LeadsNow sees booked-quote costs of $30–$400, depending on industry, offer, price and many other variables. For a tradie that is only the lead half of the bill. At an assumed $80 enquiry and a 50% booking rate, a booked quote costs $160 in leads plus about $180 of unpaid site-visit time: $340 before you win anything.
- The formula: cost per booked quote = (cost per enquiry ÷ enquiry-to-booked-quote rate) + unpaid hours per quote visit × what an hour of your time is worth.
- The cost most tradies leave out: the free measure-and-quote visit. Two hours of driving, measuring and writing up at $90 an hour is $180, which is more than the lead cost in most of the rows below.
- The cost per won job: divide the booked-quote cost by your quote-to-win rate. $340 at a 30% win rate is $1,133.33 per job won.
- The decision rule: the Quote-Visit Rule. Compare cost per won job with the job’s value; above 25%, stop giving that job type a free on-site quote.
- The public data: no Australian dataset publishes cost per booked quote. hipages publishes plan prices ($139 to $649 + GST a month) but not a dollar price per lead on its membership costs page.
Worked calculation: what a booked quote costs a tradie once the site visit is counted
A booked on-site quote costs an Australian tradie $260 to $480 in this model once two assumed unpaid visit hours are added to the lead cost.
Every input here is an assumption, labelled so you can swap in your own numbers: a 50% enquiry-to-booked-quote rate, two unpaid hours per visit (travel, measure, write-up and send) valued at $90 an hour, and a 30% quote-to-win rate. The visit time stays the same whatever you paid for the enquiry, so it dominates when leads are cheap.
| Cost per enquiry (assumption) | Lead cost per booked quote (÷ 0.50) | Plus unpaid visit (2 h × $90) | Cost per booked quote | Cost per won job (÷ 0.30) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $40 | $80 | $180 | $260 | $866.67 |
| $80 | $160 | $180 | $340 | $1,133.33 |
| $150 | $300 | $180 | $480 | $1,600.00 |
To run it on your own business, take last quarter’s marketing spend, divide by enquiries, divide by the share of enquiries that became a booked site visit, then add your real hours per visit at your real hourly value. The line worth remembering: for most tradies the free quote visit, not the lead, is the biggest single cost of a booked quote. Our step-by-step method for calculating cost per booked call covers what belongs in the spend line.
How it works
How to work out what a booked quote really costs a tradie
Find your enquiry cost
Divide last quarter’s marketing spend by the enquiries it produced.
Divide by booking rate
Divide the enquiry cost by the share of enquiries that became a booked site visit.
Add the visit time
Add your unpaid hours per quote visit at what an hour of your time is worth.
Apply the Quote-Visit Rule
Divide by your win rate and compare with the job value. Above 25%, stop offering that job a free site visit.
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The Quote-Visit Rule: when a free on-site quote stops paying
The Quote-Visit Rule says a tradie should keep free on-site quotes only while the cost per won job stays under 10% of that job’s value, and should stop above 25%.
The 10% and 25% lines are a decision rule, not a measured benchmark: set them against your own gross margin. The table applies the $1,133.33 cost per won job from the middle row above to three job sizes.
| Job type (illustrative value) | Cost per won job as a share of job value | Band | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot water system replacement ($1,500) | $1,133.33 ÷ $1,500 = 75.6% | Over 25% | Quote by phone or from photos; charge for a site visit and credit it against the job |
| Timber deck ($8,000) | $1,133.33 ÷ $8,000 = 14.2% | 10% to 25% | Pre-qualify budget, timing and site photos before you drive out |
| Kitchen renovation ($35,000) | $1,133.33 ÷ $35,000 = 3.2% | Under 10% | Keep free on-site quotes and spend on speed of reply instead |
Small-ticket trades lose money on free visits long before they lose money on leads. For the lead-price side of this decision by job value, see where tradies can get leads in Australia.
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.
Is there a published benchmark for cost per booked quote in Australia?
No public Australian dataset measures cost per booked quote for trades; only platform pricing and cost per lead are published.
hipages lists four monthly plans on its membership costs page: Starter $139 + GST with 155 credits, Advanced $249 + GST with 310, Premium $449 + GST with 595 and Platinum $649 + GST with 850 (read 2026-10-15). It says the credits needed to accept a lead vary “by job category, location, size of job, and supply and demand”, so the plan price tells you the cost of a credit (about 75 to 90 cents before GST, our own division of each plan price by its credits) but not the cost of a lead, and nothing about a booked visit. Our roofing lead cost breakdown works through the credit model for one trade, and the hipages versus pay-per-result comparison covers who does the chasing under each model.
