Networx Pricing Per Lead for Roofing: The Real Math

Networx does not publish a rate card. Neither does Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack or Modernize. That is not an oversight, it's the model. Per-lead pricing is quoted per territory, per trade, per month, over the phone, after you've told a rep your ZIP codes. The number you get is the number that clears their margin for your market this quarter.

So this post won't invent a figure. It will do the thing the pricing page won't: lay out the arithmetic of the per-lead model, show you what your effective cost per signed job comes out at once you apply realistic contact and close rates, and then price the alternative honestly.

1. What "per lead" actually means in this trade

A lead marketplace sells you a form fill or a phone inquiry from a homeowner who asked about roofing. You pay per inquiry. The inquiry is almost never exclusive to you.

Roofing is one of the highest-ticket residential trades, which makes it one of the most aggressively shared. A homeowner who types "roof replacement near me" into a comparison site is typically routed to three to five contractors, sometimes more. Every one of them pays for the same name. Every one of them calls the same phone number within minutes.

The homeowner's experience is that four roofers called in an hour. Yours is that you paid full price for a race you can lose by taking a shower.

2. The share count is the whole ballgame

This is the part that decides your economics, and it's the part the sales call moves past fastest.

If a lead is shared four ways and you close 30% of the leads you actually speak to, your close rate on the lead you bought is not 30%. It's roughly 30% times your share of the race, adjusted for how fast you call and how good you are on the phone. If you're the fastest and best of four, you might win half. If you're average, you win a quarter.

Run that through a real number. Say the lead costs $X. You buy 100 leads a month. You reach 60% of them. Of the 60 you reach, you win a quarter because it's a four-way split. You signed 15 jobs. Your cost per signed job is 100X divided by 15, or about 6.7X.

Now run the same 100 leads at a 70% contact rate and a 40% win rate. You signed 28 jobs. Your cost per signed job is 3.6X.

The lead price didn't change. Your cost per acquired customer nearly halved. That's why comparing lead prices between vendors is close to useless, and why "what does Networx charge per lead" is the wrong first question. The right first question is how many other contractors got the same name.

We broke the full channel-by-channel version of this down in cost per acquired customer in roofing, and the pattern holds across every marketplace.

3. Contact rate is where the arithmetic bleeds

Most contractors overestimate their contact rate because they remember the calls that connected and forget the voicemails.

A form-fill lead is cold by the time it reaches you. The homeowner filled in a box on a comparison site, often at 9pm, often for a quote they wanted and never followed up on. By the time you dial, they've already had three other calls. A realistic contact rate on shared marketplace leads sits well below what most roofers assume, and it drops the longer you take to dial.

The second bleed is credit disputes. When a lead turns out to be a wrong number, a renter, a homeowner who wanted a $200 repair, or someone who says they never requested anything, you can usually dispute the credit. Whether the credit comes back, and how many hoops it takes, is one of the most consistent complaint patterns roofers report about this model. I won't quote a named reviewer or a star rating, because I can't verify either. The pattern is what matters: you spend admin time chasing credits instead of knocking doors.

The third bleed is the one nobody prices in. A shared lead is not a territory. It doesn't tell you anything about the block. You can't route it. You can't work the neighbours. You drive 40 minutes for one name and drive home.

4. What the effective cost per signed job looks like

Here's the arithmetic laid out plainly, with the lead price left as a variable because no marketplace publishes one.

• Leads bought per month: 100
• Contact rate: 55% (55 conversations)
• Win rate on conversations in a four-way share: 25% (14 jobs)
• Cost per signed job: 100 ÷ 14 = 7.1x the lead price

At 70% contact and a 40% win rate: 28 jobs, 3.6x the lead price.

Same vendor, same leads, same month. The difference is entirely contact speed, phone skill, and how many competitors are in the race.

Now apply a realistic average roof replacement ticket. If a signed job is worth $12,000 to $15,000 gross, a 7.1x lead price still looks survivable on paper. It stops looking survivable when you factor in the jobs you sign that never get built, the ones that go to insurance and stall, and the months where you bought 100 leads and the storm didn't come.

That last point is the quiet killer. Per-lead spend is a fixed monthly commitment against variable demand. You buy the leads whether or not the phones convert. There is no month where you buy 20 leads instead of 100 and still keep your territory.

5. Why the per-lead model exists, and who it suits

I'm not going to pretend the model is a scam. It solves a real problem: a contractor with no marketing engine and no list can get a phone ringing this week. If you're brand new, have no reviews, no referral flow, and no idea how to find work, buying leads is a way to start conversations.

It suits contractors who are fast on the phone, have a dedicated person answering leads within minutes, and treat lead spend as a customer acquisition budget rather than a pipeline. It does not suit a two-man crew who can't answer the phone mid-tear-off, or a company that wants to build a territory instead of renting access to one.

The model's structural weakness is that it sells the same house to your competitor. Roofbird compared with buying shared leads is the honest version of that comparison, but the short form is: a shared lead is a race, and you don't control the starting gun.

6. The flat-subscription alternative, priced out loud

A subscription model flips the meter. Instead of paying per name, you pay for the ability to find and open names yourself, exclusively, in a territory you choose.

