Last updated 25 September 2026
A CCTV lead never tells you who lives next door.
Leads Do Work sells a household CCTV lead for £26 plus VAT, and a business one for £36. Lead Pronto starts at £15. Zapo's cheapest search ads plan comes to about £40 for every lead it forecasts. Go to Google direct and a click on a CCTV search costs £3.38 to £32.99.
The form tells you the camera count and the postcode. It doesn't tell you what the cameras will see over the fence, and that's the part the law cares about. Once a camera takes in a neighbour's garden or the street, your customer is under data protection law, and the way you angle it, mask it and set it up decides how much trouble they're in.
From the judgment, word for word
"A great deal of the purpose could be achieved without audio at all, as is the case with the bulk of CCTV systems in use in public places in this country"
That's the judge in Fairhurst v Woodard, a 2021 case in the County Court at Oxford between two neighbours. The doorbell's picture of people walking past was allowed. Its microphone, which picked up speech far beyond the picture, broke the law. What that means at handover.
Where we stand
We don't sell CCTV installation leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying CCTV installation leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build CCTV 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.
What the leads ask for
One lead price covers a doorbell and an eight-camera system.
Leads Do Work has a single CCTV line on its price list, so a video doorbell swap and a full NVR system cost the same £26 to hear about. The table puts that price, and Zapo's forecast £40, against what each job pays, winning one quote in every 3.
| Job | Typical UK price | Leads Do Work, £26 a lead | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fit a single camera | £100 to £350 | £78 per job won, 35% | £120 per job won, 53% |
| Supply and fit a video doorbell | £150 to £350 | £78 per job won, 31% | £120 per job won, 48% |
| Two IP cameras on an NVR | £400 to £650 | £78 per job won, 15% | £120 per job won, 23% |
| Four IP cameras on an NVR | £950 to £1,400 | £78 per job won, 7% | £120 per job won, 10% |
| An eight-camera system | £1,000 to £1,700 | £78 per job won, 6% | £120 per job won, 9% |
One camera: MyBuilder price guide, Aug 2026. Video doorbell: MyBuilder price guide, Jun 2026. 2-camera NVR: MyJobQuote cost guide, 2026. 4-camera NVR: MyJobQuote cost guide, 2026. 8-camera system: MyBuilder price guide, Aug 2026. Every range is worked at its middle, and the percentage is the share of that job the leads eat. We borrow MyJobQuote's figure for how often its trades win: one quote in 3. Zapo's figure is its £400 Launch plan shared across the 10 leads it forecasts. Both lead prices exclude VAT.
We work to a rough yardstick with no study behind it: winning a customer shouldn't cost more than 10 to 15 percent of the job. A single camera blows through it at 35%, and so does a doorbell at 31%. Two IP cameras sit at the top of the band on 15%, and from four cameras up the lead hardly registers, at 7% of a four-camera job and 6% of an eight. The doorbell lead only earns its keep if you leave having sold the cameras as well.
Ten leads on the feed, and what they asked for
Leads Do Work publishes its recent CCTV leads, names and numbers masked. The 10 on it, dated April to August, break down like this:
- 1 full new system: "wired cctv installation with min 4x 8mp colour turret cameras"
- 2 faults, one a screen "showing loss of video"
- 2 customers wanting cameras they'd already bought put up, one marked "install only"
- 1 request for "CCTV brochure and Intruder Alarms brochure, one of each"
- 2 with no detail beyond "Looking at prices for cctv"
- The rest upgrades: a new DVR, a front camera replacing an old one
A customer who bought their own cameras is paying for labour only, which MyBuilder puts at £100 to £300 a camera. The fault calls are repairs, and a repair search is the cheapest click in this trade, covered further down. Only one of the ten arrived already written up as a full new system.
Your numbers
Pick the camera count, then see what a lead can cost you.
It opens on a four-camera NVR job. Switch to the doorbell or the single camera to see why small jobs and bought leads don't mix, or type in the average of your last ten installs. Then set how many quotes you send per job won and the price you've been offered.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A CCTV 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
£59
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £118 to £176
- Which per lead is
- £39 to £59
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 line is a sense check we use, nothing firmer. If you sell a yearly maintenance visit, MyBuilder puts those at £50 to £100, so a customer who keeps one adds to what the first job was worth.
