How Much Do Solar Leads Cost in the UK? (2026 Comparison)
How much should a solar lead cost in the UK? The honest answer: it depends entirely on what kind of lead you’re buying, and most installers don’t realise they’re comparing completely different things.
A homeowner’s quote request, a shared enquiry and a booked appointment are different products. This guide breaks down the published prices, the extra costs to look for and how to work out what a lead is worth to your business.
Disclosure: I run PoweredLeads, which sells solar and heat pump leads. This is our buyer guide, not independent market research. The linked public offers were checked on 5 September 2026. Worked examples are fictional, not supplier results or promises.
Published enquiry, call and appointment prices
Compare the same purchase unit before comparing the price. These selected suppliers’ public product pages were checked on 10 September 2026. They do not establish a market average or an independent quality ranking.
| Supplier | What the price buys | Published price | Fees, sharing and conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| PoweredLeads | Accepted homeowner solar enquiry | From £45 per accepted lead | One installer per agreed solar area. Price varies with order size and repeat orders; the starting price is not a first-order quote. Lead blocks include generation and delivery. |
| Lead Pronto | Enquiry, branded enquiry or booked hotkey | From £25, £35 or £130 respectively, excluding VAT | Shared and exclusive products; agree the selected product, area and minimum. The lowest price does not establish exclusivity. |
| SolarPVLeads | Enquiries through managed provider access | Typical £8–£15 per enquiry, plus a weekly management retainer | Retainer amount, VAT and minimum need a quote. Provider charges are separate; exclusivity depends on the agreement. |
| Panel Reach | Qualified inbound homeowner call | £30 per qualifying call | At least 60 seconds, within business hours and the agreed area, with homeowner solar-installation intent. No retainer; minimum and VAT need confirmation. |
| Watts Marketing | Qualified booked appointment | Quote required; no numeric price on the checked page | Advertises pay-as-you-go, no minimum and one installer per appointment. Get price, VAT and credit rules in writing. |
| Leads2Trade | Hot Key, Premium appointment or Qualified enquiry | Product-specific quote required | Solar page says 1, up to 3 and up to 4 recipients respectively. Confirm your product’s distribution, fees and remedy. |
If a linked offer has changed, send us the current source so we can review the entry.
An inbound call is not an attended appointment, and an appointment is not a completed installation. Do not treat a suggested trial budget from an AI answer as a supplier’s published rate. Use a current written quote for your buying decision.
Lead-capture software is a separate cost
Radiant OpenLead helps capture enquiries through an installer’s own channels. Its pricing page lists OpenLead within the Sell plan at £249 per month, excluding VAT, when checked on 10 September 2026. That buys software and other included features, not a guaranteed number of domestic homeowner enquiries. Add the costs of bringing visitors to the form when comparing it with bought leads.
What about directories, advertising and referrals?
These are additional ways to generate work. Their payment models were reviewed on 5 September 2026, as described in the disclosure above.
| Lead source | Published price or payment model | What else to check |
|---|---|---|
| Checkatrade | Membership plans; enquiry volume and areas form part of the quote | What the selected plan includes for your trade and postcodes |
| MyBuilder | A shortlist fee when customer contact details are shared after you express interest | Fee shown for the job, VAT and the applicable refund terms |
| Your own advertising | Actual advertising spend, plus any management and website costs | Cost per enquiry and completed job from your campaign |
| Referrals | Any incentives, customer care and staff time allocated to referrals | Results and costs, even when there is no lead invoice |
A directory membership, a shortlist fee and an advertising budget cover different things. Confirm current availability, VAT, minimum purchases and all fees before comparing totals.
For a wider supplier shortlist, see our comparison of nine UK solar lead generation companies.
Why Cheap Leads Can Cost More Than Expensive Ones
The price on the invoice is only the start. Your team still spends time calling, answering questions, booking surveys and preparing quotes. A cheaper enquiry may take more work, or it may turn out to be good value. You need the results to tell.
There is no rule that the cheapest lead wins, or that an exclusive lead must outperform a shared one. Use an observed cohort or a clearly labelled scenario.
| Fictional scenario | Price per paid lead | Completed jobs per 100 leads | Lead purchase cost per completed job |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | £20 | 4 | £500 |
| B | £50 | 10 | £500 |
| C | £50 | 5 | £1,000 |
A and B cost the same per installation before other costs. Differences in calls, surveys, travel, refunds and job contribution can still make one more attractive. C is more expensive per completed job, despite having the same lead price as B.
