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How much do Thumbtack leads cost? About $10 to $120 each by third-party reports, and Sharrk makes sure you win the ones you pay for

By Sharrk Team · October 15, 2026

Thumbtack leads cost about $10 to $120 each by third-party reports, with HVAC and roofing reported higher, and Thumbtack prices each lead by job size and your location. Sharrk makes sure the leads you pay for turn into booked jobs: it texts and calls every new Thumbtack lead in under 30 seconds, day or night, and its Strikes keep following up until the customer replies or books.

Thumbtack's own advice to pros is "Respond quickly. Get hired." Sharrk does the responding for you, on every lead, and Mako, Sharrk's AI assistant, sets it all up from one plain-English sentence.

Below is how Sharrk wins your Thumbtack leads, then how Thumbtack charges, what sets the price, what pros report paying by trade, and how to lower your cost per booked job.

You paid for the lead. Sharrk makes sure you win it.

Every Thumbtack lead answered in under 30 seconds

Sharrk takes in leads from Thumbtack, along with Angi, Networx, web forms and webhooks, and replies to each new lead in under 30 seconds by text and call. The AI text agent answers questions and can book the job right in the thread. The AI voice agent answers questions, asks your qualifying questions and books onto Sharrk's AI booking calendar, Calendly or Cal.com, or straight into ServiceTitan, or transfers a hot lead to you live. On ServiceTitan? Thumbtack bookings that land there come into Sharrk as leads too (here's how).

Strikes follow up until they book

A lead that goes quiet usually stays paid for (more on Thumbtack's refund rules below), so the money is won in follow-up. A Strike keeps reaching out by AI call, text, email and voicemail drop on the schedule you choose, and it stops the moment the lead replies or books. No paid lead goes cold because someone got busy. See how it works on our speed-to-lead page.

Mako builds it in one sentence

Mako, Sharrk's AI assistant, builds your agents, follow-up and automations from plain English. Tell Mako "follow up with every new Thumbtack lead in 30 seconds until they book" and it builds the Strike, shows you every step and waits for your OK. A new greeting, a review request after every Won job, a win-back campaign for last year's quotes: ask Mako.

Old Thumbtack leads, new jobs

Every Thumbtack lead you didn't close is a lead you already paid for. Hunts reach back out to past leads and customers by AI call, text and email inside the calling windows you set, with opt-outs, quiet hours and DNC checks built in, and hand anyone ready to book straight back to you. You're responsible for having consent to contact your list. Learn more about lead reactivation.

Sharrk has helped clients bring in six figures in revenue, including a single $30,000+ deal.

How does Thumbtack charge pros for leads?

Thumbtack is pay per lead, not a subscription. On its jobs page for pros, Thumbtack says (checked October 15, 2026):

• "Creating an account is free. There's no signup or subscription fee."
• "You pay when a new customer contacts or hires you."
• "You only pay when an interested customer has seen what you offer and wants to talk."
• "When you sign up, we show you what a lead costs in your area, and you tell us how many customers you want."
• "You decide how much you're willing to spend each week."

So what Thumbtack charges per lead is whatever it quotes for your category and area, inside the budget you set. You see that number before you commit.

What sets the price of a Thumbtack lead?

Thumbtack names two drivers on its own page: job size and your location. In the Thumbtack Community, a Thumbtack moderator also pointed pros to their max lead price settings as the way "to control what you pay," and in another thread suggested a pro's max lead prices were set high with "a lot of room to experiment with lowering those prices."

Thumbtack does not publish its pricing formula. When a pro asked in the community how a specific lead was priced, the moderator replied, "I can't speak to how individual leads are priced or reviewed."

What do Thumbtack leads typically cost by trade?

These ranges come from outside sites, not Thumbtack. Treat them as rough reports, not quotes. Your own number is the one Thumbtack shows you for your area.

PaintingPPC also says prices in dense metro areas run "20 to 50 percent above those averages" and notes that "Thumbtack does not publish a national price sheet."

Prices also change over time. In a 2022 community thread, long-time pros reported leads that once cost a few dollars now costing $20 to $30 or more in their categories. Those are individual reports, but they match the idea that the number you saw last year may not be the number you see now. The more each lead costs, the more it pays to answer it first.

Can you get a refund or credit for a bad Thumbtack lead?

