Last updated 16 October 2026
An MOT is capped at £54.85. The lead that brings it in is not.
Car garage work is mostly sold as quotes and commission, not leads. WhoCanFixMyCar charges £120 a month plus VAT and 10% of each booking you win on its cheapest plan. AutoFixFair takes 10 to 15% of each job. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for garages from £400 a month plus VAT, roughly £40 a lead on its own forecast. Buy the click yourself and a garage search costs £1.11 to £6.83.
The catch is the job most of those leads are for. The law caps what you can charge for a car's MOT, and the dearest search in the trade is somebody trying to book one.
The rule, word for word
"The maximum fee for a car is £54.85"
That's gov.uk's MOT costs page, which adds "You do not pay VAT on the fee." A click on "book mot" averages £6.83, which works out at about £93 a lead. This guide is for garages with a workshop and a ramp. If you go to the car, read mobile mechanic leads; if you fit garage doors, garage door leads. Dents, scratches and resprays are in car body shop leads, and car glass in windscreen leads. A tyre van is its own business, in mobile tyre fitting leads, and teaching learners in a dual-control car is in driving instructor leads. Buying cars that have reached the end of the road is in scrap car leads.
Where we stand
We don't sell garage leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying garage leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build car garages 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 paying for
A bought lead costs more than twice the MOT. A cut costs a fraction of the cambelt.
A quote platform or marketplace charges when the job is booked or done, as a share of it. A lead seller charges for the lead, so what you really pay depends on how many you buy to win one. Garage prices run from the capped MOT to a four-figure clutch, and the two ways of paying land very differently across that range.
Each job below is priced at the middle of its published range, then worked both ways: AutoFixFair's top rate of 15%, and Zapo's forecast cost per lead multiplied by the 3 quotes it takes to win one.
| Job | Typical UK price | A 15% commission | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car MOT, the legal maximum | £54.85 | £8 a job | £120 a win, 218% of the job |
| DPF clean (forced regeneration) | £85 to £100 | £14 a job | £120 a win, 129% of the job |
| Air con regas and check | £65 to £130 | £15 a job | £120 a win, 122% of the job |
| Interim service | £110 | £17 a job | £120 a win, 109% of the job |
| Front brake pads and discs | £190 to £240 | £32 a job | £120 a win, 56% of the job |
| Full service, small to large car | £170 to £395 | £42 a job | £120 a win, 42% of the job |
| Cambelt (timing belt) change | £600 to £1,000 | £120 a job | £120 a win, 15% of the job |
| Replace a clutch | £320 to £1,350 | £125 a job | £120 a win, 14% of the job |
The MOT row is gov.uk's maximum for a car, worked as £55. The others are Checkatrade's cost guides: DPF cleaning (June 2026), air con (March 2026), car service (March 2025), brake pads (April 2026), cambelt (May 2024) and clutch (March 2026, its labour, kit and fluid ranges added together). Zapo's column is its £400 plan spread over the 10 leads it forecasts, before VAT. Winning one quote in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its own trades; nobody publishes a figure for garages.
Our rough rule, not a measured one: winning a customer shouldn't cost more than 10 to 15 percent of what the job pays. A bought lead fails that badly on everything under a service: £120 to win an MOT is 218% of it, and on an interim service it is 109%. It only comes into the band on the cambelt and the clutch. The two ways of paying cost the same on a job of about £800.
If the booking is an MOT
You can't raise the price to cover the lead, because the price is set in law. The MOT pays when it turns into the advisories you fix, the service booked alongside it, and the same car next year. A platform that takes a cut only on what is booked through it costs you far less here than a lead you may lose.
If it's a cambelt or a clutch
Here the sums turn round. 15% of a £800 cambelt is £120, every time, while a bought lead costs about £120 per job won. The bigger the job, the more a percentage takes from you.
Your numbers
How much can a garage lead cost before the job stops paying you?
