What Land Clearing Leads Actually Cost

Ask what a land clearing lead costs and you will not find an answer. Every pricing roundup on the internet covers HVAC, plumbing, roofing and remodeling. None of them cover land clearing, forestry mulching or excavation. The category gets skipped.

So here are the real numbers, including ours, including what the big platforms charge, and including the math that decides whether any of it is worth buying.

The short answer

Land clearing leads sell for roughly $15 to $180 depending on the size of the job and how exclusive the lead is. Our own marketplace prices most leads between $15 and $50, set by job size. A half acre cleanup is not priced the same as a twenty acre clear.

That range only means something once you know how many other contractors got the same phone number.

What the big platforms charge

Neither Angi nor Thumbtack publishes land clearing pricing, so the closest read is adjacent trades:

Angi also charges an annual membership of around $300 and asks for an upfront deposit between $300 and $1,500 before you see a single lead.

The number that actually matters

Cost per lead is close to meaningless on its own. What matters is cost per booked job, and that depends on how many contractors are calling the same person.

Shared leads close at roughly 20 percent. Exclusive leads close at roughly 44 percent, more than double.

Run it out. A $50 lead sold to five contractors, closing at 20 percent, means five leads to win one job. That is $250 to book one job, not $50. Angi has been reported selling roofing leads to as many as sixteen contractors. At sixteen ways, you are not buying a lead. You are buying a lottery ticket and paying retail for it.

We cap marketplace leads at three contractors and then pull the listing from sale. Not because we are generous, but because a lead split sixteen ways does not produce repeat customers.

The part the platforms would rather you forgot

In January 2023 the Federal Trade Commission ordered HomeAdvisor to pay up to $7.2 million for deceptively marketing leads to contractors. The FTC alleged the company told pros they would only receive leads matching the services they provide and the areas they work, and that many leads did not match. It also alleged HomeAdvisor could not substantiate its claims about how often leads turned into actual jobs.

Contractors who were affected received refunds capped at $30 each. Plenty of them had spent thousands.

That is worth remembering the next time a platform quotes you a cost per lead without telling you how many other trucks are pulling into the same driveway.

How to work out what a lead is worth to you

Before you buy from anyone, including us, do this arithmetic:

1. Average job value. What does a booked clearing job actually bill? If your typical job is $3,200, use that.
2. Your close rate. Not the platform’s claim. Yours. If you book one in four of the leads you call, that is 25 percent.
3. Leads per booked job. Divide 1 by your close rate. At 25 percent, four leads per job.
4. Cost per booked job. Multiply leads per job by the lead price. Four leads at $45 is $180 to book a $3,200 job.
5. Compare against gross margin. $180 against a job carrying $1,280 of margin at 40 percent is a 7 percent acquisition cost. That works. If acquisition passes 15 to 20 percent of margin, the channel is not paying for itself.

The mistake is comparing lead prices to each other. Compare them to the margin on the job they produce.

If you are not sure what margin a job actually carries, run it through our land clearing bid calculator first. Put in your own cost per machine hour and it will tell you what to bid and what is left over.

Why speed matters more than price

Whatever you pay, the contractor who calls first usually wins. On a shared lead the gap between first and third call is often the whole job. If you are buying leads and letting them sit until the end of the day, you are paying full price for someone else’s booked work.

Call inside the hour. If you cannot, buy fewer leads.

What we charge, plainly

Leads run $15 to $50, priced by the size of the job, sold to a maximum of three contractors and then pulled. No contract, no membership fee, no deposit, no annual commitment. You buy one at a time and stop whenever you want.

Subcontract work is different and it is free to bid. We hold the contract with the property owner, you run the machine, and you get paid the next day. There is no lead cost at all on that side because we are not selling you a phone number, we are handing you the job.

Full pricing on everything we do, including ads, websites and SEO, is published on our pricing page. Every number is on it.

The honest caveat

Bought leads are not the cheapest work you will ever get. Repeat customers and referrals are cheaper, and they always will be. Leads are for filling the gaps, for getting into a new county, and for the stretch between September and February when the phone goes quiet.

If your schedule is full, do not buy leads. If it is not, work out your cost per booked job before you spend anything, with anyone.

See what is live in your area right now, or look at subcontract work if you would rather bid than buy.

Whatever you pay per lead, your cost per booked job is set by how you work it. The cadence that moves that number is in working a land clearing lead: what to do in the first ten minutes.