Last updated 23 September 2026
Cleaning leads: price them by the client, not the clean.
Short answer: you can rent a place on a directory (Bark, Checkatrade, MyBuilder), pay a lead company a monthly fee (Zapo) or a price per lead (one window cleaning seller charges £12.50a lead), or buy the click on Google yourself for £1.73 to £7.24.
Which one pays depends on a question almost none of them ask you. Is the lead a one-off job, or a client who could book you every week? On Checkatrade's own averages, a weekly £75 clean is £3,900 a year from one customer. A two-bed end of tenancy clean is £260, once. Those two leads are not worth the same, so they shouldn't cost the same.
If you used Bark or Helpling
Both have changed under cleaners' feet.
Bark has moved cleaners and end of tenancy cleaners off pay-per-lead credits and onto monthly Bark Marketplace subscriptions, and your old credits can be moved across. Helpling, the home cleaning booking platform, ceased all UK operations on 10 March 2025. Details of both are further down.
Where we stand
We don't sell cleaning leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying cleaning leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build cleaning businesses 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.
One-off or on the books
A tenancy clean pays once. A weekly client keeps paying.
Cleaning is two businesses sold under one word. Checkatrade's own end of tenancy guide says it plainly: "An end of tenancy clean is a one-off". A weekly house clean is the start of a relationship. Price the lead against the client you want: the table shows what each can carry at one win in 3.
| The work | Worth | Most a lead should cost | Figure from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Window clean, terraced to semi | £30 to £35 | about £2.00 | Checkatrade, Jan 2025 |
| One weekly clean (3 hours) | £75 | about £4.00 | Checkatrade, Sep 2026 |
| End of tenancy, studio to 6-bed | £180 to £415 | about £15 | Checkatrade, Aug 2026 |
| A weekly client for a year | £3,900 | about £195 | Checkatrade £75 a week x 52 |
The third column uses a rough rule: winning a job should cost you about 10 to 15 percent of what it's worth, counting the quotes you lost on the way. Priced as a single clean, a regular house clean can carry a lead cost of about £4.00. Priced as a client who stays a year, the same lead can carry about £195. Nothing about the lead changed. What changed is whether you keep the customer. A one-off end of tenancy clean, taken from the middle of its range, sits between the two at about £15.
One seller is honest about this. Window Cleaning Lead Generation charges £12.50 a lead, and says of each one: "We have no idea if the lead is for a 1 bed apartment or a 5 bed house, or even a large commercial job". Same price for all three. Against a single £30 to £35 window clean that's a loss. Against a customer who books you on a round, it can pay.
So before you buy anything, decide which cleaner you are. If you want end of tenancy and one-off deep cleans, you need a lot of cheap leads and a fast phone. If you want a full diary of regular clients, you can afford to pay more for each lead, as long as it's a lead for the work you want and nobody else was sold it.
Run it on your round
What a lead can cost you if the client stays.
The calculator opens on a weekly client kept for a year, because that's the figure most cleaners never write down. Switch to a one-off job to see how far the number falls, or type in what your own regulars are worth a year. Then enter a seller's price per lead.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A CLEANING 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
£195
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £390 to £585
- Which per lead is
- £130 to £195
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 an industry rule of thumb, not a measured figure. The yearly figure assumes the client books every week for 52 weeks. If yours tend to stay six months, halve it.
The directories, read from their terms
What Bark, Checkatrade and MyBuilder sell cleaners.
Each one tells cleaners a different story on its sales page than in its contract. Here's both.
Bark: now a subscription, not a lead
Bark has moved cleaners onto Bark Marketplace. Instead of buying credits to unlock a lead, you pay a monthly subscription and "clients contact you directly via phone or chat". The prices, all plus VAT:
| Profession | Starter | Essential | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaner | £29 a month | £69 a month | £129 a month |
| End of Tenancy Cleaner | £39 a month | £89 a month | £169 a month |
If you still hold credits, Bark says "Your old credits can be transferred towards your Marketplace enquiries quota". Before you pick a tier, find out how many enquiries it includes, because that's the number that turns a monthly fee into a price per lead.