Who sells them
Most CCTV lead sellers say exclusive. Read the line under it.
Installers don't go looking for this: "CCTV installation leads" showed no measurable UK searches when we checked, so the sellers come to you. Each row below is from the seller's own website, in its own words.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets it | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads Do Work | £26 home, £36 business, + VAT; £11 a week | 1 to 3 others, 5 at most | "no more than 5 competing" |
| Lead Pronto | From £15 a lead | One installer, it says | "never sold on" |
| Leads 2 Trade | Not published | 1, up to 3 or up to 4, by lead type | "exclusive to one company" |
| Zapo (formerly Get Work) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody, it says | "exclusive CCTV leads" |
| Leads Everyday | Not published | Nobody, it says | "never shared with competitors" |
| PromoSEO | From £500 a month | One provider | "No leads are shared" |
| MyJobQuote | Credits, shown after sign-up | Up to 3 trades | "Up to 3 local trades" |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80 | Not stated for CCTV | "CCTV Installation" category |
Leads Do Work: a price for business leads, and a weekly fee
Its Connect list has a "Security | CCTV" row at £26 for a household and £36 for a business, both before VAT, and prices intruder alarms separately from £23. Winning one in 3, a business customer costs you £108 in leads. The £11 weekly service fee is due every week you're signed up, which is £572 over a year before any lead or any VAT.
Its terms put 1 to 3 other tradesmen on the same job, never more than 5, and let you cancel any time and ask for a lead back, with each request looked at by a person. Its own CCTV sales copy says "many customers ask more than one local tradesperson for a quote", which is the shared lead described in its own words.
Lead Pronto says one installer, and three models too
Its security leads are "from £15 per lead", priced on volume and area, with "No contract and no notice period". Its CCTV sales copy opens with "Every lead goes to one installer and is never sold on". Further down, the same copy says "Pronto has three main models for how we distribute leads, please enquire for more detail." Ask which model you're on and get it in writing. It also runs branded campaigns for "A typical fee of 25% of the ad spend", and says it takes installers with no NSI or SSAIB registration. It's the seller the ICO fined, which is covered further down.
Leads 2 Trade only sells to registered firms
Its home security headline reads "Every alarm system lead is exclusive to one company". Its list of lead types says otherwise for three of the four: a Premium Lead goes to "a maximum of 3 installers", a Qualified Lead is "sent out up to 4 times", and the Lead Vault sells "on a first come first served basis". Only the Hot Key Lead is "unique". What sets it apart is who it sells to: "NSI or SSAIB registered" alarm and CCTV installers with at least 1 year of stable trading. No price is published.
Three that run the ads and hand you the result
Zapo "delivers exclusive leads to security companies, CCTV installers and security experts" through search adverts. Launch is £400 a month plus VAT, £200 of which goes on clicks, for 10 leads it estimates. Leads Everyday runs Google Ads for CCTV firms, "never shared with competitors", with "No commission on any jobs" and no price on show. PromoSEO's security packages "start at £500 per month", and it says "No leads are shared."
InfoBest runs campaigns on your budget for a percentage of it, and prints its own suggested targets: £8 to £10 a domestic CCTV lead in the East Midlands, £14 to £16 in Greater London, and £33 to £36 for a commercial one in London. They're targets on a website still showing a 2019 copyright, not prices anyone guarantees. Insite Web, an agency, pitches at firms with "£1.5K+ Monthly Budget". All of these buy their clicks in the same auction as the next section.
The directories keep the price behind a login
MyJobQuote's CCTV listing promises each customer quotes from as many as 3 local firms. Bark has a CCTV Installation category and sells credits at £1.80 each, without saying how many a CCTV lead takes. Rated People lists "CCTV / Satellites / Alarms" and now says it is part of Checkatrade Group, whose trade blog counts "over 50,000 job searches related to CCTV" on its website in 2025. How those contracts work is in Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs Bark, and what three installers on one job does to the price you can quote is in the shared-lead trap.