Sometimes. Based on Thumbtack moderator posts in the community:

• Refund requests are reviewed "on a lead by lead basis" (February 2025).
• A separate Trust and Safety process can find and refund spam leads (February 2025).
• A customer who simply stops responding is not, by itself, grounds for a refund under the stated policy (February 2025).
• Thumbtack expanded its instant book cancellation refund from 15 minutes to "1 response hour (8am - 8pm)," and bookings made after hours and cancelled overnight are credited automatically (June 2024).

Refund rules change, so check Thumbtack's current help center before you count on one. The practical point: a lead that goes quiet usually stays paid for, so the money is won or lost in how you follow up, which is exactly what Strikes are for.

How do you lower your cost per booked job on Thumbtack?

The price per lead is only half the math. What matters is cost per booked job:

Cost per booked job = total lead spend ÷ jobs booked from those leads

For example (illustrative numbers only): ten leads at $40 is $400. Book two jobs and each one cost you $200 to win. Book four from the same ten and each cost $100. The lead price never changed. Your close rate did.

Ways to move that number:

1. Reply fast. Thumbtack's own advice to pros is "Respond quickly. Get hired," and "When you're contacted, check the job details and reply quickly." Sharrk replies to every new Thumbtack lead in under 30 seconds, day or night, so your paid lead hears from you before anyone else. More on why minutes matter in our post on the 90-second rule for speed to lead.
2. Set max lead prices on purpose. Use the max lead price setting per category. Lower it in categories where you rarely close, and keep it competitive where your margins are best.
3. Cut categories that don't pay back. Track bookings by category for a month. Drop or narrow the ones with the worst cost per booked job.
4. Follow up more than once. One reply is rarely enough. A Strike sends a short sequence of AI texts, calls, emails and voicemail drops over the next few days and catches the customer who was busy the first time. See how AI lead follow-up works.
5. Ask for the next step. Every reply should end with a clear ask: a time for an estimate, a photo of the job, or a call window. Sharrk's AI text and voice agents ask for it and book the time on the spot.

A first reply that works by text, and one Mako can put in your Strike:

Hi [Name], this is [Your name] with [Company]. Got your Thumbtack request for [job]. I can come out [day] between [time window] for a free estimate. Does that work, or is another time better?

Sharrk pricing

Self-serve plans, no contracts, no setup fees, cancel anytime.

• Sharrk Free: $0. Build and test unlimited AI voice and text agents with Mako, plus the CRM and 2,500 one-time credits. No credit card.
• Sharrk Core: $99/month. Every feature live with 1 phone number and 47,500 credits a month. You and Mako run it.
• Sharrk Complete: $449/month. 185,000 credits a month plus a done-for-you build by the Sharrk team every month.

Every paid plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment, minus credits used. To protect you and your leads, AI outbound calling unlocks after you sign a consent attestation and your texting registration is approved, and Mako walks you through both.

Win your next Thumbtack lead with Sharrk

Start free and Mako will build your first AI agent from your website in minutes, no card needed. Prefer a walkthrough? Book a demo and we'll show you Sharrk replying to a test Thumbtack lead. For the bigger picture, our guide to speed-to-lead software covers what great lead response looks like.

Also buying leads from Networx? See how much Networx leads cost and how its credits for bad leads work.

Deciding between the two marketplaces? See Thumbtack vs Angi.

Once you pay for a lead, speed decides who gets hired; here is how fast to respond to Thumbtack leads.

Sources

• Thumbtack: Jobs on Thumbtack (for pros) (checked October 15, 2026)
• Thumbtack Community: How Leads are priced (checked October 15, 2026)
• Thumbtack Community: Cost of Leads as a Photographer and Refunds (checked October 15, 2026)
• Thumbtack Community: Thumbtack's Refund Policy (checked October 15, 2026)
• Thumbtack Community: Your feedback in action: Refund policy update (checked October 15, 2026)
• Thumbtack Community: Not Happy With Max Lead Pricing (checked October 15, 2026)
• SAVU LLC: Thumbtack Pro Review 2026 (checked October 15, 2026)
• PaintingPPC: Thumbtack for Painters (checked October 15, 2026)
• LeadCapture.io: Is Thumbtack Worth It? (checked October 15, 2026)

Related on Sharrk: Speed-to-lead follow-up · Lead reactivation · Contractor automation · AI receptionist for service businesses · AI lead follow-up guide · What Angi leads cost

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