Last updated 16 October 2026
A physio lead costs about £40. A patient who finishes the course pays £386. Price the lead against the course.
Only one seller prints a price per physio lead, and it's a starting price in euros: WhatClinic charges per lead, from €10. Zapo runs search ads for clinics from £400 a month plus VAT and forecasts about £40 a lead. Bark sells credits at £1.80 each. Booking apps take 20% to 35% of a new client's first booking. And the insurers run the biggest patient lists of all, with fees they don't publish.
Reaching a clinic owner who types "physio marketing" costs a bidder £8.14; reaching a patient who types "physio" costs £5.12. The dearer click belongs to people selling to physios. Running a trade rather than a clinic? Start at our guide to trade leads.
From Bupa's own page for physios
"receive agreed fees for the care and treatment that you provide our customers"
That line is on Bupa's physio network page, beside a directory it says gets over 100,000 visits a week. The fees themselves aren't on it. They sit in the application form.
Where we stand
We don't sell physio leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying physio leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build physio clinics 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
Priced against one session, a lead loses money. Against a course, it doesn't.
A new patient books an assessment and then, if it goes well, a run of follow-ups. Bupa's pay-as-you-go prices put an initial assessment at £72 to £95, and Nuffield Health's follow-ups start at £49 outside London. Bupa says the average treatment plan takes 4 to 6 sessions. That's why the table runs from one follow-up to a full course.
| What the patient buys | Typical UK price | Zapo, about £40 a lead | Survey median, £25 a patient |
|---|---|---|---|
| One follow-up session | £49 to £72 | £120 a patient, 197% of it | 41% of it |
| Initial assessment | £72 to £95 | £120 a patient, 143% of it | 30% of it |
| Assessment plus three follow-ups | £219 to £311 | £120 a patient, 45% of it | 9% of it |
| Assessment plus five follow-ups | £317 to £455 | £120 a patient, 31% of it | 6% of it |
Session prices from Nuffield Health (outside London, the low end) and Bupa (Greater London, the high end), both read October 2026. The courses add three or five follow-ups to the assessment, after Bupa's 4 to 6 sessions; they are our example. Ranges are worked at their middle. Winning one in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its own trades; nobody publishes one for physios. The £25 is the median cost of a new patient in HMDG's Private Practice Barometer, a clinic marketing agency's survey of 715 owners.
Our rough rule is that winning a customer should cost about 10 to 15 percent of what they're worth. On Zapo's forecast, a patient who books one follow-up and stops costs 197% of what they paid. One who finishes a course of 6 costs 31%.
Count courses, not first visits
HMDG's survey found 5.5 sessions per episode on average. A lead source is only as good as the share of its patients who come back after the assessment, so track that by source.
Most clinics don't know their number
In the same survey, only 25.8% of owners knew what a new patient cost them. The £25 median comes from that quarter. Work out yours before you compare it with anybody's.
Your numbers
What can a new patient cost before the course stops paying you?
Each button below is something a patient might pay you. It opens on a course of 6. Put in how many leads it takes you to book one patient, then a seller's price per lead, and flick between one follow-up and a full course to watch the same lead go from a loss to a fair price.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A PHYSIO 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
£19
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £39 to £58
- Which per lead is
- £13 to £19
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 band is a rough guide we use for every business we work with. Nobody has measured it.
Who sells them
Physio leads come as ads, credits, commissions, memberships and listings.
The big trade lead sellers don't touch physio: Leads Do Work's price list has no physio row, and Checkatrade, MyJobQuote, Rated People and TrustATrader have no category for it. What's left is below, in each firm's own words. "Not stated" means the firm doesn't say.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the patient | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapo | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody | "exclusive leads to physiotherapy clinics" |
| WhatClinic | Per lead, from €10 | The patient picks one clinic | "Our users choose a specific clinic" |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80 each, count not published | Up to 5 professionals | "up to 5 responses from professionals" |
| Fresha | 20% of the first booking, £4 minimum | Not stated | "20% one-time commission" |
| Booksy | £40 a month, Boost 30% of a first visit | Not stated | "One-time 30% fee" |
| Treatwell | 35% of the first booking, plus a monthly fee | Not stated | "0% commission for repeat bookings" |
| Physio First | £400 to £4,350 a year | Other members listed | "Physio Directory Listing" |
| CSP Physio2u | Free, or £49 a year + VAT | Over 8,000 practices listed | "A special banner saying 'Promoted'" |
Zapo buys Google clicks and calls them exclusive leads
Its physiotherapy page says it "delivers exclusive leads to physiotherapy clinics, physiotherapists and osteopaths" from search engine ads. Pay £400 for the entry plan and £200 of it goes on clicks, with 10 leads forecast in return. Every plan up to £1,600 works out the same, half on ads and about £40 a forecast lead, and the page says volumes "vary by sector, location and season". Those clicks come from the same auction you can bid in yourself, covered further down.
