Last updated 25 September 2026
A £14 pest lead buys one wasp nest. A contract pays you every year.
Leads Do Work charges £14 plus VAT for a pest control lead from a householder, and sells packs that bring it nearer £3.18. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs pest control search ads from £400 a month plus VAT, roughly £40 for each lead it expects to bring in. Straight from Google, a pest control click costs £1.66 to £13.36.
Those prices are low next to the jobs, and that's the honest starting point. What no lead says is whether the customer will ever ring you again. A house with a wasp nest pays once. A café that signs up pays every year, and there wasn't a café on the lead list we read.
The whole lead, as sold
"Just saw a mouse or. Rat"
Northampton, 17 September, on Leads Do Work's public list of pest control leads. That's everything the customer wrote. It's a £14 lead for a job Checkatrade prices at £120 to £240 over two visits, if it turns out to be a job at all.
Where we stand
We don't sell pest control leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying pest control leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build pest controllers 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
Wasps, drain flies and a squirrel. Every lead on the list was a house.
The 10 latest leads on that list ran from 8 to 24 September. 3 were wasps, including a nest "underground just off the patio" and "1 or 2 nests" in a bungalow attic. 2 were drain flies, 2 were rats or a mouse, and the rest were a grey squirrel in a roof space, rabbits on a lawn and "microscopic bugs" nobody could see. The 4 that filled in the seller's form all said "domestic" and "one time extermination". Not one came from a business.
Here is what those leads cost per job won, at Leads Do Work's price and Zapo's, if you land one quote in every 3.
| Job | Typical UK price | Leads Do Work, £14 a lead | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Treat one wasp nest | £75 to £200 | £42 a win, 30% of the job | £120 a win, 87% of the job |
| Rat or mouse treatment, two visits | £120 to £240 | £42 a win, 23% of the job | £120 a win, 67% of the job |
| Bed bug treatment, one property | £100 to £280 | £42 a win, 22% of the job | £120 a win, 63% of the job |
| Squirrel control, two visits | £100 to £300 | £42 a win, 21% of the job | £120 a win, 60% of the job |
| A small commercial contract, first year (from) | from £400 | £42 a win, 11% of the job | £120 a win, 30% of the job |
| Bed bug heat and insecticide, up to 3 bedrooms | £1,000 to £1,500 | £42 a win, 3% of the job | £120 a win, 10% of the job |
Domestic prices from Checkatrade's pest control guide (table dated April 2026), each worked at the middle of its range. The contract is MyJobQuote's starting figure for a small commercial site, so it's a floor. One win in 3 is the rate MyJobQuote says its own trades should expect. Zapo's column is its £400 Launch plan shared across the 10 leads Zapo reckons that plan brings. VAT goes on top of both.
We treat 10 to 15 percent of the bill as a fair price for winning a customer. A £14 lead costs 23% of a rat job and 30% of a wasp nest, both over that line, but only 11% of a first contract year. Zapo's estimate is another matter, at 87% of the nest.
The pack is cheaper, and there's no refund
Leads Do Work's Smart Local pack is 20 pest leads for £63.60 plus VAT, about £3.18 each, or 7% of a wasp nest won. The catch is in its terms: no refunds on single leads, and leads "may also be supplied to other suitable local businesses".
A heat treatment carries any lead price
At £1,000 to £1,500, a bed bug heat treatment makes the lead price a rounding error: 3% at Leads Do Work, 10% at Zapo. Two of the drain fly leads may also be a drainage job; the drainage leads guide covers what those cost.
Your numbers
How much can one pest control lead cost before it stops paying you?
Pick a job, say how many quotes it takes you to win one, and enter a seller's price. The wasp nest and the contract year make a useful pair to compare.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A PEST CONTROL 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
£7
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £14 to £21
- Which per lead is
- £5 to £7
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 working rule of ours across every trade. No study sits behind it.
Who sells them
Eight firms will sell you pest leads, and seven keep the per-lead price to themselves.
