--- title: "How Much Do Electrician Leads Cost in the UK? A 2026 Pricing Guide" description: "Electrician leads in the UK cost £20–£70 via Google LSA, £30–£150 via Google Ads. Compare platforms and calculate your true cost per booked job." author: "James" author_title: "Head of Content" author_url: "https://blog.referr.co.uk/author/james" date: 2026-09-16T09:05:02.722Z language: "en" category: "Lead Generation" tags: ["electrician leads cost UK", "Google Local Services Ads electrician", "electrician lead generation UK", "cost per lead electrician", "buy electrician leads UK"] canonical: "https://www.referr.co.uk/how-much-do-electrician-leads-cost-in-the-uk-a-2026-pricing" --- # How Much Do Electrician Leads Cost in the UK? A 2026 Pricing Guide Electrician leads in the UK typically cost between £20 and £70 through Google Local Services Ads, and £30 to £150 through Google Ads — with London and the South East sitting at the top of both ranges. Membership platforms like [Checkatrade](/b/referr/top-5-best-checkatrade-alternatives) and pay-per-shortlist sites like MyBuilder work differently again, which is why comparing "lead cost" across platforms without doing the maths first can leave you badly out of pocket. Most guides on this topic quote US dollar figures that mean nothing to a sparky in Leeds or Luton. This one doesn't. Everything below is in pounds, based on the UK platform landscape electricians actually use. ## What UK Electricians Actually Pay, By Channel Lead costs vary enormously depending on where you get them. Here's the breakdown by channel, based on data from growyourtrade.com and typical UK market rates: | Channel | Typical cost | How it's charged | | --- | --- | --- | | Google Local Services Ads (LSA) | £20–£70 per lead | Pay per lead, Google-vetted | | Google Ads (Search) | £30–£150 per lead | Pay per click, converts to cost-per-lead | | Checkatrade | Membership fee (no per-lead charge) | Fixed monthly/annual subscription | | MyBuilder | Per shortlist fee | You pay to appear in a homeowner's shortlist, not per job won | | [Bark](/b/referr/top-5-bark-com-alternatives-2) | Credit-based, pay per lead unlock | Variable, often £10–£30 in credits per lead | | Rated People | Per lead or subscription (varies by package) | Mixed model | | Independent lead marketplaces | Varies widely | Pay per lead, some offer exclusivity options | The LSA and Google Ads ranges are the closest thing the UK has to a reliable benchmark, because both are transparent, auction-based systems. Checkatrade and MyBuilder are harder to pin a "cost per lead" figure on — you're not paying per lead in the traditional sense, you're paying for access or visibility, and how many leads that turns into depends heavily on your local search volume and profile strength. That's the trap most electricians fall into: comparing a £25 LSA lead to a £30/month Checkatrade fee and assuming Checkatrade is cheaper. It might be. It might also be ten times more expensive per booked job. You won't know until you do the next bit of maths. ## Cost Per Lead vs Cost Per Booked Job This is the number that actually matters, and almost nobody calculates it. A £20 lead that never picks up the phone, or turns out to be a tyre-kicker three postcodes outside your patch, is worse than a £70 lead that converts one time in three. In practice, the electricians we see doing well with paid lead gen aren't chasing the cheapest lead price — they're chasing the lowest [cost per booked job](/b/referr/maximizing-roi-in-b2b-lead-generation-a-comprehensive-guide). > 💡 Work out your real number: total spend on a platform ÷ number of jobs actually booked from it = cost per booked job. Track this monthly per channel, not per lead. It's the only fair way to compare Google LSA against Checkatrade against a lead marketplace. US benchmark data from nustreammarketing gives a useful directional example (not a UK figure, but the logic transfers): Local Services Ads averaging $39 per lead with a 44% book rate work out to roughly $89 per booked job, while standard Search Ads at $94–$104 per lead with a 40% book rate cost more per lead and per job. The pattern — a cheaper channel with a higher conversion rate beating an expensive channel with a low one — holds true in the UK too. If your average domestic callout is worth £150–£300 and a full rewire is worth £3,000+, a £70 lead that books is cheap. A £20 lead you can't get hold of, three times running, isn't. ## Exclusive vs Shared Leads: What You're Actually Paying For Shared leads get sold to three, four, sometimes five tradespeople at once. You're competing on speed of callback and price. Exclusive leads go to you alone, at a higher price, with no race to the phone. In our experience working with UK trades, exclusivity earns its premium on high-value jobs — full rewires, consumer unit upgrades, EV charger installs — where the homeowner is comparing detailed quotes rather than booking the first available slot. For low-value, urgent jobs like a tripped RCD or a dead socket, shared leads work fine because speed matters more than being the only bidder. A rough rule that holds up well: - **Job under £200** — shared leads are usually fine; the customer just wants someone fast. - **Job £200–£800** — exclusivity starts paying for itself if it improves your close rate by even 15–20%. - **Job £800+** (EV chargers, rewires, board upgrades) — exclusive leads are almost always worth the extra spend, because losing one job to a faster competitor costs more than the lead premium ever would. ## Regional Pricing: London and the South East vs the Rest of the UK