WhatClinic charges for first contact. Bark charges for the reply
WhatClinic is free to list on, though it says "free listings may not be permanent", and sells patient leads on a price-per-lead model that "may start from €10 per lead". You are charged for the first email and the first phone call from each patient. It's an Irish company and prints the price in euros. Bark has a physiotherapist category and sells credits at £1.80 each. It shows the credit cost of each lead before you commit but doesn't publish it, and up to 5 professionals can reply to the same patient. The shared-lead trap works through what several replies to one enquiry do to your price, and is Bark worth it covers the rest of Bark's terms.
The booking apps take a cut of the first visit
Fresha takes 20% of a new client's first booking, at least £4. Booksy charges £40 a month and, if you switch on Boost, 30% of a Boost client's first visit, at least £5. Treatwell takes 35% of first bookings from new clients it sends you, on top of a monthly fee it doesn't print. On a £84 assessment that's £16.80, £25.20 and £29.40, paid once, and only when somebody books. Repeat bookings carry no commission on any of the three, so the follow-ups are yours.
The directories come with a membership
Physio First lists members on its Find a Physio directory. Clinic membership runs from £400 a year for up to 4 clinicians to £4,350 for 76 to 100, and isn't sold monthly; the individual rate is £260 a year. The CSP's Physio2u is open to CSP members only, free for a basic listing or £49 a year plus VAT for a premium one, and CSP membership for a chartered physio practising in the UK is £480.84 a year from January 2027. Doctify is free to join. None says how many leads a clinic gets.
Everything here about Bark's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 11 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have physio 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 areaThe insurers
Insurer recognition is the biggest patient list. None of them prints the fee.
An insured patient goes where the insurer sends them, so getting on the list works like a lead source you pay for in price rather than cash. Bupa recognises the practice as a whole and asks for a named lead clinician registered with the CSP and the HCPC, with at least 5 years' post-qualification experience in full-time practice. In return you get agreed fees and a page on its Finder directory. WPA asks only that you register for recognition first.
- Vitality: up to 6 self-referred sessions a plan year
- Vitality: 6,900+ physios in its own network
- AXA Health: speak to a physio with no GP referral
- Aviva (individual cover): GP referral needed to claim
- Physio Med: a network of 700 practices
Vitality covers sessions in its Priority Physio network in full, and up to £35 a session anywhere else. That £35 is what the member gets back, not what Vitality pays a network clinic, but it tells you the gap a member outside the network has to fill. Against a £61 follow-up, the member pays the other £26.
Ask for the fee before you apply
Bupa's fees sit in its application form, and IPRS Health asks you to state your own assessment price when you apply to its network. Know your self-pay price per session first, so you can see what the discount costs you.
Keep the self-pay side growing
A network sends patients on its terms and can stop. Self-pay patients who found you through your own website and your own ads found you, and that list stays with the clinic.
The free option
The NHS is free and slow. Your ad should sell the wait.
NHS.uk tells patients that in many areas they can get physio from NHS community musculoskeletal (MSK) services without a GP referral, and that it's free, "but there may be a long waiting list". The NHS England figures for August 2026 put 456,532 people on the adult MSK waiting list, up from 425,796 in April, with 78,025 of them waiting more than 18 weeks. NHS England calls the data unvalidated management information.
"self referral physio" gets 8,100 searches a month on Google at £3.49 a click. Somebody typing that wants physio and hasn't found it yet. If you can see them this week, say so on the ad and the website, with the price.
The same NHS page tells people choosing a private physio to make sure they're chartered, with MCSP after their name, and registered with the HCPC. Put both on your website for every clinician, with the HCPC number, because patients are told to look for them and "hcpc physiotherapist" gets 320 searches a month at £4.27.
Buying the click yourself
Google hides most physio search data. The clicks it shows are cheap ones.
