Per Lead, Per Seat, or Per City? What Storm-Lead Tools Actually Cost in 2026

Put four storm-lead vendors' pricing pages side by side and you'll see four different units. One charges per lead. One charges per rep. One charges per year per state. We charge per city. None of those numbers can be compared directly, which is why most roofers pick based on whichever demo they sat through last.

So let's put them on one unit: what it costs to sign one roof.

Everything below comes from each company's own public pricing page as of September 21, 2026, or from published industry estimates where a company doesn't post prices. Where a company quotes by phone, we say so rather than guess. Close rates in the math are illustrative assumptions so you can see how the arithmetic works. Put your own in.

The four pricing models

1. Shared per-lead marketplaces (Angi, HomeAdvisor). You pay for each homeowner inquiry, and the same inquiry goes to several contractors. Angi doesn't publish a roofing rate card, but 2026 industry write-ups consistently put roofing leads at roughly $40 to $120 each, usually on top of an annual membership around $300, with each lead typically shared three to eight ways. The homeowner raised their hand, which is real value. So did everyone else who bought the lead.

2. Exclusive per-lead sellers (StormLead and similar). You pay only when a lead is delivered, and it's sold to one contractor. StormLead's posted price is $99 each for your first three leads, then $175 each, with no monthly fee and no contract. Exclusivity is per lead, not per area. The roofer across town can buy the house next door.

3. Per-seat canvassing software (SalesRabbit). You pay per rep per month for the app, then add storm and data layers. From SalesRabbit's pricing page: Pro is $49 per user per month billed annually ($75 monthly), the Weather add-on is $19 to $31 per user per month depending on billing term, and DataGrid AI (propensity scoring and homeowner data) is also $19 to $31. You get a genuinely good field tool. You don't get exclusivity. Any other roofer in your city can buy the same seat and see the same map.

4. Flat per-territory (RoofLeads Pro). One monthly price per city, no per-lead fee, and one roofer per city. Our tiers run $399 for a small city, $699 mid, $1,299 large, and $2,598 for a premier metro city, with county bundles at about 30% off the sum of their cities.

Map-first tools like HailTrace and Interactive Hail Maps sit next to these. They're mostly annual or quote-based subscriptions sold per state or region. Call them for a current number; we compared features in an earlier post.

Same crew, four bills

Take a five-rep roofing company working one mid-sized Front Range city for a month.

Per-seat stack. Pro + Weather + DataGrid on annual billing is $49 + $19 + $19 = $87 per rep. Five reps: $435 a month. On month-to-month billing it's $75 + $31 + $31 = $137 per rep, or $685 a month. That buys the map, the storm layer, and scored homeowner data. It doesn't buy the doors. Your reps still knock them, on the clock, and so can anyone else's.

Exclusive per-lead. Buy 20 leads at $175: $3,500 a month. Buy 4: $700. The spend scales with volume exactly, and nothing is charged in a month you buy nothing.

Shared per-lead. 20 leads at $80, plus the membership spread over twelve months: about $1,625 a month.

Per territory. A mid city is $699 a month whether its storms produce 10 scored addresses or 200.

The monthly bill is the least useful number on that list. What matters is what each one costs per signed roof.

Cost per signed roof

The formula is simple: cost per lead ÷ close rate = cost per job. The close rate is where every model's pitch lives, so here's the arithmetic across a range. These close rates are assumptions for illustration, not results anyone is promising.

A shared lead doesn't close at the same rate as an exclusive one. The homeowner is taking three to eight calls, and the job usually goes to whoever arrives first or bids lowest. Published 2026 industry benchmarks generally put shared-lead close rates well below exclusive ones, so the two rows don't belong in the same column. We ran that comparison in detail in the exclusive vs shared ROI math, and our Angi comparison covers the marketplace side.

Flat-rate models don't have a per-lead price, so run them backwards: monthly cost ÷ jobs signed = cost per job. A $699 territory that produces one signed roof a month costs $699 per job. Two roofs: $350. Zero: the whole $699 is overhead that month. For a per-seat stack, add your reps' door hours on top of the software bill. Our door-knocking cost breakdown puts a canvass crew at roughly $1,800 a week in labor, fuel, and windshield time, which usually outweighs the software line by a lot.

Which model wins, and when

Here's the part a vendor comparison usually skips: each of these models is the right answer for somebody.

Per-lead wins in a slow month. If no storm hits your city for six weeks, a pay-per-lead vendor charges you nothing for those six weeks. For a one-truck shop that can't carry a fixed monthly cost through a dry spell, that's a real advantage, and it's fair to say so.

Per-seat wins if canvassing is your whole model. If you run a large door team and you're going to knock regardless, a per-rep app with a storm layer is cheap relative to payroll. The software isn't where your money goes. The doors are.

Shared leads win when you have speed and no territory. If you can call inside five minutes and you're willing to compete on price, a shared lead is the cheapest raised hand on the market. You're just competing with everyone else who bought it.

Per territory wins in the months that matter. After a real storm, the flat price doesn't move and the address count does. A hail day that puts a few hundred qualifying roofs in your city costs the same $699 as a quiet week, and nobody else in the city can buy those addresses from us. The trade-off is the reverse of per-lead: you carry a fixed cost through the dry months. In Colorado, that's roughly October through April. The claim window on the summer's storms keeps that backlog workable through the winter, which is the argument we made in the off-season post.

How to actually choose

Don't compare monthly bills. Take the last twelve months and estimate how many roofs each model would have signed for you, using your own close rates, and divide. Three questions decide it:

1. How lumpy is your city's hail? Frequent storms favor flat pricing. Rare storms favor per-lead.
2. Do you want to be the only one there? Per-lead exclusivity protects one house. Territory exclusivity protects the city.
3. Who does the work after the data arrives? Scored contacts you can call are a different cost structure from a map your reps have to knock.

Run your own numbers, including crew time, on the cost-per-job calculator. If a flat city price pencils for you, check the territory map. One roofer per city gets it, and it's first come.