Industry insights
What a roofing lead really costs on Google in 2026, and the number to pay attention to instead
Google charges roofers $124 to $310 a lead in 2026, and more than $600 in storm season. Here is what drives the price, how to set up campaigns that keep it down, and why cost per signed roof, by job type, is the number worth paying for.
Roofometry · https://www.roofometry.com/articles/roofing-google-ads-cost-per-lead-2026/
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Every roofing owner has heard the pitch: turn on Google Ads, the phone rings, and the crews stay busy. The phone does ring. What the pitch leaves out is how much each call costs, and how few of those calls turn into signed roofs.
The 2026 numbers are in. Two data sets were compiled by the agency Skill Mammoth: call-tracking firm 99 Calls, which covered 105 roofing advertisers from January 2024 to mid-2026, and Valley Marketing Group's first-quarter 2026 accounts. Here is what they say, and what we do about it for our clients.
What a roofing lead costs on Google in 2026
Google search ads
- Typically $235 to $310 a lead, $130 to $180 for the best-run accounts, and $400 to $600 or more in the hardest metros.
- Non-branded searches: $124 on average. The middle half of accounts paid $80 to $256.
- Branded searches (people typing your company's name): $44.
Local Services Ads (the "Google Guaranteed" listings above the search ads)
- September 2026: $146.90 on average, with a median of $125.01. The middle 80% of accounts paid $84.65 to $150.88.
- For the past two years, the cost has stayed between roughly $80 and $170 a lead.
Cost per click
- $25.65 in 2026, down from $27.94 in 2024.
- Ahrefs keyword data: $8 to $11 for repair, emergency and inspection searches, and about $1.50 for broad terms.
The two data sets disagree by more than 2x. That gap comes from which contractors were measured, where they work, and what counted as a lead. Treat the range as the honest answer. Your own number depends on your market, your campaign setup, and whether anyone at your company is actually checking it.
You pay a different price for every kind of job
99 Calls broke cost per lead down by what the homeowner searched for:
- Repair: $200
- Storm or emergency: $215
- Leak: $218
- Replacement: $243
- Just "roofing": $265
- Inspection or estimate: $285
- Metal, tile and flat roofing: $230 to $298
The cheapest leads are small repairs. The most expensive are inspection and "free estimate" searches, which bring in plenty of tire-kickers and people collecting quotes. A lead is a phone number. A signed replacement is what pays the crews. One number called "cost per lead" hides all of this.
The same data shows fewer clicks turning into leads. In 2024, 13.6% of clicks became a lead. In 2026 it was 10.1%. You are paying for more clicks to get each phone call.
The same data shows fewer clicks turning into leads. In 2024, 13.6% of clicks became a lead. In 2026 it was 10.1%. You are paying for more clicks to get each phone call.
Run Local Services Ads before search ads
Local Services Ads cost less per lead than most search campaigns. They also put Google's verification badge next to your name. Google charges per lead, not per click, so you do not pay when someone looks and leaves. Verification takes six to eight weeks, so start before you need the calls, not after the first hailstorm.
How to set up search campaigns that keep a lead under $200
- Split campaigns by what the homeowner needs. Put repair, leak and emergency in one campaign, replacement and new roofs in a second, and metal, tile and flat roofing in a third. Each one gets its own budget, ads and landing page.
- Do not run one catch-all "roofing" campaign. It pulls in the $265 generic leads and gives you no way to tell which job types are worth the money.
- Block wasted searches. At minimum, exclude jobs, salary, hiring, DIY, how-to, "price" shoppers, competitor names, and cities you do not serve.
The storm season trap
After hail, every roofer in the metro raises bids at the same time. 99 Calls measured an average of $551 a lead in April 2026 and $609 in May. Valley Marketing Group saw leads go past $600 in the most competitive metros. Doubling your budget during a storm mostly doubles what you pay Google.
Hold search spend steady or cut it during the spike. Put the extra effort into the channels that do not get more expensive: canvassing the neighborhoods that were hit, following up with past customers, and asking for referrals. Our hail-report maps, which are still in development, rank the areas that took reported hail so canvassers know where to start.