Shared Leads vs Exclusive Leads: The Hidden Maths
An exclusive enquiry is one the supplier agrees to send only to you. A shared product can go to more than one installer. Ask about the exact distribution rules, lead age and what the customer asked for; those details vary between suppliers and products.
Do not multiply your cost by the number of other installers who received the lead. Their effect, if any, is already reflected in your own contact and sales results. For the wider buying comparison, read exclusive versus shared solar leads.
Keep contact, survey and close rates separate
Each staged percentage must describe the next step from the previous denominator. Consider these fictional assumptions, not market benchmarks:
- 1,000 paid leads at £20 = £20,000.
- 60% of those leads are contacted = 600 conversations.
- 15% of contacted leads book a survey = 90 surveys.
- 25% of those surveys become installations = 22.5 expected installations in the forecast.
The assumed lead-to-install rate is 0.60 × 0.15 × 0.25 = 2.25%. Forecast lead purchase cost per installation is £20 ÷ 0.0225 = £888.89. The fractional 22.5 is an expected value, not a claim that half an installation can be delivered.
If “15% survey rate” instead means 15% of all paid leads, the calculation changes: £20 ÷ (0.15 × 0.25) = £533.33. You do not multiply by the contact rate again.
Correction: an earlier version of this article quoted £2,133 for a £20-lead example without a valid calculation. It also presented unsupported channel conversion ranges. Those figures have been removed; the definitions and calculations above replace them.
Why Lead Quality Varies So Much Between Suppliers
Two suppliers quoting a similar price can be selling completely different things. The gap sits in how much work happens before the enquiry reaches you.
Ask to see what arrives with a lead. Useful details include:
- What the homeowner asked for: a quote, general information or help with funding.
- Whether the property is in your area and who owns it.
- Whether the contact details have been checked, and how.
- Whether another installer receives the same enquiry.
- What happens if the details are wrong or the lead duplicates an earlier one.
A form with more questions is not automatically a better lead, and an exclusive lead is not automatically ready to buy. Your team should know why the person left their details and what they expect next.
Use our solar lead buying checklist to compare those answers before ordering.
What About Google Ads for Solar?
Search ads can reach people searching for phrases such as “solar panel installers near me” or “solar PV quotes”. But you pay for advertising activity, not a guaranteed customer. A click still needs to become an enquiry, and that enquiry still needs to become a sale.
Google explains that cost-per-click bidding charges for clicks and that the actual click price depends on the auction. It does not publish a fixed cost for a solar installation lead. Google’s explanation of CPC · How actual click cost is determined.
Running your own ads or buying leads
| Approach | What you pay for | What your team needs to handle |
|---|---|---|
| Run your own Google or Meta ads | Advertising, landing pages, tools and your campaign time | Campaign setup, monitoring, enquiries and sales |
| Use a managed advertising service | Media plus the agreed management fee; sometimes an additional performance fee | Agreed brand decisions, feedback and sales follow-up |
| Buy leads | The agreed lead price, plus your own follow-up costs | Calling, surveying, quoting and winning the work |
With your own ads, track the searches or audiences, the landing-page enquiries and the jobs they produce. With bought leads, ask how they are generated and checked before delivery. Neither route wins on price automatically.
Read do Facebook ads work for solar installers? or compare managed advertising with buying leads.
How to Calculate Your Real Cost Per Installation
The direct calculation is:
Cost per installation = total acquisition spend for a defined group of leads ÷ completed installations from that group.
When using a lead-to-install conversion rate:
Lead purchase cost per installation = price per paid lead ÷ lead-to-install conversion rate.
A 5% conversion rate means 5 installations from 100 paid leads. A hypothetical £20 lead therefore produces £20 ÷ 0.05 = £400 in lead purchase cost per installation, before other acquisition costs. It does not matter how many other installers received that enquiry when applying this formula; any effect of competition is already reflected in your observed conversion rate.
Count all costs, without counting anything twice
For bought leads, include the lead invoice, follow-up labour, surveys, travel and attributable software costs. If advertising is included in the supplier’s lead price, do not add an invented media cost again.
For your own campaign, include actual advertising spend, management fees, landing-page costs and the same follow-up costs. Do not add a separate lead purchase fee when no such fee exists.
For a fictional example, 80 leads at an assumed £60 each cost £4,800. If 48 book surveys and 10 become completed installations, lead-to-install conversion is 12.5% and survey-to-install conversion is 20.83%. Lead purchase cost per installation is £480. With another £800 of attributable acquisition costs, the total becomes £560 per installation. These figures are illustrative, not a PoweredLeads price or performance result.
