Thumbtack has no single price for a lead: it charges the lead price you set for each service when a matching customer contacts you, and the cost varies with the job, how many pros are available and your market. Whether those leads are worth it comes down to how many turn into booked jobs and what each job is worth to you, not the price of one lead.
This guide covers how the charges work, how to judge Thumbtack by what it earns you, why some leads never answer, and which settings control your spend. The Thumbtack details come from its own Help Center, checked October 31, 2026. The rest is how we judge any lead source.
How does Thumbtack charge for leads?
Thumbtack charges in two ways, and they work differently.
- Leads. A lead is a new customer who reaches out to you directly. When a customer finds you in search results and the job matches your job preferences, you pay for the lead automatically, at the lead price you set for that service.
- Opportunities. Here you reach out to the customer first. The price shows before you do, and you pay it only if the customer responds.
On top of lead prices, you set a weekly budget. It is the amount you plan to spend each week on leads across all your services. If a lead costs more than what is left in the budget, you pay the full lead price, and Thumbtack limits how far over the budget that last charge can go. After that you stop getting new leads until the budget resets on Monday. The one exception is Thumbtack’s lead boosts: if they are on for your account, you may still get discounted leads after you reach your budget, and you can turn them off. Opportunities are charged separately from the budget, and Thumbtack also offers an unlimited option. Thumbtack explains lead pricing in How much do I pay for leads and opportunities? and the budget in How to edit my budget.
Before you change anything, open your payment history and your Messages tab in the Thumbtack Pro app. Thumbtack shows a record of every lead and Opportunity you paid for and what each one cost. That list is the raw material for everything below.
What decides what a Thumbtack lead costs you?
Thumbtack says it tries to make the cost match how valuable the job is, so prices vary with the type and size of the job, how many pros are available and your market. You also have a say: you can set a different lead price for each of your services. Thumbtack’s Help Center also describes a newer setup, not available on every account, where you set one lead price range for each trade and the final price of a lead depends on the job’s estimated value. If your Lead prices screen under Services shows a range, that is the setup you are on.
Your price is one of several things that decide how many leads you get. Thumbtack also lists your profile, your star rating and reviews, how quickly you respond to new leads and local demand for your services. Write down the lead price you have set for each service next to the number of leads that service sent you last month. It shows you where your money is going before you judge whether it is working.
How do you tell if Thumbtack leads are worth it?
A lead price tells you what a lead costs. It does not tell you what a customer costs. We think the useful way to look at any lead source is to track it back to revenue, not just to lead counts. The leads that count are the ones that booked and became a sold job.
Work it out one service at a time, using your own records:
- From your payment history, add up what you spent on leads and Opportunities for one service over a set period. Subtract any refunds or credits you received.
- Count how many of those leads booked and became a sold job. A quote that never turned into a sale does not count.
- Divide the spend by the number of booked jobs. That is your cost per booked job.
- Add up the revenue from those sold jobs and divide it by the same spend. That is what you got back for each dollar you spent.
- Set that against what a job earns you after your own costs.
Keep each service separate. One service can pay for itself while another quietly loses money, and a total hides both.
If your numbers show Thumbtack leads cost more than the jobs they book, there’s another way to get customers. We run Google Ads and Local Services Ads in accounts you own, so the calls and form fills come straight to you and are never resold. Tell us about your market and we’ll show you what’s realistic.
Why do some Thumbtack leads never answer?
Thumbtack limits a customer to contacting five pros in the first four hours of a search. Customers usually contact fewer, and they can contact more pros after those four hours. The lead shows you how many pros the customer contacted, so you can be one of several people trying to reach the same person. Thumbtack also lists how quickly you respond to new leads as one of the things that affects how many leads you get.
Speed is only part of it. In our experience, reaching a lead takes 8 to 9 attempts on average. That is our own experience, not a published study, and your numbers may differ. What it means in practice is that every lead should go into a scheduled follow-up cadence. Write down when each follow-up goes out and how, before the leads arrive, so every lead gets the same sequence whether you are busy or not and follow-up does not depend on remembering.
To see where yours stands, pull your last ten leads that never replied. For each one, note how many pros the customer contacted, how fast you answered and how many times you followed up. If you stopped after one or two tries, that is the first thing to change.
How do you control spend without losing the good leads?
Thumbtack describes these controls in its Help Center, and the options below come from there.
- Lead prices by service. In the Pro app you move a slider under Services, then Manage lead prices, to set the exact amount you pay for each lead. Menu names can differ, so follow your Pro app if it does.
- Weekly budget. Under Services, then Manage your budget, you can choose a recommended budget, keep your current one, set a custom amount or set it to unlimited. The budget covers all your services together.
- Job preferences. A lead is charged automatically when the job matches your job preferences, so your job preferences decide which leads you pay for.
- Opportunities. The price shows before you reach out, so you can decide job by job.
- Lead boosts. If they are on for your account, you can still get discounted leads after you reach your weekly budget. Thumbtack says you can turn them off.
Thumbtack’s own advice is that if you are not hitting your budget and want more leads, raising your lead prices for your top services makes you more competitive for those jobs. If you hit your budget every week and want more customers, it suggests raising the weekly budget. Use your cost per booked job from the last section to decide where those moves make sense. Where a service books jobs for well under what a job earns you, there may be room to raise the price or the budget. Where it does not, spending more is hard to justify until the follow-up and the numbers improve.
What about refunds or credits for bad leads?
Thumbtack describes one automatic refund in its Quality Commitment. If a customer does not reply to any pro they contacted within the first 72 hours, Thumbtack says it automatically refunds the lead. Thumbtack’s Fair Shot Refund policy adds conditions: you reply through Thumbtack, you respond within four business hours of the request, and you do not share your personal phone number or email before the customer replies. If you meet those, that covers a customer who goes quiet with everyone, and the refund is added to your Thumbtack balance to use on future leads.
For any other lead you think should be refunded, read the current refund policy for pros in the Thumbtack Help Center before you assume anything. We cannot tell you what Thumbtack will or will not refund. Whatever refunds or credits you do receive, subtract them from your spend before you work out your cost per booked job.
When does it make sense to add a lead source you own?
A Thumbtack lead is a lead you rent. You pay for it, and the same customer can contact other pros. A lead source you own, such as your own ads or a profile you control, works differently, because the calls and form fills come to your business directly.
In our view, if Thumbtack is making you 2x or more on your money, keep it going. That means revenue from jobs that booked and became sold jobs, divided by what you spent on Thumbtack, and the 2x is a rule of thumb for judging your own return, not a promise of what you will earn. Your margins decide where your own line sits. If a service stays under your line after you have fixed your follow-up and your spend settings, that is the signal to put its budget somewhere you control. You can read more about how buying leads works and about lead generation for home service businesses.
To sum up: pull your payment history, work out cost per booked job by service, put every lead on a scheduled follow-up cadence, and keep or cut each service by what it returns.
Add a Lead Source You Own
On Thumbtack, a customer can contact several pros about the same job, so a lead you pay for may also go to other pros. Clicks Geek runs Google Ads and Local Services Ads in accounts you own, and we optimize for better calls, not just more of them. The calls and form fills come straight to you and are never resold.