Bark's house cleaning sign-up page makes a promise worth reading against its terms: "if you don't get hired with your first pack we'll give you all your credits back". The terms say a returned credit brings no "monetary refund": Bark will "reinstate those returned Credits onto your Bark.com account". Returns have to be made within 7 days, only for a wrong number, a bounced email or the wrong person, and not "if you do not secure the job". Credits bought from 1 November 2025 expire 3 months after purchase, and unused credits can't be refunded.
Checkatrade: two numbers and "a share"
Checkatrade offers cleaners "a regular flow of leads for a fixed monthly cost", and "Memberships are for 12 months." Its cleaner join page says "Over 493,000 searches were made on Checkatrade last year for Cleaners like you". Its own blog for cleaners says "in 2025, we saw 893,000 searches for cleaning services on our website." The join page also says "Over 15,000 homeowners turned to Checkatrade to find a cleaner last year". That's the figure to plan with, because a homeowner is who pays you.
The same blog promises members "a share of cleaning leads". A share is the honest word. And the Fixed Plan terms define a lead to include "clicks from the Platform to Your website", so somebody tapping through to your site counts, whether or not they ever get in touch.
Checkatrade will give you an estimate of leads, but its terms say it "is only an estimate and is not binding", and "We reserve the right to stop providing You with Leads if you reach or exceed any estimate We provide to You." So the estimate isn't a floor, and it can work as a ceiling.
MyBuilder: you pay to be shortlisted
MyBuilder's cleaning company sign-up says "If you're shortlisted, we charge you a fee for the customer's contact details". Its terms add that "It is not necessary for you to be awarded the Job for the Shortlist Fee to be payable." And if a refund is ever offered, "Any refund that is offered to you will only be provided by way of Account Credit." So a bad lead gets you more MyBuilder, not your money back.
Everything here about Bark'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.
Each directory gets a full breakdown in is Bark worth it, is Checkatrade worth it and is MyBuilder worth it. Why a lead sold to several cleaners costs more than its price is in the shared-lead trap.
The lead companies
Half of what some of them charge is Google's.
The other way to buy cleaning leads is from a company that runs ads and passes you the replies. Their price lists say more than their sales pages.
Zapo
"Zapo Ads delivers exclusive leads to house cleaning companies, and cleaners." Its Launch plan is £400 a month and "Prices exclude VAT". Of that, "Included ad budget £200/mo". That's 50% of the fee going on the ads, and the same half-and-half split runs up to Accelerate, £1,600 a month with £800 of ads.
Launch estimates 10 leads a month, which works out at about £40 plus VAT a lead. Zapo's own small print: "Leads arrive within 1-4 weeks, and volumes vary by sector, location and season." It is month to month and "you're free to cancel at any time", which is fair.
Window Cleaning Lead Generation
"£12.50 per lead. Leads come in batches of 20": a "20 Leads Package for £250 or the Lead Canvassing 200 for £600", with a £100 deposit. Your area stays yours "as long as they place orders with us… once every 2 months or so." Dud numbers "get a full replacement". It doesn't say whether the prices include VAT, so ask.
Leads Everyday
A flat monthly fee, with the ad spend "paid directly to Google", so you can see what goes on clicks and what goes on the service. No minimum term, and "All leads generated through our services are 100% yours". The fee isn't published.
Helpling
Gone. "As of March, 10th 2025 Helpling has ceased all operations in the United Kingdom." If older advice sends you there for home cleaning work, it's out of date.
A managed lead company isn't a rip-off. Someone has to write the ads, build the page and pick up the forms. But where the ad budget sits inside the fee, you're buying clicks you could buy yourself with a margin on top. Worth knowing before you compare their price per lead with what your own ads would cost.
Rather have cleaning 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 cleaning 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: dearer per lead on some searches, yours every time.
A click becomes a lead only some of the time. WordStream's 2025 average for Home & Home Improvement search ads is 7.33% of clicks turning into an enquiry. It's US data, so read these as a rough guide rather than a quote.
| Work | What they type | Per click | Per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial | commercial cleaning | £7.24 | £99 |
| End of tenancy | end of tenancy cleaning | £6.78 | £92 |
| Office | office cleaning | £6.31 | £86 |
| Deep clean | deep cleaning service | £4.06 | £55 |
| Finding a cleaner | cleaning services near me | £3.12 | £43 |
| House cleaning | house cleaning | £3.07 | £42 |
| Window cleaning | window cleaning near me | £2.94 | £40 |
| Cleaners near me | cleaners near me | £2.76 | £38 |
| Carpet cleaning | carpet cleaning | £2.00 | £27 |
| Oven cleaning | oven cleaning | £1.73 | £24 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. These are bid-based estimates, so most advertisers pay less per click.
