Angi bills you when you and the homeowner both show interest, and up to four other pros can get that same request. If that’s eating your margin, you’re probably shopping for Angi alternatives. Most lists quote price ranges with no source. We checked each company’s own pricing, help or terms pages in October 2026 and ran every one through the same four questions. Then we show how to work out what each source costs you per booked job.
The short answer: for licensed trades, Google Local Services Ads are the first Angi alternative to test, because the homeowner contacts you from your own ad. Thumbtack works most like Angi, but you set the lead price and a weekly cap. Remodelers should look at Houzz Pro. For small jobs, Bark lets you see a lead’s price before you pay. And your free Google Business Profile is the one source you own.
Key takeaways
- Angi and Bark cap each request at five pros, Thumbtack at five in the first four hours, and Networx sends a pay-per-lead request to up to four. How crowded each lead is
- Local Services Ads charge when a customer contacts you from your ad, but Google no longer credits wrong job type or wrong area leads. Local Services Ads rules
- Thumbtack lets you set your own lead price and a weekly budget, with no contract or membership fee. Thumbtack’s terms
- Houzz Pro plans run $99 to $399+ a month, ads start at $499 a month, and standard plans are a 12-month commitment. Houzz Pro pricing
- Judge every source on cost per booked job (total spend divided by jobs booked), not on lead price. The cost per job math
- Google says you can’t pay for a better local ranking, so your profile and reviews are the lead source you own. Sources you own
- Ask seven questions in writing, then test any lead site for 30 days with a cap and a tracking sheet. The 30-day test
Angi alternatives at a glance
Angi is the first row, for comparison. Each row comes from the platform’s own pricing, help or terms pages, checked in October 2026, so you know how you pay, who else gets the lead and what you sign before a sales rep calls.
| Option | How you pay | Who else gets the lead | What you commit to | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angi (baseline) | Per lead, at a fee Angi sets | Up to 5 pros per request | Pay per lead, or an auto-renewing subscription | The yardstick for everything below |
| Google Local Services Ads | Per lead: a call or message from your ad | Calls come to you; Google posts no cap like Angi’s | Your budget. You can pause any time | Licensed trades: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing |
| Thumbtack | A lead price you set, per service | Up to 5 pros in the first 4 hours | No contract, membership or annual fee | Small and mid-size jobs, testing a new service |
| Google search ads | Per click | The click lands on your own site | Your budget and bids | Shops with a page that turns visits into calls |
| Yelp Ads | Per click, and a quote request counts as a click | The click comes to your Yelp page | No term contract on self-serve ads | Markets where your customers check Yelp |
| Houzz Pro | Monthly plan ($99 to $399+), ads from $499 a month | Not stated | 12-month subscription | Remodelers, designers, design-build |
| Bark | Credits ($2.35 each at the standard rate), price shown before you pay | Up to 5 pros per customer | Credits expire after 3 months | Handyman and small jobs, cheap tests |
| Networx | Prepaid, $14 to $100 per lead | Up to 4 contractors | Credits refill on their own until you cancel | Trades that want a steady shared lead flow |
| Nextdoor | Free page and posts; ads from $5 a day | No lead fee. Neighbors contact you, but a recommendation thread may name several pros | Pay as you go or monthly on ads | Local repair and recurring service |
Sources for each row are linked in the platform sections below. Prices are what each company posts. Your real cost per lead depends on your trade, your ZIP code and how many shops you’re up against.
Read two columns before the price: who else gets the lead (how hard you’ll fight for each job) and what you commit to (how hard it is to quit if it flops).
The four questions to ask about any lead site
Angi is the yardstick here, so let’s run it through the four questions that decide your real cost. (HomeAdvisor is the same company: Angi Inc.’s 2025 annual report lists Angi, Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor and Handy as its brands. In 2023 the FTC finalized an order requiring HomeAdvisor to pay up to $7.2 million over how it sold leads to pros.)
- When am I charged? On Angi, as soon as you and the homeowner both show interest, and whether or not you open or answer the lead.
- How many other pros get it? Angi matches each request with no more than five pros.
- Who sets the price? Angi does. Its fees change with the task, the homeowner’s location and demand for the work.
- What do I sign? Pay per lead within a monthly budget, or a subscription. Angi’s Pro Agreement says subscriptions renew on their own, and the fee can go up by as much as 10% over the price you paid the term before. And Angi’s credit page says leads on an annual subscription don’t get credits at all.
