Last updated 23 September 2026
Heat pump leads: grant leads and paying customers are two different buys.
Short answer: the cheapest published heat pump lead we found is Lead Pronto's, from £15. A click on a heat pump search in Google costs £3.02 to £18.70. Most sellers don't publish a price at all.
The price matters less than what the lead is. Nearly every seller leads with the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, yet MCS says only 43% of the certified heat pumps installed in 2025 went through it. The other 57% were paid for without the grant. Those are two different customers, and a grant lead comes with rules that can stop the job before you've fitted anything.
Two dates to put on every quote
Both run out in March 2027.
The 0% VAT rate on residential heat pumps ends on 31 March 2027 and goes back to 5% from 1 April. The extra £1,500 for homes on oil or LPG with no mains gas runs "Until March 2027". A customer weighing it up over the winter is on a clock, and they may not know it.
Where we stand
We don't sell heat pump leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying heat pump leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build heat pump 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 you're actually buying
Most searches are for the grant. Most installs aren't.
Look at what people type into Google. The two grant searches get about 9 times as many searches a month as the two searches for an installer. So when a seller runs ads to fill its lead pool, the grant is the obvious hook, and a lot of what gets sold as "heat pump leads" starts with somebody asking about free money.
| Search | Looking for | Searches a month | Per click |
|---|---|---|---|
| heat pump grant | The grant | 5,400 | £8.21 |
| boiler upgrade scheme | The grant | 4,400 | £7.34 |
| heat pump installers near me | An installer | 880 | £11.95 |
| air source heat pump installers | An installer | 260 | £18.70 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. Monthly searches are averages in rounded bands.
Then look at who actually buys. MCS counted over 60,000 certified heat pump installations in 2025, the most ever, and 43% of them were delivered under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. More than half the market paid without it. The sellers' own pages show which side they're fishing:
- Lead Pronto: "Most of the homeowners in our grant-route campaigns are applying through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme."
- Asked if they expect the grant to cover everything, Lead Pronto answers: "Some do".
- Leads 2 Trade qualifies its leads by asking if they know about the scheme.
- GMS Leads' grant leads are homeowners "in receipt of at least one government benefit".
Nobody publishes whether grant leads close better or worse than able-to-pay ones, so we won't pretend to know. What you can do is stop treating them as one product. Ask the seller which campaign a lead came from, a grant campaign or an installer one, and price them separately in your head.
Renewables Excellence, which sells to installers itself, puts the grant-lead problem in its own words: "You pay £50+ for a heat pump lead, only to find the customer's home has single-glazed windows, micro-bore pipework, and they don't even qualify for the BUS grant." That's its claim, not a measured figure, but it's the one every installer recognises.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme, from the installer's side
Six rules that decide whether a grant lead becomes a job.
The grant is £7,500 towards an air or ground source heat pump in England or Wales. No ranking seller's page mentions what has to go right for it to be paid. Check these on the first call, before you book a survey:
- They own the property.
- They're replacing fossil fuel heating. Hybrids get no grant.
- You're MCS certified. Since 28 April 2026 it's the only scheme BUS accepts.
- There's budget left. Vouchers go first come, first served until the year's cap.
- The voucher is live. Air source lasts 3 months, ground source 6.
- You install and commission within 120 days of applying.
The budget is half spent
This year's pot is £400 million for 2026/27. Ofgem's figures show £199.6 million left at 31 August 2026, with seven months of the scheme year still to run, and vouchers go first come, first served until the cap is reached. The scheme itself isn't going anywhere: the Warm Homes Plan funds it out to 2029/30, around £2.7 billion in total.
You apply, and you get paid
The installer applies on Ofgem's website, and the grant is paid to the installer, not the homeowner. Since 28 April 2026 you must take it off the customer's upfront cost. So the paperwork and the cash flow both sit with you.
None of this makes a grant lead a small job. The median air source install from April to June 2026 was £12,908 including the grant, and the grant comes to you. The customer pays about £5,408, you bill the full £12,908. A grant lead is a full-price job with an admin gate in front of it. What it costs you is time spent on leads that fail the gate.
Your ceiling
A £12,908 job can carry a much dearer lead than you think.
