HVAC companies get leads from seven main sources: their Google Business Profile, Local Services Ads, Google search ads, SEO, Facebook ads, lead sites like Angi, and past customers. The profile and past customers cost the least. Search ads ran about $128 a lead at LocaliQ’s 2025 median. Compare every source by cost per booked job, not cost per lead.
Every HVAC owner gets the calls: a lead seller, an ad rep, an agency promising a full schedule. Each one quotes a different number, and most never say where it came from. This guide puts the seven main lead sources side by side, using figures you can check yourself in Google’s help pages, LocaliQ’s ad benchmarks and Google’s Keyword Planner. Where a company doesn’t publish a price, the table says so.
What Does an HVAC Lead Cost in 2026?
It depends mostly on where the lead comes from. On Google search ads, the median HVAC lead cost about $128 in LocaliQ’s 2025 benchmarks: $127.74 for air conditioning and $129.02 for heating and furnaces. Facebook lead ads for home and home improvement businesses came in at $42.95. Your Google profile and your past customers cost time rather than ad money. Google doesn’t publish a price for Local Services Ads.
| Lead source | What you pay for | Published cost per lead | How fast it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Your time | No fee | Months to climb |
| Local Services Ads | Each valid call, message or booking | Not published by Google | Days, once verified |
| Google search ads | Each click | $127.74 (AC) and $129.02 (heating), 2025 medians | Same day |
| Facebook and Instagram ads | Clicks or views | $42.95 (home and home improvement) | Days |
| SEO and your website | The work, done by you or someone you pay | No per-lead price | Months |
| Lead sites (Angi, Thumbtack, Yelp) | Leads or ad clicks, by plan | Not in any public benchmark | Days |
| Past customers and referrals | Your time, plus any reward | No ad cost | Fast, once you have a list |
Two warnings before you compare the rows. A cheap lead that never books costs more than an expensive one that does, which is why the last section of this guide turns these figures into a cost per booked job. And these are benchmark figures across many businesses. Your market, your season and your offer can move your own numbers a long way from them.
Is Your Google Business Profile the Cheapest Source of HVAC Leads?
For most HVAC companies, yes. Google charges nothing for the profile, and the calls and website visits it sends cost no ad money. What it costs is time. Google’s help page on local ranking is plain about how its local results work: “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” It also says: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”
Relevance and popularity are the parts you control. For an HVAC company, that usually means:
- A primary category that matches your main work, such as HVAC contractor, plus extra categories for the jobs you want more of, like furnace repair or air conditioning repair.
- Your services listed one by one, with the towns you cover.
- Real hours, including after-hours service if someone actually answers.
- Photos of your own vans, crews and installs instead of stock images.
- A steady flow of new reviews, with a reply to each one.
Distance is the catch. You can’t move closer to every customer, so a profile on its own rarely wins a whole service area. Our guide to ranking in the Google map pack covers the rest. If you’d rather hand the profile work to someone else, it is part of our local SEO service.
How Do Local Services Ads Charge HVAC Companies?
Per lead, not per click. Google’s help page on leads says: “You’re charged for each valid lead you receive through your Local Services ad.” A lead is a call, a message or a booking that comes through the ad. Google doesn’t publish an average price. It says: “Lead prices may vary depending on your location, the job type, the type of lead, or your bidding mode”. It also notes that message leads are usually priced lower than phone leads, though not always.
Two changes matter this year. First, a missed call can now be a billable lead. Google’s list of valid leads now includes this one: “You missed a phone call during your business hours and the customer stays on the line for more than 20 seconds.” If nobody picks up on a busy January morning, you can pay for calls you never took. Our post on missed-call charges has the start date and what to change.
Second, Local Services Ads are moving into the main Google Ads account as a kind of Performance Max campaign. Google’s migration page puts HVAC in the first U.S. group, starting in August 2026. Accounts outside the U.S. follow in 2027. Two lines on that page are worth reading twice: “Manual bidding (such as setting a maximum cost-per-lead) is no longer supported in Google Ads.” And: “Your Local Services Ads performance reports won’t transition to Google Ads.” Download your lead history before your account moves. Our guide to the move walks through it.