When we pulled Google Ads data for physio searches, Google returned no volume or click price for "physio near me", "private physio", "physiotherapy" and "physio for back pain" and about forty more patient searches. What it did return is below. "physio" alone is typed 90,500 times a month at £5.12 a click, and "sports physio" 4,400 times at £4.36. For the per-lead column we use WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads, 7.33%. It is US data, so treat it as a rough guide, and it was not measured on health.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| physio clinic | 320 | £6.95 | £95 |
| physio | 90,500 | £5.12 | £70 |
| sports physio | 4,400 | £4.36 | £59 |
| physiotherapy manchester | 1,600 | £4.32 | £59 |
| best physio near me | 1,000 | £4.28 | £58 |
| hcpc physiotherapist | 320 | £4.27 | £58 |
| neuro physio | 2,400 | £4.19 | £57 |
| physiotherapy clinic near me | 1,900 | £4.13 | £56 |
| running physio | 590 | £3.86 | £53 |
| msk physio | 8,100 | £3.73 | £51 |
| physio for elderly | 590 | £3.62 | £49 |
| self referral physio | 8,100 | £3.49 | £48 |
| physio massage | 880 | £2.71 | £37 |
| chartered physiotherapist | 480 | £2.61 | £36 |
| physio nottingham | 1,300 | £2.44 | £33 |
| physio for tennis elbow | 390 | £1.60 | £22 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 11 October 2026. These are bid-based estimates from what other advertisers offer, so your real click price will sit near them rather than on them.
So a lead off "physio" works out at about £70, and off "physiotherapy clinic near me" about £56, both close to Zapo's forecast of £40 but without the £200 of the plan that doesn't go on ads. Across the table, own-ads leads run £22 to £95. On the other side of the auction, "physiotherapy website design" costs £13.03 a click, and "physio leads" gets about 10 searches a month with nobody bidding. What running your own gets you:
- Your clinic name on the ad, not a directory
- Bids on the conditions you treat best
- Prices and next free slot on your website
- Clicks paid to Google, nothing added
- An ad account that stays with the clinic
Setting a monthly budget is in how much to spend on Google Ads, and whether Facebook or Google suits a clinic better is in Google Ads vs Facebook Ads. Reviews do a lot of the work once the click lands; here is how to get more.
No Local Services Ads for physios
Google's Local Services Ads list has no physiotherapy category, and says booking leads aren't available for healthcare. Search ads are the Google route for a clinic. The trades that do get listed are covered in our Local Services Ads guide.
Before the ad goes live
The ASA has a list of what a physio ad can claim to treat. Stay on it.
The ASA's advice on physiotherapy ads says it and CAP are likely to accept claims that physiotherapists can treat these:
- aches and pains (general)
- arthritic pain
- backache
- back pain
- circulatory problems
- cramp
- digestion problems
- joint pains
- lumbago
- muscle spasms
- neuralgia
- fibromyalgia
- minor sports injuries
- tensions
Anything else needs documentary evidence, most likely clinical trials, under CAP rule 12.1, and unqualified claims such as "cure" are not generally acceptable. In April 2023 the ASA upheld a complaint against a physiotherapist practitioner's leaflet that said its injections could treat arthritis, tendon problems and torn ligaments, and said a device's CE certification did not count as evidence that a treatment works.
The title is protected
"Physiotherapist" and "physical therapist" are protected by the HCPC. Using one to deceive is a criminal offence, with a fine up to level 5. You can own a clinic without being registered, but the physio has to be done by people on the register.
No remarketing on health ads
Google treats health as a sensitive category. You can use its predefined audiences but not your own lists, so remarketing and Customer Match are out. Physio isn't on Google's list of healthcare ads that need certification.
Don't tell them what hurts
Meta bars ads that assert or imply a person's physical health, so "Struggling with your back?" is out. Health ads must target over-18s, and Meta removed health-related detailed targeting in January 2022.
The HCPC's own standards say a registrant must make sure any promotion they're involved in is accurate and not likely to mislead, and patients can check the register by surname or registration number. One less thing to worry about: the CQC says a standalone physio treatment service doesn't need to register for treatment. Bring a doctor or nurse into the team working in that capacity, and it does.
Selling the course
A block of sessions sold online comes with 14 days to change minds.
On our reading, private physio isn't excluded from the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013: the health carve-outs there cover NHS services and prescribed medicines. So a block of sessions sold by message, on your website or over the phone is, on our reading, a distance contract the patient can cancel within 14 days. Regulation 36 says you can't start in that time unless they ask you to, and if they ask and then cancel, they pay an amount "in proportion to what has been supplied".
- Tell them about the 14 days in writing
- Get their request to start early in writing
- Charge only for sessions already done
- Skip the notice: 12 months extra to cancel
The last line is the expensive one. If you never gave the cancellation information, regulation 31 stretches the period by 12 months and regulation 36 says the patient pays nothing for the sessions they had. A short message with the block's price, the first appointment and the 14-day right covers it, whoever found you the patient.
Through the year
Physio searches barely move all year. December is the one quiet month.
No seller says anything about seasons, so here is Google's data. UK searches for "physio" reached 110,000 in September, October, January and March, and fell to 74,000 in December, about 1.5 times apart.