Hold search spend steady or cut it during the spike. Put the extra effort into the channels that do not get more expensive: canvassing the neighborhoods that were hit, following up with past customers, and asking for referrals. Our hail-report maps, which are still in development, rank the areas that took reported hail so canvassers know where to start.
Budget, and what managing it should cost
- Minimum workable budget: about $2,000 a month. With less, Google's bidding never gets enough data to improve.
- Competitive metro: $3,000 to $8,000 a month.
- What $2,000 gets you: at $150 a lead, about 13 leads a month. If you close 25% of them, that is three roofs.
- Agency management usually costs 15% to 20% of ad spend on top of that.
The number nobody reports: cost per signed roof
Agencies report cost per lead because they can see it. The phone rang, the form was filled in, and the dashboard counts it. Whether that lead became a signed job never shows up in the dashboard. That part happens in your office, when a rep sets the appointment, inspects the roof, sends the estimate, and wins or loses.
Here is how the same close rate works out at different lead costs:
Here is how the same close rate works out at different lead costs:
- Replacement lead at $243, 25% close rate: $972 in ad spend per signed roof.
- Storm-season lead at $609, same close rate: $2,436 per signed roof.
- Inspection lead at $285 that closes at 10% because it was a price shopper: $2,850 per signed roof.
A campaign with a cheap cost per lead can still be your most expensive way to sign a roof. The data summary we drew from ends with this advice: make any agency give you cost per lead by job type, in writing. We agree, and we think it should go one step further, to cost per signed job.
How Roofometry closes the loop
Our marketing campaigns run on your own job data, not just the ad dashboard. Every lead from every campaign goes into Roofometry, and the report you get connects ad spend to signed work:
- Each campaign is its own lead source, with its cost per lead on record. Repair, replacement, metal and Local Services Ads are kept separate, so you never get one blended average.
- Each lead carries the job type, the roof type, and whether it is an insurance claim. So you can see which job types come from which campaign.
- Each lead is followed to the end. Its status moves from contacted to appointment, inspection, estimate, and then won or lost, with the reason for any loss. Price-shopper leads show up as a pattern, not a hunch.
- Each lead has a rep and an estimated value. You can tell a campaign that brings in bad leads apart from a rep who is not following up.
Once a month you get spend, leads, signed jobs, estimated value, and cost per signed job for each campaign and job type. Budget goes to the campaigns that sign roofs and away from the ones that only make the phone ring. You also get the record behind every dollar of ad spend: which campaign produced which signed job, for how much, and through which rep. That is the proof an owner needs to keep spending, or to stop.
Campaign management is part of the Roofometry consulting retainer, alongside the operations work, so we tie leads to crews and cash flow and do not stop at the click. If you run four or more crews and are unsure what your ad spend actually brings in, start with a conversation.
Campaign management is part of the Roofometry consulting retainer, alongside the operations work, so we tie leads to crews and cash flow and do not stop at the click. If you run four or more crews and are unsure what your ad spend actually brings in, start with a conversation.
Before you spend another dollar on Google
- Apply for Local Services Ads now. Verification takes six to eight weeks.
- Split search campaigns by job type, and shut down any catch-all "roofing" campaign.
- Add blocked search terms for jobs, DIY, pricing, competitors and cities you do not serve.
- Do not raise bids during a hail spike. Canvass the neighborhoods that were hit instead.
- Budget at least $2,000 a month, or wait until you can.
- Ask for cost per signed job by job type, every month, in writing.
Sources
Figures from 99 Calls (105 roofing advertisers, January 2024 to September 2026), Valley Marketing Group (Q1 2026) and Ahrefs (September 2026), as compiled in Skill Mammoth's roofing PPC guide. The cost-per-signed-roof examples are our own arithmetic on those figures, not published data.
Figures from 99 Calls (105 roofing advertisers, January 2024 to September 2026), Valley Marketing Group (Q1 2026) and Ahrefs (September 2026), as compiled in Skill Mammoth's roofing PPC guide. The cost-per-signed-roof examples are our own arithmetic on those figures, not published data.