Every option below gets the same four questions. If you want the full Angi breakdown first, read our Angi leads review. Torn between the two biggest marketplaces? Our Thumbtack vs Angi comparison goes rule by rule.
Google Local Services Ads
For most licensed trades, Local Services Ads are the first Angi alternative we’d test. The homeowner searches on Google, sees your ad with your reviews, and calls or messages you. Google says you only pay when a customer gets in touch from your ad.
On the four questions:
- When you’re charged: when a customer reaches you from the ad. Calls come through a Google forwarding number, and you’ll hear “Call from Google” when you pick up.
- Who else gets it: calls come straight to you, though other pros’ ads can sit on the same page. Google’s help pages don’t say how many pros a message lead can reach, so treat messages as shared and answer them as fast as calls.
- Who sets the price: an auction. Google says message leads usually cost less than phone leads.
- What you sign: you set a budget, and you can pause the ad any time.
Bad leads work differently here. Google’s lead credit page says leads it judges invalid or low quality aren’t charged. It also says Google no longer gives credits for wrong job type or wrong service area. So set your job types and ZIP codes tight from day one, because a lead for work you don’t do, in a town you don’t serve, won’t get you a credit anymore.
Answer fast. Google says a fast, steady response time could improve your ad’s ranking. Calls rolling to voicemail? Fix that first.
You’ll need to pass Google’s screening to run these. Our post on the Google Guaranteed and Google Verified badges covers the checks, and our Local Services Ads guide walks through setup and settings.
Thumbtack
Thumbtack works the most like Angi. It’s still a marketplace that owns the customer, but you get a lot more say over what you pay.
- When you’re charged: when a customer contacts you from search results and the job fits the preferences you set, you auto-pay for the lead. On Opportunities, the jobs you reach out to first, you pay only if the customer writes back.
- Who else gets it: Thumbtack’s Quality Commitment caps it at five pros in the first four hours of a customer’s search. The rule only covers the first four hours, so expect more pros after that.
- Who sets the price: you do. You set the lead price for each service with a slider, and that’s exactly what you pay per lead. A weekly budget caps your spending. Hit it and you drop out of search results until it resets the next Monday.
- What you sign: nothing long term. Thumbtack’s pro page says there are no contracts, no annual fees and no membership fees.
Thumbtack refunds a lead automatically if the customer doesn’t reply to any pro they contacted within 72 hours. Angi’s credit page goes the other way: a homeowner who never answers your calls or messages isn’t eligible for a credit.
Our take: if you never knew why an Angi lead cost what it did, Thumbtack is the easiest place to test the same kind of lead with your own numbers. It’s still a shared lead, so we’d answer every one within minutes. We walk through the break-even math in is Thumbtack worth it.
Google search ads
With search ads you pay for a click, not a lead, and that click lands on your website instead of a shared inbox. Google’s own definition is short: with cost-per-click bidding, you pay for each click on your ads.
That makes the lead yours alone. Nobody else gets the same form. The catch is that a click isn’t a lead. If your page is slow, vague or hard to call from a phone, you pay for visits that go nowhere.
So what does a lead cost once the clicks turn into calls and forms? LocaliQ published cost per lead from 3,211 home services search campaigns run by its own customers on Google and Microsoft Ads, from April 2024 to March 2025. LocaliQ calls these averages but says they’re medians, to keep outliers from skewing them. A few trades from its 2025 benchmark report:
| Trade (LocaliQ category) | Median cost per lead |
|---|---|
| Handyman Services | $54.05 |
| Electricians & Electrical Contractors | $93.69 |
| Plumbing | $129.02 |
| Heating & Furnaces | $129.02 |
| Roofing & Gutters | $228.15 |
Plumbing and Heating & Furnaces really are the same figure in LocaliQ’s report. Treat all of these as a ballpark, not a quote. They’re one company’s customers, and the data stops at March 2025, so it’s about 19 months old.
Search ads fit a shop that already has a page built for the job being searched, with the phone number up top. If you don’t have that page yet, fix the website first. Ads only send people to it.
Yelp Ads
Yelp Ads work like search ads inside Yelp. You pay per click, so read how Yelp defines one.
- When you’re charged: each time your ad is clicked, at a price per click that changes with supply and demand. Yelp’s advertising terms count a click as more than a tap on the ad. Requesting information, a quote or an appointment counts too.
