Last updated 23 September 2026
Plumbing leads: a £22 lead can be a steal or a write-off.
Short answer: the cheapest plumbing leads we found are Boiler Guide's, from £6 each and shared with up to two other companies. Lead Pronto sells boiler leads from £22. A click on a plumbing search in Google costs £2.80 to £21.52.
None of that tells you whether a lead pays, because plumbing isn't one job. Clearing a blocked sink is worth about £100. A new combi is worth £2,500 to £4,000, and a bathroom £5,500 to £8,000. The same £22 lead is cheap on the last two and loses you money on the first.
Before you buy a boiler lead
A boiler lead is gas work, and the law says who can take it.
Only a Gas Safe registered business can legally fit or fix a gas boiler. Most sellers' pages don't mention it. If you're a plumber without the registration, the boiler leads are the ones to leave alone, however cheap they look. The rule, in full.
Where we stand
We don't sell plumbing leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying plumbing leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build plumbers 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.
Six jobs, one lead price
What a £22 lead does to each plumbing job.
Every seller prices a plumbing lead as if the job behind it didn't matter. It's the only thing that does. Here's each job at its typical UK price, the most a lead for it should cost if you win one quote in three, and what happens if you pay £22 for it anyway.
| Job | Typical UK price | Most a lead should cost | A £22 lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear a blocked sink | £100 | about £5 | Loses money. Each win costs £66, 66% of the job |
| Clear a blocked drain | £175 | about £9 | Loses money. Each win costs £66, 38% of the job |
| Boiler breakdown repair | £275 | about £14 | Loses money. Each win costs £66, 24% of the job |
| Power flush a heating system | £350 to £800 | about £29 | About right. Each win costs £66, 11% of the job |
| Like-for-like combi, supply and fit | £2,500 to £4,000 | about £163 | Cheap. Each win costs £66, 2% of the job |
| Bathroom installation | £5,500 to £8,000 | about £338 | Cheap. Each win costs £66, 1% of the job |
Job prices from Checkatrade's cost guides (March 2026, and June 2026 for the power flush). The one-in-three win rate is MyJobQuote's own figure for its trades, the only published one we found.
The rule behind the third column: winning a job should cost you about 10 to 15 percent of what it's worth, counting the quotes you lost on the way. At one win in three, a £22 lead means £66 spent for every job you get. On a blocked sink that's most of the invoice gone before you've picked up a plunger. On a new boiler it's 2% of the job, and on a bathroom it's 1%.
The call-out figure depends on who you ask
Checkatrade puts an average plumber call-out at £100 to £120, with £40 to £60 an hour after that and £325 to £375 a day. MyJobQuote says about £75 plus about £60 an hour, or £135 to £255 all in. Either way, small reactive jobs can only carry a few pounds of lead cost.
So buy by job, never by trade
A plumber who does mostly taps, sinks and toilets should almost never pay per lead. A plumber who fits boilers and bathrooms can afford to pay well for one, as long as it's a boiler or bathroom lead and not a dripping tap with a nicer label.
Your own sums
Put in your jobs and your win rate.
The table above uses typical prices. Yours will differ. Pick the job you want more of, or type what yours are really worth, set how many quotes it takes you to land one, then add a seller's price to see what each job you win would cost you.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A PLUMBING 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
£338
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £675 to £1,013
- Which per lead is
- £225 to £338
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 rough rule of thumb, not a measured figure. Treat it as a sanity check.
Read the small print
"Exclusive" means four different things at four different sellers.
Every plumbing lead seller uses the word. Put their own sentences side by side and they're describing quite different products.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get Work | £600 to £1,500 + VAT a month | Nobody: one plumber per area | "once you've secured your location, it's yours exclusively" |
| Leads Everyday | Monthly fee, not published | Nobody | "never shared with competitors" |
| Boiler Guide | From £6 a lead | Up to 2 other companies | "sold to a maximum of 3 companies and some are available exclusively" |
| Lead Pronto (boiler) | From £22 a lead, £130 an appointment | A small number of installers | "shared between a small number of installers" |
| MyJobQuote | Not published. A free first month | Up to 2 other trades | "Up to 3 tradesmen can accept details for each job lead" |
Lead Pronto shares boiler leads, and sells roofing leads to one roofer
The same company describes its two products differently. Its roofing leads are "sold to one roofer only". Its boiler leads "are shared between a small number of installers and are never double-sold without your knowledge. Leads from a branded campaign run under your own name are exclusive to you by definition."
So a Lead Pronto boiler lead at £22 is a shared lead unless you've paid for the branded version. Ask which one the price is for, and how many installers "a small number" is in your area, before you top up. It says there's no long-term contract and no notice period, and a rejection policy in every campaign. It doesn't say whether its prices include VAT.
