Australian solar installers buy demand from three different kinds of supplier: lead brokers, marketing agencies and appointment setters. SolarQuotes publishes $60 ex GST per residential solar lead and sends it to a maximum of three installers; Capital Leads lists exclusive residential solar leads from $57. Both figures were live on 3 September 2026. This page ranks ten suppliers and shows the maths.
At a glance
- Three categories, not one. Brokers (SolarQuotes, Solar Choice) sell a shared enquiry, capped at three installers. Systems and agencies (QuoteLeads, Uprise Digital, Growth Local) build demand on your own ad accounts. Appointment setters (LeadsNow AI, Energet, Clean Energy Group Ai) sell a booked conversation.
- Compliance overlay: the Clean Energy Council administers the New Energy Tech Consumer Code (NETCC), which replaced the old Approved Solar Retailer programme and governs unsolicited contact and sales agents. The ACCC re-authorised it on 28 August 2026.
- Optimise cost per booked site assessment, not cost per lead — a $60 shared lead you reach 40% of the time is already a $150 contact.
- Rebate clock: the STC deeming period for a 2026 install is 5 years, down from 6 in 2025; battery STC factors fell from 8.4 to 6.8 per kWh on 1 May 2026.
How it works
How to buy solar leads without funding your competitors
Sort the three types
Brokers sell a shared enquiry, agencies build demand on your own ad accounts, appointment setters sell a booked site assessment. Each puts the risk in a different place.
Test speed, not price
A shared lead can sit with up to three installers at once. Measure your own time from enquiry to first call before you judge any supplier.
Price the assessment
Multiply leads by your contact rate and your booking rate to get assessments. Budget against cost per booked site assessment, not cost per lead.
Check the conduct
The NETCC binds you for marketing carried out by a sales agent on your behalf. Confirm list sourcing, consent records and the opening script before you scale.
MAKE MORE SALES.
Pay-Per-Result pricing — We scale sales HARD aligned to your interests, better than anyone else.
Methodology — and our conflict of interest, stated up front
We are LeadsNow AI and we have ranked ourselves #1. That is a biased position, so read this page as an argument, not a verdict. We have tried to earn it by being specific about where we are the wrong choice.
Every other entry is a real, currently-trading business whose site we visited on 3 September 2026. Pricing is recorded only where the company publishes it; where it does not, we write “does not publish pricing” rather than guess. Five criteria: where the risk sits (pay-per-booked-appointment above pay-per-exclusive-lead, above pay-per-shared-lead, above a flat retainer); exclusivity; solar specificity of the qualifying questions; asset ownership when you stop paying; and pricing transparency.
Where we are honestly weak: our 25 filmed case studies span brokerage, commercial property, fitness and education — none is a residential solar install. If a named solar reference decides it, several suppliers below beat us today. Our solar lead generation guide and our comparison of buying solar leads versus generating your own cover economics this page does not repeat.
Want this done for you? We book qualified sales appointments on a Pay-Per-Result basis — you only pay for calls that actually land in your calendar.
The ten: best lead generation agencies and lead sources for Australian solar companies
1. LeadsNow AI — pay-per-result appointment setting
Pricing: pay-per-result revenue share on booked appointments; no retainer.
We do not sell you a phone number. We work enquiries and dormant CRM records with AI voice, SMS and email until a qualified homeowner or business is booked into your consultant’s diary, and you pay on the booking. Since 2017 the platform has booked 50,769+ AI sales appointments and generated 1M+ leads; we hold a 4.6 rating from 43 Google reviews and 25 filmed case studies. A solar sale needs a site assessment, and an assessment needs someone at home with their last bill — a scheduling problem, not a traffic problem. Not for you if you want to own the ad accounts or need a named solar reference first. Book a call to test the maths.
2. SolarQuotes — the benchmark broker
Published pricing: $60 ex GST residential solar, $55 battery, $185 commercial.