Straight comparison: a £12.50 window cleaning lead is cheaper than a lead from your own ads. On house cleaning, about £42 a lead from your own ads is in the same place as Zapo's estimate. Commercial cleaning, at about £99, is the dearest click on the list and the biggest contracts. So price alone doesn't settle it. What settles it is what you get with the lead:
- The customer rang you. Nobody else was sold them.
- You choose the work: bid on weekly cleans, skip one-off ovens.
- You set the hours, so the phone rings when you can answer it.
- Nobody takes a margin. You pay Google on your own card.
- Stop, start or change the budget any day, with no year to sit out.
And when you work with us, the Google Ads account is in your name and stays with you, with all its history, if you ever leave. Every lead it produces is yours, and so is every regular client who comes from one. For Google's pay-per-call format, see our Local Services Ads guide.
When the work comes
Domestic cleaning never stops. Commercial peaks in September.
Most trades have a busy season. Cleaning mostly doesn't. Searches for "end of tenancy cleaning" average 12,100 a month and never fell below 8,100 in the last year, because people move house every month. Commercial cleaning is the exception. Searches for "commercial cleaning" hit 6,600 in Sep and fell to 1,900 in Jun, Jul and Aug, about 3.5 times apart.
UK searches for "commercial cleaning", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Commercial is won on the review date
An office or a block doesn't look for a cleaner when the bins overflow. It looks when the current contract comes up. Lead Gen Specialists, which sells commercial leads, puts it this way: "By understanding your prospect's incumbent solution, and review dates, you can target qualified Decision Makers at the right time." When a business says "we're sorted", ask when the contract ends and ring back before then.
What to do about it
Run domestic ads all year and treat them like a tap you never turn off. For commercial, have your website and ads live before September and put the extra budget into that month. The work is worth chasing: Checkatrade prices window cleaning a commercial property at £100 to £500, against £30 to £35 a clean for a house.
Winning the lead
Show the checks before they ask for them.
A cleaning lead is someone deciding whether to hand a stranger their key. There's no general UK licence for cleaners, so a customer can't look one up. What you can show them is the handful of rules that do apply, done:
Waste carrier registration
In England, gov.uk says "You must register if your business does any of the following: transports waste". It's free if you only ever carry your own waste, and £191.02 otherwise. "You can get an unlimited fine if you do not register."
Employers' liability insurance
The moment you take anyone on, you need cover "for at least £5 million", and "You can be fined £2,500 every day you are not properly insured." If you run a team, say you're covered.
A basic DBS check
For people working in England and Wales, gov.uk says "It costs £21.50". For a domestic cleaner holding keys, it's the cheapest trust you'll ever buy.
Local rules where they exist
Scotland is the clear example. Under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, a "window cleaner's licence" is required to trade as a window cleaner. Check what your own area asks for.
We found no legal duty to hold public liability insurance, but if you carry it, say so. Put all of it on your website and your quote, not in a reply three messages later.
Then answer within the hour
Harvard Business Review looked at how fast firms answered web leads. Those that tried to make contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a real conversation with the decision maker as those that waited even an hour longer. It wasn't a study of cleaners, and it measured conversations rather than jobs won. But on a lead that went to several cleaners, the one who rings first is usually the one who gets asked round.
Before you pay a seller
Buying leads is legal. The consent is your problem.
The Information Commissioner's Office says a business buying marketing data "must undertake proportionate checks and due diligence", and "It is not enough to simply accept a third party's assurances." Ask every seller, in writing:
- Who collected this lead, and how?
- When was it collected?
- What did the customer agree to, and does it name my business?
- Was it checked against the Telephone Preference Service?
The ICO generally recommends not using consent that came through a third party more than six months ago, and for emails and texts, consent has to name you, not just "trusted partners".
Why it matters
We found no ICO fine in cleaning. The nearest case is a lead generator. In November 2025 the ICO fined Lead Pronto Ltd £30,000 over 76,605 texts. Its consent sat in its privacy policy, and the ICO said: "LP provided the Commissioner with a list of 18 clients it generated data on behalf of, but none of these companies were listed in the privacy policy. It cannot be argued that consent was informed." Eighteen businesses had leads generated for them under consent that didn't name them. Ask to see how yours was collected.
