Last updated 23 September 2026
A plastering lead has to pay its way in a day.
Leads Do Work sells an interior plastering lead for £20 plus VAT, or 20 of them in a pack for £63.60. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs Google Ads for plasterers from £400 a month plus VAT, about £40 per estimated lead. Buy the click yourself and a plastering or rendering search costs £3.24 to £8.98.
The trouble is the size of the job. Checkatrade prices a medium ceiling skim at £280 to £440, and reckons a small room skims in about a day. Win one quote in 3 and that ceiling can afford a lead of about £12 to £18. Only the cheapest shared packs come in under that.
Check the maths
One seller gives two figures for the same searches.
Get Work's plastering page says "Over 3.6 million people search Google for a plasterer each month", then "over 3.2 million" further down. Google's own figure for "plasterer" is 8,100 a month. The real numbers.
Where we stand
We don't sell plastering leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying plastering leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build plasterers 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
Most plastering leads are one room or a patch.
Leads Do Work lists its latest wall plastering jobs on its own site. On 23 September 2026 they included "Skimming one bedroom walls only no ceiling", "1 chimney wall and 1 small wall needing skimmed" and half a dozen holes in a plasterboard wall where an electrician had fed cables through. A couple asked for a full room, walls and ceiling. That is the shape of plastering work, and it is why the lead price matters more here than in almost any other trade.
Here is what the common jobs are worth, and what winning one costs you at the two lead prices plasterers are most likely to meet, at one win in 3.
| Job | Typical UK price | Leads Do Work, £20 a lead | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skim a medium ceiling (15m²) | £280 to £440 | £60 a win, 17% of the job | £120 a win, 33% of the job |
| Re-skim a medium room | £430 to £550 | £60 a win, 12% of the job | £120 a win, 24% of the job |
| Plaster a medium room from scratch | £575 to £920 | £60 a win, 8% of the job | £120 a win, 16% of the job |
| Render a 3-bed semi (about 90m²) | £2,700 to £7,200 | £60 a win, 1% of the job | £120 a win, 2% of the job |
Prices from Checkatrade's plastering, ceiling and rendering cost guides, all updated June 2026, each worked at the middle of its range. Rendering excludes scaffolding. One win in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its trades. Leads Do Work's price is its Connect rate for interior plastering; Zapo's is its Launch plan divided by its own lead estimate. Both exclude VAT.
A won job should cost somewhere around 10 to 15 percent of what it pays. On a ceiling, the cheaper lead already sits at 17% and the dearer one at 33%. On a room skim the dearer one is 24%. Only when the lead is a whole house to render does either price stop mattering, at 2% of the job.
If you mostly skim rooms
The lead has to be cheap, or the job has to be more than one room. Price the whole house when you visit, and ask whether the decorating is booked. Painters buying leads for the same rooms are weighing the same sums in our decorating leads guide.
If you render, or plaster new work
A £2,700 to £7,200 render carries any lead price on sale. Extensions and renovations need plastering at the end, so a builder who calls you back each time is worth more than a lead feed. What builders pay for their own work is in our builder leads guide.
Your numbers
What can a plastering lead cost before the job stops paying?
Pick the job you quote most often, set how many quotes it takes you to land one, then put in a seller's price per lead. Try the ceiling first, then the render, and watch the answer change.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A PLASTERING 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
£25
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £49 to £74
- Which per lead is
- £16 to £25
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, not a measured figure.
Who sells them
Eight places to buy plastering leads, and who else gets each one.
Each seller is quoted from its own plastering page, price list and terms. The column that matters most on a small job is the third one, because every other plasterer on the lead is quoting the same room.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads Do Work (Connect) | £20 to £25 + VAT a lead, plus £11 a week | Up to 5 trades in all | "no more than 5 competing for any given job" |
| Leads Do Work (Smart Local) | £27.60 to £63.60 + VAT for 5 to 20 leads | Other local firms, number not stated | "may also be supplied to other suitable local businesses" |
| Get Work (now Zapo) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody | "plastering leads that are exclusive to your business" |
| The Trade League | £299 to £799 + VAT a month | Nobody in your postcode | "one plasterer per postcode" |
| Leads Everyday | Monthly fee, not published | Nobody | "never shared with competitors" |
| MyJobQuote | Credits, priced job by job | Up to 3 tradespeople | "only charged for rendering and plastering leads that you want" |
| MyBuilder | A fee when you are shortlisted | Whoever the homeowner picks | "customers decide who to share their details with" |
| Checkatrade | Membership, lead plans not priced | Other members | "enjoy a share of plastering job leads" |
Leads Do Work: the cheapest lead, and the most crowded
Its Smart Local pack for plastering and ceilings works out at £5.52 a lead for 5 and £3.18 a lead for 20, plus VAT. That is the only plastering price on this page a ceiling skim can comfortably carry. The terms explain why it is so low: "Individual lead returns are not available under the Smart Local contract", and the homeowner's details "may also be supplied to other suitable local businesses". The pack renews itself once it has delivered, no sooner than a week after the last one started, so a busy area can bill you every seven days.