Lead prices track hourly rates fairly closely, and the regional gap is significant. UK domestic electrician rates typically run £45–£85 an hour, rising to £65–£110 in London, according to nearbytraders.co.uk. Kent sits closer to £45–£75. That gap shows up directly in lead pricing. Google Ads and LSA auctions are competitive by nature — more electricians bidding for the same postcode pushes the price up. London and the South East consistently sit at the top of the £70–£150 range for Google Ads leads, while electricians in the Midlands, the North East, Wales and rural Scotland often pay closer to the bottom of the £20–£70 LSA range. --- The upside for regional electricians: your job values may be lower, but so is your cost per lead, and often your competition too. The maths can work out similarly whichever end of the country you're in — it's the ratio between lead cost and job value that matters, not the raw number. ## How Job Value Is Pushing Lead Prices Higher in 2026 Rising material and labour costs are dragging job values up, and lead prices are starting to follow. Two examples worth watching: **Consumer unit upgrades.** The average cost of a fuse box upgrade in the UK rose from around £625 in 2025 to £890 in 2026 — a 42% jump, according to logic4training.co.uk. As that job gets more valuable, expect electricians to bid more aggressively for consumer-unit-related leads on Google Ads. **EV charger installations.** Average install costs edged up from £1,100 to £1,175 in 2026, and search demand for EV chargers is up 45% year-on-year, per whito.co.uk. More demand plus higher job value equals more competition for the same lead — and that's exactly what's happening. EV charger leads now command some of the highest per-lead prices in the electrical trade, and that trend is only going one direction. **Should I specialise my lead spend around EV chargers?** If you're already certified for EV charger installs, it's worth ring-fencing a separate budget for this job type rather than lumping it into general electrician ad spend. The job value (£800-£1,200+) comfortably supports a higher cost per lead, and demand is growing fast enough that early movers in your area will build a reputation advantage before prices climb further. ## Budgeting for Lead Generation as a UK Electrician A sensible monthly split for a small electrical firm looks something like this: - **Local SEO**: £500–£1,000/month for a proper UK-focused package (electricianseopro.co.uk). Expect 3–6 months for noticeable movement, 6–12 months in competitive cities, though quick technical and Google Business Profile fixes can show results in 60–90 days. - **Google LSA / Ads**: start with a budget that can generate at least 15–20 leads a month so you have enough data to judge conversion rate — for most one or two-van operations that's £300–£800/month depending on region. - **Marketplace fees**: Checkatrade membership, MyBuilder credits, or a lead marketplace subscription, budgeted separately since these don't scale the same way as pay-per-click. Don't split your budget evenly across everything. Put the bulk of spend behind whichever channel currently shows the lowest cost per booked job, and treat the rest as ongoing tests. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Do I pay VAT on electrician leads bought from marketplaces? Most UK lead platforms and marketplaces charge VAT on their fees if you're VAT-registered, and it's reclaimable as a normal business expense. Always check the invoice — some platforms display prices net of VAT, which can make a lead look cheaper than it actually is until it hits your accounts. ### Is Checkatrade cheaper than Google Ads for electricians? It depends entirely on how many booked jobs your Checkatrade membership actually delivers each month. A fixed membership fee can be extremely cheap per job if it generates strong volume in your area, or expensive if it doesn't — divide your monthly fee by jobs booked, not leads received, to get a fair comparison against Google Ads. ### How many leads does an electrician need to book one job? It varies by channel and job type, but a 30-45% book rate is a reasonable benchmark for well-qualified leads like Google LSA. Shared marketplace leads convert lower, often 15-25%, because you're competing with other electricians for the same enquiry. ### Should a new electrician pay for exclusive leads? Not always. If you're building reputation and reviews, shared leads at a lower cost let you get more jobs in the door faster, even at a lower win rate. Once you have a strong review base and can command higher prices, exclusive leads on higher-value jobs like rewires and EV chargers tend to pay off. ### What's a realistic monthly lead-gen budget for a one-man-band electrician? Somewhere between £400 and £1,000 a month is typical for a sole trader combining a marketplace membership with a modest LSA or Google Ads spend. Start at the lower end, track cost per booked job for 60 days, then scale whichever channel is performing. Cost per lead is the wrong headline number to chase. Track cost per booked job across every channel you use for a full quarter, then put your budget behind whatever wins — that's the only [pricing guide](/b/referr/how-much-do-painter-and-decorator-leads-cost-in-the-uk-a-202) that actually matters for your business. **Ready to buy or sell leads in the UK?** Join over 10,000 businesses already using Referr to grow their pipeline — or monetise their enquiries. [Get started on Referr](https://referr.co.uk) ## Written by **[James](https://blog.referr.co.uk/author/james)**, Head of Content