Which route, for which cleaner
Match the route to the clients you want to keep.
Buy per-lead if
- You do one-off and window work
- You need jobs this month
- The price is low and fixed
- Dud numbers get replaced
Think hard about directories if
- You'd be tied in for a year
- A click counts as your lead
- Refunds come back as credit
- You'd share every lead
Run your own ads if
- You want weekly regulars
- You want commercial contracts
- You'll answer in working hours
- You want the customer, not a slot
Plenty of cleaners do both: cheap bought leads to keep the week busy now, and their own ads building a book of regulars who don't need buying twice. The lead that becomes a £3,900 client is the one to own outright. The same sums for a trade with bigger one-off jobs are in our roofing leads guide.
Where this comes from
Why trust a company that sells the alternative?
Because we told you where a bought lead beats our route on price, and quoted every seller from its own price list and terms rather than its banner. We build websites and run Google Ads for trades, so yes, we'd like you to run your own. We'd rather you did it knowing the numbers.
Prices and terms were read on each company's own site on 23 September 2026, the same day as the Google Ads data for the UK. Job values come from Checkatrade's cost guides. The rules come from gov.uk and legislation.gov.uk, the consent guidance and the Lead Pronto notice from the ICO, Bark's subscription prices from its help centre, Zapo's from its pricing page, and the response-time research from Harvard Business Review.
Cleaners ask
Cleaning leads, answered.
- How much do cleaning leads cost in the UK?
- It depends who you buy from. Window Cleaning Lead Generation charges £12.50 a lead in batches of 20. Zapo's cleaning plans start at £400 a month plus VAT, £200 of which is ad budget, with an estimated 10 leads. Bark has moved cleaners onto monthly subscriptions from £29 plus VAT. Checkatrade sells cleaners a 12-month membership, and MyBuilder charges a fee when a customer shortlists you. Buying the click yourself on a cleaning search costs £1.73 to £7.24.
- Are Bark leads worth it for cleaners?
- Bark has changed how it sells to cleaners. Cleaners and end of tenancy cleaners are now on Bark Marketplace subscriptions (£29, £69 or £129 a month for cleaners, £39, £89 or £169 for end of tenancy, all plus VAT), and clients contact you directly by phone or chat. Old credits can be moved towards your enquiries quota. Whether it pays depends on how many of those enquiries turn into regular clients, so check your tier's enquiry allowance first.
- How do I get commercial cleaning contracts?
- Commercial cleaning is usually bought on a contract that comes up for review, so timing matters more than volume. A commercial lead firm, Lead Gen Specialists, puts it as understanding a prospect's "incumbent solution, and review dates". UK searches for "commercial cleaning" also peak in September, so have your website and ads ready before then.
- Do cleaners need a licence in the UK?
- There is no general UK licence for cleaners. The rules that do apply: register as a waste carrier if you transport waste for customers (it's free if you only carry your own), get employers' liability cover of at least £5 million once you employ anyone, and in Scotland window cleaners need a window cleaner's licence. We found no legal duty to hold public liability insurance.
- Should cleaners get a DBS check?
- A basic DBS check costs £21.50 for people working in England and Wales. Being able to say you have one answers the question every homeowner handing over a key is thinking.
- Is buying cleaning leads legal?
- Yes, but the checks are yours. The ICO says a business buying marketing data must do its own due diligence and that it is not enough to accept the seller's assurances. In November 2025 the ICO fined the lead generator Lead Pronto £30,000 because the consent it collected named none of the 18 clients it generated data for. We found no ICO fine in cleaning, but the same rules apply.
- What happened to Helpling?
- Helpling ceased all operations in the United Kingdom on 10 March 2025. If you got cleaning work through it, that route has gone.
- What counts as a cleaning lead?
- It varies by seller, which is why you should ask. Checkatrade's Fixed Plan terms count a click from its site through to your website as a lead. Window Cleaning Lead Generation says it doesn't know whether a lead is for a one-bed flat or a large commercial job, and charges the same for both.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
A diary full of regulars nobody else was sold.
See what it costs, then tell us about your round. We'll show you what your own cleaning leads look like, aimed at the weekly clients and contracts you actually want. Got a question first? Just message us.