The short answer
If your schedule is empty next month, buy leads. Nothing else on this page works that fast. If you're paying for leads month after month and your name still means nothing to anyone in town, start building your own, because the bill never ends and it leaves little behind.
A roofing lead is a homeowner's contact details, or a live phone call, from someone who might want roof work. They come in roughly three kinds. Shared leads go to more than one roofer. Exclusive leads go only to you, at least according to the seller. Earned leads call you because they found you in Google, saw your yard sign or heard your name from a neighbor. Earned leads have no per-lead price, but they aren't free: they cost time and, often, some money to someone who does the work.
Buying shared leads suits a roofer with a fast, disciplined sales process. It's a poor fit if nobody can call within a few minutes, or if you only want full replacements at the top of the market.
What the sellers say in their own terms
These are the sellers whose current terms we could open and read in November 2026, and they differ more than the sales pages suggest. Availability varies by market, and terms change, so read the current version before you sign. Other sellers exist: if one isn't here, we couldn't read its current terms, so ask it the same questions.
| Seller | Who else gets the lead | How you pay | If a lead is bad | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angi | Frequently several other pros, within what it calls competition limits | Per lead, by bundle or by subscription. You pay even if you don't win. | Credits are considered only if the lead is under 45 days old and you tried calling within 24 hours. Not offered on annual subscriptions. Expire after six months. | Subscriptions renew automatically, and an early termination fee may apply. |
| Thumbtack | Up to five pros in the first four hours, and more after that | You set an exact price per lead and a weekly budget, which can run over by a limited amount | Refunds at its sole discretion, requested within 45 days. Automatic if the customer replies to no pro in 72 hours, with conditions. Paid to your Thumbtack balance by default. | Your budget isn't a subscription. Prepaid packages are final. |
| Service Direct | Sold as exclusive, by its own description | Pay per call at a cost per lead you choose. No setup fee. | Repeat callers, wrong numbers and solicitors aren't billed. | No term contract. |
| Google Local Services Ads | Google doesn't say, though its lead page notes customers may have contacted other advertisers. | Per valid lead, with prices varying by location and job type | Credits for low-quality leads, but no longer for job types or areas you don't serve. | A budget you set and can change. Roofers go through Google's screening. |
A few things in the fine print matter more than they look:
- "Shopping" isn't grounds for a credit. Angi lists a homeowner gathering quotes, or hiring someone before you reached them, as already accounted for in lead pricing. That's a fair description of a roof buyer, so don't count on credits to rescue your numbers.
- Smart matching can widen what you pay for. Thumbtack says its AI may send leads outside your usual preferences, charged automatically. You can decline for a refund or opt out from your Services page, so check that setting.
- Your Angi reviews stay at Angi. The agreement says you have no right to reproduce reviews first published on its platform, including your own. A customer who only reviewed you there won't help your website or your Google profile.
- Contact law is your problem. Angi's agreement makes you responsible for following the TCPA, telemarketing rules and state do-not-call laws when you contact homeowners. The TCPA is the federal law on marketing calls and texts, so ask a lawyer or your software vendor how your dialer and texts handle it.
It's worth reading sales claims with a little care, in any business. In 2023 the FTC finalized an order against HomeAdvisor, the company behind Angi Pro, requiring it to pay up to $7.2 million. The FTC had alleged misleading claims about the quality and source of its leads and how often they turned into jobs. That's about older sales practices and says nothing about today's product. The practical lesson applies to every seller: get promises about lead quality in writing, and measure them yourself.
