How much should a painter pay per lead or per booked estimate?

In 2026, painting leads typically cost $20 to $80 on Angi and Thumbtack, about $41 on Facebook, and about $44 on Google Local Services Ads. What you can afford per booked estimate depends on your average job and close rate: a painter who closes 1 in 3 estimates on a $4,000 job can pay far more per estimate than a lead site charges and still profit.

Typical cost per lead by channel

Angi: about $35 to $80 per painting lead, shared, plus around $300 a year.
Thumbtack: about $20 to $45 for interior leads, with tracked medians of $75 interior and $136 exterior.
Facebook and Instagram: $41.26 median for home improvement.
Google Local Services Ads: $44 median for painting.
Paint'd campaigns (our own accounts): $8 to $12 per exclusive lead on average across current clients.

Work out your own break even

Take your average job value, multiply by your gross margin, then by your close rate. That is what one estimate is worth to you in profit.

Example: a $4,000 average job at 40% margin is $1,600 gross profit. If you close 1 in 3 estimates, each estimate is worth about $533. Anything under that per booked estimate makes you money. Use your own numbers, not these.

Lead price vs estimate price

If one in five leads books, a $40 lead means a $200 estimate. If one in two books, the same lead means an $80 estimate. Callback speed is usually what moves that ratio most.

At Paint'd's own average of $8 to $12 a lead, a lead that books one estimate in three costs $24 to $36 per booked estimate. One that books one in two costs $16 to $24.

Paint'd's own numbers

What our campaigns have delivered

We publish our own ad account results instead of asking you to take a cost per lead on faith.

$300,000+
Ad spend managed: 10,000+
Leads delivered

Meta Ads Manager campaigns from Paint'd's own ad accounts: eight campaigns, 1,094 website leads, $10,251.21 in ad spend and a blended cost of $9.37 per lead. Campaign names and budgets are redacted.

Lifetime totals across the ad accounts Paint'd has managed, stated by our team rather than pulled from published research. These are our numbers, not a promise about what your campaigns will do.

Where Paint'd fits

Paint'd campaigns average $8 to $12 per lead across current clients, and every lead is exclusive and called within 30 seconds. Run your own numbers in the Paint'd calculator on our home page, or let us show you what booked estimates would cost in your area on a strategy call.

Book a strategy call

Sources

Updated 2026-10-28