These are the median installed prices from the government's own scheme statistics, and the most a lead for each should cost you if you win one quote in 3.
| Job | Median installed price | Most a won job should cost | Most a lead should cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air source heat pump, installed (median) | £12,908 | about £1,936 | about £645 |
| Ground source heat pump, installed (median) | £27,232 | about £4,085 | about £1,362 |
Prices: DESNZ BUS statistics, Apr-Jun 2026, including the grant value. The ceilings use a rough rule: winning a job should cost about 10 to 15 percent of what it's worth, counting the quotes you lost to get it. It's a rule of thumb, not a measured figure.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A HEAT PUMP 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
£645
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £1,291 to £1,936
- Which per lead is
- £430 to £645
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
On those numbers, a £15 lead on an air source job is nothing, and so is £50. The ceiling is so high that price per lead is rarely what sinks a heat pump installer. What sinks them is buying leads that were never going to turn into a £12,908 job. A ground source install at £27,232 has even more room.
The number no seller prints
Work out the cost per install, not the cost per lead.
Every seller quotes a price per lead. None quotes a price per installation sold, which is the only one that tells you if the money came back. Lead Pronto comes closest, because it publishes its own conversion figures:
- "24% of heat pump leads book an appointment"
- "82% of booked appointments are attended"
- "18 of every 100 heat pump leads our partners work end in an installation sold"
Put that last one against its floor price of £15. A hundred leads cost £1500 and sell 18 installs, so you're paying about £83 in leads for each one. Against a job whose ceiling is about £1,936, that's a bargain, if the figure holds for you.
Three things to check before you rely on it. It's Lead Pronto's own figure, with no source behind it. £15 is a "from" price, and its page doesn't say whether VAT is on top. And its refund terms aren't published: "A rejection policy is included in every campaign, agreed against the commercials for that campaign before it goes live." Get that policy in writing.
Then do the same sum with your own numbers after a month of any source: what you spent, divided by the installs it sold. That's the figure to compare sellers on, and the one to compare them with running your own Google Ads.
Read their pages twice
Where the heat pump lead sellers contradict themselves.
We read each seller's own product pages and FAQs. Some of them say two different things about the same product, and one is still selling against a grant that isn't the one being paid today.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets it | If a lead is bad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead Pronto | From £15 a lead, no contract. VAT not stated | One installer, "never resold" | Agreed per campaign, not published |
| Leads 2 Trade | By phone only | From 1 installer to 4, by tier | Within 72 hours, on listed grounds |
| Boiler Guide | Not published. No contract | "up to only 3 companies" | Not published |
| GMS Leads | Not published | "never re-sold" | A 9-day replacement period |
| Renewables Excellence | £49 a month featured slot | One business per city or county | A directory, not sold leads |
Leads 2 Trade: three installers, or two?
Its air source tiers are Hot Key, "unique leads to 1 installer"; Premium, "sent out to a maximum of 3 installers"; Qualified, "sent out up to 4 times"; and Lead Vault, "first come first served". But its FAQ says Premium is "only supplied to yourself and one other company". Ask which is true before you pay Premium prices.
You can reject a lead "within 72 hours" if the customer changed their mind, can't be reached after 72 hours, is a duplicate ("proof required"), or their job "is not within the next 6 months". Cancellation notice runs 14 to 30 days, prices are phone-only, and you need MCS registration and "At least one year's stable trading history".
Its own description of how a lead arrives is worth reading: people click an advert and are sent to its website, and "At this point they may STILL just be searching for information." You're buying somebody else's ad click, plus their margin.
Renewables Excellence: £489 or £499?
It says "We are a premium directory, not a lead broker", funded by "hardware manufacturers, energy tariff affiliates, and our Featured Installers". The featured slot is "£49/month or £489/year" in one place and "£49/month or £499/year" in its FAQ, on the same site. It takes "one heat pump business per city/county", which is a real limit on competition, and requires MCS and TrustMark. You're paying for a listing, so the customer still chooses whether to ring you.
GMS Leads: an old grant on the page
GMS sells exclusive air source leads that are "never re-sold", with a "nine (9) consecutive day replacement period", which is one of the clearer bad-lead terms we found. Its page still cites the "Green Homes Grant Scheme". The grant paying for heat pumps today is the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. If the page is out of date, ask how current the campaign behind the leads is.
Boiler Guide and Geordie Leads
Boiler Guide says it gets "over 300 air source heat pump enquiries every month" and sells each to "up to only 3 companies", with "No contract, no membership fees". Geordie Leads offers ground source leads with "No long-term contracts, no minimum volumes", and says "Many GSHP enquiries come from homeowners who have researched BUS funding". Neither publishes a price.
A lead sold to three installers costs more than its price once you count the quotes you lose. We work through that in the shared-lead trap, and the same maths for another trade in roofing leads.
Everything here about Leads 2 Trade's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 23 September 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have heat pump 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 heat pump customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingRunning your own
Buy the installer search, skip the grant search.
