Last updated 25 September 2026
Some of the drains you buy leads for are the water company's to clear, free.
Leads Do Work sells drain and sewer clearance leads at £25 each plus VAT, and septic tank leads at £22. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for drainage firms from £400 a month plus VAT, about £40 per lead it estimates. Buy the click yourself and Google charges £6.03 to £27.56 when a homeowner taps a drainage ad.
What a lead leaves out is whose pipe it is. Since 1 October 2011, a sewer shared with the neighbours belongs to the water company in England and Wales, and some water companies clear blockages on their own pipes for nothing. The customer who rings you may be about to pay for a job that was free.
A real lead, word for word
"outside of the kitchen sewer blocked, needed to clearing."
That's from Leads Do Work's public feed of drain and sewer leads, and the same London customer posted again nine days later. The customer calls it a sewer. Whether it serves one house or several decides who should be paying for it. Whose pipe is it.
Where we stand
We don't sell drainage leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying drainage leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build drainage firms 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
An unblock lead only pays when the camera goes down the drain.
Checkatrade puts the average domestic unblock at about £85. Most of the leads on Leads Do Work's drain feed are that job: a blocked kitchen pipe, a drain overflowing out front. A few are worth far more. On 22 August one homeowner wrote "I have approx 15m of pitch fibre drain that is severely blistered and needs lining." At Checkatrade's £85 to £150 a metre, 15 metres of lining is £1,275 to £2,250.
Here is what a lead costs you per job won across that spread, at Leads Do Work's published drain price and Zapo's estimate, and one win in 3.
| Job | Typical UK price | Leads Do Work, £25 a lead | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rod a blocked drain | £75 to £150 | £75 a win, 66% of the job | £120 a win, 106% of the job |
| Empty a medium septic tank | £175 to £225 | £75 a win, 38% of the job | £120 a win, 60% of the job |
| CCTV survey with a full report | £250 to £400 | £75 a win, 23% of the job | £120 a win, 37% of the job |
| Reline 15 metres of drain | £1,275 to £2,250 | £75 a win, 4% of the job | £120 a win, 7% of the job |
| Replace a septic tank, small to large | £4,200 to £6,000 | £75 a win, 1% of the job | £120 a win, 2% of the job |
Prices from Checkatrade's drain unblocking (June 2026) and septic tank (April 2026) cost guides, each worked at the middle of its range. The relining row is our sum: its per-metre rate times 15 metres. The win rate comes from MyJobQuote's help centre. Zapo's figure is its cheapest plan divided by the leads it forecasts. Both lead prices are before VAT.
We reckon winning a customer shouldn't cost more than 10 to 15 percent of what the job pays. The unblock blows through that: Leads Do Work's lead eats 66% of it and Zapo's eats 106%, more than the job pays. The same £25 lead is 4% of the reline. So the unblock is the way in, and what you find with the camera is where the money is.
If you survey, reline and dig
Put the camera on the van for every unblock you buy, and quote from what it shows. A lead you rodded for £113 and lined for £1,763 has paid for a lot of leads that went nowhere.
If you rod and jet only
Then you're in a plumber's price bracket, buying the same blocked-drain work plumbers buy. Our plumbing leads guide covers that market, and what a lead costs against a call-out.
Your numbers
How much can a drainage lead cost before it stops paying?
Pick the drainage job you quote most, set how many quotes it takes to win one, then type in a seller's price. Flip between the unblock and the reline and see how far apart they land.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A DRAINAGE 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
£6
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £11 to £17
- Which per lead is
- £4 to £6
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
That 10 to 15 percent line is our own rule of thumb. Nobody has measured it.
Who sells them
One seller prints a drainage price. Three promise you the job to yourself.
