How to get plumbing leads: buying them versus building your own

First, the word. This guide is about plumbing leads in the sense of job enquiries from homeowners, not lead the metal. Google mixes the two up, which is why the questions it shows beside this search include "What is lead used for in plumbing?".

Second, the short version. There are three ways to get plumbing and heating work from the internet: buy leads from a company that sells them, pay a directory to list you, or build your own from a Google Business Profile, reviews and a website. The first two bring enquiries quickly and keep charging for as long as you want them. The third costs time and some money up front, then keeps bringing work without a fee per lead. Most plumbers use more than one. The mistake is not which one you pick; it is paying for leads for years without building anything that would let you stop.

What bought plumbing leads cost in the UK

Most of the first page of Google for "plumbing leads" is companies selling them. Only one of those publishes a price, so we read each seller's own plumbing page on 10 November 2026 and wrote down what it says. Where a seller publishes no figure, the table says so rather than guessing.

Seller	How you pay	Public price (read 10 November 2026)	Shared or exclusive	When you stop paying
Get Work	Monthly subscription with Google Ads spend included, month to month	£600, £900, £1,200 or £1,500 a month plus VAT, including £300 to £750 of ad spend; an estimated 15, 23, 30 or 38 leads a month	Exclusive to one plumber per area	Leads stop
Leads Everyday	Not published; you speak to them	Not published	Exclusive, "never shared with competitors"	Leads stop; it says you can cancel any time
MyJobQuote	You reply to the jobs you want; a free first month	Not published on the plumbers page	Not stated on the page	Leads stop; your profile and reviews stay on their site
Leads Do Work	Per lead, or a fixed weekly subscription	Not published on the plumbing page	Not stated on the page	Leads stop
Bark	Credits to contact each customer, priced by service, job value and local demand	Not published on the pricing page	Not stated	Leads stop
Checkatrade, MyBuilder	Membership, or a fee when a homeowner picks you	Not on Checkatrade's plumbers page; the dated figures are in our guides on whether Checkatrade is worth it and whether MyBuilder is worth it	Varies by platform	Leads stop; reviews and profile stay with the platform

Two things stand out. Get Work's tiers each spend half the fee on Google Ads, which is a plain reminder of what every seller is selling: somebody else's advertising, with a margin on top. And Leads Do Work says its leads come from "a network of over 300 home improvement websites", naming price comparison sites for plumbing. The homeowner filled in a form on a site that was not yours, and the same form may reach more than one plumber.

Cost per lead is not cost per job

The figure a seller advertises is the cost of an enquiry. The figure you need is the cost of a booked job, and the gap between the two is where the money goes.

Take Get Work's own estimates. Its lowest tier is £600 a month plus VAT, £720 with VAT, for an estimated 15 leads, which is £48 a lead if the estimate holds; the next tier works out at about £47 (our arithmetic). Get Work says the estimate can vary by trade, location and time of year. If you win one lead in four, each booked job has cost you around £190 in fees before you have driven anywhere. That can be cheap for a boiler installation and ruinous for a tap washer.

Shared leads add a second step. If the same enquiry goes to three plumbers, two of them have paid for a job that went elsewhere, and the one who wins is often the one who answered first. The habit that fixes all of this is simple: write down where every enquiry came from and whether it became a job, and once a quarter divide what each source cost by the jobs it brought in.

Boiler leads, and why autumn changes the sums

Boiler work is where plumbing leads earn their price, and it is also the most seasonal work a plumber does. Google Ads data for October 2025 to September 2026 (DataForSEO, rounded into bands by Google) shows the swing:

Search	Quietest month	Busiest month
boiler repair near me	2,900 (June to August 2026)	14,800 (October 2025)
boiler service	8,100 (May 2026)	27,100 (October 2025)
emergency plumber	6,600 (May 2026)	33,100 (October 2025)
gas safety certificate	8,100	12,100

Repairs and services multiply as the heating goes on. Landlord gas safety work hardly moves, because the check is due every year whatever the weather. Get Work's estimates vary "by time of year", and that is the honest way to read any seller's figures: a bought lead in October is a different product from one in June.

The same searches are what every advertiser is paying Google for. Advertisers pay around £17.36 a click for "emergency plumber", £14.64 for "boiler installation" and £8.46 for "boiler repair" (DataForSEO, November 2026, converted from US dollars), and that cost sits inside the price of every lead built on Google Ads. A boiler page on your own site that is already ranking in September collects the October searches without a fee per click.

Free plumbing leads, and what free actually costs

Free sources exist, but you pay for them in hours instead of pounds.

Source	What it costs in money	What it costs in time	When it starts producing
Google Business Profile	Nothing to set up	An hour to set it up properly; twenty minutes a week for photos, updates and replies to reviews	Weeks to months, depending on how many plumbers already hold the map in your town
Reviews	Nothing	Two minutes at the end of every job to ask, and a reply to each one	Straight away, on every job where you ask
Landlords and letting agents	Nothing	Keeping a list of whose gas safety check is due when, and reminding them	Slowly, then every year
Other trades	Nothing, or a drink	Staying in touch with the builders, kitchen fitters, electricians and letting agents who are asked "do you know a plumber?"	Slowly, then steadily
Your own website	A build cost, then hosting each year	Photos of your own jobs, and checking each page before it goes live	Months for planned work; sooner for people who already have your name

The Google Business Profile is the one to do this week if it is not done. When someone searches "plumber near me" with water coming through the ceiling, Google shows three local businesses with a call button above everything else, and being one of the three costs nothing per call. It needs the right primary category, the jobs you do listed as services, a service area that matches the towns you actually cover, hours you actually keep, and reviews and photos added as you go. Our guide to getting Google reviews covers the asking.