Everything here about Leads Do Work's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 25 September 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have CCTV installation 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 CCTV installation customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingBuying the click yourself
One business click costs nearly what a bought business lead does.
"commercial cctv installation" costs £32.99 a click, against Leads Do Work's £36 for a whole business lead. At the other end, "cctv repair near me" is £3.38. We turn each click price into a lead price by dividing by 7.33%, WordStream's rate for home improvement search ads. It's measured on American campaigns, so take the last column as a rough steer.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| commercial cctv installation | 390 | £32.99 | £450 |
| cctv for business | 390 | £26.21 | £358 |
| cctv company | 390 | £24.01 | £328 |
| cctv maintenance | 260 | £19.33 | £264 |
| cctv camera installation | 1,300 | £11.43 | £156 |
| doorbell camera installation | 70 | £10.68 | £146 |
| cctv system installation | 590 | £10.39 | £142 |
| home cctv installation | 480 | £10.07 | £137 |
| security camera installation | 880 | £9.76 | £133 |
| cctv installation | 2,900 | £9.44 | £129 |
| security camera installation near me | 480 | £8.77 | £120 |
| cctv companies near me | 390 | £8.32 | £114 |
| cctv installers near me | 3,600 | £6.68 | £91 |
| cctv installation cost | 480 | £5.46 | £74 |
| cctv repair near me | 480 | £3.38 | £46 |
Pulled from Google Ads for UK searches on 25 September 2026. A click price is the going average in the auction, and the account you run decides what you really pay. Monthly searches are averaged over a year, and September 2025 ran high across the set: "commercial cctv installation" reached 2,400 that month. "cctv installation" also counts close wordings such as "cctv installer".
On these numbers a lead from your own ads costs £46 to £450, more than Leads Do Work's £26 on every search in the table. The difference buys the choice of which camera jobs you pay for, and a customer who asked for you alone:
- Bid hard on business and system searches
- Keep repair clicks cheap and separate
- Ask the camera count on the form
- No other installer was sent the call
- Google charges your card direct
- The ad account is yours to keep
"cctv maintenance" costs £19.33 a click, about £264 a lead, and a business asking for maintenance can turn into a contract. Under a maintenance contract, NSI approved firms answer a fault within a set time, typically 24 hours. For households, "home cctv installation" runs at £10.07. Setting the monthly figure is worked through in how much to spend on Google Ads.
Local Services Ads, if you were hoping
Google's UK list has no category for CCTV, cameras or security systems, so a camera installer can't buy those pay-per-lead listings. Which trades can, and how they're charged, is in our Local Services Ads guide.
The camera and the neighbour
Point a camera past the boundary and data protection law comes with it.
The ICO's home CCTV guidance, which covers smart doorbells too, says owners should aim cameras at their own property where they can. If a camera "captures someone else's property, a public area or communal space, then data protection law applies." From then on the owner needs a clear reason, no more coverage than that reason takes, a sign, footage that's deleted regularly, a way to give people copies of recordings they appear in, usually within a calendar month, and no recording of anyone who objects without a legitimate reason to carry on.
The ICO says that in most cases it won't make anyone move a camera, or take a neighbour to court for them. The neighbour can go to court on their own, and in Fairhurst v Woodard in 2021 one did. Her claims for harassment and breach of the Data Protection Act succeeded against a neighbour with three Ring cameras, one of them a doorbell.
The picture was allowed
The judge found the doorbell's video of the neighbour walking past was caught only incidentally, and that his interest in protecting his home wasn't outweighed by it.
The driveway camera was not
One camera looked down a shared drive at her gate, garden and parking. The judge said his cars could be protected "in a lesser way", for example by a camera with "a close focus on only the cars in his parking spaces." That's an installer's decision.
The microphone was not
A test in the case heard speech "perfectly clear" at 40 feet and caught it up to about 53, well past what the lens could see. Recording that audio was unlawful. Back then it couldn't be switched off; a later firmware update allowed it.
