What does an LSA cost calculator work out?
An LSA cost calculator turns a cost per lead into a cost per booked job. Enter your monthly budget, your cost per lead, the share of leads you dispute and win, your qualification rate, close rate, average job value and gross margin; it returns booked jobs, cost per booked job and gross profit after spend.
Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no form to fill in first.
Why doesn’t this page publish a cost per lead?
We publish no cost-per-lead figure for Local Services Ads, and that is deliberate. Cost per lead on Local Services Ads moves by trade, market, season and competition, and Google sets it dynamically. A figure published here in July would be wrong by October, and wrong in a direction nobody could predict.
Your account holds the real one. Average the last three months rather than taking a single month, because seasonal spikes raise demand and cost together.
What is your qualification rate, and why does it decide the result?
Your qualification rate is the share of LSA leads that are the right area, the right job and a real budget. Most contractors have never measured what share of their LSA leads were qualified at all. It is the variable with the largest effect on the result above, and it usually gets entered as a guess.
Spend one month tagging every lead as qualified or not at the moment it comes in. The number is often lower than the impression left by the busy weeks, and it changes whether the channel pays.
Which LSA leads can you dispute for a credit?
Google credits leads that are spam, outside your service area, or for work you do not do. The process exists, it works, and most contractors use it rarely because it happens at the end of a long day.
Make it a weekly habit rather than a month-end job. At a 5 to 10% dispute rate on a $3,000 budget that is real money returned every month, and the calculator above shows what it does to cost per booked job.
What do Local Services Ads do that organic search does not?
Local Services Ads and compounding visibility are two different purchases, not two versions of one. Local Services Ads buy volume now. Organic search, map presence and AI answers compound over quarters and cost the same whether you get one call or forty.
A business that needs work this month is better served by the first. A business planning for next year is better served by the second. Running both and reporting them together is how the compounding one gets blamed for a bad month in the paid one.
| Local Services Ads | Organic search, map presence and AI answers | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | Volume now. | Position that compounds over quarters. |
| How the bill behaves | Billed per lead, so the bill rises with every extra contact. | Cost the same whether you get one call or forty. |
| When it pays | When the work is needed this month. | When the plan runs to next year. |
That table is our own reading of the two channels rather than anything Google or any other publisher states, and no row on it is sourced to an outside body.
Questions contractors ask
How much do Local Services Ads cost per lead?
It varies by trade, market, season and competition, and Google sets it dynamically. Any fixed figure published online is stale. Take the real one from your own account and enter it above.
Are LSAs cheaper than Google Ads?
Cheaper per contact, and sometimes more expensive per booked job. Your qualification rate decides which, which is why this calculator asks for it.
Can I get money back for bad leads?
Yes. Google runs a dispute process for spam, wrong-area and out-of-scope leads. Most contractors under-use it, and the credits are real money.
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