UK searches for "physio", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Keep the budget steady
With demand this flat, a physio ad budget can run the same most months. January came straight back to the high after the December dip.
Use the December gap
December was the low point. That's when to book past patients back in rather than raise bids. One year of data can't prove the pattern repeats.
Which way to go
Pay for patients who finish a course. Not for names who book one visit.
Buy leads if
- You track courses by source
- The fee is per booked patient
- The patient chose you
- You reply the same day
Think twice if
- Up to 5 clinics reply too
- The fee is before ad spend
- Nobody prints the price
- You can't see the ad copy
Run your own if
- You want self-pay patients
- You treat on the ASA list
- You can show your prices
- The ad account stays yours
A physio clinic lives on patients who come back after the assessment. The lead sources worth paying for are the ones priced against a course, and the ones that leave you with patients of your own when a network or a contract ends. If you're weighing up ads at all, start with are Google Ads worth it. Another local service we have looked at the same way is personal trainer leads.
Our sources
Where every physio figure here came from.
We sell websites and Google Ads, so we aren't neutral about own ads against bought leads. That's why each seller and insurer is quoted in its own words, and why the page shows Zapo's forecast level with a click you buy yourself, and the booking apps cheaper than either on a single assessment.
Seller, directory and insurer prices are quoted from each firm's own website, read on 11 October 2026. Click prices and search volumes are Google Ads data for the UK, pulled the same day. Session prices are from Bupa and Nuffield Health; the survey figures are HMDG's, and we say so where they appear. Waiting lists are from NHS England. The advertising rules are from the ASA, the CAP Code, the HCPC, Google and Meta; registration from the CQC; and cancellation from the Consumer Contracts Regulations.
Questions clinic owners ask
Physio leads, answered.
- How much do physio leads cost in the UK?
- Only WhatClinic prints a per-lead price, and only a starting one. Zapo runs search ads for physios from £400 a month plus VAT and forecasts 10 leads on that plan, about £40 each. WhatClinic charges per lead, "from €10 per lead". Bark sells credits at £1.80 and doesn't say how many a physio lead takes. Booking apps take 20% to 35% of a new client's first booking. A click on your own Google ad for "physio" costs £5.12.
- Are physio leads shared with other clinics?
- On Bark, yes: each customer can get up to 5 responses from professionals. Zapo says its physio leads are exclusive. WhatClinic says its users choose a specific clinic before they get in touch. Directories such as Physio First's and the CSP's Physio2u list you beside other clinics and leave the choice to the patient.
- Is Bupa recognition worth it for a physio clinic?
- It puts you on a list patients are sent to. Bupa says its Finder directory gets over 100,000 visits a week and that recognised practices receive agreed fees, but it doesn't publish them. You need a lead clinician registered with the CSP and HCPC with at least 5 years' post-qualification experience. Insurers also run their own networks: Vitality covers network sessions in full and only up to £35 a session elsewhere.
- What conditions can a physio clinic advertise that it treats?
- The ASA says it is likely to accept physios claiming to treat aches and pains (general), arthritic pain, backache, back pain, circulatory problems, cramp, digestion problems, joint pains, lumbago, muscle spasms, neuralgia, fibromyalgia, minor sports injuries and tensions. Claims about other conditions need documentary evidence, most likely clinical trials, under CAP rule 12.1. Unqualified claims such as "cure" are not generally acceptable.
- Can a physio clinic use remarketing in Google Ads?
- Not on ads about health conditions. Google treats health as a sensitive interest category: you can use its predefined audiences, but you can't use advertiser-curated audiences, and Customer Match and your own data segments aren't supported. Meta also bars ads that imply the viewer has a medical condition.
- Does a private physio clinic need to register with the CQC?
- Not for treatment, if it is physio only. The CQC says physiotherapists are not on its list of professionals, so a standalone physio treatment service does not need to register for treatment of disease, disorder or injury. A team that includes a listed professional, such as a doctor or nurse, working in that capacity is in scope.
- Can a patient cancel a block of physio sessions they bought online?
- On our reading, yes, within 14 days, if you sold it at a distance by message, website or phone. Private physio isn't excluded from the Consumer Contracts Regulations. If they asked you to start inside those days, they pay for the sessions already done. If you never gave them the cancellation information, they owe nothing for those sessions and the period runs 12 months longer.
- When do people search for a physio most?
- In the last 12 months, UK searches for "physio" peaked in September, October, January and March at 110,000 and were lowest in December at 74,000, about 1.5 times apart.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Patients who searched for a physio near them, and found you.
We build your clinic's website and run Google Ads from an account in your own name, aimed at self-pay patients looking for physio in your area. See what it costs, then tell us about your clinic and we'll build the campaign around the patients you want to treat.