Each row is taken from that seller's own website. "Not stated" means we looked and the seller doesn't say.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads Do Work | £14 a lead + VAT, £11 a week | 1 to 3 others, 5 at most | "compete with 1 to 3 tradesmen" |
| Zapo (formerly Get Work) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody | "exclusive leads to pest control companies" |
| PromoSEO | From £500 a month | Nobody | "Each enquiry goes to one provider" |
| Leads Everyday | Monthly, not published | Nobody | "never shared with competitors" |
| Digitool (agency) | £245 + VAT a month, plus ad spend | Nobody | "sent only to your pest control company" |
| MyJobQuote | Credits, price shown after sign-up | Up to 3 pest controllers | "Up to 3 local Pest Controllers" |
| Bark | Credits, price not published | Not stated | "The average price of Pest Controllers is £160" |
| Checkatrade (with Rated People) | 12-month plans, or pay per board lead | Off the board after 3 pay | "Memberships are for 12 months" |
Leads Do Work: a business lead costs £24, and the list had none
Its Connect price list has a pest control row at £14 from a householder and £24 from a business, both before VAT, plus the £11 weekly fee. You compete with 1 to 3 other firms on a normal job and never more than 5. Connect leads can be sent back for a manual review; pack leads can't.
Its pest page says homeowners are "dealing with unwanted rodents, insects or wildlife who need help fast" and that the operative who answers first "wins the job more often than the cheapest quote". The list bears that out: they're urgent, they're domestic, and each is one visit or two. If you want the £24 kind, ask how many business leads reached your area last month before you set a quota.
Zapo, PromoSEO, Leads Everyday and Digitool buy the clicks for you
Zapo says it "delivers exclusive leads to pest control companies" through search adverts, from £400 a month plus VAT, £200 of which is ad budget. PromoSEO starts at £500 a month, says pricing "varies by pest type, urgency and competition level" and that "Only verified enquiries are charged". Leads Everyday runs Google Ads for a monthly fee it doesn't print. Digitool, an agency, shows £245 a month plus VAT with a £500 minimum ad spend on top, and quotes one pest client at £10.77 a lead. All four are bidding in the auction covered below, on your behalf.
The marketplaces let three quote and keep the price quiet
MyJobQuote tells householders "Up to 3 local Pest Controllers will then be in touch". Checkatrade's Opportunities Board lists a lead until 3 trades have paid for it, and Rated People, whose sign-up lists residential and commercial pest control, now passes its leads to Checkatrade. Bark sells credits, valid for 3 months, and tells customers the average pest controller costs £160: that's the bill, not the lead. What three pest controllers ringing one worried householder does to the quote is covered in the shared-lead trap.
Who we couldn't find selling pest leads
Lead Pronto, which sells leads to several trades we've covered, has no pest control page. MyBuilder's pest control sign-up link lands on its general form. Striker Leads and FatRank run pest control campaigns but publish no price, so they're not in the table.
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 pest control 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 pest control 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 pest search is a restaurant looking for a contract.
"pest control leads", which a pest controller types to find a seller, gets about 10 searches a month at £6.87 a click. That's about 1.3 times the householder's "pest control near me" at £5.18, which runs to 14,800 searches a month. Top of the list is "pest control for restaurants" at £13.36. The lead prices below take each click and divide by 7.33%, WordStream's rate for home improvement searches that end in a lead. It comes from American accounts, so read them as a guide.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| pest control for restaurants | 90 | £13.36 | £182 |
| bed bug heat treatment | 1,600 | £8.76 | £120 |
| emergency pest control | 590 | £8.12 | £111 |
| bed bug pest control | 2,400 | £8.00 | £109 |
| pigeon control | 210 | £7.39 | £101 |
| commercial pest control | 390 | £6.49 | £89 |
| cockroach pest control | 590 | £5.85 | £80 |
| pest control contract | 90 | £5.55 | £76 |
| bed bug treatment | 8,100 | £5.47 | £75 |
| pest control near me | 14,800 | £5.18 | £71 |
| mice control | 880 | £5.08 | £69 |
| pest control | 22,200 | £4.82 | £66 |
| wasp nest removal | 6,600 | £4.55 | £62 |
| rat catcher near me | 720 | £4.47 | £61 |
| rat catcher | 4,400 | £1.66 | £23 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 25 September 2026. The click prices are Google's estimates from what rival advertisers bid, so your own bill won't match them to the penny.
For one-off house calls, a seller is cheaper. Your own ads come out at £23 to £182 a lead, against Leads Do Work's £14, and "wasp nest removal" alone is about £62 a lead. Where your own ads earn their place is the work that wasn't on the lead list: "commercial pest control" at about £89 a lead and "pest control contract" at £5.55 a click, for a customer worth from £400 a year on MyJobQuote's figures, who can sign again the year after. At the other end, "rat catcher" is only £1.66 across 4,400 searches, cheap enough to test in a town you want to break into.
- Bid on commercial and contract searches
- Send business searches to a contracts page
- Show your certificates on the ad and the website
- Turn wasp ads down after the summer
- Your name on the ad, not a seller's
- An account in your name that stays yours
Google Local Services Ads
Pest control made Google's UK category list, so there's a second paid route beside search ads. Google checks the business first, then bills per call you pick up, and UK accounts don't get credits back for bad leads. The sign-up steps and costs are in our Local Services Ads guide, and setting a monthly figure is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads.
