Last updated 15 October 2026
£13 a lead, for a £125 mini skip or a £600 roll-on roll-off.
Leads Do Work sells skip hire leads at £13 each plus VAT, with an £11 weekly fee on top. Lead Pronto gives a guide price from £15 a lead, and Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for skip firms from £400 a month plus VAT, which its own forecast works out at about £40 a lead. Buy the click from Google yourself and a skip or grab hire search costs £1.43 to £5.58.
Leads Do Work has one price for the whole trade. A 2 yard mini skip for a garden and a 40 yard roll-on roll-off for a building site both cost £13 to hear about, and both turned up on its feed in the same week.
Straight off a seller's feed
"it can be placed on my assigned parking Bay Area so i dont believe i need a council permit"
A customer in Chertsey wrote that on 28 September, asking for a 2 yard and a 4 yard wait and load, and it sits on Leads Do Work's public list of skip hire leads. If that bay turns out to be highway, the law says the offence is committed by the owner of the skip, which on a short hire is you, with a fine of up to £1,000. What the Act says.
Where we stand
We don't sell skip hire leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying skip hire leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build skip hire firms 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.
This guide is for firms that own the skips. Man-and-van rubbish removal and house clearances, which compete with a skip for the same customer, are covered in our waste removal leads guide. Knocking down the garage or shed that fills the skip is in our demolition leads guide.
What you are buying
From a 2 yard mini to a 40 yard RoRo, at one price.
The 10 leads on Leads Do Work's feed, dated 24 September to 1 October, are a fair sample. Solihull wanted "a 2 yard mini skip", Morden "a 4 to 5 yard skip for garden waste/soil" on the driveway, and Sutton "8 yard skip. 9 Oct for 14 days". Two came from building sites: a pair of 20 yard skips "on private land" near Sutton-in-Ashfield, and "a 40yd roll on/off skip" for a site in Henstridge. Three gave no size at all, like the Bristol customer who wrote only "Skip for bathroom renovate", and one was a garage clearance in Northern Ireland.
Here is what that single price does to each size, at Leads Do Work's £13 and at Zapo's forecast, if you win one quote in 3.
| Skip | Typical UK price | Leads Do Work, £13 a lead | Zapo, about £40 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mini skip, 2 to 3 yards, a week | £75 to £175 | £39 a win, 31% of the hire | £120 a win, 96% of the hire |
| Midi skip, 4 to 5 yards, a week | £130 to £320 | £39 a win, 17% of the hire | £120 a win, 53% of the hire |
| Builder's skip, 6 to 8 yards, a week | £190 to £450 | £39 a win, 12% of the hire | £120 a win, 38% of the hire |
| 12 yard skip | £220 to £440 | £39 a win, 12% of the hire | £120 a win, 36% of the hire |
| 20 yard roll-on roll-off | £300 to £600 | £39 a win, 9% of the hire | £120 a win, 27% of the hire |
| 40 yard roll-on roll-off | £400 to £800 | £39 a win, 7% of the hire | £120 a win, 20% of the hire |
Mini, midi and builder's skip prices are Checkatrade's weekly figures (June 2026). Checkatrade stops at 8 yards, so the 12 yard and roll-on roll-off rows are MyJobQuote's (September 2026). Ranges are worked at their middle. Winning one quote in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its own trades; nobody publishes an independent UK figure. For Zapo we divide its £400 plan by the 10 leads it forecasts. Lead prices are before VAT.
We'd want landing a customer to cost somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the invoice. The £13 lead fits that from a builder's skip up, at 12%, and is 7% of a 40 yard roll-on roll-off. On a mini skip it takes 31%, before the lorry has left the yard or the council has been paid for the permit.
If the lead gives no size
Ring before you price it. "Bathroom rip out, bath, basin and toilet plus tiles" could be a midi or a builder's skip, and the difference is about £95 on Checkatrade's figures. Ask where the skip will sit as well, because that decides the permit.
If it's a site, not a house
Leads Do Work charges £23 for a lead from a business rather than £13. A builder who books two 20 yard skips once can ring you direct the next time, and that kind of skip lead can pay more than once.
Your numbers
How much can a skip hire lead cost before the hire stops paying you?
