On 2026 benchmarks, accounting / financial services leads run $45 to $140, with a median around $80 and a typical lead-to-customer close rate near 25%. What your business can afford is a separate number: gross profit per customer, times your close rate, divided by a profit factor. The calculator below runs that math with accounting / financial services defaults loaded.
Your ceiling of $125 per lead sits inside the $45 to $140 band for accounting / financial services, so profitability depends on buying at the cheap end or converting better than average. Two levers move you clear of the band: close rate and job value. At a 29% close rate your ceiling clears $140, the expensive end of the market.
Two readings from the same dataset: the band above is the blended cost-per-lead row; paid search alone implies $82 / $160 / $278 per lead (Google cost per click divided by landing-page conversion at each quantile). Search-only leads usually cost more than the blend.
| Gross profit per customer | $1,500 |
| Value per leadusing the 25% industry benchmark close rate | $375 |
| Breakeven lead cost | $375 |
| Your ceiling | $125 |
Balanced: a lead may cost up to a third of the money it brings in. A sensible default for most businesses.
Plots your real number on the scale next to the benchmark band ($45 to $140).
These bands are industry medians. If you want to know what leads cost in your market right now, we will pull the numbers for your area at no cost.
Accounting has the quietest great economics in professional services: a business client retained this year is very likely retained next year, and the year after. Individual tax returns bill $200 to $600 once a year; business clients on monthly bookkeeping-plus-tax arrangements run $500 to $2,500 a month and stay for years. Those two markets share a benchmark band and almost nothing else.
The retention math is the entire argument for paid leads in this vertical. A $1,000-a-month business client at 60% margin produces $7,200 of kept profit per year, and multi-year retention is the norm rather than the exception. Even modest close rates support lead prices that look reckless against a single tax return, so firms advertising for business clients outbid firms advertising for 1040s without breaking their math.
Seasonality is sharper here than anywhere outside the trades: January through April floods the market with tax-return demand at peak lead prices, while the business-client pipeline runs year-round with far less competition. Firms that advertise for business relationships in the off-season and let tax season fill itself buy their best clients at the year's cheapest prices.
A worked example: a firm signing business clients averaging $12,000 in first-year fees at 60% margin keeps $7,200 per client. Closing 20% of qualified inquiries makes a lead worth $1,440; even the conservative divide-by-three ceiling is $480, several multiples above the market's expensive end. On individual-return math ($400 return, same margin, 30% close), the ceiling is $24, below the band's cheap edge: the same firm, two different businesses.
The capacity caveat particular to accounting: the constraint is senior review hours in March, not lead flow in October. Signing clients the practice cannot serve at quality during peak season churns them by summer, so lead budgets here should follow hiring plans, not precede them.
For business clients, easily: a $1,000-a-month engagement at 60% margin keeps $7,200 a year, and retention compounds it. For one-off individual returns, rarely; a $400 return supports about $24 per lead, under the market's cheap edge.
Off-season, for business relationships. Tax-season demand arrives on its own at the year's highest lead prices, while May through November business-client inquiries cost less and are worth more. The calendar is the arbitrage.