A click isn't a lead. The only published conversion rate for home improvement is WordStream's: 7.33% of search clicks become a lead. It's US data, so treat it as a rough guide. Here's what that makes a lead on each heat pump search.
| Job | Search | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding an installer | air source heat pump installers | £18.70 | £255 |
| Installers near me | heat pump installers near me | £11.95 | £163 |
| Grant searches | heat pump grant | £8.21 | £112 |
| Installation | air source heat pump installation | £7.79 | £106 |
| Boiler Upgrade Scheme | boiler upgrade scheme | £7.34 | £100 |
| Servicing | heat pump service | £6.32 | £86 |
| Checking the cost | air source heat pump cost | £5.34 | £73 |
| Ground source | ground source heat pump | £3.68 | £50 |
| Repair | heat pump repair | £3.02 | £41 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. These are bid-based estimates, so most advertisers pay less per click.
So on price per lead, a £15 bought lead beats running your own ads, easily. The dearest search, somebody looking for an air source installer, works out at about £255 a lead. It's dear because it's the search with the money behind it: that person has already decided and wants somebody to fit it. Still well under the ceiling above. And what you're buying is different:
- The lead is yours alone. They searched, saw your ad and rang you.
- You pick the search. Bid on installers, and leave the grant hunters alone.
- Your ads run in the hours you choose, when someone can pick up.
- No seller takes a margin on the click. You pay Google directly.
- Turn it up in the autumn and down in December, with nothing to sit out.
- Work with us and the Google Ads account and its history stay yours if you leave.
Google Local Services Ads
HVAC is one of Google's UK categories. You pass Google's screening and pay per answered call rather than per click, so the cost lands only when a homeowner actually rings. More in our Local Services Ads guide.
MCS's own installer search
Certified installers "automatically appear" on MCS's Find an Installer page. It won't fill a diary on its own, but it's where a careful customer checks you, so make sure your listing matches the name on your website and your quotes.
When to spend
Heat pump demand dies every December.
Searches for "air source heat pump installation" ran about 6.1 times higher in September than in December over the last twelve months. The scheme's own application figures show the same pattern, year after year.
UK searches for "air source heat pump installation", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
| Year | BUS applications, November | December |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 1,666 | 924 |
| 2023 | 2,557 | 1,378 |
| 2024 | 3,239 | 2,844 |
| 2025 | 5,328 | 2,686 |
Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics, table M1.1.
Summer isn't quiet any more
July 2026 had 8,150 voucher applications, "the highest number of voucher applications in a month since the scheme started". Don't switch your ads off for the summer on the assumption nobody wants heating in July.
What to do about it
Cut spend in December, not to zero. From January, the March 2027 dates give every quote a reason to be signed: the 0% VAT and the off-gas £1,500 both end that month. Say so, with the dates, in writing.
Grant leads and the ICO
"Free grant" is the pitch the ICO keeps fining.
Buying leads is legal. But the Information Commissioner's Office says a business buying marketing data "must undertake proportionate checks and due diligence", and that "It is not enough to simply accept a third party's assurances." In energy grants, it has had plenty to act on:
Lead Pronto Ltd, £30,000
Fined in November 2025. The ICO describes it as "a lead generation company which generates and sells leads of potential customers in the energy and home improvements sector". It sent 76,605 texts reading "Claim a Government-backed Free Boiler Grant!" between October 2023 and February 2024, with consent bundled into agreeing to its privacy policy. It gave the ICO a list of 18 clients it generated data for, "but none of these companies were listed in the privacy policy. It cannot be argued that consent was informed."
A self-employed lead generator, £200,000
Bharat Singh Chand, fined in September 2025 over 966,449 texts. "99% of these complaints related to messages about ECO4 or energy saving grants".
Darian Bishop, trading as ECO4U, £50,000
Fined in May 2025 for 194,110 calls to people on the Telephone Preference Service about boiler and solar grants, "with the inference made during the calls that he was connected to a government scheme."
No ICO case names heat pumps. These are the closest, and they share the hook heat pump leads are sold on. Ofgem warns homeowners that scammers pose as Ofgem, and that it will never "come to your property". So before you buy, ask the seller:
- Who collected this lead, and was it you?
- What did the customer agree to, and does it name my business?
- How old is it? Third-party consent over six months old shouldn't be used.
- Did any ad or text promise a free or government heat pump?
Handing the calling to someone else doesn't hand over the responsibility. Skean Homes blamed its lead generation provider in January 2024 and was still fined £100,000. Keep the seller's consent records for every grant lead you buy.
From lead to install
Ring fast, qualify on the first call, quote at their table.