What to set before you leave the job
- Angle each camera at the customer's own property
- Mask the neighbour's windows, garden and the pavement
- Microphone off unless there is a real reason
- Recordings set to delete on a schedule
- A sign where a camera sees beyond the boundary
- Show the customer how to export a clip
The NSI tells homeowners that "Care does need to be taken that the privacy of your neighbours or the general public is not invaded", and that an approved installer will advise on it. Put that advice in writing on the quote, and it's also a reason to choose you over a box off the shelf.
Businesses, licences and the kit
Fitting cameras needs no licence. Watching them for a client may do.
A business customer is the dearer click and the bigger job, and it arrives with more rules attached. None of them sits on the installer's licence, but most of them shape what you quote.
A business owes signs and a DPIA
The ICO's guidance for organisations calls a data protection impact assessment a legal requirement that "applies in most cases" of video surveillance, and a business that skips one has to write down why. Signs go up before the camera's view starts, and the ICO says to "switch off by default any capability to record audio". No retention period is set in law; the purpose decides it.
The SIA licenses the watching, not the fitting
On our reading of the SIA's list, installing isn't a licensable activity. Using CCTV under a contract to identify or monitor people, to guard premises against disorder or damage or to protect people from assault, needs a public space surveillance (CCTV) licence, and that includes reviewing recorded footage. Offer to keep an eye on a client's cameras and you may need one.
Councils and police bring a code
The Surveillance Camera Code of Practice binds relevant authorities in England and Wales, such as councils and the police, and everyone else is only encouraged to adopt it. It doesn't bind a contractor directly, but it says contracts "must ensure that contractors are obliged by the terms of the contract to have regard to the code". Tender for that work and expect it in the paperwork.
Default passwords belong to the maker
Since 29 April 2024 the PSTI regime has required connectable products to ship with a unique password or one the user sets, and makers to publish how long security updates last. The duties fall on manufacturers, importers and distributors. Section 7(6) says fitting a product as part of works doesn't make you a distributor when identical ones are sold to consumers anyway. Our reading: bring cameras in from abroad yourself and you're the importer.
Firms approved by the NSI for CCTV work to its code of practice, NCP 104, and it's the registration Leads 2 Trade asks for alongside SSAIB. If a customer asks about wiring the recorder into a new circuit, that's Part P work, which our electrician leads guide covers.
Through the year
CCTV searches come in two bursts, then sit flat for months.
UK searches for "cctv installers near me" reached 6,600 a month in September 2025 and January 2026, and sat at 2,900 in 7 of the 12 months, about 2.3 times lower. Leads Do Work's CCTV copy says "Demand for home CCTV has grown steadily". A single year can't prove a trend either way, but this one went from 6,600 in September 2025 to 2,900 in August 2026.
UK searches for "cctv installers near me", by month
Google Ads keyword data for the UK, September 2025 to August 2026, each month shown as Google's rounded band.
Front-load the busy months
A flat budget has fewer searches to spend on in a 2,900 month than in a 6,600 one. Put more behind the bursts and keep a smaller budget running through the flat stretch.
Sell maintenance in the quiet ones
The flat months are when last year's customers are worth a call. MyBuilder puts a monitoring service at £10 to £50 or more a month and an annual check at £50 to £100, work that no seller charges you to hear about.
Where the lead came from
Buy a CCTV lead and its consent becomes your problem.
Under the ICO's guidance, the checks on bought marketing data are the buyer's job, sized to the risk, and a seller saying it's fine doesn't count as a check. In November 2025 the ICO fined Lead Pronto £30,000: its texts went out on consent that didn't name a single one of the 18 firms buying its leads. We found no ICO case naming a CCTV installer.
Ask the seller before the first payment:
- Which website did the customer fill in?
- Is my business named in the consent?
- How many other installers got this lead?
- Home or business, and how many cameras?
- New system, repair, or their own kit fitted?
File each answer with the lead it belongs to, dated. If a customer or the ICO asks how you checked, that file is the answer.
Which way to go
Let bought leads fill gaps, and win the systems under your own name.