Who shows first depends on your bid and on what Google calls profile quality: your rating, number of reviews, response time, photos and verification checks. Google’s page on ad rankings adds: “Missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness.” And: “Higher quality profiles, including those with images, may rank higher and may also pay lower costs per lead.” So reviews and a phone that gets answered count alongside your bid. If calls go to voicemail, fix that first. Our post on why Local Services Ads stop getting leads goes further.
Not sure which source is paying off? Book a free 20-minute call. We’ll look at your Google profile and your ad accounts with you, and tell you which lead source to fix first.
Book a Free Call →How Much Do Google Search Ads Cost per HVAC Lead?
About $128 per lead at the median, going by LocaliQ’s search ad benchmarks for home services. Those figures come from 3,211 U.S. home services campaigns that ran between April 2024 and March 2025.
| Search ad category | Cost per click | Clicks that became leads | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air conditioning installation and repair | $9.68 | 6.56% | $127.74 |
| Heating and furnaces | $9.30 | 7.48% | $129.02 |
| All home services | $7.85 | 7.33% | $90.92 |
HVAC sits well above the home services average, mostly because clicks cost more: $9.30 to $9.68, against $7.85. Only around 7% of HVAC clicks turn into a lead, so it takes about 13 to 15 clicks to get one call or form.
Search ads have one big advantage, which is speed. A campaign can be taking calls the same day, and you choose the searches you pay for. That makes them the usual answer for a slow week, a new service area or one job type you want more of. The trade-off is that every click is billed, booked or not. The account needs negative keywords, a tight location setting and call tracking from day one. Our comparison of Google Ads and SEO covers which to start with.
Are Facebook Ads a Cheaper Way to Get HVAC Leads?
Per lead, usually yes. LocaliQ’s Facebook ad benchmarks for 2026 put lead campaigns for home and home improvement businesses at $42.95 per lead, against $27.39 across all industries. The report has no HVAC row, and it doesn’t say what period or how many accounts the figures cover, so treat it as a rough guide.
The lower price has a reason. Someone searching “furnace repair near me” has a problem right now. Someone filling in a form while scrolling usually doesn’t. So Facebook is usually a better fit for planned jobs, like a tune-up offer before winter or a heat pump offer in spring, than for emergency calls. Call these leads back fast and more than once. Our lead follow-up system lays out the routine.
How Long Does SEO Take to Bring In HVAC Leads?
Months, not weeks. SEO here means pages on your own website that rank for searches like “heat pump installation” in the towns you serve. There is no per-lead price, because you pay for the work instead of the clicks. Once a page ranks, it keeps bringing calls without a bill for each one.
The demand is large. Google’s Keyword Planner shows about 368,000 U.S. searches a month for “ac repair” and 201,000 for “furnace repair”, averaged over November 2025 to October 2026. A page for each main service, written for the towns you cover, gives you a chance at your share of them.
For a realistic timeline, read how long SEO takes for contractors. If you need calls this month, SEO is the wrong first move. If you’re planning for next year, it is the one source on this list where you don’t pay again for every new call.
Should HVAC Companies Buy Leads From Angi, Thumbtack or Yelp?
Only with the math in front of you. Each site charges in its own way, by lead, by plan or by ad click, and none of them appears in a public benchmark like the ones above. The only reliable number is the one from your own account.
Before you sign anything, ask four questions:
- Is the same lead sent to other contractors too?
- Do I pay if the homeowner never answers?
- Is there a contract, and what does leaving early cost?
- Can I get a credit for a bad lead, and how?
Then track every lead from that site for 90 days and divide what you spent by the jobs you booked. Our guides go through each site: Angi, Thumbtack, Yelp and, for Canadian contractors, HomeStars.
Why Are Past Customers the Cheapest HVAC Leads?
Because you already paid to win them. A homeowner whose furnace you fixed knows your name, has your number and has met your techs. Asking them to book the next tune-up, or to pass your name along, costs a phone call or an email instead of a new ad.
HVAC has a built-in reason to stay in touch. ENERGY STAR tells homeowners to have a contractor do “annual pre-season check-ups” and explains the timing: “Contractors get busy once summer and winter come, so it’s best to check the cooling system in the spring and the heating system in the fall.” That advice is written for homeowners, but it works as your contact calendar too: a heating check in the fall and a cooling check in the spring.