Pick a job, set how often you win a quote, then type in what a seller wants per lead. It opens on a full service. Switch to the MOT and then to the clutch to see why one price per lead can't suit both.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A GARAGE 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
£14
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £28 to £42
- Which per lead is
- £9 to £14
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 rule of thumb we use across every trade. Nobody has measured it for garages.
Who sells the work
Nobody sells car garage leads by the lead. Nine firms sell the work another way.
Lead Pronto has no garage page. Leads Do Work's price list has two rows with "garage" in them, a garage door at £25 and a garage conversion at £49, and nothing for a car. The work reaches garages through the nine below, each quoted from its own pages. "Not published" means the firm doesn't say.
| Who | What it costs | Who else gets the job | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| WhoCanFixMyCar | £120 + VAT a month and 10% of jobs won, or £250 to £999 a month flat | Every garage that quotes | "10% flat fee on jobs won" |
| AutoFixFair | 0% at first, then 10 to 15% commission | Garages and mobile mechanics quoting | "get competing prices" |
| Garage UK | Commission, rate agreed on a call | Not stated | "Only pay commission after you get paid" |
| Fixter | A rate Fixter negotiates, not published | Not stated | "We negotiate competitive rates with garages" |
| Zapo (formerly Get Work) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody | "exclusive leads to car garages" |
| Leads Everyday | Monthly fee, not published, clicks on top | Not stated on its motor page | "MOT bookings, servicing, bodywork" |
| Bark | £1.80 a credit, credits per lead not published | Up to 5 professionals | "up to 5 responses" |
| Good Garage Scheme | Membership, fee not published | Other members nearby | "no middle man" |
| Trust My Garage | IGA membership; no extra cost on top | Other members nearby | "no extra costs for you or your garage" |
WhoCanFixMyCar puts your price next to everyone else's
Its cheapest garage plan is "£120 / month + VAT" plus a "10% flat fee on jobs won", after an "Initial sign-up fee £99 +vat". The flat plans run from £250 to £999 a month with no sign-up fee, and the first term is twelve months at least. Drivers post a job, garages send quotes, and "The driver accepts your quote and makes a booking." Its MOT menu tells drivers to "Compare MOT quotes from local garages". On a job whose price has a legal ceiling, comparing quotes can only push it down.
On Starter, every booking carries the 10% on top of the monthly fee. Its AutoQuotes feature lets you "Set fixed prices for your choice of services to respond to quote requests instantly", and it offers routes into RAC and Green Flag networks and warranty repair work. Work out what 10% of your average booking comes to before you choose Starter over a flat plan.
Three marketplaces take a cut, and one sets the price
AutoFixFair charges nothing on your first 20 bookings or 90 days, then 10 to 15%, "only on the jobs we bring you", and you set your own prices. Garage UK is free to join and takes a commission once the customer has paid you, but "Your commission rate is discussed and agreed personally during your onboarding call", so you can't compare it until you've rung them. Its garage page lists engine rebuilds and replacements, with "More job types coming soon". Individual mechanics pay £49 a month instead.
Fixter works the other way round. It sells drivers an MOT "From £49" and a service "From £129", collects the car from their door, and says "We negotiate competitive rates with garages", which it puts "on average 30% cheaper than main dealerships". The customer belongs to Fixter, and the rate you are paid isn't published.
Zapo and Leads Everyday buy the clicks for you
Zapo's car garages page now reads "Car servicing & repair leads" and promises "exclusive vehicle maintenance leads within the next 14 days". On its £400 plan, £200 goes on the ads and it forecasts 10 leads, with volumes that "vary by sector, location and season". It is month to month. Leads Everyday has a motor trade page for "MOT bookings, servicing, bodywork, and specialist repairs", built from "Bespoke landing pages and targeted Google Ads"; its terms charge a flat monthly fee with the Google Ads spend paid to Google on top. Both bid in the same auction you can bid in yourself, so ask which searches they will pay for. An MOT click is the dearest one in the table further down.
