Exclusive roofing leads are worth more than shared leads only when the higher price per lead buys a proportionally better chance of signing the job. Divide each lead's price by the share of leads that turn into signed jobs, and a shared lead at a fraction of the price can land at about the same cost per signed job, or higher once you count the hours spent chasing it.
This post gives you that formula, a worked example with numbers you can swap for your own, what the lead marketplaces' own terms say about how many roofers get each lead, and a short checklist for buying leads of any kind.
How many roofers get the same lead?
"Shared" and "exclusive" describe how many contractors a lead seller passes the same homeowner to. The marketplaces publish this in their help pages, so check them before you compare prices. As of October 2026:
- Angi's Leads FAQ for pros says its Market Match leads go to "up to four pros." For Exact Match and Instant Booking leads, the number is as many pros as the homeowner chooses to connect with. Angi charges for each lead as soon as it is sent and states plainly that "Leads are not guaranteed jobs."
- Thumbtack's page for pros says customers get quotes from up to 5 pros.
- Google Local Services Ads charge per lead: an answered call, a missed call during business hours where the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds, a message, a voicemail or a booking request. For message leads, Google's billing page says the price reflects, among other things, whether the customer has already contacted other Local Services advertisers. A lead you pay for alone can still be a homeowner who contacted three roofers.
That last point applies to every lead labeled exclusive. Exclusivity limits how many contractors the seller sends the contact to. It can't stop the homeowner from collecting other bids on their own, so price an exclusive lead as "fewer competitors," not "no competitors."
The formula: cost per signed job
Two numbers decide what a lead is really worth to you: how many of the leads you actually reach, and how many of the reached homeowners sign with you.
Cost per signed job = price per lead ÷ (share of leads you reach × share of reached leads you sign)
If some of your spend comes back as credits for bad leads, use the net price. If you pay a monthly fee on top of lead prices, divide that fee by the number of leads you get per month and add it to the price per lead.
A worked example: $90 shared vs. $225 exclusive
The numbers below are example inputs, not benchmarks. The two prices sit near the middle of the ranges ActiveProspect, a lead software company, gives for roofing leads: about $75 to $110 or more for a shared lead and $150 to $300 or more for an exclusive one, though it doesn't publish the data behind them. Replace each input with what your own records show. The example assumes the same kind of homeowner in both columns, half of whom hire someone, and that you win your fair share of the bids you're in: one in four when four roofers bid, one in two when two do.
| Example input or result | Shared lead | Exclusive lead |
|---|---|---|
| Price per lead | $90 | $225 |
| Leads you reach | 70% | 85% |
| Roofers bidding, including you | 4 | 2 |
| Reached homeowners who sign with you | 12.5% (50% ÷ 4) | 25% (50% ÷ 2) |
| Leads bought per signed job | 11.4 | 4.7 |
| Lead cost per signed job | $1,029 | $1,059 |
The exclusive lead costs 2.5 times as much per lead, and almost exactly the same per signed job. To check the shared column on your phone: 0.70 × 0.125 = 0.0875, so about 9 in 100 leads become jobs, and $90 ÷ 0.0875 = $1,029.
Now add your time. Each signed shared-lead job took about 8 reached homeowners (11.4 leads × 70%), the exclusive job about 4. If calls, the drive and the inspection take 2 hours per reached homeowner and you value that time at $50 an hour, the shared job carries $800 of time and the exclusive one $400. All in, that's about $1,829 versus $1,459 per signed job. The cheap lead is the expensive one here, and the reason is the extra inspections, not the lead price.
What moves the answer
Speed matters most on shared leads, which is why Angi itself tells pros to follow up quickly. Our guide to speed to lead for roofers shows how fast is fast enough. If calling first lifts your win rate on shared leads from one in four to one in three, the lead cost per job drops from $1,029 to $771. On the other side, an exclusive lead at $300, the top of the range above, costs $1,412 per job in lead spend alone.
A quick rule for the break-even price: multiply the shared lead's price by how many more jobs per lead the exclusive one brings. In the example, exclusive leads sign 0.2125 jobs per lead (0.85 × 0.25) against 0.0875 for shared, about 2.43 times as many. So an exclusive lead is worth up to about $219 on lead cost alone ($90 × 2.43), and more once your time is counted. Above that, the shared lead wins.
How do leads you generate yourself compare?
Referrals, past customers, yard signs, door knocking, direct mail and your own website work differently. There's no price per lead. You pay up front for reach (postage, printing, an hour of knocking), and every homeowner who responds contacts you, not a pool of roofers. The same math still works if you swap the first step: cost per contact = cost per home ÷ response rate, then divide by your close rate. Our post on cost per job for direct mail runs that version line by line.
The trade-off is risk and timing. A marketplace bills you only when a lead arrives, so a slow month costs you little. An owned channel bills you before the first call, a single campaign can come in below average by chance, and it takes a few rounds before you know your real numbers. What you get in return is a homeowner who reached out to you about your offer, and a list of responses nobody else bought. Our comparison of roofing lead channels puts bought leads, mail, knocking and search ads on the same cost per signed job.
What does a "guaranteed" lead guarantee?
Usually a valid contact, not a job. Before you sign up with any lead seller, get answers to these in writing:
- How many other contractors receive the same contact, and does the seller resell it later? Ask what "exclusive" means in their terms, not their sales deck.
- Which bad leads get credited, and how fast you must claim. Angi's credit rules cover duplicates, wrong ZIP codes, wrong project types, competitors testing the system and wrong or disconnected numbers. The lead must be at least 24 hours and less than 30 days old, call tracking must be on, and you must have tried calling within 24 hours on more than one day. A homeowner who simply hired someone else is not on the list. Google says its models keep reassessing charged Local Services leads and can credit low-quality ones automatically, but it no longer credits leads for job types or areas you don't serve, so keep your service settings tight.
- What results the seller claims, and how they measured them. In 2023 the FTC finalized an order against HomeAdvisor over claims about the quality and source of its leads and how often they turned into jobs, with up to $7.2 million in redress. A close rate in a sales pitch is a claim, not your number.
- Contract length, minimums and budget caps. Google lets you set an average weekly budget that caps the month; other sellers may use monthly minimums or prepaid packages. Know how you get out before you get in. Our guide to vetting a roofing marketing company covers exit terms in more detail.
- How you'll count signed jobs per source. Without that, none of the math above is possible. Our guide to tracking leads by source covers the setup.
Lead contracts are legal agreements. If one runs long or carries large minimums, have a qualified professional read it before you sign.
Where Scoutbound fits
Scoutbound doesn't sell leads. It runs direct mail for you: it looks at aerial images of homes in ZIP codes chosen with you, selects roofs with visible wear and mails each homeowner a personalized letter with an aerial image of their own roof, under your brand. Every letter carries its own QR code, which leads to your website, and your campaign's tracking phone number, so responses come to you, not to a pool of roofers. Postage and printing are included. Calls, texts and scans show up in your portal, where you can filter responses by campaign, which gives you the count of contacts you need for the cost-per-job math above.