We took every row from the seller's own website, and a blank on sharing means the seller is silent on it. Lead Pronto, Leads 2 Trade and The Trade League sell no drainage leads at all.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads Do Work | £25 drain, £22 septic, + VAT | 1 to 3 others, 5 at most | "no more than 5 competing" |
| Zapo (formerly Get Work) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody | "exclusive leads to drainage companies" |
| PromoSEO | From £500 a month, or about 30% of the job | Nobody in your area | "one company per area" |
| Leads Everyday | Not published | Nobody | "never shared with competitors" |
| MyJobQuote | Credits, price shown after sign-up | Up to 3 local trades | "Up to 3 local trades" |
| MyBuilder | A fee when shortlisted | Not stated | "Only pay a fee when shortlisted" |
| Bark | Credits, priced by job and area | Not stated | "valid for 3 months" |
| Checkatrade (with Rated People) | Fixed lead plan, price by phone | Not stated | "runs on a 12-month term" |
Leads Do Work: two drainage rows and a public feed
Its price list has exactly two drainage lines: "Drain / Sewer Clearance" at £25 and "Septic Tank Inspection / Clearance" at £22, plus VAT and an £11 weekly fee. There's no row for surveys, relining or soakaways, so that work arrives inside a clearance lead or not at all. Each job usually goes to 1 to 3 firms besides you, and its terms allow "no more than 5 competing for any given job."
Its drain page says "the fastest responder tends to win the job", which with up to five of you on one blocked drain is probably true. At one win in 3, a £22 septic lead costs £66 a win, 33% of a £200 emptying. The public feed showed ten drain leads between April and September, and none said whether the pipe was shared.
PromoSEO: a monthly floor, or a share of the job
"Monthly lead packages start from £500 per month", or you pay per conversion, which "typically costs around 30 percent of the confirmed job value once payment is received." On a £5,100 septic tank replacement, that's £1,530, about twice the top of our 10 to 15 percent band. It also says drainage firms "typically convert more than 25 percent of leads into paying jobs". That's its figure, not a checked one.
Zapo and the agencies sell ads, not a list
Zapo says it "delivers exclusive leads to drainage companies, drainage contractors and drain engineers" through search adverts. Its cheapest plan is £400 a month plus VAT, of which £200 buys clicks, for 10 leads it estimates. Leads Everyday runs Google Ads for drain clearance firms and won't give a price until you book a call. WiiZARD Marketing offers "dedicated postcode areas", and the only price on its drainage page is for SEO. One Base Media works "on a pay on results basis" and publishes no rate.
The marketplaces share the job and keep the price back
MyJobQuote tells homeowners that "Up to 3 local trades will then be in touch". MyBuilder files drain clearance under plumbing and charges when a homeowner shortlists you, win or lose; more in is MyBuilder worth it. Bark prices a contact by service, job value and local demand, and says its average drain engineer charges £120. Rated People is now part of Checkatrade Group, whose fixed lead plan is a 12-month term. What several firms on one blocked drain does to your price 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 24 September 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have drainage 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 drainage customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingBuying the click yourself
The dearest drainage click is the homeowner's emergency.
"drainage leads", the search a drainage firm makes to find a seller, gets about 20 searches a month at £20.15 a click. "emergency drain unblocking" costs more, at £27.56, and the busiest paid search, "drain unblocking near me", is £15.15 across 6,600 searches a month. The dearest of all is "homebuyer drain survey" at £32.73, though only about 30 people a month type it. The per-lead column assumes 7.33% of clicks become leads, WordStream's average for home improvement search ads. That average comes from American accounts, so treat the column as a steer.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| emergency drain unblocking | 720 | £27.56 | £376 |
| drain survey | 2,400 | £17.32 | £236 |
| drainage services | 1,600 | £16.14 | £220 |
| drain unblocking near me | 6,600 | £15.15 | £207 |
| drainage companies near me | 1,900 | £15.00 | £205 |
| cctv drain survey | 3,600 | £14.37 | £196 |
| cesspit emptying | 720 | £12.49 | £170 |
| septic tank installation | 1,000 | £11.48 | £157 |
| drain lining | 320 | £11.38 | £155 |
| septic tank emptying | 4,400 | £10.47 | £143 |
| drain repair | 1,300 | £7.27 | £99 |
| drain unblocking | 27,100 | £6.03 | £82 |
UK Google Ads figures, pulled 24 September 2026. Each per-click price is Google's estimate from advertisers' bids, not an invoice.
