Thumbtack Lead ROI Calculator · guide
Short answer: a paid lead pays when your close rate times what a job earns you beats the lead price plus the time you spend quoting it. The calculator does that sum for your own numbers.
Everything below is arithmetic on invented numbers. Not financial or business advice. Lead prices, credits and rules are the platform's and change; check your own account. No warranty.
You answer 30 paid leads at $50 each, with 10 percent credited back for bad leads. Each takes 20 minutes to quote at $40 an hour of your time. 20 percent become jobs worth $1,200.00, and job costs take 60 percent of that.
Halve the close rate and the same month loses money. The levers that matter are close rate, the minutes behind each quote, and whether you answer leads you are unlikely to win. Try an 8 percent close rate, 40 minutes a lead and $60 an hour in the calculator: the same lead spend now loses money. Only your own history says which side you are on.
On the default numbers, yes: 30 leads cost $1,350.00 after credits and a 20 percent close rate earns $2,880.00 across six jobs. The month nets $1,130.00 once your $400.00 of quoting time is counted, so the margin is thinner than lead fees alone suggest.
There is no universal number, and the calculator does not claim one. Count your own jobs won divided by paid leads over several months, then compare it with the break-even rate the tool computes, 12.2 percent on the worked numbers.
At a 20 percent close rate, $480.00 earned per job and 20 minutes of quoting, a lead stops paying above about $91.00. Below that the lead is profitable at your current close rate; above it, you need a better close rate or a cheaper lead.