Bark, and the two schemes that send drivers straight to you
Bark has no MOT category; garages sit in its Car Mechanics listing, where the average job is £180. Credits are £1.80 each, last 3 months, and "Each customer can receive up to 5 responses"; more in is Bark worth it. The Good Garage Scheme, run by Forté Lubricants, vets members and then tells drivers to "Contact the garage directly to book your vehicle in - no middle man", with 1,017,449 reviews behind it. Trust My Garage has "over 2,900 trusted members", all in the Independent Garage Association, and says there are "no extra costs for you or your garage". Neither prints its membership fee. What happens to a quote when several garages chase one driver is in the shared-lead trap.
Everything here about Zapo's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 1 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have garage 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 customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingWant to know how many people near you search Google for what you do each month? Message us your town and we'll send you the real numbers.
Check my areaBuying the click yourself
The dearest search in the trade is for the job you can't reprice.
About 10 people a month search "garage leads", and the click averages £16.80. A driver typing "car garage near me" costs £1.56, about 11 times less, and 74,000 of them do it every month. On the driver's side, the most expensive search is "book mot" at £6.83 a click, across 49,500 searches a month, for a job worth at most £54.85.
The last column turns each click into a lead using the 7.33% conversion rate WordStream measured for home improvement search ads in the United States. Garages aren't home improvement and the UK isn't the US, so read that column as a guide.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| book mot | 49,500 | £6.83 | £93 |
| mot and service near me | 12,100 | £6.40 | £87 |
| full car service | 3,600 | £4.37 | £60 |
| car service near me | 22,200 | £4.25 | £58 |
| clutch replacement | 2,400 | £3.93 | £54 |
| mot near me | 110,000 | £3.76 | £51 |
| dpf cleaning near me | 12,100 | £3.74 | £51 |
| brake pads replacement near me | 1,000 | £3.56 | £49 |
| cheap mot near me | 2,900 | £3.42 | £47 |
| timing belt replacement | 3,600 | £3.26 | £44 |
| car diagnostics near me | 2,900 | £2.64 | £36 |
| car repair near me | 33,100 | £1.82 | £25 |
| car garage near me | 74,000 | £1.56 | £21 |
| car air con regas near me | 8,100 | £1.11 | £15 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 1 October 2026. Each click price is an average Google works out from what advertisers bid, so what you actually pay will land near it rather than on it. "garage near me" is left out because it also catches fuel stations and storage garages.
So a lead off "book mot" costs about £93, more than the £54.85 you can charge. One off "mot near me" is about £51, and one off "car service near me" about £58. A lead off "timing belt replacement" costs about £44 for a job Checkatrade puts at £600 to £1,000. Across the table that is £15 to £93 a lead. What your own ads buy you is the choice of which jobs to pay for:
- Bid on cambelts, clutches and services, not every MOT
- Put your MOT price on the website before they ring
- Your garage name on the ad, not a platform's
- No success fee on the booking
- Clicks paid to Google, with nothing added
- An ad account that leaves with you
Google's Local Services Ads have no garage, mechanic or vehicle category in the UK, so ordinary search ads are the paid way in. Setting a monthly figure is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads, and running the campaign in the Google Ads guide for tradesmen.
The MOT customer
Next year's MOTs are already in your diary. DVSA tells them a month out.
Every car you test comes back due on a date anyone can look up. gov.uk's MOT history check shows, from the number plate alone, "when the next MOT is due", and in Great Britain which parts failed or "had minor problems". A car first needs an MOT by "the third anniversary of its registration", then every year, and the fine for driving without one is up to £1,000.
DVSA's free reminder goes by text or email "one month before" a car's MOT is due. And gov.uk says a driver "can get an MOT up to a month (minus a day) before it runs out and keep the same renewal date". So the useful window opens a month before the due date, about when DVSA's text lands. A garage that sends its own reminder a few days ahead of that is the first name the driver sees.
The advisories
The minor problems you note on a pass are on the public record and in your own. They are the reason to ring before the next test, and the repair work that pays for an MOT capped at £54.85.