Boiler Guide is cheap, and shared
Heating leads from £6, free to join, "No contract, no membership fees", and it says it rings everyone who fills in its form. That's a fair price for a lead two other companies are also ringing. It's also clear about where its job ends: "securing the job is down to you." It's run by Leads.io Ltd, and we couldn't find published refund terms.
The managed plans are exclusive, and you're paying for the clicks
Get Work and Leads Everyday both run Google Ads for you. Get Work says it runs the ad and sends people to a website built to sell your plumbing, and "it's your plumbing company that the homeowner sees." It offers £250 off your first month and says it doesn't "tie you in to long-term contracts". Of its £600 Startup plan, half is Google Ads spend. Leads Everyday doesn't publish a price, promises "No commission on any jobs" and lets you "Cancel anytime". Both are real exclusivity. You're buying the same clicks you could buy yourself, with someone else running them.
Checkatrade says both on one page
Its 2022 blog post for plumbers says "the jobs you get are all yours, we don't take a cut", and on the same page talks about "your share of Checkatrade plumbing leads". On its Opportunities Board, its terms let more than one trade unlock the same job. More in is Checkatrade worth it, and on what a shared lead really costs in the shared-lead trap.
Every conversion figure is the seller's own
Lead Pronto quotes a "24% Lead to appointment rate" for boiler leads, and says 82% of booked appointments are attended. Read the other way, three in four of its boiler leads never become an appointment. Boiler Guide says "80% of our enquiries go on to buy a new boiler", which is about the homeowner buying, not about them buying from you. Get Work says its websites "turn 1 in 5 visitors into plumbing leads".
None comes with a source, and the headline numbers wobble. Get Work says "Over 3.6 million people search Google for a plumber each month" and "over 3.2 million" on the same page. Boiler Guide gives its visitors as over 4 million in one place and over 3 million in its FAQ. No seller publishes a close rate. Plan with your own numbers in the calculator above.
Everything here about Lead Pronto'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 plumbing 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 plumbing customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingRunning your own
What a plumbing lead costs from your own Google Ads.
A click isn't a lead. To turn one into the other you need a conversion rate, and the only published one for home improvement is WordStream's 7.33% of search clicks. It's US data, so use it as a rough guide. Here's what it makes a lead on each plumbing search.
| Job | Search | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency call-out | emergency plumber | £21.52 | £294 |
| Boiler install | boiler installation | £19.57 | £267 |
| Leak detection | leak detection | £18.91 | £258 |
| Blocked drain | blocked drain | £13.07 | £178 |
| Boiler repair | boiler repair near me | £8.71 | £119 |
| Finding a plumber | plumber near me | £8.09 | £110 |
| Bathroom install | bathroom installation | £5.79 | £79 |
| Toilet repair | toilet repair | £4.46 | £61 |
| Power flush | power flush | £2.80 | £38 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 23 September 2026. These are bid-based estimates, so most advertisers pay less per click than this.
So on price per lead, a bought lead wins. Boiler Guide from £6 and Lead Pronto from £22 are well under the £38 to £294 your own ads work out at on these estimates. If price per lead were the whole story, you'd buy. It isn't, because the two aren't the same lead:
- Nobody else was sold it. The customer searched, saw you, and rang you.
- You choose the jobs. Bid on bathrooms and boilers, skip the blocked sinks.
- Your ads run only in the hours you can answer the phone.
- Turn it up in October and down in June, day by day.
- No one takes a margin on the click. You pay Google directly.
- The account and its history stay yours if you ever stop working with us.
A shared lead at £6 that two other companies are also ringing isn't cheaper than a lead nobody else has, once you count the quotes you lose racing them. The win rate is the number that decides it, and it's the one number an exclusive lead puts back in your hands. The budget side is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads.
Google Local Services Ads
Plumbers is one of Google's UK Local Services Ads categories. You pass Google's screening and then pay per answered phone call rather than per click. In the UK there are no lead credits for a bad call, and a call outside your opening hours is never credited. More in our Local Services Ads guide.
Who can take the lead
Boiler leads are for Gas Safe registered businesses only.
Sellers sell "plumbing and heating" leads as one bundle. The law splits them. Under regulation 3 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, no self-employed person may carry out gas work unless they're "a member of a class of persons approved for the time being by the Health and Safety Executive". Regulation 3(7) adds: "No person shall falsely pretend to be a member".