Founded by Finn Peacock and part of Origin Energy since late 2024, SolarQuotes is the most transparent lead source in the market and the one every other broker gets measured against. A lead answers at least 15 questions — storeys, roof type, budget, system size, bill size, finance, timeframe — before it reaches you; no contracts, no minimum spend, and you can reject a lead within 7 days — no cap on rejections, no clawback fees — if it is not seriously considering a system within 12 months. Entry standards are real: state contracting licence, 12 months in the industry, minimum 5-year installation warranty, a full-time SAA-accredited designer, and “systems in place to follow up every lead within one business day”. The trade-off is structural: you are one of three quotes.
3. Solar Choice — broker with a pricing-data moat
Does not publish pricing.
Operating since 2008, Solar Choice states it does not sell customer information to more than three installers and imposes no contract lengths or sign-up fees. Installers get a free portal or an API into their CRM. Its differentiator is the Solar Choice Price Index, which it says is used by the Australian Government, BloombergNEF and SunWiz — brand and pricing feedback a pure lead vendor cannot give you.
4. Capital Leads — exclusive pay-per-lead with a published rate card
Published pricing: from $57/lead residential solar, $45 battery, $350 commercial.
Capital Leads publishes rates on its homepage, which almost no exclusive vendor does, and states leads are 2FA mobile-verified and never shared or resold. It advertises a 4.7 Google rating, 80+ installer partners and a first-pack refund if you close nothing. Its published partner benchmark is a $500–$1,600 cost per install on solar-plus-battery jobs worth $12,000–$18,000 — the company’s own figure, not an independent one.
5. LeadsHQ — exclusive leads across the electrification stack
Does not publish pricing.
LeadsHQ runs a pay-per-lead platform across residential solar, battery, commercial solar, air conditioning, heat pumps and energy plans, with SMS verification, real-time distribution and no lock-in contracts. It states it shows clients the actual ads running and uses TrustedForm for consent capture — relevant where resold data is common. Everything sits behind a “request pricing” gate.
6. QuoteLeads — you own the machine
Published pricing: $2,500 + GST one-off build, then optional $600/month + GST.
QuoteLeads builds a branded lead system on your own Meta and Google Ads accounts — survey funnel, landing page, server-side tracking, CRM integration and AI SMS follow-up — across solar, HVAC, roofing and renovations, and the assets stay yours if you stop paying. Correct structure if you intend to be trading in five years; wrong one if you want leads on Monday, because you fund ad spend on top of the build fee.
7. Energet — Australian telemarketing and appointment setting
Does not publish pricing.
Energet runs outbound telemarketing, SMS and email for solar retailers, collects the energy bill and books energy assessments, stating no lock-in contracts and payment for qualified appointments. Two honest caveats: Energet also runs a consumer-facing solar and battery arm, booking its own free assessments and quotes and fulfilling through partner installers, so satisfy yourself about territory and data handling; and outbound calling into a residential list is where the NETCC unsolicited-contact rules and the Do Not Call Register bite hardest.
8. Uprise Digital — digital agency with a named solar vertical
Does not publish pricing.
Based in Cremorne, Melbourne, Uprise Digital names solar as one of six industries alongside property consultants, medical, legal, government and builders, and offers Google and Meta ads, landing pages, SEO, AEO/GEO and CRO. Traditional agency shape: you pay for the work and the media, you own the outcome, results compound over 6–12 months. Right call if someone in-house runs the numbers weekly; wrong call if nobody owns the funnel.
9. Growth Local — general trades system with a solar module
Published pricing: $397/month standard implementation, $697/month custom implementation, plus communication and AI usage fees.
Growth Local sells an all-in-one CRM, automation and lead-capture system for Australian tradies, with a named Solar Marketing System alongside its general Tradie Marketing System, ServiceM8 integration and database reactivation. Publishing monthly pricing at this end of the market is unusual and creditable. The caveat: solar is one vertical among many, so the qualification logic is not solar-native out of the box.