Buy per lead if
- Most jobs are four cameras or more
- You can survey the same week
- The seller says who else gets it
- You upsell doorbells into systems
Think twice if
- Your work is mostly single cameras
- Up to five firms get the job
- The price is only a "from"
- "Exclusive" has lead types under it
Run your own if
- You want business contracts
- You want repairs kept cheap
- You want the call to yourself
- You want the ad account in your name
On an eight-camera job a won Leads Do Work lead costs £78, which is why the big systems are the ones worth fighting for. If you fit locks as well, how those leads are sold is in our locksmith leads guide. Every trade faces the same choice, set side by side in our guide to trade leads.
Our sources
What this CCTV guide is built from.
Know where we stand before you weigh any of this: TradeBlitz makes its money from websites and Google Ads for trades, and sells no leads. So every seller here speaks in its own words, and the table above shows Leads Do Work's price per lead coming in under our route.
Seller websites and price lists were read on 25 September 2026, and the search figures come from UK Google Ads data pulled 25 September 2026. Job prices are from MyBuilder and MyJobQuote. The data protection points come from the ICO and the approved judgment in Fairhurst v Woodard, licensing from the SIA, the code for public bodies from gov.uk, the product rules from legislation.gov.uk, and the installer standard from the NSI.
Questions installers ask
CCTV installation leads, the short version.
- How much do CCTV installation leads cost in the UK?
- Leads Do Work lists a CCTV lead at £26 from a household and £36 from a business, both before VAT, on top of an £11 weekly fee. Lead Pronto starts at £15 a lead. Zapo, which used to trade as Get Work, charges £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT for search ads, roughly £40 for each lead its cheapest plan forecasts. Buying the click yourself on a CCTV search runs from £3.38 to £32.99.
- Are CCTV leads sold to more than one installer?
- Often. Leads Do Work sends a job to 1 to 3 other firms and caps it at 5, and MyJobQuote lets 3 quote. Leads 2 Trade says its alarm leads are exclusive, yet its own lead types include ones sent to 3 and to 4 installers. Zapo, Leads Everyday and PromoSEO say theirs go to one firm.
- Does a customer's home CCTV have to follow data protection law?
- Only if it sees past their boundary. The ICO says that once a camera captures a neighbour's property, the street or a shared space, data protection law applies, and the owner needs a clear reason, a sign, footage that deletes itself, and a way to hand over recordings when someone in them asks. Aim the cameras at the customer's own property and mask anything else, and most of that falls away.
- Can a video doorbell legally record sound?
- It is the riskiest thing it does. In Fairhurst v Woodard in 2021, a county court judge accepted a doorbell filming people walking past but found its audio unlawful, because it carried much further than the picture, with speech clear at about 40 feet in a test. The ICO tells businesses to switch audio off by default. Turn the microphone off at handover unless the customer has a real reason for it.
- Does a CCTV installer need an SIA licence?
- Not to install, on our reading. Fitting cameras isn't on the SIA's list of licensable activities. Using CCTV under a contract to identify or monitor people, to guard premises against disorder or damage or to protect people from assault, needs a public space surveillance (CCTV) licence, and that includes reviewing recorded footage. If you offer to watch a business's cameras for it, check the licence first.
- Do I need NSI or SSAIB approval to buy CCTV leads?
- Depends who you buy from. Leads 2 Trade only takes NSI or SSAIB registered installers with at least 1 year of steady trading. Lead Pronto works with registered firms and says it also takes established installers who hold neither. NSI approved firms have to work to its CCTV code of practice, NCP 104.
- When do people search for CCTV installers most?
- UK searches for "cctv installers near me" hit 6,600 a month in September 2025 and January 2026, and sat at 2,900 in 7 of the 12 months to August 2026, roughly 2.3 times lower.
- What should I ask before buying CCTV leads?
- Where the customer filled in the form, whether the consent names your business, and how many other installers get it. The ICO says a buyer has to check for themselves rather than trust the seller. It fined Lead Pronto, which sells CCTV leads, £30,000 in November 2025 over texts sent without valid consent.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Camera systems in the diary, from customers who went looking for you.
We build your website and run Google Ads in an account under your own name, aimed at the jobs that pay: business systems, multi-camera homes and maintenance, with repairs kept on a short lead. See what it costs, then tell us about your CCTV business and we'll set the campaign up around the installs you want more of.