How Much Can a Roofer Pay for a Lead? Work Backward From the Job.

Ask a roofer what a good price for a lead is and you'll usually hear a number someone else set. Angi charges this, a storm list costs that, a knocker gets paid so much a door.

That's backward. The job tells you what you can afford to pay for it. Do the arithmetic once, write the number on the wall, and every lead source after that gets the same test: does it come in under the line or not?

Here's how to build that number, with Denver and Dallas as the examples.

Step 1: Start with the average job, not the best one

Use your real average ticket for an insurance shingle replacement, not the big house you sold in June.

If you don't track it yet, published 2026 ranges are a fair starting point. Denver bids on a typical asphalt replacement mostly land between $12,000 and $22,000, with metro averages around $15,500 to $17,000. DFW runs cheaper, mostly $8,500 to $18,000 for a standard shingle roof. Colorado's higher hail exposure pushes buyers toward heavier shingles and impact-rated upgrades. Texas labor is cheaper too.

For the examples:

• Denver average job: $16,000
• Dallas average job: $13,000

Step 2: Peel off everything that isn't acquisition

Now take out every cost that would exist no matter where the lead came from. These are example percentages. Swap in yours.

That last line is your allowable acquisition cost per built job. In Denver it's about 7% of the contract. In Dallas it's the same 7%, but on a smaller ticket, so $210 less in your pocket per job to spend.

Two things people get wrong here:

1. They skip the profit line. If you don't take your profit out before you set the lead budget, the lead budget eats it. A source that "breaks even" at $1,600 per job in Denver is a source that pays you nothing.
2. They forget commission. If your reps are paid on the contract, every lead has to fund a commission check and a lead bill. A source that's cheap per lead but needs a closer on commission is not cheap.

Step 3: Turn the job budget into a per-lead price

A lead isn't a job. To get from one to the other, multiply by the share of leads that become built jobs. Not signed contingencies, built jobs.

That distinction matters more on insurance work than anywhere else. A homeowner signs, the adjuster comes out, and the claim gets denied, settles below the deductible, or hits a cosmetic damage exclusion. The signature was real. The job never was.

Say 8 of every 100 leads sign, and 70% of those signatures turn into a roof you install:

• Lead-to-signed: 8%
• Signed-to-built: 70%
• Lead-to-built: 5.6%

Now the ceiling per lead:

• Denver: $1,120 × 5.6% = about $63 per lead
• Dallas: $910 × 5.6% = about $51 per lead

Pay more than that on those conversion rates and you're spending your profit line. Pay less and the difference is margin.

Notice how hard the build rate pushes on this. If only half your signatures get built, the Denver ceiling falls to $45. If 85% do, it rises to $76. The fastest way to afford better leads is to stop signing roofs that were never going to be approved. That's mostly a roof-age and stone-size question, and it's why two homes on the same street can be worth very different amounts.

Step 4: Run every source through the same line

The nice thing about the allowable number is that it works on any pricing model.

Per-lead sources. Compare the price to the per-lead ceiling. A shared lead also has a lower close rate built in, because two to four other roofers are calling the same homeowner. If sharing cuts your lead-to-built rate from 5.6% to 2.5%, the Denver ceiling for that lead is $28, whatever the sticker says.

Door-knocking. Convert to cost per door. If one in 300 doors on a storm street becomes a built job, Denver can afford $1,120 ÷ 300 = about $3.73 per door, all-in: canvasser pay, mileage, the permit some cities charge, and the hours a closer spends on the doors that went nowhere. We ran the canvassing costs in detail in the door-knocking post. If your crew is knocking unscored streets, that one-in-300 is optimistic.

Flat monthly territories. Divide the monthly fee by the allowable cost per job. That's how many built jobs a month the territory needs to pay for itself. A $3,000-a-month territory needs about 2.7 built jobs a month in Denver and 3.3 in Dallas to clear the line. Everything past that is margin, and the price doesn't go up in a busy month.

Seats and software. Same move. Add up seats plus data plus whatever you still spend to reach the homeowner, then divide by built jobs. We laid out how the four pricing models compare for a five-rep company in the storm-lead pricing post.

Step 5: Two checks before you buy at the ceiling

The ceiling is the most you can pay. It isn't a target. Before you spend all the way up to it, check two things.

Cash timing. Insurance replacement money arrives in pieces: a deposit, the ACV check, then recoverable depreciation after the roof is done. That can stretch 30 to 90 days past signing. Leads get paid for now. If your lead bill for the month is $8,000 and the jobs it produces don't pay out until December, you need the cash to float it. Per-lead billing in a busy month hits hardest here.

Capacity. A lead you can't work within a couple of days of the storm is worth less than the same lead worked the next morning, because someone else got there first. If your crew can inspect 40 homes a week, buying 200 leads in a week doesn't give you 200 chances. It gives you 40 and a pile of stale ones. Buy what you can run.

The short version

• Allowable cost per built job = average job × gross margin − commission − overhead − the profit you want. On these example numbers, about $1,120 in Denver and $910 in Dallas.
• Per-lead ceiling = that number × your lead-to-built rate. Not lead-to-signed.
• Shared leads carry a lower close rate, so their real ceiling is lower than their sticker suggests.
• The build rate is the biggest lever. Leads on roofs that are old enough, under big enough hail, raise the ceiling for every source you buy.

Run your own ticket, margin and close rates through the cost-per-job calculator and you'll have your number in two minutes. Then hold every lead source to it, including ours: flat price per territory on the pricing page, one roofer per city, every home inside the radar-estimated hail footprint scored on stone size at the address and roof age. If your city is still open, check the territory map. First come.