Plumbing leads.
One plumber per area.
Most plumbing leads are shared: £5-35 a time on MyBuilder, £50+ on the bigger jobs, with 3-5 trades chasing the same homeowner. You are competing on price from the first message. We sell the opposite. A consumer brand we run takes the enquiry, and when it passes five published checks, confirmed by SMS in the homeowner's own words, it is warm-referred to exactly one plumber in that area, never resold. You are not racing anyone, so the conversation starts differently. The market anchor for an exclusive intent-confirmed referral is £45-120. Fail a check, it is not sent and not billed.
What does a plumbing
referral look like?
It is 1 of 1: one homeowner, one plumber, one area. The job is not dropped into a directory queue for whoever rings first; it is passed to the plumber who holds that area, after the homeowner has confirmed the detail over SMS.
Plumbing splits in two, and the split is the whole job of qualifying it. There is the emergency: a burst pipe, water coming through a ceiling, a cylinder that has finally gone, no hot water on a Sunday night. Then there is the planned work: a bathroom, a boiler swap, a replumb, decided over weeks and quoted properly. A form fill rarely tells you which one you are looking at. The homeowner’s own SMS words do, before you pick up the phone.
It also keeps the arrangement clean. You are not paying for a place in a list of plumbers; you are paying for a referral that passed the same published standard every time. The five published checks are the rule behind the handover, and they are the same rule the billing system enforces.
What a referral arrives with
- The homeowner’s name and direct mobile
- The job in their own SMS words: burst pipe, leak, boiler, bathroom
- Their stated timeline, emergency or planned
- “Nobody else booked”, confirmed
- Consent on record
- Delivered in real time
How much do plumbing leads
cost in the UK?
£5-35 for a typical shared plumbing lead on MyBuilder, £50+ on the larger jobs, and the price buys a race: the same enquiry goes to 3-5 trades at once, and whoever rings first wins.
The published picture is patchy on purpose. None of the five biggest UK platforms publishes a full price list, and Rated People and TrustATrader publish nothing at all. What is public still shows the mechanism clearly enough, and it shows how many shapes the charge can take: per lead on MyBuilder, per lead plus a subscription on Rated People, a monthly fee and no per-lead charge on Checkatrade, credits that expire on Bark. Exclusive plumbing leads are a different unit, with one destination from the start and no silent resale after delivery.
| What matters | Shared-leads directory | OptiMAX |
|---|---|---|
| MyBuilder | Shared leads £5-35 typical, £50+ on larger jobs, shared with 3-5 trades. | One plumber per area. The referral is 1 of 1, never resold. |
| Rated People | £15-40 a lead on top of a £30-60/mo subscription, shared with a maximum of 3. | The homeowner is given one name: the plumber who holds the area. |
| Checkatrade | £30-500+/mo subscription, no per-lead fee. One enquiry is shared with 10-20+ trades. | No retainer, no lock-in. Pay only for referrals that pass five published checks. |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80 each, £9-36+ for a typical lead, up to 5 buyers, and credits expire after 3 months. | Nothing expires and nothing is bought in advance. You are billed per referral that passed. |
| What the money buys | Auction access to an enquiry several plumbers are already chasing. | An SMS-confirmed homeowner, stated timeline, nobody else booked, consent on record. |
The anchor maths is blunt. A shared lead anchors at £15-40 across the UK market; an exclusive intent-confirmed referral anchors at £45-120. The higher unit price buys the absence of the race. On a shared enquiry you are quoting against everyone else who bought the same number, and a Checkatrade enquiry can be shared with 10-20+ trades. On an exclusive referral the homeowner gets one name back, yours, and has already confirmed nobody else is booked.
Shared plumbing leads can still suit a plumber who wants volume and will win on response speed. This page is for the other kind: the plumber who would rather hold an area, take fewer, checked referrals, and stop paying to lose. The definitions are laid out properly in shared vs exclusive leads, and the platform-by-platform numbers sit in what trade leads actually cost.
What gets a plumbing enquiry
through the five checks?
Five published checks stand between an enquiry and your phone, and the rule is mechanical: fail one, and it is not sent and not billed.
First, real and reachable. A number that rings out is not a referral, so contact is established before anything moves. Second, the job in their own words. “Boiler playing up” gets binned. “No hot water since Friday, combi has finally packed in” does not. The check is not a lead score; it is whether a real plumbing problem has been described by the person who owns it.
Third, timeline stated. A burst pipe and a bathroom in the spring carry different urgency, and the homeowner says which, in writing. Fourth, still an open job: a homeowner who has already signed with another plumber is binned, and one still comparing quotes arrives with that stated, not discovered on your first call. Fifth, one buyer only. Pass every check and the referral goes to exactly one plumber, in real time, and it is never sold again afterwards.
That is the whole of our plumbing lead generation model, and it is the same standard that runs across the one tradesperson per area model. The plumbing version just stays specific to plumbing work: leaks, burst pipes, boiler swaps, bathrooms, and the call-outs that keep the van paying for itself.
What does a plumbing lead
cost on Google?
$80 per click in the US auction. “Plumbing leads” draws 390 searches a month there, and a click is auction access before any qualification has happened.
That $80 buys a site visit, not a homeowner. Nobody has confirmed a job in their own words, stated a timeline, ruled out an existing booking, or consented to a call. The click is the start of the qualifying work; a referral that passed five published checks is the end of it. A plumber in either market faces the same unit question: pay for a chance to qualify an enquiry, or pay for an enquiry that has already been qualified and belongs to you alone.
What do plumbers ask
before holding an area?
£45-120 is the market anchor for an exclusive intent-confirmed referral, and every answer below follows from one mechanism: five published checks, one plumber per area, never resold.
How much do plumbing leads cost?
Why only one plumber per area?
Do you send emergency work or planned jobs?
Why does word of mouth still beat every leads platform?
What happens if a referral is rubbish?
Is there a contract or a retainer?
How does a plumbing referral reach me?
Is your area
still open?
One plumber per area, first come. Every referral passes five published checks; fails one, it is not sent and you are not billed. If your area is taken, we tell you straight.