On 2026 benchmarks, HVAC leads run $45 to $130, with a median around $75 and a typical lead-to-customer close rate near 30%. 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 HVAC defaults loaded.
Enter your average job value to see the most you can afford to pay for a lead, and how that ceiling compares with what leads cost in your market.
HVAC leads split into two economic species, and pricing them the same is how budgets go sideways. A repair call runs $300 to $900 and closes fast; a replacement runs $7,000 to $15,000 and involves two or three bids. A lead source that produces mostly repair calls at $60 each can outperform one producing replacement quotes at $110, or badly underperform it, depending entirely on your close rate for each type. Know which kind your pipeline actually feeds.
Seasonality moves the market more than any other home trade except roofing. The first heat wave of summer and the first hard freeze of winter double search demand, and lead prices follow because every shop in town is bidding on the same emergencies. Shoulder-season leads (March to April, October to November) run 30 to 40 percent cheaper, which is when maintenance-plan offers earn their keep: a $150 tune-up customer acquired cheap in April is a warm call in July.
The maintenance plan is also why HVAC supports a lifetime view better than most trades. A household on a plan produces two visits a year plus the eventual replacement, which is the purchase that pays for a decade of marketing. If half your new customers join a plan, your real value per lead is roughly double the first-ticket math, and your affordable ceiling moves with it.
A worked example: a shop averaging $6,500 per replacement at 45% gross margin keeps about $2,925 per job. Closing 30% of leads makes each lead worth roughly $878. At a divide-by-three profit target, that shop can pay up to about $290 per lead, which clears even the expensive end of the HVAC market with room to test. The same shop closing 15% can afford about $146, still workable, but with execution now doing the carrying.
The caveat specific to this trade: replacement leads decay fast. A homeowner with a dead system in July signs with whoever answers first, and speed to lead matters more than lead price. A $75 lead answered in five minutes routinely beats a $50 lead answered in three hours.
Demand doubles when the first heat wave hits and every contractor bids on the same emergency searches. Expect lead prices 30 to 40 percent above shoulder-season rates during peak cooling and heating months. Buying maintenance-plan customers cheap in April is the standard hedge.
The benchmark band runs 20 to 40 percent, with repair calls closing at the high end and replacement bids at the low end because homeowners collect multiple quotes. Below 20 percent, the fix is usually response time; most lost HVAC leads went to whoever called back first.