Connect costs more, £20 for an interior plastering lead and £25 for ceilings, stud walls or rendering, plus £11 a week. For that you get returns that are "manually reviewed", a cap of 5 trades on each job, and first sight of new leads before the pack buyers. Leads come from its own home improvement websites, which include local-quotes.co.uk, doubleglazing.com and myroofingquotes.co.uk.
Zapo, formerly Get Work: ten leads to start
Zapo says its search ads "deliver plastering leads that are exclusive to your business". Its entry plan charges a plasterer £400 a month plus VAT, spends £200 of that on the ads themselves, and forecasts 10 leads in return. On the plastering page they arrive "within the next 14 days"; the pricing page says "within 1-4 weeks". The old Get Work page is still live, offering £250 off your first month and claiming its pages "turn 1 in 5 visitors into plastering leads". Contracts run month to month.
The Trade League sells Local Services Ads to plasterers
The Trade League takes "one plasterer per postcode" and says its leads are "full room re-plasters, extensions, new builds, and external render", which is the right end of the trade. Its £299 tier is built on Google Local Services Ads, but Google's UK list of Local Services Ads categories has no plastering or rendering category, so ask which one your listing would sit in. Its terms ask for 30 days' notice, and the websites it builds "remain the intellectual property of Big Gun Digital Ltd" while your Google Ads account stays yours.
Leads Everyday: ads or cold outreach?
Leads Everyday lists "Targeted Google Ads" for plasterers who do "skimming, rendering, dry lining, or full re-plasters", with "No commission on any jobs" and a campaign "live within 48 hours on average". Step two of its process on the same page reads "We build targeted lists and craft compelling outreach." A homeowner searching for a plasterer and a name on a list are not the same lead. It publishes no price, and its terms say the ad spend is paid to Google on top of its monthly fee.
MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and Checkatrade share the job
MyJobQuote prices each job in credits, weighing "Competition for the lead", and lets up to 3 tradespeople take it. MyBuilder charges when the homeowner shortlists you, whether or not you get the job; more in is MyBuilder worth it. Checkatrade invites plasterers to "enjoy a share of plastering job leads", and says its own site saw over 655,000 searches for plastering jobs in 2025. On a £490 skim, three plasterers pricing the same room is the whole margin, which is the shared-lead trap at its sharpest.
The demand they quote
Three sellers, five figures, none of them Google's.
Get Work says "Over 3.6 million" people search for a plasterer each month and, lower on the same page, "over 3.2 million". Onebase Media says "plasterer" is searched 21,000 times a month, and elsewhere on its page that "over 50,000 people search for local plasterers in the UK every day". FatRank says "Over a million".
Google Ads data puts "plasterer" at 8,100 searches a month and "plasterer near me" at 14,800. All 10 of the buyer searches in the table further down add up to 29,140. A seller out by more than a hundred times on demand deserves a second look at its other numbers.
Everything here about Leads Do Work'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 plastering 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 plastering customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingBuying the click yourself
Your own ads earn their keep on render, not patches.
"plasterer near me" is the busiest search here at 14,800 a month and the cheapest at £3.24 a click. Rendering is the dear end: £8.98 for "rendering contractors" and £6.10 for "renderers near me". The last column turns clicks into leads at WordStream's 7.33% conversion rate for home improvement search ads, a US benchmark, so treat it as a rough guide.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| rendering contractors | 170 | £8.98 | £123 |
| k rend near me | 320 | £6.24 | £85 |
| renderers near me | 2,400 | £6.10 | £83 |
| rendering services | 590 | £5.63 | £77 |
| artex ceiling removal | 1,300 | £5.14 | £70 |
| plasterer | 8,100 | £4.57 | £62 |
| plastering company | 590 | £4.41 | £60 |
| pebble dash removal | 480 | £3.80 | £52 |
| plastering services | 390 | £3.44 | £47 |
| plasterer near me | 14,800 | £3.24 | £44 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. Click prices are bid estimates, and most advertisers pay less.
