Contractor Google Ads Benchmarks: CPC, CPL & Cost Per Booked Job by Trade

Most contractors who ask us about Google Ads want to know one thing first: is what they're paying normal? This page answers that trade by trade. You'll see what a click costs, how many clicks turn into leads, what a lead costs, and what a booked job costs once you count the leads you don't close.

The trade numbers come from LocaliQ's home services benchmarks: 3,211 US Google search campaigns run between April 2024 and March 2025, with at least 103 campaigns in each trade. LocaliQ reports medians, so a few very large accounts can't pull the numbers up. For the wider market we added LocaliQ's 2026 search benchmarks, and for Local Services Ads, SearchLight Digital's February 2026 study of 888 contractors.

It's all US data in US dollars. I've run Google Ads for contractors for more than five years, and our BC accounts follow the same patterns, but the prices aren't identical. To convert, multiply by about 1.37, the Bank of Canada's 2024 average rate. The calculator further down does that for you.

What changed in contractor Google Ads costs this year?

LocaliQ compared every home service business in its data with the year before. More people clicked on ads, but fewer of those clicks became leads, so each lead cost more:

On average, click-through rates rose 13.95%, conversion rates fell 14.96% and cost per lead rose 10.51%. The rest of the market moved the other way. Across all industries, 52% of businesses saw their click-through rate drop, and conversion rates went up 6.84%. Rising click prices point to more companies bidding on the same searches, and the results page for a trade now stacks Local Services Ads, the map and regular ads before a homeowner gets to the first normal listing.

LocaliQ's 2026 report has some better news. Across all industries, cost per lead went down for the first time in five years, and home and home improvement averaged $8.33 a click with 8.05% of clicks turning into leads. An average like that mixes trades moving in opposite directions, so the trade numbers below are the ones to plan with.

How much does a click cost for contractors on Google Ads?

The median home service click cost $7.85 (about $10.75 CAD). By trade it runs from $5.31 for general contracting to $13.74 for painting.

Painting has the most expensive click in home services: $1.56 more than electrical and about $3 more than roofing. In the painting accounts we manage, big painting companies and one-van operators bid on the same small set of searches, so you can't win on bid alone. Quality Score and the landing page have to do more of the work (more on both below). It can still pay well. Beyond The Brush Painters booked 8 jobs in the 20 days after their new website went live, at a 7X return on the ads.

General contracting, garages, and pools and spas have the cheapest clicks. A cheap click can still add up to an expensive lead, as the next two sections show.

What click-through and conversion rates should contractors expect?

Click-through rate is the share of people who see your ad and click it. Conversion rate is the share of those clicks that call you or fill in a form. The home service medians are 6.37% and 7.33%, and the gap between trades is wide: the best-converting category turns clicks into leads almost 7 times as often as the worst.

The top of that list is quick decisions. Nobody collects three quotes for a house cleaner. The bottom is big ones: roofing converts 3.7% of clicks and general contracting 2.61%, because people shopping for a roof or an addition click on several companies before they call one.

If you're in one of those trades and your ads get clicks but few calls, look at the page the ad sends people to before you change the ads. A page built for one service, with photos of your work, your reviews and a phone number at the top, turns more of those shoppers into calls.

Landscaping has the lowest click-through rate of any trade at 4.69%, with plumbing and electrical close behind. Those searches usually show Local Services Ads and the map first, so fewer people scroll down to the regular ads. A low click-through rate is fine when the clicks you do get convert, and landscaping still turns 6.42% of clicks into leads.

How much does a Google Ads lead cost for contractors?

The median home service lead cost $90.92 (about $124.54 CAD). This is where trades differ most: from $45.15 for pools and spas to $228.15 for roofing, a 5X gap.

Roofing leads cost the most in home services, $27.81 more than doors and windows in second place. Roofing also has one of the lowest conversion rates, so a roofing account has less room for waste than any other trade here. That's why roofing ads should go to a page for one service, like repairs or replacements, and never to the homepage. Our roofing Google Ads guide walks through the setup.

In Canadian dollars that's about $313 for a roofing lead, $190 for painting and $177 for plumbing. In our experience, smaller markets on Vancouver Island and in the Interior usually cost less per click than Metro Vancouver.

What does a booked job cost?