At £82 to £376 a lead, your own ads cost more per lead than Leads Do Work's £25. What they buy is choice. You bid on surveys, lining and septic tank work, where one job pays for weeks of clicks, and each caller rang you alone:
- Bid on surveys and lining
- Ask about shared pipes on the form
- Run a separate septic tank campaign
- The call comes to you alone
- Pay Google direct, no markup
- The account stays yours
One £5,100 septic tank replacement covers a lot of £11.48 clicks, and an unblock at around £85 covers very few, which is why the searches you leave out matter as much as the ones you bid on. Drainage isn't one of the categories on Google's UK Local Services Ads list, so search ads are the route, and how much to spend on Google Ads helps you set the monthly figure.
Before you go out
Whose pipe it is decides who pays.
In law a drain serves one building, and the lateral drain is the part of it that runs from the property boundary to the sewer. On 1 October 2011, under the 2011 transfer regulations, private sewers and lateral drains that connected to a public sewer before 1 July 2011 became the water company's. Thames Water puts it plainly: "If your drain joins up with your neighbours, we own the joint part." That holds "even if they are under your garden or driveway."
United Utilities says that if the blocked pipework is theirs, "we'll clear it for free". Wessex Water says "We clear blockages on our network for free". And CCW, the water consumer body, tells anyone unsure whose pipe it is to contact their sewerage company and keep a record.
One house, inside the boundary
A drain serving only that home is the owner's, and so is the bill. Northumbrian Water tells those customers "you'll need a drainage contractor." This is the lead you want.
Shared, or past the boundary
A sewer serving two or more homes, or a blockage beyond the boundary, is usually the water company's. If you clear it and the customer finds out later, you've been paid for a job the water company would have done free.
Newer homes and septic tank runs
Anglian Water's guidance says the transfer skipped pipes running to septic tanks or cesspits and anything laid after 1 July 2011. Those stay private unless the water company has adopted them, so the owner pays, shared or not.
Insurance is the other payer. Admiral, for one, says a policy should cover accidental damage to underground drains the customer is responsible for, but adds "if there's no damage to the pipe or drain itself, we won't cover the cost of clearing blockages from them." A cracked pipe on the camera may make it a claim, so show the customer the footage.
None of the ten drain leads on Leads Do Work's feed said whether the pipe was shared. On your own website, the form can ask "Do your neighbours have the same problem?" before you set off.
Septic tanks and tankers
A septic tank lead arrives with the owner's legal duties.
The Environment Agency's general binding rules put the duties on the owner, and they are what turns a septic tank lead into a bigger job. "You must not discharge effluent from a septic tank to a watercourse." Where one does, the owner must act "as soon as possible": connect to a public foul sewer, swap the tank for a small sewage treatment plant, or put in a drainage field, with plans in place usually within 12 months. That rule once had a fixed deadline of 1 January 2020. It no longer has a date, only "as soon as possible".
What the owner must do
Desludge "at least once a year or in line with the manufacturer's instructions", using a registered waste carrier. Keep the discharge to 2 cubic metres a day or less if it goes to ground. Tell a buyer in writing that a sewage discharge is in place. And with a public foul sewer within 30 metres, the rules can't be met at all.
What a new install needs
gov.uk says a new sewage treatment system needs building regulations approval. Approved Document H puts a septic tank at least 7 metres from habitable rooms, a drainage field at least 15 metres from any building, and a rainwater soakaway no closer than 5 metres to a building or road.