Start from a skip size, enter how many of your quotes become hires, and add the seller's price per lead. It opens on a builder's skip. Switch to the mini skip and then to the 40 yard roll-on roll-off to see the gap.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A SKIP HIRE 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
£16
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £32 to £48
- Which per lead is
- £11 to £16
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 rule of thumb we use across every trade. Nobody has measured it, and the hire price here is before your tipping costs.
Who sells them
Eight places a skip firm can buy work. Only one prints a fixed lead price.
Seller pages and prices are quoted from each firm's own website, and "Not stated" means the firm doesn't say.
| Seller | Price | Who else gets the lead | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads Do Work | £13 a lead + VAT, £11 a week | 1 to 3 others, 5 at most | "customers must respond quickly" |
| Lead Pronto | From £15 a lead, a guide price | Not stated | "No contract and no notice period" |
| Zapo (formerly Get Work) | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Nobody | "exclusive leads to skip hire companies" |
| Leads Everyday | Not published | Nobody | "never shared with competitors" |
| Striker Leads | Not published | Not stated | "verified, high-quality skip hire leads" |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80 + VAT each | Up to 5 professionals | "compare quotes from local providers" |
| Checkatrade | £30 a month, lead plans from £59 | Not stated | "Pick a plan that fits" |
| Select A Skip (broker) | Supplier terms not published | Not stated | "Apply To Become a Supply Partner" |
Leads Do Work prices a mini and a RoRo the same
Its Connect price list has one row, "Waste | Skip Hire", at £13 from a homeowner and £23 from a business, plus VAT. The £11 weekly fee comes to £572 a year before you've bought a lead. Its terms put 1 to 3 other firms on a job as well as you, never more than 5, and returns are "manually reviewed".
Its skip page says the leads come from "a network of over 300 home improvement websites", and gives each operator a profile showing "permit assistance offered" for "customers comparing several local providers on price and availability". That's the seller telling you the customer is shopping around.
Three agencies promise exclusivity and buy the clicks for you
Zapo "delivers exclusive leads to skip hire companies" from search ads, starting "within the next 14 days". On its cheapest plan £200 of the £400 goes on the ads, and it forecasts 10 leads. Leads Everyday covers "mini skips, midi skips, builders skips, roll-on roll-off containers" and wait-and-load, promises leads "never shared with competitors" from "Targeted Google Ads", prints no price, and lists its own second step as "We build targeted lists and craft compelling outreach." Striker Leads names Google, Bing, Facebook and X ads and prints neither a price nor who else gets the lead. All three are buying clicks in the same auction you can bid in yourself.
Lead Pronto sells skip hire inside waste removal
Skip hire is one of the services on its waste page, "From £15 per lead delivered", with a footnote that the real price "depends on your sector and the area you cover", and booked appointments from £130. There's no contract. It doesn't say whether a lead goes to one skip firm or several, so ask before you start. The ICO fined it £30,000 in November 2025, covered further down.
Bark and Checkatrade list you and keep the lead price back
Bark sells credits at £1.80 each plus VAT, up to 5 professionals can answer, and it doesn't publish how many credits a skip lead takes. Its skip hire page tells homeowners the average job is £345 in one place and £250 in the price table underneath. Checkatrade has a Skip Hire category, an Approved tier at £30 a month and lead plans "from £59/mo". What quoting against four other firms does to your price is in the shared-lead trap.
The broker takes the customer and hands you the job
Select A Skip advertises "1,100+ licensed suppliers", tells customers "we'll match you with a trusted local supplier" and "We sort the council permit", and recruits skip firms with "Apply To Become a Supply Partner". It publishes no supplier rates. Work through a broker can fill a lorry, but the customer booked the broker, so the next booking goes back to the broker too.
Everything here about Leads Do Work's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 1 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have skip hire 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 areaBuying the click yourself
The cheapest click in skip hire is for somebody else's bag.
