Angi, Thumbtack or your own website: what a won job really costs each way

01

Who's been doing this math for you

Search "Angi leads vs website" and the top results, when we checked in October 2026, came from field-service software companies and lead vendors: firms that sell you the software to manage those leads, or a different source of them. They aren't wrong about the prices. Most repeat the same reported range for Angi, roughly $15 to $85 a lead plus a yearly membership. Then they stop. None of them works out what a lead from your own website costs, and none puts the two side by side in the unit you actually get paid in, which is jobs.

That's what this page does. We build websites, so we have a stake in the answer too. That's why every outside number below says where it came from, and every worked example says what it assumes. Swap in your own numbers and see whether the conclusion survives.

02

What a marketplace lead actually is

Start with Angi's own words, because they're more useful than anyone's estimate. Its 2025 annual report, filed with the SEC, says its lead revenue "comprises fees paid by Pros for consumer matches (regardless of whether the Pro ultimately provides the requested service)". The same filing says "a single Service Request can result in multiple Leads." In 2025 Angi counted about 15.5 million service requests and about 20.2 million leads, roughly 1.3 leads per request on average. Put plainly: you pay for the introduction, win or lose, and sometimes another pro paid for the same one.

What does an introduction cost? We couldn't find a price list Angi publishes for pros, so every figure out there is an estimate. Phonely, a company that sells AI call answering to contractors, puts it at "$15–$85, depending on your trade and location," plus an annual membership of around $300. Treat that as a ballpark. Your rep's number for your trade and zip code is the real one.

Thumbtack is set up differently. Its partner listing promises "no charge to join, no annual fees, and no membership fees." You pay per lead instead, and the price follows the size of the work. Jobber's contractor guide puts it bluntly: "The bigger the lead is, the more you pay for it." You also set your own lead budget. We couldn't find a current per-lead figure for Thumbtack that we could verify, so pull yours from your dashboard for the math below.

None of this is a scandal. It's the deal: the marketplace spends money attracting homeowners, and you rent access to them one lead at a time. What matters is what that access costs per job you actually win.

03

Do the math in jobs, not leads

A lead you don't win still shows up on the bill. So the number to watch is what you spent on leads divided by the jobs you won from them. Lead price gets all the attention, but your close rate moves the answer more.

Here's an illustration. The assumptions are ours, picked to sit in the middle of the reported range, and your own close rate beats any of them:

• A $50 lead, and you win 1 in 5. Each won job cost you $250 in leads.
• Add the membership. At 10 leads a month, that's $6,000 a year in leads plus about $300 in membership, for 24 jobs. Call it $263 per job.
• Win 1 in 10 instead and the same $50 lead costs $500 per job. At $85 a lead and 1 in 10, it's $850.
• Now hold it against the job. On a $9,000 roof, $263 to land the customer barely registers. On a $250 drain clearing, it's the whole ticket. (Those job values are examples too.) That's how the same marketplace can pay off for one trade and lose money for another.

04

What a lead from your own website costs

A website flips the arithmetic. You pay for it once, and the cost of each job it brings is what you've spent divided by the jobs it's brought. The more it brings, the cheaper each one gets. And the homeowner who calls from your site called you. Nobody else got the same request at the same minute.

The honest caveat first, since sales pages tend to skip it: a website doesn't come with a lead count. It gets calls when people can find it, which means your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your truck and your referrals all have to point at it. Nobody can promise how many jobs it brings in year one, and we don't.

What we can show is the break-even. Same kind of illustration, with our own prices: a Growth site is $2,490, and with our optional care plan at $149 a month (hosting, backups, security updates and small edits), year one costs $4,278 and each year after costs $1,788. Against the marketplace example's $263 per job:

• Year one: the site has to bring about 17 jobs to match. If it brings 20, each one cost you $214.
• Year two and after: about 7 jobs to match, because the build is already paid for. At 20 jobs, $89 each.
• On Starter ($1,490, with the $99/mo care plan): about 11 jobs to match in year one, about 5 a year after that.
• Skip the care plan and host the site anywhere you like. Your yearly cost becomes whatever your host charges, and the break-even drops with it.

05

Renting leads vs owning a lead source, side by side

The same comparison in one place. The cost rows use the illustration's assumptions, so replace them with yours before you decide anything.

06

When Angi or Thumbtack is the right call

More often than website people like to admit. A marketplace has homeowners on it today. A new website has to earn its traffic. Renting wins when:

• You're brand new. No reviews, no rankings, no word of mouth yet. Paying per lead gets the phone ringing while the rest catches up, and every job you finish is a review and a referral you didn't have before.
• You've got a slow month to fill. On Thumbtack you set your own lead budget, so you can spend for a few weeks and then pull back. A website can't produce calls on demand.
• You're testing a new service or a new town. Buy a few weeks of leads before you pay for pages. If nobody bites, you found out cheaply.
• The jobs are big and you close well. When one job is worth thousands, a few hundred dollars to land it can be a perfectly good trade. Run the arithmetic with your own numbers and believe what it says.

07

Use both, and keep your own score

Where contractors lose money is when the marketplace is the only place anyone can find them. Think about what happens after the job. The homeowner who hired you through the app googles your company name to check you out before you show up, to find your number when the water heater quits next winter, or to text your link to a neighbor. If that search turns up nothing of yours, the next job goes back through the app, where you're competing with several pros again for a customer you already won.

Keep score with your own numbers, not anyone's pitch. In April 2023 the FTC approved a final order requiring HomeAdvisor, which the agency describes as "a company affiliated with Angi," to pay up to $7.2 million. The complaint charged that since at least mid-2014 HomeAdvisor had made "false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims about the quality and source of the leads" it sold, and that it told pros its leads result in jobs "at rates much higher than it can substantiate." The order settled those allegations. It's about one company's past sales claims, not a verdict on the lead you'd buy today. The lesson is smaller and more useful: a close rate someone tells you is a claim, and a close rate you counted is a number. That goes for anything a website seller tells you, us included.

• Put your own web address on everything you leave behind: the invoice, the truck, the yard sign, the follow-up text.
• Ask every new customer how they found you, and write it down. After a few months you'll know what each channel really produces, in jobs and in dollars.
• Read your marketplace agreement before you move anything off the platform. Your own name on your own invoice is ordinary, but know what you signed.
• Turn lead spend down gradually as your own calls fill the calendar, not on the day the website goes live.

08

Where we fit

If the arithmetic says you should own a lead source, here's ours in the same plain numbers. Starter is $1,490 for one page, live in 3 days. Growth is $2,490 for a 5–8 page site with a page for each core service, live in 7 days. Pro is $3,490 for crews working several cities, with a page per city, in 7–10 days. The care plan is optional, $99–149 a month, month-to-month. For what other routes charge, see what a contractor website costs in 2026.

There's no deposit. We agree the scope in writing, build the site and put it live on our subdomain. You click through it on your own phone and pay when you approve it. The build includes two rounds of changes, and after the second round it's delivered. The quote carries a guarantee: Lighthouse 95+ on every page and under 2 seconds on a real phone. If a page misses, we get one chance to fix it, and if we can't, no invoice goes out. Once you've paid, the site moves to your domain, and the domain, the code and the analytics are in your name.

What we won't promise is a number of leads. Nobody controls Google, and a new site has to be found before it rings. So keep the marketplace running while that happens, count both channels, and let your own numbers tell you when to turn the rented one down.