Cost per answered lead: Thumbtack, Angi, Bark, Yelp, The Knot and WeddingWire in 2026, and whether the listing is worth it

The headline figure is $44.50, Angi's average cost per lead in Q2 2026, across about 106,000 monthly active pros¹. The usable figure is $1,335. That is the cost per booking for an Angi reviewer who reported "one job out of 30 leads"². Lead prices across Thumbtack, Bark, Yelp, The Knot and WeddingWire vary by a factor of ten. Cost per booking varies by more, and part of that spread is set after the lead arrives, by whether it was answered, offered a time and followed up.

What do Thumbtack, Angi, Bark, Yelp and The Knot leads cost in 2026?#

Lead prices in 2026 range from about $10 to more than $150 per lead on pay-per-lead platforms, and from a few hundred dollars a month to $8,000 a year on wedding listings. The table below is dated and sourced row by row. Most rows are not platform price lists. They are aggregate figures reported by a third party, or single vendors' own accounts. The confidence column says which.

Platform list prices were not checked for this table. We will update rows as platforms or new reports change the figures.

Two derived figures are worth having on hand. The WeddingWire reviewer who paid $254 a month for three months and received four leads paid about $190 per lead. The Bark reviewer's 80 credits for $200 work out to $2.50 a credit; how many credits a lead costs depends on the category.

Why cost per lead is the wrong denominator#

Cost per lead divides spend by leads received. It treats every lead as the same unit, which they are not. A lead answered in 20 minutes with a price and a time is a different asset from a lead answered the next afternoon with "when works for you?" Both cost the same. Only one has a reasonable chance of booking.

The public argument over whether a listing is "worth it" mostly runs on cost per lead or on total spend. A thread in r/weddingvideography titled "Is the Wedding Wire worth it?" (20+ comments) has the top answer "Absolutely not."¹⁴ A WeddingWire reviewer on Trustpilot wrote in December 2025: "I spent $1,600 and booked zero events"⁸. On AccountingWEB in March 2022, an accountant called Bark credits "my biggest waste of money since I set practice up"¹⁶. Each verdict may be right. None of them says what share of the leads were worked.

The formula that settles it has three terms:

cost per booking = cost per lead ÷ (share of leads worked × booking rate of worked leads + share not worked × booking rate of leads not worked)

Platforms control the first term and influence lead quality, which feeds both booking rates. The pro controls the share worked. Selection bias runs through every public number here: pros who post reviews are disproportionately the ones losing money, and pros who post advice in community threads may skew toward the ones who answer fastest.

Cost per booking, sliced by what happens after the lead#

The calculator below runs the formula on two illustrations, one trade and one wedding. The trade example uses Angi's average lead price and one reviewer's booking rate. The wedding example uses round inputs that match vendor reports; its booking rates are assumptions, labelled as such. Replace every input with your own.

Line	Formula	Trade example (illustration)	Wedding example (illustration)	Yours
A. Spend in period	From invoices	$1,335 a month	$4,500 a year
B. Leads received	Count	30	40
C. Cost per lead	A ÷ B	$44.50 (Angi average)	$112.50
D. Bookings, as now	Count	1 (reviewer's "one job out of 30")	2 (5% booking rate, assumed)
E. Cost per booking, as now	A ÷ D	$1,335	$2,250
F. Booking rate if every lead is worked	Your worked-lead rate	1.25 in 30 (Thumbtack's +25% for fast replies, borrowed)	20% (assumed)
G. Bookings if every lead is worked	B × F	1.25	8
H. Cost per booking if worked	A ÷ G	$1,068	$562.50
I. Average booking value	Your figure	Your average job	$3,000 (The Knot photographer average, 2026)
J. Cost per booking as share of booking value	E ÷ I, then H ÷ I	Depends on job size	75%, then 19%

Sources: Angi lead price via Tygart Media¹; booking rate from one Angi reviewer²; +25% from Thumbtack's 30-minute vs three-hour comparison¹⁰, applied to Angi only as an illustration; photographer average from The Knot¹². The 5% and 20% wedding booking rates are assumptions.

Read line J first. In the wedding illustration, the same $4,500 listing costs 75% of a $3,000 booking when leads are not worked and 19% when they are. The platform, the lead price and the lead quality are identical in both columns. The only change is the share of leads worked.

