Understand what you are buying
Is the product a completed enquiry form, a verified phone call, a qualified appointment or a lead shared with several plumbing firms? Agree what each outcome means in the contract.
If you want to buy plumbing leads in the UK, the hard part is not finding a supplier — it is working out which plumbing lead company is selling you a real job and which is selling the same contact to four of your competitors. Every model below is on the market right now: directory memberships, open marketplaces, wholesale brokers reselling plumbing leads for sale, and exclusive lead generation where the enquiry is generated for one firm only. This page lays out what each costs per lead, what close rate to expect from it, and when the cheap option is genuinely the right one.
Buyer decision guide
The cheapest contact rarely represents the lowest acquisition cost. Compare the customer intent, job fit, lead-sharing conditions and response-time requirements before choosing a plumbing lead supplier.
Is the product a completed enquiry form, a verified phone call, a qualified appointment or a lead shared with several plumbing firms? Agree what each outcome means in the contract.
List the postcodes, working hours, minimum job values and work you can actually fulfil. Include boilers or gas work only where the appropriate registered engineers are available.
Specify how duplicates, wrong numbers, out-of-area enquiries, non-plumbing jobs and uncontactable prospects are handled. Ask whether you own the lead data and how consent or privacy information was collected.
"Plumbing leads for sale" covers four very different products, and the word lead is doing a lot of work in all of them. A contact credit is a name and number with no job confirmed. A shared enquiry is a real job sent to several firms at once. An exclusive enquiry is a real job, qualified against your criteria, sent to you alone. A booked appointment is a slot already in a diary. Prices rise steeply across that list and so does what you can do with it.
Directories sell membership plus per-lead credits and put you on a list next to your competitors. Marketplaces sell contact credits with no qualification at all. Brokers buy leads wholesale and resell them, often more than once. Exclusive lead generation builds the demand for one firm and charges per qualified enquiry. The cost per lead rises across that list and so, sharply, does the close rate.
A £15 shared lead that closes one time in twelve costs you £180 per booked job before you count the hours spent quoting the eleven that went elsewhere. A £90 exclusive lead that closes one time in three costs £270 per job but consumes a third of the quoting time and usually carries a higher job value because you are not being beaten down on price. The number that matters is cost per booked job, and after that, revenue per booked job.
It genuinely is, sometimes. A new firm with empty diary space and a strong phone manner can convert shared leads well enough to build a review base and cash flow. Off-season gap filling is another fair use. What shared leads cannot do is build a business with predictable revenue, because you never own the demand — the moment you stop paying, the flow stops.
The answers to these five questions tell you everything, and a supplier who will not answer them plainly is telling you something too.
Costs below are typical UK market ranges as of 2026 and vary by region and job type.
| Supplier type | Model | Exclusivity | Typical cost | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Checkatrade / MyBuilder style directories | Membership plus per-lead credits | Shared with 3–5 firms | £1,000–£2,000 a year plus £8–£30 a lead | Volume is real, but you are quoting against everyone else on price. |
| Bark and open lead marketplaces | Pay per contact credit | Shared, often 5+ firms | £10–£40 a credit | Cheapest per contact, worst conversion — most enquiries never answer. |
| Shared plumbing lead brokers | Bulk lead purchase | Resold by default | £15–£45 a lead | Fine for filling gaps, useless for building a contract pipeline. |
| Plumbing Lead Generation Agency | Pay per qualified lead, or managed campaigns you own | Exclusive to you, never resold | £45–£150 a qualified lead depending on job type and area | Higher cost per lead, materially higher close rate and job value. |
So you can compare us against the table above on the same terms:
If your only decision criterion is the lowest possible price per contact, a marketplace will beat us every time. We would rather tell you that now than sell you a package you resent in month two.
It depends on what you need. For cheap volume while you build reviews, the marketplaces win. For predictable, exclusive work with a higher job value — especially commercial — exclusive lead generation wins. There is no single best supplier for every firm, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling.
Yes, that is exactly what exclusive lead generation is. The enquiry is generated for you, qualified against your criteria and sent to you alone. Expect to pay £45–£150 for domestic and £120–£400 for commercial.
Bought leads are worth it when your close rate and job value clear the cost per booked job. Work that number out before you buy anything: lead price divided by your realistic close rate, compared with your average job margin.
Shared leads run £8–£45 per contact. Exclusive domestic leads run £45–£150. Commercial and contract leads run £120–£400. Boiler installation leads sit at the upper end of the domestic range because the job value is higher.
Speed and competition. Shared leads go to several firms simultaneously, so the win usually goes to whoever calls within five minutes and quotes lowest. If you cannot do both, cheap leads will cost you more in wasted quoting time than they save.
Give us your job types, service area and monthly capacity, and we will come back with the channels worth running, the realistic cost per booked job, and what we would not bother with.