What the lead doesn't check
The seller never asks for your certificate. Your supplier now does.
HSE says professional use of anticoagulant rodenticides "must follow the requirements of one of the UK rodenticide stewardship regimes", and its rodenticides page gives "no permanent baiting" as the kind of restriction a professional product can carry. The regime HSE names is CRRU UK's, and from 1 January 2026 it tightened: at the point of sale you now need either a CRRU approved course finished within the past 5 years, or membership of a CPD scheme CRRU recognises.
None of that is visible to a householder reading a lead seller's form, and all of it is something they'd want to know before letting someone put poison down near their dog. Say it on your own website and it becomes a reason to ring you.
Glue traps in England
Setting one for rodents without a licence has been a criminal offence since 31 July 2024. Natural England licenses professional pest controllers only, and says "Restaurants, pubs, takeaways and private houses are not likely to be considered exceptional circumstances." A one-site licence is £535; registering for the class licence costs £180.
Pigeons, not gulls
Natural England's general licence GL41 covers 2026 in England and lets the occupier, or someone they authorise, act against feral pigeons, Canada geese, jackdaws and monk parakeets for public health or safety, with no registration. Gulls aren't on its list of target birds, so a gull job needs checking before you quote it.
Bats and grey squirrels
Bats and their roosts are fully protected, with up to 6 months in prison for damaging a roost, and gov.uk lists insecticides among the things that can harm them. A grey squirrel caught alive can't be let go: gov.uk's pest control guidance says it must be killed humanely.
The grey squirrel "in roof space, need removed and access blocked" on that lead list is a real example. A customer who wants it taken away and released somewhere nice is asking for something you can't legally do, and the time to say so is on the phone, before the visit.
Selling the contract
No law makes a café sign a pest contract. Its inspector still wants the paperwork.
The food hygiene regulation says one thing about pests: "Adequate procedures are to be in place to control pests." Bromley Council's guidance for food businesses spells out what that means: "It is a legal requirement that you manage pest control (although there is no legal requirement to have a pest control contract)." The same guidance says a contract can help "prove a 'due diligence' (legal defence)", and that the visit reports give a visiting Environmental Health Officer evidence of what was done.
How to pitch it honestly
"It's the law" is wrong and an owner who checks will find out. "You have to be able to show the inspector what you do about pests, and our reports are that record" is right. Bromley also tells businesses to check for BPCA or NPTA certificates, so put yours where they'll see them.
Homes can sign too
MyJobQuote puts home contracts from £300 a year. A customer whose rats came back after the last treatment is the obvious one to offer it to. Commercial cleaners chase the same kind of repeat work; our cleaning leads guide covers how those contracts get won.
Some councils have stepped out of pest control altogether
Ceredigion County Council stopped its service after a decision on 29 February 2024 and now tells residents to call a private firm, pointing out that under the Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949 owners and occupiers are responsible for keeping their land free of rats and mice. Under section 4 of that Act a council can still serve notice on an owner to deal with them. Where your council has cut back, that owner is looking for someone, and your website is where they'll find you rather than a lead list.
Through the year
Wasps peak in August, mice in October, and pest searches follow both seasons.
Leads Do Work says "wasp callouts peak in summer, rodents move indoors in autumn and winter", and PromoSEO that "Seasonal demand alone cannot sustain predictable revenue." The searches bear out the summer and the autumn; winter is quieter than that sounds. UK searches for "pest control near me" peaked in October at 27,100, while late wasps and the first mice overlap, about 2.2 times the December and February lows.
UK searches for "pest control near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Wasp searches swing 21 times
"wasp nest removal" went from 880 searches in February to 18,100 in August. A wasp budget left running all winter is paying for clicks nobody is making, and a pack of wasp leads bought in spring may take months to fill.
Mice peak in autumn, then tail off
"mouse pest control" hit 2,900 in October, about 4 times its June to August low, and was already falling by the new year. Autumn, not winter, is when to have the rodent ads running.
Where the lead came from
Before you pay for a lead, find out who the customer thought they were asking.
The ICO's guidance on bought marketing data puts the checking on the buyer. Checks have to fit the risk, a seller's promise isn't one, and consent to be texted or emailed only counts if it names your firm. We found no ICO case against a pest controller; the home improvement cases are listed in our roofing leads guide.
Ask any pest lead seller:
- Which website did the customer fill in?
- Does their consent name my business?
