Google Ads Statistics for Contractors: Costs by Trade

If your agency sends one average for the whole account, ask for the trade and campaign breakdown. A repair call and a replacement estimate can have very different values to your business.

This guide puts published search-ad costs beside the checks you can make in your own account. Sources checked September 14, 2026. The benchmark below was collected in 2024 and 2025.

Contractor click costs, lead costs and conversion rates

LocaliQ’s 2025 home services study covers 3,211 US campaigns running from April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025. It includes Google and Microsoft search ads, rather than a Google-only sample. Each category includes at least 103 campaigns. Its reported averages are medians. All costs are USD.

Across home services, the reported median cost per click was $7.85 and cost per lead was $90.92. Use the trade rows when they better match your business.

The same report gives these conversion rates:

Category	Conversion rate
Air conditioning installation and repair	6.56%
Heating and furnaces	7.48%
Plumbing	7.63%
Roofing and gutters	3.70%

Download the 14 figures as a free CSV. The file includes the source URL, date range, sample and units.

What do these numbers measure?

Cost per click is ad spend divided by clicks. Cost per lead is spend divided by the tracked leads or conversions. Conversion rate describes the share of ad interactions that produced the tracked conversion action.

Your account’s setup matters. A click on a phone link, an answered call and a booked visit are different events. Check what gets counted before comparing your results with a report.

The table contains separately reported medians. Dividing its median click cost by its median conversion rate will not necessarily reproduce its median lead cost. Use your own matching totals when doing that calculation.

Ask for four lines in your monthly report

• Ad spend and valid enquiries for the same period.
• Booked appointments, with duplicates removed.
• Completed, paid jobs from those enquiries. Give longer estimate cycles time to close.
• The campaign split: company-name searches, service searches and other campaign types.

Then look at the actual enquiries. Check whether the homeowner was in your area, wanted work you offer and could get an appointment. A low lead price can hide a poor fit.

Do the numbers work for your jobs?

Illustrative calculation: An account spends $2,400 for 200 clicks and 20 valid enquiries. That is $12 per click, a 10% enquiry rate and $120 per enquiry. If four enquiries become paid jobs, the ad cost is $600 per job.

Those are example inputs, not customer results or targets. Add your delivery costs before judging whether the jobs were profitable.

Compare different campaign types using the trade cost-per-lead guide. For changes over time, use the ad-cost inflation guide. Keep LSA results separate from click-based search campaigns.

What about people who never contact you?

An ad account can show a visit without giving your office a person to follow up with. PipelineOn helps identify some eligible visitors to your website. Available records can include contact details and the pages visited.

Review those records alongside your existing customer list. Keep them separate from enquiries and count the conversations or jobs that follow only when you can verify them.

See PipelineOn for HVAC, plumbing or roofing. Our GA4 visitor identification guide explains what analytics can show on its own.

Correction, September 14, 2026: We removed the incorrect HVAC figures, dated the underlying sample and separated Google-only claims from combined search-ad research. Unsupported mobile shares and outdated LSA badge or credit claims were removed.