Thumbtack, Angi and Yelp: what they really charge you per lead
By Josi L.Published
It took me a whole afternoon to answer one question: how much does Thumbtack charge you every time somebody messages you from there?
We went into their site to write the number down and be done with it. We read what they show a business that wants to sign up. We looked for a table, a range, a “starting at”. Nothing. The figure is not published on their site.
That is already an answer, even if it is not the one you went looking for.
There are two ways to charge you, and they are nothing alike
The first one is paying to show up. You pay a set amount a month or a year and your business is listed. Ten people message you that month, you pay the same. Nobody messages you, you pay the same. It is boring, and boring has one big advantage: on the first of the month you already know what you are spending.
The other one is paying per lead. You are not paying to be listed. You pay every time the platform hands you somebody.
Put a real house on it. A deep clean request comes in and they pass it to you. Charged. You send your quote and that person never writes again. Already paid. She was only checking prices. Already paid. The same request goes out to three or four other cleaners at the same time and one of them books it. You already paid.
None of that shows up on your calendar. It shows up on the statement at the end of the month, and the number of charges on it has nothing to do with the number of houses you cleaned.
Here the number sits on one page and does not move: $30 a month, and you can see what you get for it right there.
What we found when we went and looked
This is exactly what we did, so you can go do it yourself.
| What we went looking for | What was there, September 9, 2026 |
|---|---|
| A price per lead, anywhere on their site | Nothing. No table, no range, no “starting at” |
| Phone numbers on the Dallas house cleaning list | None. Not one, for any business on it |
| What a cleaner’s own profile shows the visitor | “Check out 62 house cleaners in your area.” |
| The business phone on Angi and HomeAdvisor | Not published. Yelp does publish it |
Read that third row again, because it is the one that took me a second to believe. That is her page. Somebody lands on the profile she filled in, with her own work on it, and the platform hands him a list of everybody else.
Why they build it that way, we do not know, and we are not going to invent a reason. We know what we counted and the day we counted it.
The rest is arithmetic you can do on your own. If your number were printed there, that person would reach you directly. And if she reaches you directly, there is no lead left to sell. That is the whole reason it matters where your page actually lives.
What to ask before you hand over a card
We did not go through Angi and Yelp page by page hunting for their lead price, so we are not going to talk about them as if we had. That is useful information too: when somebody rattles off figures for all three in one breath, ask them where the figures came from.
What does help, and it works on any of them, are the questions. Three of them, in writing, to their support team:
- Do you charge me to be listed, or do you charge me per lead?
- If it is per lead, how much exactly, and which page of your site says it in writing?
- Does that same request go out to other cleaners at the same time, and to how many?
If question two does not come back with a number and a page you can read it on, that is your answer. Save the reply.
The figures floating around the internet, and where they come from
You will find articles with very specific numbers: this much per cleaning lead, this much a year just to be in. We found them too.
Look at who publishes them before you believe them. Almost all of them are companies that sell software to cleaning businesses — scheduling, quoting, follow-up. That does not make them bad people. But the number is not coming from the platform. It is coming from somebody with something to sell you next.
So we are not repeating them here. If we hand you a figure we cannot back up, we are just one more voice with nothing behind it, and you have had enough of those.
And here is the part nobody says out loud
The price per lead is not something you learn before. It is something you learn after.
You open the account, you fill in the profile, you wait. The first lead arrives and the first charge arrives with it, and that is when you finally see your number. By then you are already in.
Imagine telling a customer “yes, I will do your house”, and giving her the price when you finish.
You would never. You say it up front, because it is fair and because it saves you half the back and forth.
How to work out YOUR number, the only one that counts
If you are already paying one of these platforms, the figure is in your hands and you have not looked at it yet. Five minutes on your phone:
- Log into your account and open billing. Write down last month’s total.
- Count how many leads came in that same month.
- Divide the total by the leads. That is what each person who messages you costs.
- Now count how many of those turned into an actual house, and divide the month’s total by those.
Number four is the one that counts. The first three only exist to get you there. Put what you charged for that house next to what it cost you to land it, and there it is, with nobody needing to explain it to you.
And I will tell you the part almost nobody bothers with. Do it three months running and keep it in a note on your phone. One month on its own says nothing. Three in a row tell the truth, and after that nobody can talk you into anything.
While you have the calculator open, this is also the moment to look at what a house is really worth where you live.
What is different here, without dressing it up
$30 a month, fixed. No charge per lead. No cut of what your customers pay you. And no lock-in: you leave the month you want, and what you wrote stays yours.
Your page carries your WhatsApp and your email, and whoever finds you writes to you directly. Nobody takes a dollar out of that house.
And the price goes at the top, where it shows.
It is the number one question in this trade. Go and see where the other places keep the answer.
Before you decide anything, read what happens if you have to stop for a month. It is answered there, including the parts that are not convenient.
And if you want to see yours built before you spend a dollar, you can build the whole thing for free and publish it the day you say so.