Nobody searches "skip hire leads": Google showed no measurable searches for it, or for any other way a skip firm might ask for leads. Homeowners make up for it. "skip hire" gets 60,500 searches a month and "skip hire near me" 40,500, at £2.64 and £2.81 a click. The cheapest row in the table is "hippo bag collection" at £1.43, people after a skip bag instead of a skip. The dearest is "grab hire near me" at £5.58. For the per-lead column we assume 7.33% of clicks get in touch, which is WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads, measured on American campaigns, so read the last column as a guide.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| grab hire near me | 2,400 | £5.58 | £76 |
| skip hire companies | 480 | £5.36 | £73 |
| grab hire | 2,900 | £4.68 | £64 |
| commercial skip hire | 480 | £4.53 | £62 |
| roll on roll off skip hire | 390 | £3.74 | £51 |
| skip hire same day | 590 | £3.02 | £41 |
| wait and load skip | 590 | £2.98 | £41 |
| skip hire near me | 40,500 | £2.81 | £38 |
| 8 yard skip hire | 880 | £2.65 | £36 |
| skip hire | 60,500 | £2.64 | £36 |
| 4 yard skip hire | 880 | £2.64 | £36 |
| cheap skip hire | 3,600 | £2.48 | £34 |
| skip hire prices | 6,600 | £1.99 | £27 |
| mini skip hire | 2,900 | £1.97 | £27 |
| hippo bag collection | 2,400 | £1.43 | £20 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 1 October 2026. The click prices are Google's estimates from what other advertisers bid, so what you actually pay will land near them rather than on them.
Every row works out dearer per lead than Leads Do Work's £13, at £20 to £76. Size decides whether that matters. A lead off "mini skip hire" costs about £27, so at one win in 3 a £125 mini skip costs £81 to win, 65% of the hire. A lead off "roll on roll off skip hire" costs about £51, and a £450 20 yard roll-on roll-off comes out at 34%. Neither sits inside our 10 to 15 percent band at that rate, but the roll-on roll-off leaves £297 of the hire and the mini skip £44. What your own ads get you is the choice of which skips you pay for:
- Bid on RoRo, grab and commercial, not every mini
- Put your sizes and weekly prices on the website
- Ask where the skip will sit, on the form
- Your firm's name on the ad the customer taps
- Clicks paid to Google, with nothing added
- An ad account that leaves with you
Homeowners also search "skip permit" 590 times a month. A line on your website saying you apply for the licence answers them before they ring a rival. Picking a monthly figure is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads, and the rest of running the account in the Google Ads guide for tradesmen.
Google Local Services Ads
Google's UK category list has no skip hire category. The nearest is "Junk removal services", and Google doesn't say whether a skip firm is accepted under it, so ask before you count on it. If one is, what you would be billed for is covered in our Local Services Ads guide.
When the skip goes on the road
No permit on the road, and the Act charges the owner of the skip.
Section 139 of the Highways Act 1980 starts plainly: "A builders' skip shall not be deposited on a highway without the permission of the highway authority for the highway." If it is, "the owner of the skip" is guilty of an offence and faces a fine of up to level 3, which the Sentencing Act 2020 sets at £1,000. The Act only treats the hirer as the owner on a hire of at least 1 month, so on a one or two week domestic hire, that's our reading, the owner is your firm.
The gov.uk licence page says that "In most areas, skip hire companies are responsible for getting skip licences", that skip bags need one too, and that "You can't put a skip on the pavement." A skip wholly on private land needs no licence, which is why the Morden lead saying "on driveway" is the easy one.
Lit, named and taken away
With a permit, the owner must still keep the skip "properly lighted during the hours of darkness", mark it with "the owner's name and with his telephone number or address", and remove it "as soon as practicable after it has been filled". Missing any of those is the same level 3 offence.
Two plates at each end
The Builders' Skips (Markings) Regulations 1984 want two matching marking plates on each end of any skip on the road, other than a footway or verge, with the top edge no more than 1.5 metres from the ground, kept "clean and efficient".
When the customer moves it
If the offence was somebody else's doing, they're guilty too, and you have a defence of "all reasonable precautions" and "all due diligence". You can only use it if you name them in writing at least 7 clear days before the hearing, so keep the booking notes.
Parts of section 139 work differently in London, under a 2013 act for the London boroughs, so a London firm should check its borough's own rules. None of this shows up on a lead. The Chertsey customer's "assigned parking Bay" might be private or might be highway, and only one of those leaves you holding the offence. Ask where the skip will sit before you quote.
What the council charges
Homeowners are told £15 to £60. Devon charges £110.50.
