Buy Solar Leads or Generate Your Own? Cost per Install

Buy solar leads only when they cost less per install than leads you generate yourself. On sellers' own price lists, checked on 1 October 2026, a residential solar lead costs $60 ex GST at SolarQuotes, shared with up to two other installers, or $50 to $100 exclusive at LeadsHQ. The lead price starts the sum. The install decides it.

This is the decision we help installers make in our solar lead generation work, where every source, bought or our own, is judged on installs booked. The four sellers below appear on page one of Google Australia for 'buy solar leads', and every fact about them comes from their own websites on 1 October 2026.

Where can you buy solar leads in Australia?

From quote-matching sites, which pass a homeowner's enquiry to a small number of installers, and from lead generators, which run their own ads and sell each enquiry to one installer. Four of the sellers ranking for 'buy solar leads' explain how their leads work:

Source: solarquotes.com.au/join-our-network, solarchoice.net.au/installers, solarmarket.com.au/suppliers and leadshq.com.au/buy-leads/buy-solar-leads, checked 1 October 2026. Prices as each seller publishes them. Check current terms before you sign.

So what is the best company to buy solar leads from? The one whose leads become installs at the lowest cost in your postcodes. Nobody can tell you that in advance, including the sellers, because it depends on your prices, your sales team and your area. You find out by tracking each seller's leads to the install.

Shared or exclusive: which kind of solar lead is better?

Neither by default. A shared lead costs less because you are competing for it, so it is only worth the price if your team calls first and quotes well. An exclusive lead costs more, but nobody else is calling, so more of them should close, provided the homeowner was found honestly. Ask any exclusive seller how it finds homeowners. LeadsHQ, for example, says its leads come from paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube, and that it does not use cold calling or email lists.

Two questions settle it for your business: how quickly your team calls a new lead, and how many lost quotes you can afford. A slow team pays twice for shared leads, once in the lead price and again in the quotes it never had a chance to win.

The decision rule: cost per install

Cost per install is what you spend on a source divided by the installs it produced. For bought leads, that is the price per lead divided by the share of leads that become installs. For your own ads, it is the cost per click divided by the share of clicks that enquire, then divided again by the share of enquiries that install. Our guide to cost per lead covers the general version of the sum.

The table runs it on published prices and example close rates. The close rates are illustrations to replace with your own, not benchmarks.

Source: lead prices from the sellers' sites, checked 1 October 2026. The $25 click sits inside Keyword Planner's top-of-page range for 'solar panel installation' ($8.41 to $32.00, Australia, pulled 1 October 2026). Close rates and the click-to-enquiry rate are examples, not benchmarks.

Read the table across each row, not down the columns. The same source is cheap at one close rate and dear at another, so the comparison only means something when each source carries its own close rate. A shared lead has to beat up to two other installers; an enquiry from someone who found your site has not been sent to anyone else. If your shared leads close one in sixteen and your own enquiries one in four, the $60 lead costs $960 per install and the $200 enquiry costs $800. The cheap lead loses.

Then add your selling cost. Every quote takes design time and often a site visit, so the number of quotes per install belongs in the sum. For example, if a quote costs you $80 in staff time and a source needs eight quotes for every install, add $640 to that source's cost per install.

What the invoice does not show

• Rejected leads. SolarQuotes does not invoice a lead you reject within 7 days if the homeowner is not seriously considering a system in the next 12 months. Your real price is what you paid for the leads you kept.
• Speed. A shared lead tends to go to the installer who has the first useful conversation. If nobody can call within minutes in working hours and the same evening after hours, the cheaper lead becomes the dearer one.
• Bundles. LeadsHQ sells residential leads in bundles of 50. Judge a bundle on the installs from the whole bundle, not on the first ten leads.
• Who keeps the learning. A seller's ads, landing pages and audiences keep learning on its account, not yours. Your own campaigns build account history and data that can bring your next lead's cost down.
• Compliance. The ACMA says a business using leads gathered by third parties carries the compliance obligations, and should be able to show the consent behind any list it buys. In Victoria, Solar Homes retailers must not sell rebates or loans by cold calling or door-knocking, including through contractors or marketing companies. Our solar marketing compliance guide covers the rest.