The math that actually decides this
Cost per lead is the number sellers want you to compare. It tells you almost nothing. What matters is the cost per signed job, which is your total spend on a source divided by the jobs it produced in the same period. Here's how the same budget can come out. Every number in this table is made up to show the method, so plug in your own:
| Made-up example | Spend | Leads | Close rate | Signed jobs | Cost per job |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared leads | $2,400 | 40 at $60 | 8% | 3.2 | $750 |
| Exclusive calls | $2,250 | 15 at $150 | 25% | 3.75 | $600 |
| Your own search work, once it's running | $600 plus your time | 6 | 40% | 2.4 | $250 plus your time |
Don't read the winner off that table: your market and your sales team will change every line. The search row in particular takes months to get there, costs real hours and might never reach six calls a month in a crowded metro. What the table does show is why a lower lead price can lose, and why a roofer who calls back in five minutes can make shared leads work when a slower one can't.
Run this per source for at least three months, because roofing has a long gap between lead and signed contract. Split repairs from replacements while you're at it: a source producing $400 leak jobs and one producing $14,000 replacements shouldn't be compared by job count. And count what the channel leaves you with when you stop paying. That's the next question.
What you own when you stop paying
Turn off a lead seller's budget and the calls stop. There's nothing wrong with that: it's what you're paying for, and it makes costs easy to control in a slow month. But nothing carries over, except the customers you won.
Search works the other way round. Your Google Business Profile is free, and Google says nobody can pay for a better local ranking. Reviews stay on the profile. A leak repair page you wrote last winter is still there next winter, and no seller passed the homeowner who finds it to anyone else. None of it is guaranteed. Distance is one of Google's main factors, so you won't show on the map across a metro just because you want to, and a new company with no reviews has a long way to go.
Be honest about where you stand. Here's who's better off doing what:
- Lean on bought leads: a new company, a new territory, a crew standing idle, or a post-storm window you can't afford to miss.
- Start shifting to earned leads: you've got a few years of jobs behind you, a stack of happy customers who were never asked for a review, and a monthly lead bill you've stopped questioning.
- Spend on neither: you're booked out from referrals and repeat commercial work. Keep your profile accurate and get on with it.
How to start earning your own
Our full guide to roofing SEO covers this step by step, including storm pages and the insurance wording that can get you in trouble. If you only do a few things this quarter, fix your profile's name, category and service area, write one page each for leak repair and replacement, and ask every finished customer for a Google review with the link Google gives you. Don't offer anything for it: Google prohibits incentives and asking only happy customers.
Off-Google, your cheapest leads are the ones you've already paid for. Ask for referrals when the job's done, put up a yard sign if the homeowner agrees, and write to the neighbors with a note saying you've just finished nearby. A roof is the rare purchase a whole street can see.
Door-knocking after a storm is still a lead source, with rules attached. The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule gives homeowners three days to cancel certain sales made at home, and says the seller must tell them so and hand over cancellation forms. Your town may also have its own rules for door-to-door selling. Homeowners have been told to expect you: the FTC advises people after bad weather to hire only licensed, insured contractors and get a written contract. Lead with those.
Questions to ask any lead seller
- How many other roofers can receive this same lead, and in what time window? Is that in the contract?
- What's my price per lead in my ZIP codes for replacements and for repairs, as a number, in writing?
- Exactly what qualifies for a credit, who decides, how long do I have, and does the credit come back as money?
- Is there a membership, a subscription, a minimum or an early termination fee? How do I cancel?
- Where do these leads come from: your own site, partner sites, ads?
- Who owns the reviews and profile I build with you if I leave?
A seller with a good product can answer all six. Start small, with a budget you can afford to lose while you find out.
Where Sojig fits, and where it doesn't
Sojig is our product, and it doesn't sell leads or run ads, so it won't fill next month's schedule. It's for the earned side. It tracks where you appear in Google Maps from each city you serve, and drafts review replies, posts and profile fixes each week for you to approve, along with website pages and fixes. Direct profile connection isn't open yet, so you copy what you approve into your profile yourself.
It starts at $99 a month as of November 2026. That's a poor deal for a roofer who won't read the weekly list, and everything Google recommends for your profile is free if you'd rather do it yourself. Other trades run into the same choice: see our HVAC guide, or how Sojig works for other businesses.