The HSE puts it plainly: "Anyone employed to work on gas appliances in domestic premises must be a Gas Safe registered engineer". Of the sellers we read, only Lead Pronto mentions it, and only as an expectation of the installers it supplies. Nobody else checks for you, so the check is yours.
How your customer checks you
The HSE tells homeowners to look at the back of the engineer's Gas Safe ID card, which lists the work they're qualified for. They can also text "Gas" and the engineer's seven-digit licence number to 85080, or ring 0800 408 5500. Put your number where a nervous customer will see it, before they ask.
Bathroom leads have a rule too
Under the Water Fittings Regulations 1999, some fittings need notice to the water supplier and its consent before work starts, including a bath over 230 litres and a pump drawing more than 12 litres a minute. WaterSafe says approved contractors can do certain work "without prior notification" and issue Certificates of Compliance.
What this means for buying: a plumber without Gas Safe registration should buy bathroom, drain and leak leads, never boiler leads. A registered engineer can take the boiler work others legally can't, and should say so on every quote and every page of their website.
When the phone rings
Boiler work arrives the week the heating goes on.
UK searches for "boiler repair near me" were about 5.1 times higher in October than in June, July and August, with a second, smaller rise in January. Searches for "emergency plumber" peaked in October too. A monthly lead package priced the same all year is buying the same thing in summer that it buys in autumn, and it isn't the same thing.
UK searches for "boiler repair near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Why October
British Gas says "40% of boiler breakdowns occur when people switch their heating back on after summer", going by its 2025 breakdown data. A boiler that sat idle since spring gets its first real test on the first cold night.
What to do about it
Be ready by September, not scrambling in October. Put your spend where the searches are, and use the quiet summer months for bathrooms, power flushes and collecting reviews. If you run your own ads, you can turn them up for the rush and down in June without a contract to sit out.
Emergency call-outs
Why homeowners don't trust an unknown emergency number.
"Emergency plumber" is the dearest plumbing search we priced, and there's a reason customers hesitate before ringing whoever comes up. In February 2025 York Council and National Trading Standards reported a man who "operated as an 'emergency plumber'", "advertised his services online and responded to emergency callouts", "charging grossly inflated emergency callout and repair fees". He was "sentenced to 4 years in prison".
You're competing with the memory of people like him. A customer with water through the ceiling wants someone fast, but they also want proof they're not about to be robbed. Show them before they ring:
- Your call-out fee and hourly rate, in pounds
- Your real business name and the area you cover
- Your Gas Safe number, if you do gas work
- Photos of your van, your team and real jobs
- Reviews from named local customers
A price on the website does more for an emergency lead than any badge. It answers the one fear the York case put in everyone's head.
Ring back within the hour
Harvard Business Review looked at 1.25 million web leads at 42 US companies. Firms that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited longer, and more than 60 times as likely as those that waited a day. It measured conversations, not jobs won, and it wasn't about plumbing. On an emergency or a shared lead, though, the plumber who rings first is often the only one the customer talks to.
Cancellation rules: call-out versus quote
The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 treat an emergency and a planned job differently:
- An urgent repair they called you out for is exempt from the 14-day cancellation right
- A boiler or bathroom agreed at their home can be cancelled within 14 days
- Skip the written cancellation notice and it's an offence, with up to 12 months added
- Fitting a new boiler before day 14? Get their go-ahead in writing or by email
The exemption is in regulation 28. Keep a written quote template for installs that covers the rest.
Before you pay a seller
Buying leads is legal. Checking them is your job.
The Information Commissioner's Office says a business buying marketing data "must undertake proportionate checks and due diligence", and "It is not enough to simply accept a third party's assurances." Heating has already seen enforcement.
A seller named on this page
On 6 November 2025 the ICO fined Lead Pronto Ltd £30,000. Between 1 October 2023 and 5 February 2024 it sent 76,605 texts reading "Claim a Government-backed Free Boiler Grant!", with consent bundled into agreeing to its privacy policy. It gave the ICO a list of 18 clients it generated data for, none of them named in that policy, and the ICO found "It cannot be argued that consent was informed."
It isn't the only case close to plumbing. In 2023 the ICO fined SGS Home Protect £70,000 for 24,241 calls to people registered with the Telephone Preference Service, selling blocked-drain insurance. In 2025 it fined a sole trader, Darian Bishop, trading as ECO4U, £50,000 for 194,110 calls about boiler and solar grants, implying he was connected to a government scheme. And in January 2024 Skean Homes was fined £100,000 after blaming its lead generation provider. That defence didn't work.
The ICO's questions for a data seller, plus one of ours, for any plumbing lead seller:
- Who collected this lead, you or someone you bought it from?
- When and how was it collected, and how old is it?
- What did the customer agree to, and does it name my business?
