See exactly what paid leads are worth to your business. Enter your lead price, conversion rate and average sale value to get your cost per customer, return on lead spend and the conversion rate you need to break even.
Set margin to 100% to see return on revenue; lower it to your gross margin for a true profit ROI.
At a 15% conversion you earn $4.50 back for every $1 spent on leads. You only need to convert 3.3% of leads to break even.
Exclusive, SMS-verified leads. No retainers, no lock-in — pay only for leads that fit your brief.
Last updated 9 July 2026 · Estimates only — your real numbers depend on your offer, follow-up and market.
A lead price on its own means nothing. A $100 lead is a bargain if you convert one in three and each sale is worth $3,000; the same $100 lead is a disaster if you convert one in fifty. The number that actually governs your profit is cost per customer — your lead price divided by the share of leads you turn into paying customers. Compare that to your average sale value (times your margin) and you know immediately whether the channel makes money.
Because cost per customer is so sensitive to conversion, small improvements in how you handle leads move the ROI a lot. The single biggest lever is speed-to-lead: research popularised by Harvard Business Review found that contacting a web lead within five minutes dramatically raises the odds of qualifying it versus waiting even half an hour. Exclusive leads help for the same reason: when a lead isn't also sold to three competitors, more of your calls connect and convert.
Shared leads look cheaper per unit, but they're sold to several businesses at once, so your conversion rate — and therefore your true cost per customer — is worse than the sticker price suggests. Try it in the calculator: drop the conversion rate to model a shared lead, and watch the cost per customer climb. That gap is why exclusive leads usually win on ROI even at a higher price, and it's the model PrimeLeads is built on.
There's no universal number — a $150 lead is cheap for a mortgage broker and expensive for a $200 job. What matters is your cost per customer (cost per lead divided by your conversion rate) measured against your average sale value and margin. This calculator works that out for you.
Lead ROI = (revenue × your profit margin − lead spend) ÷ lead spend, shown as a percentage. A simpler version is ROAS (return on ad spend) = revenue ÷ lead spend, e.g. '4× back for every $1 spent'. The calculator shows both, plus the conversion rate you need just to break even.
It varies widely by industry, offer and — critically — how fast you follow up. Speed-to-lead is decisive: research popularised by Harvard Business Review found contacting a lead within five minutes makes you far more likely to qualify it. Exclusive, verified leads also convert higher than shared leads because you're not racing several other businesses.
Usually, yes. A shared lead is sold to several businesses at once, so your conversion rate drops and your effective cost per customer rises. When you plug a higher conversion rate into the calculator, the ROI difference between exclusive and shared leads becomes obvious.
With pay-per-lead you only spend when a qualified enquiry that matches your brief actually arrives — there's no retainer and no lock-in, so the ROI is transparent and easy to model. That's how PrimeLeads works: exclusive, SMS-verified leads, priced per lead.
Request a test batch of exclusive, SMS-verified leads and check the ROI for yourself. No retainers, no lock-in.
Request a test batchWe will build the campaign, deliver your first leads, and show you the quality before you scale.