The trade example moves less: $1,335 to $1,068 per booking. That is because the only evidence-based uplift we can apply is Thumbtack's 25% hiring difference between 30 minutes and three hours¹⁰. It measures speed alone. It does not include an offered time or follow-up. The true effect of working a lead fully is not published for any marketplace.

One real data point sits between the two columns. A photographer reported in a BBB review in February 2025: "I spent $8,000 on an annual contract, expecting bookings… I got just one elopement and two weddings"⁷. That is about $2,667 per booking, against The Knot's 2026 average photographer spend of $3,000 and a lower-quartile figure of $1,500¹².

Competing explanations: lead quality, sharing, and category#

Three confounding variables can make a listing lose money no matter how leads are worked. Each one shows up in the reviews.

• Lead quality. Angi reviewers describe "wrong numbers, people who never answered"². The Knot Worldwide said under 1% of 2024 leads were marked as spam by vendors¹⁷. That is a count of vendor flags, not a measured fake rate. Nobody has published the fake share for any platform.
• Sharing. "They send you leads they send to 10+ other companies too," one Angi reviewer wrote². A Bark reviewer counted "5 CONTRACTORS PURSUING SAME LEAD"³. WeddingPro reports couples contact 5 vendors per category on average¹¹. With five buyers per lead, a base rate near one booking in five is a fair share, before quality.
• Category. Thumbtack lead prices span more than tenfold by category⁵, and booking values span more than that. A $100 lead is cheap for a kitchen remodel and ruinous for a one-hour job.

Working every lead does not remove these. It does tell you which one you have. A pro in r/Thumbtack, in a thread titled "Is thumbtack for pros a scam" (60+ comments), wrote of "receiving and responding to 49 leads (all within minutes…)"¹⁵ before reaching a verdict. That pro had controlled the variable they owned. Their result is evidence about the platform. A pro who answered half their leads the next day has evidence about nothing yet.

Methodology, denominators and limits#

How we got this: we collected lead and listing costs from public reviews, community threads, a trade analysis and vendor roundups available in September and October 2026. We did not check platform price lists or contracts. Every figure in the price table carries its own denominator; most have a denominator of one.

The limits are large. Trustpilot scores skew negative for lead platforms: Angi's TrustScore was 2.1 from 7,027 reviews, Bark's 3.8 from 111,882, WeddingWire's about 1.5 from 3,000 or more²³⁸. Those are samples of people who chose to write, not of pros. The Angi average comes from a secondary report of quarterly figures. The follow-up effect is borrowed from home-services data: Pied Piper's 2026 mystery shop found 72% of 3,211 inquiries got no follow-up¹³, which is not a marketplace sample.

What is missing is a per-source ledger at scale: leads by platform, share answered within the hour, share offered a time, share followed up twice, share booked. Valet could build that ledger from its inquiry records across many businesses. It does not exist yet, and we will not estimate it.

What would make you cancel a listing, and what would change the finding#

Cancel on cost per booking, measured after 60 to 90 days of working every lead. Three outcomes are worth deciding on in advance.

1. Cost per booking above your margin on an average booking. If line E exceeds what you keep from one job after working every lead, the listing is losing money on its own terms.
2. Close reasons dominated by fake or out-of-area leads. That points at lead quality. More speed will not fix it. Take the records to the platform or leave.
3. Close reasons dominated by "no reply after one message". That points at the inbox. Fix the follow-up before you judge the platform.

The finding here, that the share of leads worked moves cost per booking more than the lead price does, would be falsified by data showing worked and unworked leads book at similar rates on the same platform. We know of no published data either way for marketplaces. The closest is Thumbtack's own 25% hiring gap on speed alone¹⁰. For the full cross-channel version of this calculation, see the Lost Inquiry Calculator; for the record each lead needs, see why marketplace leads die in your inbox.

Where Valet fits#

Valet works the leads you have already paid for. It answers marketplace and directory lead emails, website forms and your info@ inbox from your own price list, packages, calendar and policies, offers and holds real times, and follows up twice with something useful before it stops and tells you why. Every inquiry has a state, so a per-source ledger of answered, offered, followed up and booked builds as you go. Pricing during early access is a small monthly base plus a fee only for bookings or quotes Valet wins, capped monthly and month to month. To see your own numbers first, start with the free lead check: forward 10 to 20 recent inquiries and see which went unanswered, which stopped after one reply, and what they were worth.