- Was it checked against the Telephone Preference Service?
- Did it come from a "free boiler grant" advert?
Given what the ICO found in the Lead Pronto case, the useful test for any boiler lead is simple: ask to see the exact wording on the form the homeowner filled in, and check that your business is named in it. If it only says "partners", it doesn't cover you.
So which route?
It depends what's in your van.
Buy per lead if
- You fit boilers and are Gas Safe
- You need work in the diary this month
- You can ring back within the hour
- You ask how many others get each lead
Skip bought leads if
- Your work is mostly small repairs
- You get boiler leads but aren't Gas Safe
- The seller can't show you the consent
- You can't stop work to call back fast
Run your own if
- You want the customer, not a queue
- You want to pick the jobs you pay for
- You want to go hard in October
- You're building past this winter
You don't have to pick one. Buy boiler leads to get through this autumn, and get their own ads and website running so next autumn they're not queueing for a share. The same sums apply to roofers, with very different jobs, in our roofing leads guide. And if a directory is your other option, read is MyBuilder worth it and is Bark worth it first.
Where this comes from
Why take our word for it?
You shouldn't have to. We build websites and run Google Ads for trades, so we'd rather you ran your own leads, and we've still shown you where a bought lead beats that on price. Every seller is quoted in its own words, and where its marketing and its figures don't agree, we've said so.
The sellers' prices 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 and MyJobQuote's cost guides. The rules come from legislation.gov.uk, the HSE, WaterSafe and the ICO. The seasonal breakdown figure is from Centrica, and the response-time research is Harvard Business Review.
Straight answers
What plumbers ask about buying leads.
- How much do plumbing leads cost in the UK?
- Boiler Guide says its heating leads start at £6. Lead Pronto sells boiler leads from £22 each and booked appointments from £130. Get Work sells a monthly plan from £600 to £1,500 plus VAT. MyJobQuote and Leads Everyday don't publish a plumbing lead price. Buying the click yourself on a plumbing search costs £2.80 to £21.52, going by Google Ads data for the UK.
- How do I get leads for my plumbing business?
- Four ways: buy them one at a time from a lead seller such as Boiler Guide or Lead Pronto, quote on posted jobs at a site such as MyJobQuote, pay a monthly fee for a managed ads plan such as Get Work or Leads Everyday, or run your own Google Ads to your own website. Plumbers is also one of Google's UK Local Services Ads categories, where you pay per answered call.
- Are plumbing leads exclusive?
- Depends who you ask, because the word means different things. Get Work gives one plumber an area. Leads Everyday says its leads are "never shared with competitors". Boiler Guide sells heating leads to up to 3 companies, with some available exclusively. Lead Pronto says its boiler leads "are shared between a small number of installers" unless you pay for a branded campaign in your own name.
- Can I buy boiler leads without being Gas Safe registered?
- You can't do the work. The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 say no self-employed person may carry out gas work unless they belong to the class approved by the Health and Safety Executive, which is the Gas Safe Register, and it's an offence to pretend to be a member. Lead Pronto is the only seller we found that mentions it: installers it sends boiler leads to are "expected to be Gas Safe registered".
- When is demand for plumbers and boiler repairs highest?
- Autumn. UK searches for "boiler repair near me" peaked in October and ran about 5.1 times higher than in June, July and August. British Gas says 40% of boiler breakdowns happen when people switch their heating back on after summer. Searches for "emergency plumber" also peaked in October.
- Is it legal to buy plumbing leads?
- Yes, but the ICO says a business buying marketing data must do proportionate checks and due diligence, and that it is not enough to accept the seller's assurances. In November 2025 it fined Lead Pronto £30,000 over 76,605 texts reading "Claim a Government-backed Free Boiler Grant!", finding the consent behind them was not informed.
- Does the 14-day cancellation rule apply to emergency plumbing call-outs?
- Not to an urgent repair the customer called you out to do: those are excluded under regulation 28 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. A bigger job agreed at the customer's home, like a new boiler or a bathroom, does carry the 14-day right to cancel, and starting inside it needs their express request on a durable medium such as an email or a signed form.
- How many plumbing leads turn into jobs?
- No seller publishes a close rate. Lead Pronto says 24% of its boiler leads become an appointment, so three in four don't get that far. Boiler Guide says "securing the job is down to you". MyJobQuote says it would typically expect trades to win 1 in 3 jobs. All of these are the sellers' own figures.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
A diary full of boilers and bathrooms, and nobody else was sold the lead.
We build the website and run the Google Ads in your own account, on the plumbing jobs you actually want, in the hours you can answer. See what it costs, or message us with a question first.