Landlord work is the free source plumbing has that most trades do not. A landlord needs a gas safety check every year, so a landlord who books you once is a booking every year, often across several properties. A reminder a month before each one is due costs nothing and is the closest thing in plumbing to a lead that arrives on schedule.

Shared versus exclusive leads

A shared lead is sold to more than one plumber. The homeowner gets several calls, takes several quotes and usually picks on price or on whoever answered first. An exclusive lead goes to you alone. Get Work and Leads Everyday both sell that way. Exclusive costs more per lead, and it is worth more on planned work, a boiler swap or a bathroom, where the homeowner is choosing a firm rather than a price.

Whichever you buy, three questions settle whether the price is fair:

1. How many other plumbers receive this lead, and can I see it before I pay?
2. What happens when the number is dead, the job is outside my area, or the homeowner has already booked someone?
3. Is there a minimum spend, a contract or a notice period? Get Work says its starting contracts run month to month and Leads Everyday says you can cancel any time; read the terms of any seller that does not say so plainly. Checkatrade's plumbers page says its fixed plan memberships are for 12 months.

Directories and Google's own leads

Checkatrade, MyBuilder and Bark are lead sources too, in a different shape: you pay for a listing, a badge or an introduction, and the homeowner finds you beside every other plumber in the area. Checkatrade's plumbers page says "Over 854,090 searches were made on Checkatrade last year for Plumbers like you", and its own answer further down the same page says "Over 30,000 people turned to Checkatrade to find a plumber last year". Searches are not people and people are not leads, so ask any directory for the enquiries it expects in your postcodes rather than its national totals. Our Checkatrade alternatives guide compares the directories with dated prices.

Google sells leads directly as well, through Local Services Ads, where you pay per lead rather than per click. How the price is set, what Google checks and why UK advertisers do not get lead credits are in our guide to Google Local Services Ads.

The thing to hold onto is ownership. Leave a directory or a lead seller and you take nothing with you: the reviews stay on their site and the next homeowner finds someone else. Reviews on your own Google profile and pages on your own site are the same effort, and they stay yours.

The three-year view: what builds and what stops

	Bought leads	Directory listing	Your own profile and website
What you pay	Per lead or per month, for as long as you want leads	Membership or fees, for as long as you are listed	A build cost once, then hosting each year; monthly SEO only if you choose it
When it produces	This week	Within weeks, faster with reviews	Months, then continuously
What happens when you stop	Leads stop	Leads stop; reviews and profile stay with the platform	Site, reviews and rankings stay yours
What builds over time	Nothing	Reviews, but on their site	Reviews, rankings, photos, landlord bookings, referrals

Get Work's lowest tier is £600 a month plus VAT (read 10 November 2026); over three years that is £21,600 plus VAT (our arithmetic), and on the day you stop, the leads stop. That is not an argument against using it, and it may be the right call for a plumber who needs a full diary now. It is an argument for building something alongside it that you keep.

Plumbing lead generation you own

The version you own is the last column of that table, kept going every month: a Google Business Profile that holds its place in the map for the towns you cover, a review from every finished job, and a page for each kind of work, emergency call-outs, boiler installation, boiler repair and landlord certificates, in each of those towns, so that "boiler installation" plus a town name has somewhere to land. That steady work is plumber SEO. It costs a monthly fee rather than a fee per lead, takes months rather than days, and what it builds stays yours. Our page on plumber SEO sets out what that work involves each month, and if you do not have a site yet, websites for plumbers covers the build. The rest of the picture, from the van to landlord reminders and Gas Safe on every page, is in our guide to marketing for plumbers.

A plan for the next twelve months

1. This week: the Google Business Profile. Claim it, set Plumber as the primary category with Heating contractor where it applies, list every job you do, set the service area to the towns you cover, and add photos of your own finished work. Costs nothing.
2. From the next job onwards: ask for a review when the job is finished and the customer is pleased, and ask them to mention the work, "new combi boiler", "burst pipe fixed". Reply to every one.
3. This month: decide about bought leads. If the diary needs filling, pick one seller, ask the three questions above and track cost per booked job from day one. If the diary is full, skip it.
4. Within three months: a website that takes the call. Tap to call at the top of every page, a page for each kind of work and each town you genuinely cover, your Gas Safe number where homeowners can check it, and a quote form that asks what is wrong, how soon, and for a photo.
5. By September: the boiler pages. Boiler repair, boiler servicing and boiler installation, live and indexed before the heating goes on, not during the first cold week.
6. Every quarter: run the numbers. Enquiries by source, jobs by source, cost per booked job. Cut whatever is dearest per job. As your own enquiries grow, the bought leads are usually the first to go.