Roofbird works on one meter: credits. Looking is free, acting costs. Asking questions, searching, sorting, saving lists, scanning new ground at any size, unlimited service areas, unlimited named lists: all free on every plan including the trial. You spend a credit when you read a roof properly, unlock a homeowner's contact details, or open a house completely.

The pricing is published, which is the first difference:

• Free trial: 10 credits, no credit card, no expiry.
• Hunter: $199/mo, 350 credits a month. Top-ups $25 for 37 credits.
• Hunter Pro: $499/mo, 1,000 credits a month. Top-ups $25 for 50 credits.

What a credit buys:

• Reading a roof properly, both photographs (overhead and street-level) plus the full property record in one go: 1 credit per 8 roofs.
• The owner's name, phone and email: 1 credit per 2 roofs.
• Opening a house completely: 1 credit. That's the full roof read with imagery date, street address, owner name and mailing address, occupancy, DNC-flagged phone numbers, an email where one exists, and the whole property record.

There is no per-lead fee and no quota on looking. Nothing is gated by plan. The only difference between Hunter and Hunter Pro is how many doors a month you can open.

The comparison that matters isn't credits versus lead price. It's exclusive versus shared. A lead you found by reading the roofs in your own service area has no competitor attached to it, because nobody else bought it. You can knock the neighbours. You can route it. You can hold it.

That's the flat-subscription argument in one line: you're not buying a name, you're buying the ability to find names nobody else has.

7. The homeowner contact details are the payoff

Here's where the arithmetic gets interesting, because the expensive part of any lead isn't the name. It's the phone number and the email.

Roofbird shows the full property record free, on every scanned lead: owner name, owner-occupied or absentee, estimated market value, year built, last sale date and price, beds, baths, living square footage, lot size, stories, garage, annual property tax, mortgage lender, and an owner-equity estimate. Equity is the number that decides whether a homeowner can say yes, so it's not gated.

Only the phone and email sit behind a one-click unlock. Every number is DNC-scrubbed and labelled: "clear" means it was checked against the federal Do Not Call registry and is safe for a manual sales call, "DNC" means don't call it, and "verify" means the scrub couldn't confirm either way, so treat it as unknown. Manual dialling only. No texts, no auto-dialler. A lookup that finds no contact never costs a credit.

So the model is: free to look, cheap to read, and you only pay when a real homeowner with a real number is worth a call. How Roofbird scores a roof from imagery walks through what the read actually contains, and the contact details and DNC screening page covers how the numbers are sourced and checked.

Run your own numbers against that. If you're buying 100 shared leads a month at a 25% win rate, you're paying for 75 losses that went to somebody else. At 350 credits for $199, you could open 350 houses exclusively and knock a neighbourhood you chose because the roofs are actually worn.

8. How to decide in one afternoon

1. Write down your actual contact rate for the last 90 days. Not your gut. Your dialler or your CRM. If you don't have one, you don't have a contact rate, you have a feeling.
2. Divide your total lead spend last quarter by the number of jobs you signed from that spend. That's your real cost per acquired customer. It will be higher than you think.
3. Ask your rep, in writing, how many contractors receive each lead in your territory. If the answer is vague, that's the answer.
4. Price the alternative against the same number. A flat subscription with a published rate card lets you do that arithmetic before you sign, not after.
5. If you want to see scored roofs before you commit to anything, look at a live scored area without signing up. It costs nothing and it takes about a minute.

FAQ

Q: How much does Networx charge per roofing lead? A: Networx does not publish a rate card for roofing leads, and pricing is typically quoted per territory over the phone, so any specific figure you read online is a reported range rather than a published rate. What matters more than the sticker price is how many contractors receive the same lead, because that share count drives your effective cost per signed job far more than the per-lead fee does.

Q: Why is cost per signed job so much higher than cost per lead? A: Because cost per lead ignores contact rate and share. If you reach 55% of leads and win a quarter of those conversations because four contractors got the same name, you sign roughly 14 jobs from 100 leads, making your cost per signed job about 7x the lead price. Improve contact speed and win rate and the same leads produce a far lower cost per acquired customer.

Q: Is a flat subscription actually cheaper than buying leads? A: It depends entirely on your close rate, but the structure is different in a way that matters. Per-lead spend is a fixed monthly commitment against variable demand, and every lead is shared. A subscription with published pricing and exclusive leads lets you do the arithmetic before you commit. Roofbird's Hunter plan is $199/mo for 350 credits, and reading a roof costs 1 credit per 8 roofs, so a single month buys a lot of exclusive territory.

Q: Does Roofbird sell leads to multiple contractors? A: No. Roofbird reads roofs in your service area from satellite and street-level imagery and lets you ask questions about them in plain English. The leads you find are yours, not shared with a competitor, because nobody else bought them. You pay credits to read roofs and unlock DNC-scrubbed homeowner contact details, not a per-lead fee.

Q: Can I call the phone numbers Roofbird provides? A: Yes, for manual sales calls. Every number is DNC-scrubbed and labelled clear, DNC, or verify. Clear means it was checked against the federal Do Not Call registry and is safe for a manual call. DNC means don't call it. Verify means the scrub couldn't confirm either way, so treat it as unknown. There is no texting and no auto-dialler.