10. Clean Energy Group Ai — commercial solar only
Does not publish pricing.
Clean Energy Group Ai targets commercial and C&I solar exclusively, booking meetings with sustainability directors, operations managers and owners from a database it describes as 79M+ commercial property contacts. If your book is 100kW–5MW rooftop rather than 6.6kW residential, a broker’s residential lead is useless to you and this is the supplier shape you want. Its impact and revenue figures are self-reported and we could not verify them.
Comparison table
| Provider | Category | What you buy | Exclusive? | Published pricing (3 Sep 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeadsNow AI | Appointment setter | Booked qualified appointment | Exclusive | Pay-per-result revenue share; no rate card |
| SolarQuotes | Broker | 15-question enquiry | Shared, max 3 installers | $60 ex GST res. solar; $55 battery; $185 commercial |
| Solar Choice | Broker | Enquiry + portal/API | Shared, max 3 installers | Does not publish pricing |
| Capital Leads | Exclusive lead vendor | 2FA-verified enquiry | Exclusive | From $57 res. solar; $45 battery; $350 commercial |
| LeadsHQ | Exclusive lead vendor | SMS-verified enquiry | Exclusive | Does not publish pricing |
| QuoteLeads | Build on your own accounts | Funnel + ad accounts you keep | Exclusive | $2,500 + GST build; $600/mo + GST optional |
| Energet | Appointment setter | Booked energy assessment | Not stated | Does not publish pricing |
| Uprise Digital | Agency | Paid media, SEO, CRO | Exclusive | Does not publish pricing |
| Growth Local | General trade agency | CRM + automation + capture | Exclusive | $397/mo or $697/mo (+ comms & AI usage fees) |
| Clean Energy Group Ai | Appointment setter (B2B) | Commercial solar meetings | States 100% exclusive | Does not publish pricing |
If we can’t make you money, we don’t deserve yours.
Pay-Per-Result pricing — performance-based alignment.
How to choose: the economics nobody puts on a rate card
The published price per lead is the least important number in the deal. Three others decide whether you make money.
Contact rate and speed. A shared solar lead is held by three installers at once. Connect with 40% of the file and a $60 lead is a $150 contact before anyone has looked at a roof. If your first call goes to voicemail and the second goes out next morning, someone else has booked the assessment. That is why an aged solar lead is close to worthless — not because the homeowner stopped wanting solar, but because two other quotes landed while you were on a roof in Blacktown. Our page on the speed-to-lead five-minute rule covers the mechanics.
Cost per booked site assessment, not cost per lead. Run the chain: leads × contact rate × booking rate = assessments. Twenty $60 leads is $1,200; at a 40% contact rate and a 35% booking rate that is 2.8 assessments, or roughly $430 per booked assessment. Divide by your close rate and you have your real acquisition cost — and an apples-to-apples comparison with any appointment setter’s per-booking price. See our Australian cost-per-lead benchmarks and our list of pay-per-result marketing agencies in Australia.
Return and dispute policy. Lead quality disputes are the defining friction of this niche, so read the credit policy before the rate card. SolarQuotes’ published 7-day, no-clawback return window is a fair benchmark: if a supplier will not put its rejection criteria in writing, assume you will lose the arguments. Ask for the qualifying questions verbatim, too — if “do you own the property?”, “storeys?” and “roof type?” are missing, you are buying traffic, not leads.
The compliance overlay: NETCC, sales agents and unsolicited contact
The Clean Energy Council’s Approved Solar Retailer programme was replaced by the New Energy Tech Consumer Code (NETCC) in 2023, and the CEC now administers Approved Seller status under it. On 28 August 2026 the ACCC granted the amended Code conditional authorisation for five years, until 19 September 2031.