Checkatrade's skip guide tells homeowners a permit costs £15 to £60, that "the skip hire company will arrange the permit for you" in most areas, and that the fee "is often included" in the quote. MyJobQuote says £10 to £70. Here is what four councils charge the skip firm, from their own pages, set against Checkatrade's £125 average mini skip.
| Council | Licence fee | Covers | Share of a £125 mini skip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salford | £20.76 | a domestic skip, firms on its register, up to 28 days | 17% |
| West Northamptonshire | £27 | a week | 22% |
| Wokingham | £100 | two weeks, then £70 a week | 80% |
| Devon | £110.50 | up to 28 days | 88% |
Read on 1 October 2026 from Salford, West Northamptonshire, Wokingham and Devon. Salford's fees are from 1 April 2026. Other councils set their own.
The licence is yours to get
Wokingham issues skip licences "only to registered skip companies, not to individuals or building contractors", wants a copy of your waste carrier licence and £10 million of public liability cover with each one, and asks for 5 working days' notice. Salford says getting the permit is "the responsibility of the skip company (the supplier) not the householder/builder".
Price the permit into the quote
West Northamptonshire says "The skip company will add the appropriate fee", and charges £155 a week in pedestrian areas of larger towns. Salford charges £186.84 to join its skip register, £72.66 for a skip over 12 cubic yards, and £41.52 for a domestic skip found on the road without one. Salford and Devon both cap a licence at 28 days, so a long hire can need a second one.
Put together, a mini skip won through a £13 lead on a Devon road has spent £39 finding the customer and £110.50 on the licence, against a hire Checkatrade puts at £125. Quote the road price and the driveway price separately, and say on your website which one includes the permit.
Back at the yard
From 1 October 2026, a permitted yard reports every skip it takes in.
The government's digital waste tracking guidance says: "If you are licensed or permitted to receive controlled waste, you will need to enter details of every load you receive". That started in England and Wales on 1 October 2026, with 2 working days to report each load, and paper transfer notes carry on alongside it. If your skips go back to your own permitted site to be sorted, that site is a receiver, so this applies to you from 1 October 2026 rather than when carriers join, which the government plans for October 2027.
Your CB number sells you
The government's duty of care code names skip hire when it tells householders to check a firm holds "up to date and valid upper tier registration". In England that registration costs £191.02 and renews every 3 years at £130.25. Put the CB number on your website and your quotes, where the customer can check it before they book.
Ask what's going in it
The Chertsey lead lists "tiles, bathroom vanity, garden soil, cardboard, TV and plasterboard". Upholstered domestic seating that may contain POPs must not be mixed with other waste, a skip included; the rule and what it does to a load are in the waste removal guide. Ask before the skip goes out, not when it comes back.
Through the year
Skip searches rose 2.7-fold from December to March.
Leads Do Work says skip demand has "clear seasonal peaks in spring and summer", and the search data agrees. UK searches for "skip hire" fell to 33,100 in December, rose to 90,500 in March, about 2.7 times as many, and sat at 60,500 in 5 of the 12 months.
UK searches for "skip hire", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Get ready before the peak
A bought lead in March can still go to up to 5 firms. Your own ads, sizes and prices can be built and tested in the months before, so they are running when the searches climb.
Fix the website in the quiet month
December had the fewest searches of the year. That is the month to put your sizes, weekly prices and permit wording on the website, while the lorries are less busy.
Where the lead came from
Find out where a skip hire lead was collected before you ring the customer.
Lead Pronto, £30,000
The ICO's penalty notice of November 2025 was about boiler grant texts, sent on consent tucked into Lead Pronto's privacy policy, which didn't name any of the 18 clients it was generating data for. Different product, same firm that lists skip hire leads from £15.
The ICO puts the checking on you as the buyer. It wants checks in proportion to the risk, and a seller telling you the data is clean doesn't count as one. A customer who agreed to hear from the seller hasn't agreed to your texts or emails unless the consent names you. A fine against a home improvement firm that blamed its lead supplier is covered in our roofing leads guide.
Before you pay for skip hire leads, ask:
- Which website or ad did the customer fill in?
- Does the consent name my business?
- How many other skip firms get it?
- Does it give a size and where the skip will sit?
- Can I return one outside my area?
Where the skip will sit is the permit question, and it is cheaper to ask it on the phone than at the kerb.
Which way to go
Buy leads for the big boxes. Win the minis from customers who already know you.