That is £44 to £123 a lead, dearer than anything Leads Do Work sells, and more than a ceiling skim can carry. Where your own ads win is on the jobs that can afford them, and on who else hears about the job:
- Bid on rendering and full re-plasters
- Leave DIY searches like "plaster repair" out
- Turn it down when the diary is full
- Nobody else is sent the lead
- Pay Google direct, no markup
- The account stays in your name
One rendering job at £2,700 to £7,200 pays for a lot of clicks, and the same customer may want rooms skimmed inside. How much to put behind it is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads, and the wider picture across trades is in our trade leads guide.
Google Local Services Ads
Google's UK category list includes "General contractor services", "Handyman" and "Water damage services", but no plastering. A plasterer who also takes general building work may qualify under one of those. Each call a customer actually gets through on is what you're billed for, and UK advertisers can't claim lead credits back. More in our Local Services Ads guide.
What the lead lets you do
Two plastering leads come with rules attached.
"artex ceiling removal" is searched 1,300 times a month at £5.14 a click, and a render is the biggest job on this page. None of the sellers mentions the law on either.
The Artex lead is asbestos work
HSE lists textured coatings, "various trade names such as 'Artex'", among the places asbestos turns up. Work on them is low-risk and non-licensed, but the people doing it "must be trained to recognise and work safely with asbestos". Large-scale removal by steaming or gelling has to be notified.
HSE's training page names plasterers among the trades that need asbestos awareness training, and flags any building built or refurbished before 2000. Even drilling through a textured coating is on HSE's list of non-licensed asbestos work.
The render lead is an energy upgrade
In England, Approved Document L counts "rendering the external surface" of a wall as renovating it, and so is stripping plaster back to the brick on the inside of an outside wall. Renovate more than 50% of the wall and the whole of it should reach a U-value of 0.30.
There is a way out: if insulating would not pay back within 15 years, you do the best that would. The 2021 edition applies until the 2026 one takes over on 24 March 2027.
On gov.uk, the person doing the work "could be prosecuted and fined" for breaking building regulations, and a homeowner without approval may lack the certificates they need to sell. A plasterer who can explain both on the first visit sounds like the one to trust with the job. For the other side of the same rooms, see decorating leads.
Through the year
Plastering peaks in the autumn. Rendering waits for the sun.
"plasterer near me" was searched most in October and least in December, when it fell about 2.7 times. Every other month sat close together, so inside work is a year-round trade with one autumn spike and one Christmas lull.
UK searches for "plasterer near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Render is a spring and summer search
"renderers near me" held at its highest through spring and summer and fell about 2.9 times by December. The Trade League says it front-loads campaigns "ahead of the spring and summer building season", which the rendering numbers bear out and the plastering numbers do not.
Split the budget by job
A lead pack costs the same in December as in October. With your own ads you can push rendering from March and inside work in the autumn, and cut both for the Christmas weeks.
How many you need
Twenty rooms a month takes about 60 leads.
Checkatrade says a small room skims in around a day and a medium one in 1 to 2. A plasterer working through single rooms can fill a month with 20 or so of them, and at one win in 3 that means quoting about 60. That is a steady stream, and the price of each one decides whether the month makes money.
Zapo's Launch plan estimates 10 leads a month: about 3 jobs, or three days of skimming. Its top plan, £1,600 a month, estimates 40, about 13 jobs. Leads that arrive while you are up a ladder go cold fast; the research on how fast is in our roofing leads guide.
A skim booked for next week sits inside the cancelling window
When you price a room in the customer's house and they say yes there, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 apply. Plastering jobs are short and often booked within days, so the rules bite:
- They have 14 days to cancel
- Leave the form out: up to a year more
- Leaving it out is also an offence
- Starting sooner? Get it asked in writing
- Jobs of £42 or less are exempt
The real exposure is plaster and beads bought for a job the customer then cancels inside the fortnight. Put the cancellation wording on the quote and keep the message where they asked you to start.
Where the lead came from
A plastering lead from a double glazing website is still yours to check.
Leads Do Work names doubleglazing.com and myroofingquotes.co.uk among the sites its homeowners come from. The ICO expects the business that buys a lead to check how the consent was gathered, and says taking the seller's word for it is not enough. We found no ICO fine that names plastering or rendering. The home improvement cases, including a lead seller fined for hiding who it passed data to, are set out in our roofing leads guide.