How much does a slow reply raise the cost per booked quote?
A slow reply raises a tradie’s cost per booked quote from $294.29 to $446.67 here, as the share of $80 enquiries booking a visit falls from 70% to 30%.
The visit time does not change; only the lead share does. That is why answering speed is the cheapest lever a tradie has: it costs a phone habit, not ad spend. The booking rates below are assumptions.
| Enquiry-to-booked-quote rate (assumption) | Lead cost per booked quote | Cost per booked quote incl. visit | Cost per won job at 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | $266.67 | $446.67 | $1,488.89 |
| 50% | $160.00 | $340.00 | $1,133.33 |
| 70% | $114.29 | $294.29 | $980.95 |
The doing-it-yourself cost here is real: someone has to answer while you are on a roof or under a house, and evening enquiries wait until morning. Our guide to speed to lead for trade businesses covers the response-time habits that move this row.
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How can a tradie cut the unpaid part of a booked quote?
A tradie cuts the unpaid part of a booked quote by not driving to enquiries that photos and a five-minute phone call could have ruled out first.
Model it on ten booked visits at $340 each: $1,600 of lead cost and $1,800 of visit time, three jobs won, $1,133.33 per win. If photo and phone pre-qualification let you skip three visits that would never have bought, and you still win the same three jobs, visit time drops to $1,260 and the total to $2,860, or $953.33 per win. The three skipped visits are an assumption; track your own for a month before relying on it.
- Ask for three photos and a rough budget before booking the visit.
- Ask when they want the work done; “sometime next year” is a phone quote.
- Give a price range on the phone for standard jobs, and book the visit only to confirm it.
- Group visits by suburb so two hours becomes ninety minutes.
The cost of doing this yourself is discipline rather than money: a script, a photo-request text and the nerve to say no to a free visit.
The cheapest booked quote a tradie has is an old one
An old quote that was sent but never accepted is the cheapest booked quote a tradie has, because the lead cost and the site visit have both already been paid.
Re-opening it costs a message and a phone call, not $340. Most trade businesses have a year or more of these sitting in an inbox or job-management system. Our playbook for reactivating dead quotes covers the sequence and the Spam Act consent points, and what to do when quotes get no reply covers the first follow-up.
What does a pay-per-booked-quote model cost a tradie?
A pay-per-booked-quote model charges a tradie for the booked visit or the job revenue instead of the enquiry, which moves the booking-rate risk in the tables above to the provider.
It does not move the visit time: you still drive out and measure, so add your $180 (or your own figure) to any per-quote price before comparing it with the $340 row. LeadsNow is paid on results: 5–25% of the revenue we generate for you (revenue share), or an equivalent pay-per-appointment fee, or a mix of both, set by lead volume, what is being sold and its price, the type of product and business, and which part (or all) of the sales funnel we run. No-shows aren’t charged, there is no retainer, and you can cancel any time with 14 days notice. How our lead generation for trades works is on that page.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good cost per booked quote for a tradie?
A good cost per booked quote is one where the cost per won job stays under 10% of the job value. For a $35,000 renovation that allows about $1,050 per booked quote at a 30% win rate; for a $1,500 repair it allows $45, which no paid channel delivers with a site visit attached.
Does hipages publish a cost per lead?
Not as a dollar figure. The hipages membership costs page lists plans from $139 to $649 + GST a month with 155 to 850 credits, and says the credits needed to accept a lead vary by job category, location, size of job, and supply and demand. Ask for the credit price of your three most common jobs in your postcodes before signing.
Should tradies charge for quotes?
Charging for a site visit makes sense when cost per won job is above 25% of the job value, often on small jobs. Crediting the fee against the job if they go ahead keeps serious customers and filters out price-shoppers. Large jobs rarely need it.
Is cost per booked quote the same as cost per lead?
No. Cost per lead stops at the enquiry. Cost per booked quote divides by the share of enquiries that book a visit and, done properly, adds the unpaid visit time, which in the worked example is $180 against $160 of lead cost.
What is the cheapest way to get more booked quotes?
Reply faster and re-open old quotes. In the model above, lifting the booking rate from 30% to 70% cuts the cost per booked quote from $446.67 to $294.29 without spending more on leads, and an old quote has no new lead or visit cost at all.
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