- Who else gets it: the click comes to your page. Yelp says your ad can also show on competitors’ pages.
- Who sets the price: Yelp sets the price per click, and it can change during the month. You set the monthly budget, and Yelp says it won’t charge you more than that.
- What you sign: Yelp says self-serve ads have no term contract, and you can spend as little as $5 a day on average.
Before you spend a dollar, search Yelp for your trade in your town the way a homeowner would. If you see real reviews, recent activity and competitors buying ads, it’s worth a small test. If the top results are thin and nobody’s advertising, we’d put that money into Google first.
Houzz Pro
Houzz Pro isn’t a lead site the way Angi is. It’s job management software with an advertising package on top, and it’s built for remodelers and designers.
The pricing page lists three plans: Design at $99 a month, Pro at $199 and Teams starting at $399. The Advertising Package is an add-on that starts at $499 a month. Houzz says that package includes a preferred directory spot and entry into its lead generation program, which matches you with homeowners by budget, project type and more.
- When you’re charged: monthly, for the plan and the ads. Its pricing page doesn’t list a price per lead.
- Who else gets it: Houzz’s pricing and ad pages don’t say how many pros it matches to each homeowner. Ask the rep.
- What you sign: Houzz’s own comparison page says standard subscriptions are a 12-month commitment, paid monthly or yearly, with a 30-day free trial that needs a card. Ask what you’d owe if you quit in month three, and whether the ad package has its own term. The 30-day trial is your real test window, so ask whether the ads run during it.
Here’s the math we’d run before signing. Say you take the Pro plan plus the starting ad package: $698 a month, or $8,376 for the year. If you net 25% on a $40,000 kitchen, one kitchen brings in $10,000. One booked job a year covers it. Three and it’s a good channel. (Example numbers. Use your own job size and margin.)
Houzz makes sense if you’d use the software anyway and your work photographs well. If you just want the phone to ring for repairs, skip it.
Bark
Bark lets you test with a small credit pack and no contract. You see each lead and its credit cost first, then decide whether to pay.
- When you’re charged: only when you choose to contact a customer. Bark’s pricing page says you buy a credit pack and spend credits on the customers you want. Bark says there’s no commission and no hidden fees.
- Who else gets it: up to 5 pros can respond to each customer. You can see how many already have before you buy.
- Who sets the price: Bark. Its credit help page lists a standard rate of $2.35 per credit (bigger packs cost less per credit), and the number of credits a lead costs depends on the type of service and the size of the job. Each lead shows its credit cost before you buy. Multiply that by what you paid per credit to get the dollar price.
- What you sign: a credit pack, not a contract. Watch the clock, though: credits bought since November 1, 2025 expire 3 months after purchase. Unused credits can’t be refunded.
Bark also has a first-pack promise: if you don’t win business with your first credit pack, it says it will return all your credits. That’s credits back, not cash, and they still expire. Read the conditions before you count on it.
Bark fits handyman work, small repairs and anyone testing a new service area cheaply. Buy the smallest pack, respond only to leads with few responses so far, and track what books. Don’t let auto top-up run while you’re still testing.
Networx
Networx sells leads the old way: prepaid, per lead, shared with a few other pros.
- When you’re charged: up front. Networx’s leads page calls its prepaid plan the most popular, with each lead costing anywhere from $14 to $100.
- Who else gets it: its help center says a pay-per-lead request goes to up to 4 contractors in total. It also mentions a separate Exclusive Lead Plan, which costs more per lead.
- Who sets the price: Networx. Its leads page gives only the $14 to $100 range, so ask for your trade and ZIP codes in writing.
- What you sign: Networx says you aren’t locked into a long-term contract. But the account refills itself. The leads page says that once your credits run out, the account automatically renews and charges your card. Networx says it warns you when you’re down to about 2 leads, and again before the charge. To stop, you contact them.
Networx also lists when it gives a credit back: a wrong phone number, a lead looking for services you don’t provide, or a renter instead of an owner.
Four shops on one lead is better than five, and Networx lists its credit reasons in plain terms. Set a calendar reminder for the day your first pack runs low. Decide then whether to reload, before the automatic charge decides for you.
Nextdoor
Nextdoor isn’t a lead site at all. It’s where neighbors ask each other who to call, and a business page there costs nothing.
Nextdoor’s small business page lists a free Business Page, free Business Posts, and free recommendations from customers. Ads are the paid layer. Nextdoor advertises a start as low as $5 a day, and its billing help page offers two ways to pay: pay as you go for impressions after they run, or a set monthly subscription.