This matters because the Code binds you for conduct carried out on your behalf. Under “Direct marketing and sales”, clause 4 applies “when marketing directly to you, including through a sales agent”, and requires you to explain up-front the purpose of any un-requested (“unsolicited”) contact by phone or in person, advise the customer they can end it at any time, leave immediately if asked, and show company identification in person. Clause 5 prohibits high-pressure tactics, listing “employing badgering techniques, such as revisiting your premises uninvited or making frequent telephone calls”.
Read plainly: if you are an Approved Seller and you engage a door-knocking crew or a call centre that badgers, the conduct is yours. Ask any appointment setter how contacts are sourced, whether the Do Not Call Register is washed, and what the opening script says. General information, not legal advice — read the Code.
The rebate clock is your lead-decay clock
Solar urgency in Australia runs on a published schedule, which makes it real and predictable. Under the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme, the Clean Energy Regulator sets the deeming period at 5 years for a system installed in 2026, down from 6 in 2025 and falling by one year annually until the scheme ends in 2030. For batteries, the STC factor stepped from 8.4 per kWh (January–April 2026) to 6.8 per kWh from 1 May 2026, and drops to 5.7 for January–June 2027 (CER, last updated 30 April 2026).
Two consequences. First, a genuine deadline sits behind every quote, so follow-up should cite the actual step-down date rather than invented scarcity — invented scarcity is exactly what NETCC clause 5 targets. Second, a lead bought in April converts on different economics to the same lead in June; if your supplier does not adjust volume around the step-down dates, you pay peak rates into a trough.
FAQ
What do solar leads actually cost in Australia?
Published rates on 3 September 2026: SolarQuotes charges $60 ex GST for a residential solar lead, $55 for batteries, $80 off-grid and $185 commercial, shared with a maximum of three installers. Capital Leads lists exclusive residential solar from $57 and commercial from $350. Most other vendors gate pricing behind a call. Compare on cost per booked site assessment, not headline price.
Are shared solar leads worth buying?
They can be, if your speed-to-lead is fast and your return policy is enforceable. A shared lead is not a bad product — it is a race. The installer who calls in five minutes and books the assessment on that call wins; the one who calls next morning subsidises them. If you cannot resource same-hour contact, exclusive leads or booked appointments are the better structure.
How many solar and battery systems are being installed in Australia right now?
According to the Clean Energy Regulator’s small-scale installation postcode data (current as at 31 July 2026, last updated 13 August 2026), there have been 6,964,103 small-scale installations, including 4,501,887 solar PV systems totalling 30,323,323 kW. In 2026 to 31 July, 187,876 solar PV systems and 269,309 solar battery systems were installed — batteries outnumbered new PV. If your supplier only sells PV enquiries, it is selling you the smaller half of the market.
Does the Clean Energy Council code restrict how I market solar?
Yes, if you are a NETCC Approved Seller. Its direct marketing and sales clauses apply to conduct through a sales agent, require you to explain the purpose of unsolicited phone or in-person contact and end it on request, and prohibit high-pressure tactics including repeat uninvited visits and frequent phone calls. The ACCC granted the amended Code conditional authorisation on 28 August 2026 for five years, until 19 September 2031. General information only — get your own advice.
Will the rebate step-down change my lead economics in 2027?
Yes. The Clean Energy Regulator’s published schedule cuts the solar PV deeming period from 5 years in 2026 to 4 in 2027, and the battery STC factor from 6.8 per kWh (from 1 May 2026) to 5.7 for January–June 2027. Smaller upfront discounts mean longer consideration cycles and lower close rates on the same volume, so re-baseline your allowable cost per assessment each January.
Pay-Per-Result appointments
See if we’re a fit
We book qualified sales appointments for you and you pay on results, not retainers. Our booking page asks a few quick questions so you find out in two minutes whether that model suits your business.
- 50,769+ appointments booked without cold calling.
- Pay-Per-Result pricing — you pay for booked, qualified calls.
- Pick your own time on our live calendar, no phone tag.