The test station
Testing needs "suitable premises and approved equipment", an authorised examiner approved by DVSA, an MOT business manager who has taken an approved course, and an approved tester. A lead never asks whether you test; your website can say it first.
The price
gov.uk: "There's a maximum amount MOT test stations can charge." You can go under £54.85, never over it, and there is no VAT on it. A discount war on a platform only has one direction to go.
None of this needs a lead seller. The customer list is yours, the due dates are fixed, and DVSA has already told you when they will be looking. What it takes is a website that takes the booking and a way to send the reminder.
What drivers worry about
The newer car you want on the ramp comes with a warranty question attached.
The CMA's guidance on motor vehicle agreements (June 2023) says a maker's warranty made conditional on having repair and maintenance done "only by members of the Authorised Network" may be caught by competition law. Terms that "clearly state the consumer's right to use the services of an independent repairer without losing the benefit of the warranty" are, in its words, "unlikely to give rise to competition concerns".
The same guidance lets a maker refuse a claim caused by "a failure on the part of a repairer to carry out a particular repair or maintenance operation in the correct manner", or by a faulty part from somebody else. So the honest line for your website is that you service to the maker's schedule and keep the records. Say it where a driver with a two-year-old car will read it.
A booking taken online can be cancelled. One made at the counter can't
The Consumer Contracts Regulations call a deal made without "the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer" a distance contract. That is every booking from a website, a platform or a phone call. The cancellation rules in Part 3 apply to "distance and off-premises contracts", so a job agreed face to face at your counter, an on-premises contract, is outside them.
- An MOT or service booked online: 14 days to cancel
- Starting inside that time: get their request in writing
- Extra work agreed in person when they drop the car off: on-premises
- Extra work agreed by phone once the car is on the ramp: a distance contract again
A distance booking is still worth having. Just send the cancellation information with the confirmation, and keep the text where the driver asks you to go ahead.
Through the year
MOT searches climb in spring and autumn. Air con goes up 69 times.
Zapo says its volumes vary "by sector, location and season" without saying when. The searches say it for garages. "mot near me" reached 135,000 a month in September, October and March and sat at 90,500 in 7 months, a swing of about 1.5 times. No source we read explains the pattern, so plan around it rather than guess at it.
UK searches for "mot near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
UK searches for "car air con regas near me", by month
The same twelve months, and the garage job with the sharpest season.
Air con sells itself in June
"car air con regas near me" went from 390 in December to 27,100 in June, and at £1.11 a click it is the cheapest search in the table. Checkatrade puts a regas at £65 to £130 depending on the gas. Whoever does it needs an F gas qualification. Where regas work comes from, and why an empty system can't legally be refilled, is in car air con leads.
The MOT never goes quiet
Even the lowest months for "mot near me" held 90,500 searches. The MOT is steady work; the peaks are where your reminder list and a slightly bigger budget earn the most. A DPF clean and a cambelt are the year-round jobs worth bidding on. A DPF clean is legal work; a DPF delete is not, and our remapping leads guide explains why.
Where the lead came from
A platform booking and a bought lead are two different things to check.
A booking through a platform arrives with the driver signed up to the platform's terms. A bought lead arrives as somebody's details, and the Information Commissioner's Office says the business using them has to make its own checks, sized to the risk, rather than take the seller's word. If you text or email them, the consent has to name you. We found no ICO fine naming a garage or an MOT centre; the home improvement cases are in our roofing leads guide.
Before you pay for garage work, ask:
- Is it a booking, a quote request or a set of contact details?
- What is the success fee, in writing?
- How many other garages see the same job?
- Who sets the price the driver sees?
- Does the consent name my garage?
Keep the success fee in writing beside each booking, so the invoice and the fee can be checked against each other.
Which way to go
Let a platform fill quiet ramps. Keep your MOT list and the big repairs for yourself.