There’s no lead fee. A neighbor sees your post or a recommendation and calls you, though a “who should I call” thread may name several pros. The flip side is that you’re paying for eyeballs, not contacts, so it’s harder to tie a dollar to a job.
What we’d do: claim the free page today and ask your last ten happy customers to recommend you there. Hold off on ads until you’ve seen whether recommendations alone bring calls. We think it fits best for repair and recurring work close to home: plumbing, HVAC tune-ups, lawn care, pest control, handyman.
The alternative you own: your Google profile and website
Every option above is rented. You stop paying, the calls stop. Your Google Business Profile and your website are the two lead sources you own, and they keep working on the months you don’t buy anything.
Your Google profile is free. Google’s local ranking help page says there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Results come down mainly to relevance, distance and popularity. So fill out every field, pick the right categories and services, and keep reviews coming.
What we’d do first on the owned side:
- Fill in every service you sell on your profile, one by one, not just your main category. Our Google Business Profile guide shows where each field lives.
- Ask for a review after every job, by text, the same day. Our free review link generator gives you one short link to send.
- Build one page on your site for each money job (water heater replacement, roof repair, AC install), with your phone number at the top.
That last step is where contractor SEO starts. It’s slower than any lead site. Plan on months, not weeks. But every page and review you add keeps bringing in work you don’t pay per lead for. For the bigger picture of rented and owned sources side by side, see our guide to lead generation for contractors.
Compare Angi alternatives on cost per booked job
Lead price is the wrong number to compare. Ten $30 leads that book one job cost $300 per job. Two $150 leads that book one job cost $300 too, and that job might be worth $9,000 (example numbers). The number that matters is cost per booked job: everything you spent on a source, divided by the jobs it booked.
How crowded a lead is drives that number, because it drives how many you win. This is how many shops can be chasing the same customer, from each platform’s own rules:
To get cost per booked job for each way of paying:
- Per lead (Angi, Thumbtack, Bark, Networx, Local Services Ads): lead price divided by your close rate. On Bark, the lead price is the credits it costs times what you paid per credit.
- Per click (Google search ads, Yelp): cost per click, divided by the share of clicks that become calls or forms, divided by your close rate.
- Flat monthly (Houzz Pro, an Angi subscription, Nextdoor subscription ads): the monthly cost divided by the jobs it booked that month.
Example math with made-up numbers, so you can see the method:
| Source type | What you pay | How it turns into jobs | Cost per booked job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared lead | $60 per lead | You win 1 in 5 | $300 |
| Cheaper shared lead | $35 per lead | You win 1 in 8 | $280 |
| Per click | $10 per click | 1 in 10 clicks calls, you win 1 in 3 | $300 |
| Flat monthly | $698 a month | 1 job every 2 months | $1,396 |
The flat monthly row looks awful until you check the job size. On a $40,000 remodel, $1,396 is cheap. On a $250 drain call, $300 is a loss.
So set your ceiling from your own books. Take the gross profit on a typical job and decide what share you’ll spend to win it. Say a water heater install leaves you $1,200 after parts and labor, and you’ll spend up to 25% of that to land it. Your ceiling is $300 per booked job. (Example numbers again. Plug in yours.)
Which Angi alternative fits your trade
Emergency jobs and remodels get bought differently. The homeowner with water on the floor tends to call the first result that looks solid. The one planning a kitchen often browses photos for weeks.
These are our picks, based on how each platform charges and who it’s built for:
| Your work | Start with | Add next | Go slow on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency repair (plumbing, HVAC, water damage) | Local Services Ads | Google search ads sent to a page for that job | Anything you can’t answer in minutes |
| Roofing and storm work | Local Services Ads | Search ads, but watch cost per lead closely | Shared leads on big-ticket jobs |
| Remodeling and design-build | Houzz Pro, if you’d use the software | Search ads plus a strong project gallery | Bark and other small-job sites |
| Handyman and small repairs | Thumbtack or Bark | Nextdoor’s free page | Houzz Pro and 12-month deals |
| Brand-new shop, small budget | Google Business Profile and Nextdoor (both free) | One paid test: Local Services Ads if you qualify, or Thumbtack | Anything with a contract |
Why roofing gets a warning: Roofing & Gutters had the highest search ad cost per lead of the five trades in the LocaliQ table above, at $228.15, so watch search ad spend closely. And a shared lead on a roof replacement means up to four other shops may be calling the same homeowner. Buy those only if you call back in minutes and close well.
