Lead Smart Inc published its September 2026 payout file: 296,513 live ZIP-by-service records, a $42.00 median call payout and a new $507.00 ceiling.
Libertyville, IL (PRUnderground) September 6th, 2026
Lead Smart Inc, a pay-per-call and lead-generation affiliate network for home services founded in 2008, has published a refreshed public payout file covering 296,513 live ZIP-code and service combinations across 41,259 United States ZIP codes, 28 verticals and 53 state codes. The median qualified phone lead pays $42.00 to the publisher who generates it, up from $32.50 in the network's August file. The mean is $71.71, the top decile pays above $189.50, and the ceiling has set a new high at $507.00. Of the published records, 66,053 pay $100 or more per call and 22,870 pay $200 or more.
The refresh lands one day after 99 Calls published a year-over-year comparison of Google Local Services Ads costs across its managed campaigns, showing lead costs up 11 percent to 69 percent depending on the trade. Both datasets point the same direction: the price of a home-service customer is rising, on Google and off it.
In the 99 Calls data, average cost per charged lead rose from $20.33 to $34.35 in appliance repair, up 69 percent; from $19.85 to $33.14 in junk removal; from $22.67 to $37.29 in landscaping; from $28.58 to $43.15 in electrical; from $73.62 to $106.87 in roofing; and from $171.64 to $215.31 in water damage. Painting was effectively flat at about $33 and plumbing fell 5.6 percent to $66.17.
Lead Smart's file shows the affiliate side of the same demand as of September 5, 2026. Median payouts by vertical are: water damage $213.00, biohazard $210.50, fire damage removal $193.00, roofing cost-per-lead $130.00, siding $115.50, personal injury attorney $99.00, solar $73.50, mold removal $65.50, plumbing cost-per-lead $48.00, pest control $42.50, roofing pay-per-call $42.00, HVAC $38.50, plumbing pay-per-call $33.25, gutters $32.50, electrical $24.50 and appliance repair $14.00. Cost-per-lead entries pay on a qualified lead; pay-per-call entries pay on call duration.
Comparing the September 5 file with the network's August 24 extract shows how quickly live buyer bids move. A new vertical opened: solar cost-per-lead is live in 496 ZIP codes at a $73.50 median and an $81.00 ceiling, the first vertical added to the public file this year. Personal injury attorney coverage expanded from 344 to 963 ZIP codes with the median rising from $50.33 to $99.00. Water damage set a new ceiling of $507.00, up from $497.50, with the median rising from $201.00 to $213.00. Appliance repair repriced hardest: its median more than doubled from $6.33 to $14.00 while coverage nearly halved from 25,573 to 13,568 ZIP codes, in the same trade where Google's cost per lead rose 69 percent. Pest control added 3,470 ZIP codes and roofing pay-per-call added 1,372 at unchanged medians. Overall coverage tightened slightly, from 303,441 to 296,513 records, while the all-vertical median rose about 29 percent.
"The number everyone quotes is the average cost of a lead. The number that decides whether a campaign works is what a lead is worth in one ZIP code, in one trade, this week," said Seth Pikus, chief executive officer of Lead Smart Inc. "Appliance repair is the whole argument: our median for that call doubled while the map for it shrank by half. An annual industry report cannot see that."
Higher acquisition costs put more weight on what happens after the phone rings. Invoca's 2026 Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report, built on more than 70 million analyzed calls, found that 38 percent of home-service calls answered by a person are genuine leads and 45 percent of those leads convert on the call. The same report measured calls driven by generative AI search for the first time and found that calls referred by ChatGPT carry the highest phone-lead rate of any channel at 45 percent, about five points above paid search. By Invoca's arithmetic, lifting answer rate, lead rate and conversion rate by five percentage points each produces roughly 38 percent more conversions from the same call volume.
"Every year the platforms get more expensive and every year the same contractors let calls ring out," said Matthew Zivkovic, founder of Lead Smart Inc. "We have paid publishers more than fifty million dollars for phone calls, and the difference between the buyers who grow and the buyers who churn has almost never been the price of the call."
Journalists, analysts and contractors may cite these figures with attribution to Lead Smart Inc, data as of September 5, 2026. The underlying tool is public at https://affiliate-bid-coverage.leadsmartinc.com and requires no login or affiliate account. Payout figures are minimum expected payouts and exclude buyer-side reconciliations. Google Local Services Ads cost-per-lead figures are as published by 99 Calls on September 4, 2026 from its production LSA campaign data. Call answer, lead and conversion rates are as published in the Invoca Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report 2026.
About Lead Smart Inc
Lead Smart Inc is a US-based pay-per-call and lead-generation affiliate network specializing in home services. Founded in 2008 by Matthew Zivkovic and led by CEO Seth Pikus, Lead Smart connects more than 10,000 registered affiliate publishers worldwide with buyers across more than 200 home-service categories plus legal verticals, serving an estimated 50,000-plus home-service business locations nationwide. The network has paid more than $50 million to its affiliate publishers, maintains live payout coverage in all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico, has been voted a top-three pay-per-call network in OfferVault's Top Networks Survey for seven consecutive years, is ranked No. 5 in mThink's 2026 Blue Book, and was named to the Inc. 5000 in 2023 at No. 2,449
Media contact
Lead Smart Inc, 75 E Division Street, Suite B, Mundelein, IL 60060
(855) 466-5542
info@leadsmartinc.com