What does it cost to generate your own solar leads?

Mostly the clicks, plus the time to run and track the campaigns. Top-of-page bids for 'solar panel installation' run from $8.41 to $32.00 a click, and Keyword Planner publishes the same figures for the other searches installers bid on:

Source: Google Ads Keyword Planner, Australia, average monthly searches and top-of-page bid range in AUD, pulled 1 October 2026.

The cheaper searches are not always the better buy. 'Solar quotes' is also the name of a quote-matching site, so part of that volume is people looking for it, and 'battery rebate' searchers may want information before they want an installer. The dearer 'installers near me' searches come from people deciding who to call.

A working funnel of your own has four parts: search campaigns split by solar, batteries and commercial; Meta lead forms that ask about home ownership, roof and power bill before anyone calls; a Google Business Profile with reviews and photos of real installs; and tracking that follows each enquiry to the install, with installs sent back to Google Ads as offline conversions inside its 90-day window.

How much should you pay for a solar lead?

Work back from the margin on an install, not forward from a seller's price. Take the gross margin on a typical install, decide what share of it you will spend to win the job, and multiply by your close rate. For example, if an install leaves $2,000 of gross margin, you will spend a quarter of that to win one, and one lead in six closes, your ceiling is about $83 a lead. Above it, the source costs more per install than you decided you could pay.

Run the same sum on your own channels and on each seller. The CAC calculator does the arithmetic if you would rather not.

Is it worth paying for solar leads?

It is worth it when bought leads cost less per install than your own advertising, or when they do a job your own channels cannot do yet. That tends to mean one of four situations:

• Your tracking cannot yet tell you what a lead costs per install, and you need work while you fix it.
• You are entering a region where your brand, reviews and ad history count for nothing.
• Your crews have capacity this month that your own pipeline will not fill.
• You want to test demand for a product, such as batteries or EV chargers, before you build campaigns for it.

In each case, buy on a trial with clear rejection terms, give bought leads the same response standard as your own, and cut any seller whose cost per install is higher than your own channels once you have three months of data.

Appointment setting and commercial solar leads

Paying someone to call homeowners and book appointments puts their conduct on your account. The New Energy Tech Consumer Code makes an Approved Seller responsible for third parties it engages to do direct marketing and sales (clauses 61 and 62 of the current code, and 62 and 63 in the version that starts on 1 December 2026). A telemarketing call to a number on the Do Not Call Register needs the person's consent, calls are limited to 9 am to 8 pm on weekdays and 9 am to 5 pm on Saturdays, and in Victoria cold calling is off the table for Solar Homes sales.

Commercial leads cost more and take longer to close. SolarQuotes lists commercial solar leads at $185 ex GST, and LeadsHQ at $150 to $250 for small businesses installing 30 to 99 kW. Keyword Planner puts the top of the top-of-page bid range for 'commercial solar leads' at $79.15 (October 2026). Run commercial as its own funnel with its own close rate and sales cycle, because averaging it with residential makes both numbers wrong.

A 90-day test before you commit

1. Record your current cost per install by source for the last quarter, even if the data is rough.
2. Tag every lead with its source in the CRM the moment it arrives, bought or your own.
3. Hold every source to the same response standard, and record the time to first call.
4. Buy a fixed number of leads from one or two sellers, inside their rejection terms.
5. Run your own campaigns over the same weeks and postcodes.
6. At day 90, divide each source's total cost, quoting time included, by its installs, and keep whatever comes in under your ceiling.

Ninety days is a minimum for residential solar. Quote-to-install time varies, so give slow months longer before you call a winner.

If you want this run on your numbers, our solar lead generation work starts by tracking every source to the install, bought leads included. Read the solar marketing compliance guide before you buy leads or hire callers, or book a free 30-minute profit audit and bring a quarter of leads by source.