The tanker needs its own registration
Emptying tanks and cesspits for customers means carrying their waste. gov.uk says any business that transports waste must register, and not registering can bring an unlimited fine. Registration costs £191.02, and an upper tier registration is renewed every 3 years for £130.25. Under the duty of care code, a tradesperson is responsible for the waste their work produces, including its transport and disposal, and breaking the duty has no upper limit on the fine. The Environment Agency's waste classification guidance lists septic tank sludge as non-hazardous.
Put your waste carrier number on your website and your quotes. The general binding rules tell every septic tank owner that whoever takes their sludge must be registered, and the Environment Agency keeps a public register they can check you against.
Through the year
Blocked drains peak in September and March, not in the cold months.
Leads Do Work tells drainage firms to expect "demand spiking during heavy rainfall and colder months". Zapo says only that volumes "vary by sector, location and season". UK searches for "drain unblocking near me" peaked in September and March and bottomed out in May, June, July and August.
UK searches for "drain unblocking near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Summer is the quiet stretch
Searches sat at 5,400 a month from May to August, about 1.8 times under the peak. December, at 6,600, was no busier than April at 6,600, so the cold months weren't the busy ones.
Septic tanks spiked in October
"septic tank emptying" hit 9,900 in October 2025 and stayed between 2,900 and 4,400 every other month. Owners must desludge at least once a year, so a regular emptying customer comes back.
On the job
An emergency unblock has no cooling-off. The reline you quote after it has 14 days.
Checkatrade prices an emergency call-out at £180. When a customer asks you round to clear a blocked drain, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 take that visit out of the usual cancellation right, because the customer "specifically requested a visit from the trader for the purpose of carrying out urgent repairs or maintenance". The survey, the lining or the dig you quote once the camera has been down is extra work, and that keeps the right.
- Clearing the blockage they called about: no 14 days
- The reline agreed on the doorstep: 14 days to cancel
- No cancellation notice given: up to 12 months more
- Starting the reline early? Get it in writing
Leaving out the cancellation notice is an offence as well as a risk. Hand it over with the relining quote, and if the customer wants the work done this week, keep their written request to start.
The manhole is a confined space
The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 name a sewer in their definition, and nobody should go into one unless the job can't reasonably be done from outside. A hospital worker clearing a drain in 2022 was later found unconscious in a manhole, and the NHS trust was fined £480,000, the HSE said in 2024, for failing to treat that manhole as a confined space. Rods, jets and cameras are how you keep out of it.
Where the lead came from
Blocked drains have already drawn an ICO fine.
SGS Home Protect, £70,000
In a notice dated 2 August 2023 the ICO fined SGS Home Protect Ltd for 24,241 calls to people on the Telephone Preference Service in 2021. One complaint in it reads "Blocked drain insurance. I'm complaining on behalf of my father who has no internet access." It was a seller of drain cover, not a drainage firm, and the calls were cold.
When you buy a lead, the Information Commissioner's Office expects checks proportionate to the risk, and says a seller's assurances aren't enough. We found no other ICO case naming drainage; the fines across home improvement are listed in our roofing leads guide.
Before paying for drainage leads, ask the seller:
- Which ad or website did it come from?
- Does the consent name my firm?
- How many other firms got this lead?
- Did anyone ask if the pipe is shared?
- Is it a clearance, a survey or a septic tank?
Keep the answers with each lead. If a complaint ever comes in, what you checked and when is what counts.
Which way to go
Buy the unblock for what's behind it, or don't buy it.
Buy per lead if
- A camera is on every van
- You quote relining on the day
- You answer inside minutes
- You check for a shared pipe
Think twice if
- You only rod and jet
- Up to five firms get the call
- The fee is a share of the job
- You work on your own
Run your own if
- You want surveys and lining
- You want septic tank work
- You want the call alone
- Your account, kept if you leave
Plenty of drainage firms mix the two: bought clearance leads to fill a quiet week, and their own ads bringing in the surveys and tank work. Every trade faces the same fork, and our guide to trade leads lays it out side by side. Weighing up a directory listing instead? Read is Checkatrade worth it first.