Buy per lead if
- A lorry is free this week
- A £13 lead is small beside £320
- The lead gives a size and a spot
- You reply within the hour
Think twice if
- Most of your hires are minis
- Up to 5 firms can get the call
- The skip is going on a road
- Nobody says which site it came from
Run your own if
- You want RoRo and grab work
- Builders book you again
- You want the call to yourself
- The ad account is yours to take
A mini skip earns too little to carry a bought lead, a paid click and a road permit at once. The money is in the larger skips and the builders who book again. How leads are sold in every other trade is in our guide to trade leads. Weighing a directory listing instead? Read is Checkatrade worth it first.
Our sources
Where every skip hire figure here came from.
One thing to know first: we sell websites and Google Ads to trades, so we have a side in this. So each skip seller is quoted directly, and the sums show a bought skip lead undercutting your own ads at every size, because on these figures it does.
Seller pages and terms were read on 1 October 2026, Leads Do Work's skip feed included, and the UK search and click data came from Google Ads on 1 October 2026. Skip prices are from Checkatrade's skip guide and MyJobQuote's. The permit rules are from the Highways Act 1980, the 1984 markings regulations and gov.uk, and the licence fees from each council's own page. Waste tracking and carrier registration are from gov.uk, Google's position from its Local Services Ads help, and lead consent from the ICO. The permit and tracking rules cover England and Wales and carrier registration is England's; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own.
Questions skip hire firms ask
Skip hire leads, answered.
- How much do skip hire leads cost in the UK?
- Leads Do Work charges £13 a skip hire lead from a homeowner and £23 from a business, plus VAT and an £11 weekly fee. Lead Pronto quotes from £15 a lead as a guide price. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for skip firms from £400 to £1,600 a month plus VAT, which its own forecast puts at about £40 a lead. A homeowner's click on your own skip or grab hire ad costs £1.43 to £5.58.
- Are skip hire leads shared with other skip firms?
- It depends on the seller. Leads Do Work's terms say 1 to 3 other firms usually get the same job and never more than 5, and Bark lets up to 5 professionals reply. Zapo and Leads Everyday say their skip hire leads go to one firm. Lead Pronto and Striker Leads don't say.
- Is a mini skip lead worth buying?
- Only just. Checkatrade puts a mini skip at £75 to £175 a week. Win one quote in 3 at £13 a lead and each mini skip costs £39 to find, 31% of a £125 hire. The same lead on a £600 40 yard roll-on roll-off is 7%.
- Who gets fined if a skip is on the road without a permit?
- The skip firm, in most cases. Section 139 of the Highways Act 1980 makes "the owner of the skip" guilty of the offence, with a fine of up to £1,000, and the owner must also light it, mark it with their name and phone number and remove it once full. On a hire of less than 1 month, that owner is the firm that owns the skip, not the customer. Parts of section 139 work differently in London.
- How much does a skip licence cost a skip company?
- It depends on the council. Salford charges a firm on its skip register £20.76 for a domestic skip, West Northamptonshire £27 a week, Wokingham £100 for two weeks and Devon £110.50. Checkatrade tells homeowners to expect £15 to £60.
- What licence does a skip hire company need?
- In England, a firm that carries other people's waste registers with the Environment Agency as a waste carrier, for £191.02, and an upper tier registration renews every 3 years at £130.25. Each skip on a road needs a licence from the council, and Wokingham, for one, won't issue it without a copy of the carrier licence and £10 million of public liability cover.
- Does digital waste tracking apply to skip hire firms?
- If you tip skips at your own permitted site, it does from 1 October 2026. Every site licensed or permitted to receive controlled waste in England and Wales must report each load it receives within 2 working days. The government plans to bring carriers onto the same service from October 2027.
- When do people search for skip hire most?
- In the last 12 months, UK searches for "skip hire" peaked in March at 90,500 and were lowest in December at 33,100, about 2.7 times apart. 5 of the 12 months sat at 60,500.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Bigger skips on the lorry, booked by customers who searched for you.
We build your website and run Google Ads from an account in your own name, aimed at the roll-on roll-off, grab and builders' work that pays rather than every mini skip in the county. See what it costs, then tell us about your skip hire business and we'll build the campaign around the sizes you want more of.