Before paying for plastering leads, ask the seller:
- Which website did the customer use?
- Does their consent name my business?
- How many plasterers got this one?
- Can I return a dead number?
- Is it a whole room or a patch?
Which way to go
Decide by the size of job you want, then by the volume.
Buy per lead if
- Patches and single rooms suit you
- You can ring back within the hour
- The lead costs under a tenner
- You check where it came from
Think twice if
- Five plasterers get each lead
- The pack renews every week
- Returns are not allowed
- The seller quotes millions
Run your own if
- You want rendering work
- You want whole houses
- You want to set the pace
- You keep the account
Plenty of plasterers do both: a cheap pack to keep the one-day jobs coming, and their own ads chasing the render and the full re-plasters. If a directory is the other option on the table, read is Checkatrade worth it before you sign.
Our sources
Where these figures come from.
We sell websites and Google Ads to trades, which is why this page says plainly where a bought plastering lead beats your own ads on price. Every seller is quoted from its own site.
Seller pages, price lists and terms were read on their own sites on 23 September 2026. Click prices and search volumes are Google Ads data for the UK, pulled the same day. Job prices are from Checkatrade's skimming, ceiling and rendering cost guides. The rules come from HSE, Approved Document L and gov.uk. Building rules differ in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and this guide covers England.
Questions plasterers ask
Plastering leads, answered.
- How much do plastering leads cost in the UK?
- Leads Do Work charges £20 plus VAT for an interior plastering lead on its Connect service, plus £11 a week, and sells packs of 5 to 20 plastering leads for £27.60 to £63.60 plus VAT. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs Google Ads for plasterers from £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT, about £40 per estimated lead on its cheapest plan. The Trade League charges £299 to £799 a month plus VAT. A click on a plastering or rendering search costs £3.24 to £8.98, going by Google Ads data for the UK.
- What can a plasterer afford to pay for a lead?
- Not much, because the jobs are small. Checkatrade puts a medium ceiling skim at £280 to £440. If you win one quote in 3 and a won job should cost 10 to 15 percent of its value, a lead for that ceiling can cost about £12 to £18. A rendering job on a 3-bed semi can carry £165 to £248.
- Are plastering leads shared with other plasterers?
- It depends who you buy from. Leads Do Work's Connect leads go to no more than 5 tradespeople, and its cheaper Smart Local packs "may also be supplied to other suitable local businesses". MyJobQuote lets up to 3 tradespeople take each job. Zapo and Leads Everyday say their plastering leads go to you alone, The Trade League takes one plasterer per postcode, and on MyBuilder the homeowner picks who gets their details.
- Can I take an Artex removal job?
- Only if you are trained for it. HSE says textured coatings such as Artex can contain asbestos, and work on them is non-licensed but must be done by people "trained to recognise and work safely with asbestos". Large-scale removal by steaming or gelling has to be notified. HSE names plasterers among the trades that need asbestos awareness training, and the risk is highest in buildings built or refurbished before 2000.
- Does re-rendering a house need building regulations?
- It can bring in the energy rules. In England, Approved Document L treats rendering the outside of a wall, or stripping plaster back to the brick inside, as renovating a thermal element. Do more than half of a wall and the whole wall should be brought up to a U-value of 0.30, where that pays back within 15 years.
- When do people search for plasterers most?
- UK searches for "plasterer near me" were highest in October and lowest in December, about 2.7 times apart. Rendering keeps different hours: "renderers near me" runs highest through spring and summer and bottoms out in December.
- Is it legal to buy plastering leads?
- Yes, if you check where each one came from. The ICO expects a business buying marketing data to make proportionate checks and says a seller's assurance is not enough. We found no ICO fine that names plastering or rendering; the home improvement cases are covered in our roofing leads guide.
- Can a customer cancel a skim they booked at their home?
- Yes. A job agreed in the customer's home can be cancelled within 14 days under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and that runs up to 12 months longer if you never gave them the cancellation information. Most skims are booked and done inside that fortnight, so get their request to start early in writing. Contracts of £42 or less fall outside these rules.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Keep the diary full of plastering work that rang you alone.
We build the website and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, pointed at the renders and whole rooms you want rather than the patch jobs. See what it costs, then tell us about your trade and we'll show you which plastering searches in your area are worth paying for.