Our sources
Where these figures come from.
Bear in mind who wrote this: a firm that builds websites and runs Google Ads for trades. Where a bought drainage lead beats your own ads on price per lead, this guide says so, and each seller speaks in its own words.
We read the sellers' drainage pages and price lists on 24 September 2026, and pulled the UK search volumes and click prices from Google Ads that day too. Job prices are from Checkatrade. Pipe ownership comes from the Water Industry Act 1991, the 2011 transfer regulations and the water companies' own pages, including Thames Water. The septic tank rules are the Environment Agency's general binding rules, and waste carrier rules are from gov.uk. Pipe ownership follows the law in England and Wales; the septic tank and waste rules are England's, and Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own.
Questions drainage firms ask
Drainage leads, answered.
- How much do drainage leads cost in the UK?
- Leads Do Work publishes £25 a drain or sewer clearance lead and £22 a septic tank lead, both plus VAT, with an £11 weekly fee. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for drainage firms from £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT, about £40 per lead it estimates on the cheapest plan. PromoSEO starts at £500 a month, or around 30% of the job on its pay-per-conversion model. Bark, MyBuilder, MyJobQuote and Checkatrade don't publish a drainage price. Bought direct from Google, a click on a drainage search runs from £6.03 to £27.56.
- Are drainage leads exclusive?
- Some are. Zapo, PromoSEO and Leads Everyday say theirs go to one firm. Leads Do Work says its customers compete with 1 to 3 others and never more than 5, MyJobQuote lets up to 3 local trades quote, and MyBuilder charges each firm the homeowner shortlists.
- Who pays to clear a blocked shared drain?
- Usually the water company. Since 1 October 2011, sewers shared with neighbours and the lateral drain outside the boundary have belonged to the local water and sewerage company in England and Wales. United Utilities and Wessex Water both say they clear blockages on their own pipes for free. A drain that serves one house and sits inside its boundary is the owner's, so the owner pays. Pipes laid after 1 July 2011, and pipes running to a septic tank or cesspit, stayed private.
- Do I need a waste carrier licence to empty septic tanks?
- Yes. gov.uk says any business that transports waste must register as a waste carrier, and not registering can mean an unlimited fine. Carrying other people's waste costs £191.02 to register, and an upper tier registration is renewed every 3 years for £130.25. The general binding rules also tell septic tank owners that whoever takes their sludge must be a registered waste carrier.
- What must a septic tank owner do if it drains into a stream?
- Fix it as soon as possible. Under the Environment Agency's general binding rules, a septic tank must not discharge straight to a watercourse. The owner must connect to a public foul sewer, replace the tank with a small sewage treatment plant, or install a drainage field, with plans to do it usually within 12 months. A new treatment system needs building regulations approval. These are the rules for England.
- Can a customer cancel an emergency drain unblock?
- Not the unblock itself, if they asked you round for an urgent repair. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 take that visit out of the 14-day cancellation right. Any extra work you agree at the house, such as a reline after the camera survey, keeps the right, so give the cancellation information with that quote.
- When do people search for drain unblocking most?
- UK searches for "drain unblocking near me" peaked in September and March and were lowest in May, June, July and August, about 1.8 times quieter. December was no busier than April.
- Is it legal to buy drainage leads?
- Yes, as long as you check where they came from. The ICO says a buyer must carry out proportionate checks and can't just accept the seller's assurances. In 2023 it fined SGS Home Protect £70,000 over 24,241 calls to people on the Telephone Preference Service, selling blocked-drain insurance.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Surveys, relines and septic tanks in the diary, and nobody else rang about them.
We build your website and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, bidding on the surveys, lining and tank work you want rather than every blocked sink in the county. See what it costs, then tell us about your drainage firm and we'll set the campaign up around the jobs you want more of.