Use a platform if
- Ramps sit empty midweek
- MOTs and services are the work
- You pay only on bookings
- You can quote fast
Think twice if
- The success fee is not in writing
- A lead costs more than £54.85
- The platform sets your price
- Cambelts and clutches carry a cut
Run your own if
- You remind last year's MOTs
- You want cambelts and clutches
- You want the driver to come back to you
- The ad account is yours to take
The money in a garage is the car that comes back: the advisories, the service, next year's MOT. A platform can introduce that car once; after that it should be your reminder that brings it in. How the same choice plays out in other trades is in our trade leads guide, and if you also send a van out, the commission sums for that are in mobile mechanic leads.
Our sources
Where every garage figure here came from.
You should know who's talking: we build garages' websites and run their Google Ads, and no platform pays us. On an MOT a platform's cut beats paying for your own clicks, and the tables above show that too.
We read each platform and seller on its own website, most recently on 16 October 2026, and pulled the UK search and click data from Google Ads on 1 October 2026. The MOT fee, reminder, history and test station rules are from gov.uk's MOT costs, reminder, history and test station pages. Job prices are Checkatrade's cost guides for DPF cleaning, air con and cambelts, plus its servicing, brake and clutch guides. The warranty point is the CMA's guidance, cancellation is from legislation.gov.uk, and lead consent from the ICO.
Questions garage owners ask
Garage leads, answered.
- How much do garage leads cost in the UK?
- Very little car garage work is sold by the lead. WhoCanFixMyCar's cheapest plan is £120 a month plus VAT and 10% of each job you win, after a £99 sign-up fee; its flat plans run £250 to £999 a month. AutoFixFair takes 10 to 15% of each job after your first 20 bookings. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for garages from £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT, about £40 per lead it forecasts on its cheapest plan. A click on your own garage ad costs £1.11 to £6.83.
- Can a garage charge more than the maximum MOT fee?
- No. gov.uk says there is a maximum amount MOT test stations can charge, and for a car it is £54.85, with no VAT on the fee. You can charge less. That cap is why a bought lead or an expensive click can cost more than the MOT itself, and why the MOT only pays if the car comes back for its service and repairs.
- What does WhoCanFixMyCar charge garages?
- It sells four monthly plans. Starter is £120 a month plus VAT and a 10% flat fee on jobs won, after a £99 plus VAT sign-up fee. Standard, Premium and Pro are £250, £499 and £999 a month plus VAT, with no sign-up fee and no per-job fee listed. Drivers post a job and garages send quotes, so you are pricing against the other garages near you, and the driver picks.
- When do people search for an MOT most?
- In the last 12 months, UK searches for "mot near me" reached 135,000 a month in September, October and March, and sat at 90,500 in 7 months. Air con is the big seasonal job: "car air con regas near me" went from 390 in December to 27,100 in June.
- Does servicing a new car at an independent garage void the warranty?
- The CMA's guidance on motor vehicle agreements says a maker's warranty made conditional on having servicing done only within its authorised network may breach competition law, and that terms telling drivers they can use an independent repairer without losing the warranty are unlikely to raise concerns. A maker can still refuse a claim caused by a repair done wrongly or by a faulty part from someone else, so follow the maker's schedule and keep the records.
- Can a customer cancel a garage booking made online?
- A booking made online or over the phone is a distance contract, and the Consumer Contracts Regulations give the customer 14 days to cancel a service. To start the work inside that time you need their express request. A job agreed face to face at your counter is an on-premises contract, and the cancellation rules don't apply to it.
- Is it legal to buy garage leads?
- Yes, as long as you can show where each one came from. The ICO puts the checking on the business buying the data and says a seller's word is not enough. For texts and emails, the consent has to name your business. We found no ICO fine naming a garage or MOT centre.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Your ramps full of your own customers, with no success fee off the top.
We build your website and run Google Ads from an account in your own name, aimed at the services and repairs that pay rather than every capped MOT in the county. See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll build the campaign around the work you want more of.