At zero completed installations, cost per installation is undefined. Report the money spent and open opportunities instead of displaying £0 or inventing a conversion outcome.
Include agency and salesperson commissions too. For example, a monthly retainer plus commission on completed sales is a different cost from a fixed lead price. Check whether the commission uses revenue, margin or a fixed amount per job, and whether it is already included in another figure.
The lead budget calculator lets you compare pay-per-lead, retainer and combined arrangements, including sales salaries and commissions. You can use it without contact details and optionally email yourself the results.
What Should You Be Paying in 2026?
Start with what an installation leaves after equipment, labour and other job costs. That is the money available to cover sales costs, fixed overhead, tax and profit. The full invoice value is not your lead budget.
Before agreeing a price, ask:
- What makes a lead one that I pay for?
- Who else receives it, and can the homeowner seek quotes elsewhere themselves?
- What happens to wrong numbers, duplicates and out-of-area enquiries?
- What are the delivery period, total payment and unused-balance rules?
- Can my team follow up the volume while continuing its installation work?
Keep the purchase dates and review date with the figures. Some homeowners may still be deciding. Compare the same group of leads through completed work, and keep invalid leads separate from valid enquiries that did not buy.
How many leads should you budget for each month?
Ask for the number of new enquiries your team can follow up, rather than treating leads and installations as the same thing. Then check whether the spend fits your budget and the work you want to win.
If you start with a job target, use your own observed lead-to-install rate. For a fictional target of four installations:
| Assumed lead-to-install rate | Leads needed in the forecast |
|---|---|
| 5% | 80 |
| 10% | 40 |
| 20% | 20 |
The formula is target installations ÷ assumed conversion rate, rounding up when needed. These are scenarios, not expected supplier results. Test a less favourable rate and allow for the time between an enquiry and completed work. Do not promise next month’s installations using a rate from unrelated leads.
If you only want a few enquiries each month, our website and local SEO review is another option to discuss. We can assess your site, local visibility and enquiry journey before suggesting ongoing work. That service does not guarantee a particular number of leads or a ranking.
Solar and heat pumps can have different sales cycles and margins. If you install both, keep separate figures and use our heat pump lead cost guide alongside this one.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a solar lead cost in the UK?
The price depends on what you buy. An enquiry, a booked appointment and a managed campaign have different costs. Compare the published offers in this guide, then get a quote for your area and order size. Include any management fee, advertising paid separately and the cost of following up.
What is the cheapest way to get solar leads?
Start by checking what your existing customers, website and local profile already bring in. Referrals may have no lead invoice, but staff time and any incentives still cost money. For bought leads, compare total cost per completed job. The lowest advertised price can leave out management or follow-up costs.
How much does a solar lead cost on Checkatrade?
Checkatrade describes membership pricing based on the work, areas and lead volume you choose. That is not a universal price for one solar enquiry. Get a quote for your plan, then divide the relevant cost by the enquiries and completed jobs it actually produces. This guide does not claim a fixed Checkatrade solar lead price.
Is it cheaper to run your own solar ads or buy leads?
Either can be cheaper. For your own ads, count media spend, management, landing pages and staff time. For bought leads, count the invoice and the same follow-up costs. Compare completed jobs from each group of leads, with a consistent review period. Do not add an advertising cost twice if it is already included.
What is a good cost per lead for solar in the UK?
A useful price leaves room for your sales costs and profit after installation costs. Work backwards from what a completed job leaves and your own lead-to-install rate. Test a less favourable rate too. A supplier average cannot tell you what your team will achieve.
How many solar leads do I need per month?
Start with the number of new leads your team can contact and follow up, your budget and the work you want to win. If you use an installation target, divide it by your own lead-to-install rate. For example, four jobs at an assumed 10% rate require 40 leads in a forecast. That is planning maths, not promised sales.
Why are my solar leads not converting?
Check where they stop progressing: delivery, contact, survey, quote or installation. Wrong areas, unclear homeowner expectations, slow replies, unsuitable projects and an uncompetitive offer can all matter. Review the actual records before blaming either the lead source or your sales team.
Is Checkatrade good for solar leads?
It may fit your business if it brings suitable local enquiries at a total cost your jobs can support. Compare your actual completed-job results with other channels and ask what is included in the proposed membership. The platform name alone does not establish lead quality or profitability.
The Checkatrade answers above describe its published membership approach, not a fixed solar lead tariff or independently measured conversion result.
Want to compare a PoweredLeads order with your other options? Solar and heat pump leads start from £45 per accepted lead. Prices vary with order size and repeat orders. Get your lead options to see your price.