Angi, HomeStars and paid leads: what you're buying.

Angi and HomeStars sell you leads, meaning homeowners who asked for a quote, and the bill comes whether or not you get the job.

For some shops in some months that is a fair deal. What you are paying for is a chance to quote, and the chance ends the day you stop paying, so it helps to know how the bill is worked out before you sign up.

How lead services charge.

Start with who you are dealing with. Angi is the US company behind Angi, Angie's List and HomeAdvisor. Angi's annual report says it has been its own public company since IAC spun it off on March 31, 2025, and that it owns HomeStars, so the two are one company.

The same report describes the main charge as a fee for each consumer match, paid whether or not the pro ends up doing the work. Pros can buy full-price leads up to a monthly budget, or cheaper leads as part of a subscription, and Angi sells advertising on top of that. The fee changes with the service the homeowner asked for and where they live. Angi does not post a price list on its sign-up page, and I won't repeat the numbers that float around contractor forums, because nobody can check them.

HomeStars works differently. Its page for pros says signing up is free, and showing interest in a job is free. The homeowner then picks which pros get their details, and if you make the shortlist, HomeStars charges you a fee for the homeowner's contact details. You pay to be shortlisted, and winning the job is still up to you. HomeStars does not post that fee on its sign-up page either.

Thumbtack, which comes up a lot in the US, lets you set your own lead prices, according to its help page on lead costs. Leads that match the job preferences you set are charged automatically. With its other kind, which it calls Opportunities, you see the price first and pay only if the customer replies to you.

What a shared lead does to your close rate.

A shared lead is one homeowner's request that goes to more than one shop. Thumbtack publishes its limit: a customer can contact up to five pros in the first four hours, and more after that. HomeStars lets the homeowner choose among the pros who showed interest, and I could not find a published number for Angi.

That changes the math. Say an HVAC shop in Edmonton pays for 22 leads in September. Thirteen of them pick up when the shop calls back, and seven of those get a quote. In the end three of them book. The shop paid for 22 leads to get three jobs, so the real price of a job is the month's bill divided by three, and the price of one lead tells you little.

The lead service can show you what you were charged. Only you know which of those leads turned into work, so keep a column for it in your job software or a spreadsheet, and fill it in every week.

When several shops get the same request, the one that calls back first has the best chance. A lead that sits in the app until the end of the day is mostly money gone, which is hard on a small shop where the owner is also on the tools.

Lead quality has a history too. In a 2023 order, the US Federal Trade Commission told HomeAdvisor, now part of Angi, to pay up to $7.2 million over claims it made to contractors about the quality and source of its leads. That doesn't tell you what a lead is like today, but it is a good reason to track every one you pay for.

What you own when you stop paying.

When you stop paying a lead service, the leads stop that day. The profile you built stays on their site, and the reviews on it mostly help them, because they show up in search results under their name and send the next homeowner into their system. A roofer who has bought leads for five years and stops on a Monday has the same number of Google reviews on Tuesday as he had five years ago, unless he asked for them along the way.

Compare that with your own Google Business Profile, the box with your hours and reviews on Google Maps and beside search results. It costs nothing to run, and the calls it sends you don't come with a bill. Your website is the same, because once it is built and kept up, its pages keep bringing in work whether you paid anyone that month or not.

The catch is time. A profile and a website take at least six to nine months, and sometimes longer, to rank, while a lead service can ring your phone next week. Google sells its own pay-per-lead ads as well, which are a different deal, and I cover them in Google Local Services Ads, explained for trades.

When paid leads make sense.

Paid leads make the most sense when you have no other way to get the phone ringing. A new shop with no reviews is the clearest case. A plumber who opened in Hamilton this spring has no Google reviews and no rankings yet, and paying for leads gets him jobs, which get him the reviews he needs.

Filling a slow month is the other good reason. An HVAC shop has a gap between furnace season and air conditioning season, and a roofer in Ontario has quiet weeks in early spring. Buying leads for those weeks and stopping when the schedule fills up is a reasonable use of the money.

Where they go wrong is when they become the plan. If most of your work has come through a lead service for three years, you don't control where your work comes from, and someone else sets the price of it. If you do buy leads, a few habits help:

• Set a monthly cap, and check what you paid against jobs booked every month.
• Call every lead back within minutes during the day.
• Ask every customer you book through the service for a Google review as well, so the work builds something you keep.
• Read the cancellation and refund terms before you sign.

Is Angi or HomeStars worth it for your shop.

The answer comes down to one number: what you paid in a month divided by the jobs you booked from it. If that is lower than what a job is worth to you after materials and wages, the service is paying its way. If you don't know the number, keep the statement for a month before you decide anything.

If you are reading this, you are probably already spending on leads and wondering whether it works. The question I would ask back is what happens to your schedule if you stop. If it empties, the fix is building what you own, which is your Google Business Profile and your website, so paid leads become a top-up instead of the plan.

The strategy is where I would start. It looks at how a homeowner in your area finds you, and it comes back as a ranked list with the free fixes at the top. It also says whether to keep buying leads while those go in.