Cost per lead is the number most contractors watch. What you actually get paid for is booked jobs, and a booked job costs your cost per lead divided by the share of leads you book.

Take a $228 roofing lead. Book 30% of your leads and each job costs about $760 in ads. Book 15% and it's over $1,500. The ads are identical in both cases; the difference is what happens after the phone rings. Here's the same math for each trade at three booking rates:

Two things follow from that. A trade with expensive leads can still be a great fit for ads when the jobs are big and you close well. And the cheapest way to lower your cost per job is usually to book more of the leads you already get, by calling back fast and following up.

SearchLight Digital found the same thing in real accounts. Two contractors each paid $55 a lead. One booked 48% of its leads at a $2,800 average ticket and got a 15.6X return on ad spend. The other booked 30% at a $1,200 ticket and got 2.7X.

Work out your own cost per booked job

Pick your trade, then set your monthly ad budget, the share of leads you usually book and what an average job is worth. The calculator starts from the median cost per lead for your trade, in Canadian dollars. Treat the result as a first estimate: your area, your offer, your reviews and your website all move it.

Your real numbers will land above or below the median. If your cost per lead is far above it, the cause is usually the targeting, the tracking or the landing page. If your cost per lead is fine but the jobs don't come, look at how fast leads get a call back.

Are Local Services Ads cheaper than Google Ads?

Per lead, yes. Local Services Ads are the listings at the very top of the page with the Google Verified badge, and you pay per lead instead of per click. SearchLight Digital tracked $6.72 million of Local Services Ads spend across 888 US contractors and 126,650 leads in February 2026. The average lead cost $53, 49% less than the $104 contractors paid per lead from regular Google Ads in January.

Local Services Ads leads cost less, book a little more often and cost about half as much per paying customer. The catch is job size. The average ticket was about 26% smaller, because Local Services Ads lean toward service and repair calls, while search ads pick up more of the big planned projects like roof replacements and bathroom remodels.

For most of the contractors we work with, that means Local Services Ads go first and search ads go on top, aimed at the bigger jobs and the searches Local Services Ads don't show for. Google is also moving Local Services Ads into regular Google Ads accounts, in the US first and in other countries in 2027, so the two will soon be managed side by side.

What brings your cost per lead down?

These are the fixes we make first in a new account, before we touch bids:

• Block the junk searches. Searches with "jobs", "salary", "DIY" or "free" in them eat budget in every trade. Check the search terms report every week and add the bad ones as negative keywords.
• Raise your Quality Score. Google charges less per click when the keyword, the ad and the landing page match. Watching Quality Score is the top tip from Chelsea Shirley, a digital marketing consultant quoted in LocaliQ's benchmark report, because it lowers your cost per click and lifts conversions.
• Send each service to its own page. Someone who searches "roof repair Surrey" should land on a roof repair page with a phone number and a short form, not on your homepage.
• Call back within minutes. A Harvard Business Review study found companies that contacted leads within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify them as companies that waited even an hour longer. It's why our AI automation texts back every missed call right away.
• Give people a reason to pick you. In the same LocaliQ report, consultant Jeff Stein says home service buyers are shopping on value: a bundle discount, or an extra service included for free. Every contractor offers a free estimate, so that alone won't set you apart.
• Count phone calls as leads. A lot of trade leads come by phone. If your account only counts form fills, Google can't tell which clicks turn into work.

How we set a contractor's Google Ads budget from these numbers

1. Start from the jobs you want. Say you want 4 more roof replacements a month and you book 25% of your leads. You need 16 leads. At the median roofing lead of about $313 CAD, that's around $5,000 a month in ad spend.
2. Run Local Services Ads first if your trade and area qualify, then add search ads for the bigger jobs.
3. Measure cost per booked job with your own booking rate, not an industry average.
4. Fix the free things before raising bids: negative keywords, the landing page, call tracking and callback speed.
5. Send booked jobs back to Google. With offline conversion imports, Google learns which clicks became paying customers and bids for more people like them, instead of more form fills.

This is how we set the lead target for the Google Ads plans we run. Starter is $1,000 a month in management for ad budgets of $1,000 to $4,000. Scaling is $1,500 a month for $5,000 and up. We agree the target in writing before launch, and if we miss it in the first 90 days, you choose between your management fees back and free management until we hit it. Read the guarantee terms.