- How many other pest firms got it?
- Home or business, and one visit or ongoing?
- Which pest, if they know?
File the answers with the lead. If a customer complains later, a dated note of what you asked is worth more than whatever the seller's sales page said.
Which way to go
Buy the wasp nests cheap. Build the contract book under your own name.
Buy per lead if
- You want summer wasp work fast
- You pick up between jobs
- A two-visit rat job suits you
- You know whose form it was
Think twice if
- You want commercial work
- Other firms get the same call
- The pack has no refunds
- The pest is a gull or a bat
Run your own if
- You want contracts that renew
- Your certificates sell for you
- You want the call alone
- Your account, kept if you leave
Doing both is sensible here. Cheap bought leads can fill a wasp summer, while your own ads and website go after the businesses that sign for a year. How pest control compares with every other trade is in our trade leads guide, and if a directory listing is tempting, read is Checkatrade worth it first.
Our sources
Where the pest control numbers came from.
We build websites and run Google Ads for trades, which is worth bearing in mind as you read. Where buying a pest lead works out cheaper than your own ads, this guide says so, and every seller is quoted from its own site.
We read the sellers' pages, price lists and Leads Do Work's lead list on 25 September 2026, and pulled the UK search and click data that day too. Job prices are from Checkatrade and MyJobQuote. The rodenticide rules come from HSE and CRRU, the glue trap and bird licences from Natural England on gov.uk and legislation.gov.uk, the food business position from the hygiene regulation and Bromley Council, and the council example from Ceredigion.
Questions pest controllers ask
Pest control leads, answered.
- How much do pest control leads cost in the UK?
- Leads Do Work charges £14 for a pest control lead from a householder and £24 from a business, plus VAT and an £11 weekly fee, or £63.60 for a pack of 20. Zapo, which used to be Get Work, runs pest control search ads from £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT, which is about £40 for each lead it expects. PromoSEO starts at £500 a month. A pest control click bought straight from Google runs from £1.66 to £13.36.
- Are pest control leads shared?
- Usually. Leads Do Work sends a job to 1 to 3 other firms as well as you, 5 at most, and MyJobQuote lets 3 pest controllers quote. Zapo, PromoSEO, Leads Everyday and the agency Digitool say theirs go to one firm only.
- Are the pest control leads you can buy domestic or commercial?
- The ones we could read were domestic. Leads Do Work's public list showed 10 pest leads in September: wasps, drain flies, rats and a mouse, a grey squirrel, rabbits. Every one that answered the form's questions said a domestic building and a one-time treatment. Searches like "pest control contract" are ones you'd have to bid on yourself.
- Does a food business legally need a pest control contract?
- No. The food hygiene rules say "Adequate procedures are to be in place to control pests", and Bromley Council's guidance says plainly that there is no legal requirement to have a contract. What a contract gives the business is a paper trail for the inspector and a due diligence defence if something goes wrong, which is the honest way to sell one.
- What proof do you need to buy professional rodenticides in 2026?
- From 1 January 2026, CRRU says the seller must see either a certificate from a CRRU approved course taken in the last 5 years or membership of a CPD scheme CRRU recognises. HSE requires professional users of anticoagulant rodenticides to follow a stewardship regime.
- Can pest controllers still use glue traps in England?
- Only under a Natural England licence, and only a professional pest controller can hold one. Setting a glue trap for rodents without one has been an offence since 31 July 2024. Natural England says restaurants, pubs, takeaways and private houses are unlikely to count as the exceptional circumstances a licence needs, and a one-site licence costs £535.
- Do you need a licence to deal with pigeons?
- Not an individual one for feral pigeons in England. Natural England's general licence GL41 for 2026 lets the owner or occupier, or someone they authorise, act against feral pigeons, Canada geese, jackdaws and monk parakeets to protect public health or safety, without registering. Gulls aren't on it. Proofing a building to keep birds out is a different job from killing them.
- When is the busiest time of year for pest control?
- For "pest control near me", October, at 27,100 UK searches, about 2.2 times the quietest months. Wasp searches swing much harder: "wasp nest removal" ran about 21 times higher in August than in February.
- Can pest controllers use Google Local Services Ads in the UK?
- Yes. "Pest control services" is one of the categories on Google's UK list. Google screens the business before the ads go live and charges for each answered call, and UK advertisers get no lead credits.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
A diary of contracts that renew, and every one of them rang you.
We build your website and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, aimed at the businesses and repeat customers worth a year of visits as well as this summer's wasp nests. See what it costs, then tell us about your pest control business and we'll plan the campaign around the work you want more of.