For the remodeler, the math flips. Your jobs are big enough that a monthly fee can pay off on one sale. The real risk is signing for 12 months before you know whether Houzz homeowners in your area hire at your price.
How to test a lead site in 30 days
Never sign up for a lead site on a sales call. Test it for 30 days with a cap you can live with, and track every lead.
Seven questions to ask the rep first
Get the answers in writing. Email is fine.
- When exactly am I charged, and am I charged if I never open the lead?
- How many other pros get the same request?
- What does a lead cost for my top three services in my ZIP codes?
- How do I cap my spend, and can a lead push me past the cap?
- Which bad leads get a credit, how many days do I have to ask, and do I have to call the customer within a set time? (Angi, for one, wants a lead under 45 days old and a call attempt within 24 hours.)
- Is there a contract, an auto-renewal or a price increase at renewal?
- How do I pause, and how do I cancel?
We pulled every platform rule in this post from the company’s own pages. If a rep tells you something different, ask them to show you where it’s written.
If a rep’s answer doesn’t match the help center, believe the help center.
The tracking sheet
One row per lead, one tab per platform. Whoever answers the phone fills in the row, whether that’s you in the truck or your office manager. A paper log works too. It’s the first thing we ask for when we look at a contractor’s lead spend. Here’s the layout, with a made-up example row:
| Date | Service | Paid | Minutes to call back | Reached? | Quoted? | Booked? | Job value | Credit asked / got |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 14 | Water heater | $45 | 6 | Yes | Yes | No | $0 | No / No |
Keep or kill on day 30
Add up spend and booked jobs, and work out your cost per booked job. Under your ceiling? Keep going, and raise the cap 20 to 25%. Over it? Look at the “Minutes to call back” column before you blame the platform. On a shared lead, a slow callback is the first leak we look for.
If callbacks were under 10 minutes and you’re more than 1.5 times your ceiling, cut it and test the next one on your list. Between 1 and 1.5 times? Give it one more month. (That’s our rule of thumb, not platform data.)
Angi alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to Angi for contractors?
For most licensed trades, we’d test Google Local Services Ads first, because the homeowner contacts you from your own ad and Google doesn’t charge for leads it judges invalid. If you want a marketplace like Angi with more control, Thumbtack lets you set your own lead price and weekly budget. Remodelers should look at Houzz Pro instead.
Is there a free alternative to Angi?
Yes. Your Google Business Profile is free, and Google says you can’t pay for a better local ranking. Nextdoor gives you a free business page and free posts. Thumbtack and Bark are free to join, but you pay for leads. Free sources take longer to build, so we’d pair one with a small paid test.
Is HomeAdvisor the same as Angi?
They’re the same company. Angi Inc.’s 2025 annual report lists Angi, Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor and Handy as its brands. In 2023 the FTC finalized an order requiring HomeAdvisor to pay up to $7.2 million over how it sold leads to pros. If a rep pitches HomeAdvisor, ask which agreement you’re signing and get the renewal and price terms in writing.
Which lead sites give exclusive leads?
On the marketplaces here, shared is the norm. Angi and Bark cap a request at five pros, Thumbtack at five in the first four hours, and Networx at four on its pay-per-lead plan. Networx also sells a separate Exclusive Lead Plan at a higher price. Search ads and your own website send each lead to you alone.
Are Thumbtack leads better than Angi leads?
Neither is better everywhere. Thumbtack gives you more control: you set the lead price and a weekly cap, and it refunds a lead if the customer replies to no pro in 72 hours. Angi sets the price, its credit page says a homeowner who never answers isn’t eligible for a credit, and annual subscription leads get no credits. Test both and compare cost per booked job.
What to do this week
Keep Angi running while you test one alternative against it.
- Pull last quarter’s Angi or HomeAdvisor charges and count the jobs they booked. That’s your cost per booked job to beat.
- Set your ceiling: gross profit on a typical job, times the share you’ll spend to win it.
- Pick one alternative from the trade table above. Ask the rep the seven questions, in writing.
- Claim your free Nextdoor page and tighten your Google Business Profile while the test runs.
Want a second set of eyes on the owned side? We’ll look at your Google profile, reviews and site, and tell you what’s holding back your calls.