A maintenance plan turns that into a habit. Most HVAC companies that show up in Google’s local results already sell one, as our look at contractor maintenance plans and their prices shows. A referral program does the same job with neighbours. Our referral program guide covers what to pay for one. Direct mail can fit here too, sent to past customers or the streets you already work. Our EDDM cost guide prices a drop.
When Do HVAC Leads Peak, and What Does That Mean for Your Budget?
Twice a year, and the swing is big. U.S. searches for “furnace repair” reached about 450,000 in January 2026 and fell to about 60,500 in June and again in September, a swing of more than seven times. Searches for “ac repair” peaked at about 673,000 in July and bottomed out at about 165,000 in December 2025, roughly four times lower.
| Month | “furnace repair” (U.S.) | “ac repair” (U.S.) |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2025 | 301,000 | 201,000 |
| Dec 2025 | 368,000 | 165,000 |
| Jan 2026 | 450,000 | 201,000 |
| Feb 2026 | 301,000 | 201,000 |
| Mar 2026 | 165,000 | 301,000 |
| Apr 2026 | 110,000 | 246,000 |
| May 2026 | 74,000 | 450,000 |
| Jun 2026 | 60,500 | 450,000 |
| Jul 2026 | 110,000 | 673,000 |
| Aug 2026 | 90,500 | 550,000 |
| Sep 2026 | 60,500 | 450,000 |
What that means for lead generation:
- Budget by month, not by year. The same monthly ad budget meets very different demand in January and in June, so set it month by month.
- Work the cheap sources in the quiet months. Spring and fall are when ENERGY STAR tells homeowners to book check-ups, and when your crews have room. Call past customers, sell plans and ask for reviews then.
- Get pages ready before the peak. SEO takes months, so the work for next winter’s furnace searches starts in the spring.
In Canada, the air conditioning swing is sharper still: “ac repair” ran from about 49,500 searches in July to 5,400 in December and again in February. “Furnace repair” ran from about 33,100 in January to 6,600 in August. Our Okanagan search calendar has the same pattern for one region, trade by trade.
How Do You Work Out the Cost of a Booked HVAC Job?
Divide what you spent on a source by the jobs it booked. Cost per lead is only half the story, because some sources send people ready to book and others send people who are only pricing around.
Here is that math with LocaliQ’s median air conditioning lead, as an example only. At $127.74 a lead:
- Book half of those leads and each booked job cost about $255 in ads.
- Book one lead in three and each booked job cost about $383.
- Book a quarter of them and each booked job cost about $511.
Then set that against what the job is worth to you after parts and labour. A repair visit and a full system replacement are very different numbers, so run the math for each kind of job. A source that looks expensive per lead can still be the cheapest per booked replacement.
Your booking rate comes from your own call log: how many leads from each source turned into a scheduled visit. If you can’t answer that today, start there. Our guide to tracking marketing ROI shows how, and your own numbers will tell you more than any benchmark.
Where These Numbers Come From
The ad costs come from two LocaliQ reports. The search figures are from its home services search ad benchmarks, last updated July 15, 2026: 3,211 U.S. campaigns that ran from April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025, the end date as LocaliQ prints it, with at least 103 campaigns per category. LocaliQ says its averages are medians, in U.S. dollars. The Facebook figures are from LocaliQ’s Facebook benchmarks for 2026, last updated September 23, 2026, which don’t state a period or a sample size.
The search volumes are U.S. and Canadian monthly figures from Google’s Keyword Planner, pulled on November 13, 2026 for November 2025 to October 2026. Google groups close variants, so “ac repair” and “air conditioner repair” share one figure. October 2026 is left out of the month table because it is the newest month and some HVAC searches, such as “hvac repair”, jumped to nearly double their usual peak, so it may be revised.
The Local Services Ads rules are quoted from Google’s help pages as they read on November 13, 2026. Three Angi cost pages refused automated requests and were not used. No lead seller’s or agency’s figure appears here unless its source could be read. Osprey sells Google Ads management and local SEO to contractors, so weigh our advice with that in mind.