Call first, and qualify on the grant rules
A heat pump lead that turns out to rent, or isn't replacing fossil fuel heating, or is counting on a grant the year's budget has run out of, is a lead you've paid for twice: once to the seller and once in a wasted survey visit. Call quickly, and make the six rules above your first questions on the phone. The research on how fast to call is in our roofing leads guide.
Use the grant rules as your qualifying script
Own the home? Oil, LPG or gas now? England or Wales? Wanting it fitted in the next few months? Four questions sort a grant lead from a wasted survey, and they're the same four the scheme will ask. The ones who fail aren't always dead: they can still pay without the grant, like most of 2025's installs did.
Know the rules when you quote at their home
Agree a heat pump quote at the customer's kitchen table after a survey and it's an off-premises contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013:
- They can cancel within 14 days
- Leave out the cancellation information and it's a criminal offence
- Without it, their right to cancel runs up to 12 months longer
- Want to fit before the fortnight is up? They must ask for it in writing
So which route?
Which heat pump leads suit which installer.
Buy grant leads if
- You're MCS certified already
- You can run BUS paperwork fast
- You can ring back within the hour
- You'll test a small batch first
Walk away if
- The seller won't say who else gets it
- Refund terms aren't in writing
- The ad promised a free heat pump
- You're tied in before you've tested
Run your own if
- You want the paying customers
- You want to pick the searches
- You want nobody else quoting
- You're planning past March 2027
You don't have to pick one. Buy exclusive grant leads to keep the vans busy now, and run your own ads on the installer searches, where the customers with their own budget are. The grant funding runs to 2029/30. The customers who pay without it were most of the market in 2025, and no seller we read prices them as a separate product.
Why us
Why listen to a company that runs ads?
Fair question. We build websites and run Google Ads for trades, so we'd rather you ran your own leads. That's exactly why we showed you where a £15 bought lead beats our route on price, and quoted every seller from their own pages rather than our opinion of them.
The sellers' prices and terms were read on their own sites. Click prices and searches are Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. The grant rules come from gov.uk and Ofgem, the installed prices and application figures from the government's Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics, and the 2025 install split from MCS. The enforcement cases are the ICO's own notices, and the response-time research is covered in our roofing leads guide.
Straight answers
What heat pump installers ask about buying leads.
- How much do heat pump leads cost?
- The lowest published price we found is Lead Pronto's: exclusive air source heat pump leads "from £15 per lead", with VAT not stated. Renewables Excellence charges £49 a month for a featured directory slot. Leads 2 Trade, Boiler Guide and GMS Leads do not publish a price. Buying the click yourself on a heat pump search costs £3.02 to £18.70.
- Are heat pump leads exclusive?
- It depends on the seller and the tier. Lead Pronto says every heat pump lead "goes to one installer only and is never resold", and GMS Leads says the same of its air source leads. Boiler Guide sells to "up to only 3 companies". Leads 2 Trade runs four tiers, from one installer up to four, plus a first-come-first-served vault.
- Do I need MCS certification to buy heat pump leads?
- For grant work, yes. Every Boiler Upgrade Scheme installation must be MCS certified, and since 28 April 2026 MCS is the only certification scheme the grant accepts. Leads 2 Trade asks for MCS registration and a year of stable trading, and Renewables Excellence asks for MCS and TrustMark.
- What is a Boiler Upgrade Scheme lead?
- A homeowner who wants a heat pump through the grant: £7,500 off an air or ground source heat pump in England or Wales, if they own the home and are replacing fossil fuel heating. You apply on their behalf on Ofgem's site, the grant is taken off their bill and paid to you, and you have 120 days from applying to install and commission it.
- Why don't grant leads always close?
- Because the grant has conditions a lead can fail. The homeowner has to own the property and be replacing fossil fuel heating. Vouchers are first come, first served until the year's budget runs out, an air source voucher is only valid for 3 months, and the install has to happen within 120 days of applying.
- Is buying heat pump leads legal?
- Yes, but the checks are yours. The ICO says a business buying marketing data must do proportionate due diligence and that it is not enough to accept the seller's assurances. It has fined several firms selling energy grants, including Lead Pronto (£30,000, for texts offering a "Government-backed Free Boiler Grant") and a self-employed lead generator (£200,000, mostly ECO4 and energy saving grant messages).
- When is demand for heat pumps highest?
- In the UK search data behind this guide, "air source heat pump installation" peaked in September and fell to its lowest in December. Boiler Upgrade Scheme applications bottom out in December every year, and July 2026 set the scheme's record, 8,150 applications in a month.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
A diary full of heat pump installs nobody else was quoting for.
See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll show you what your own heat pump leads look like, from the customers searching for an installer, sold to nobody else. Got a question first? Just message us.