Published November 4, 2026 · by Luis Gomez · The only cost-per-lead numbers here are from one drywall company’s dashboards, my father’s, screenshotted in the case study. I haven’t run an HVAC account; every HVAC figure on this page is a labelled example.
Short answer: The cheapest HVAC leads come from a Google Business Profile with the exact “HVAC contractor” category and reviews that name the job (free calls), then Local Services Ads, where HVAC is a full category and you pay per charged lead, not per click, then a website with a page and a price range for each money job, then small exact-match search ads. Referral partners and a maintenance-plan base fill the shoulder months. My only published cost-per-lead numbers are drywall ($36.77 to $46.66 per charged lead, Kansas City, April to July 2026); for HVAC, pull Google’s estimate for your ZIP and run the math once per job type.
HVAC is two businesses under one logo: emergency repair, which rings in the first heat wave and the first freeze, and replacement, a five-figure purchase the homeowner researched for months. Both come through the same phone and the tickets differ by an order of magnitude, so this list is ranked by what a lead costs to get and the math gets run twice. The HVAC-specific plan is on the marketing for HVAC companies page; this is the channel-by-channel version.
First, the math an HVAC job has to clear
My HVAC page uses market ballparks of $150 to $600 for a repair, $6,000 to $12,000 for a full system replacement and maintenance plans in the low hundreds a year; ballparks for context, not client claims. Run the sheet once per job type, because a lead price that’s a bargain on replacement calls will sink a shop that mostly gets repair calls. An example, with made-up tickets and close rates:
| Your number | Repair (example) | Replacement (example) |
|---|---|---|
| Average ticket | $400 | $9,000 |
| Close rate on inbound calls | 50% | 25% |
| Revenue per lead (ticket × close rate) | $200 | $2,250 |
| Max you should pay per lead (about a third) | $67 | $750 |
The rule is from my LSA cost-per-lead guide: revenue per lead should be at least three times the cost per lead, and the close rate on pay-per-lead calls should be above 40 percent; if it isn’t, the problem is the phone, not the ads. A $150 HVAC lead is cheap if your average replacement is $9,000 and you close one in four, and a loss on a $400 repair. So track cost per booked job for repairs and replacements separately, not cost per lead on the blend. Maintenance plans are the third column: a small first ticket, then renewals, two visits a year and the easiest replacement sale in the book, which is why they’re channel six.
Now the channels, cheapest first.
1. The Google map listing (free calls, and the screen that sells the replacement)
When a homeowner types “ac repair near me” at 9 pm in July, the three businesses on the map get most of the calls. When the same homeowner spends October searching “furnace replacement cost,” the map is where they read your reviews before they dial. Most HVAC companies have a listing that was set up by whoever built the website and never touched again. What moves it, in order (the full 31-point list is in the Business Profile checklist):
- Primary category set to exactly “HVAC contractor.” Not “Contractor,” where map rank goes to die. The narrower air-conditioning and furnace categories only as secondaries, only if you do that work.
- Service-area business, address hidden, with the suburbs you actually dispatch to.
- Photos that match the job you want. Installed condensers and furnaces with the house visible. Techs in uniform at the unit, because this is a stranger coming into the basement. Before-and-after pairs of a rusted-out unit and its replacement. Condensers in June, furnaces in October.
- Reviews that name the job. “Replaced our furnace in a day” is text Google reads and the words the replacement searches use. Ask within an hour, by text, with the profile’s own review link; reply naming the job. Every maintenance visit is a review ask.
- Services listed by the words homeowners type: AC repair, AC replacement, furnace repair, furnace replacement, heat pump installation, ductless mini-split, maintenance plan, emergency HVAC repair.
- The Q&A seeded by you: diagnostic fee, financing, heat pumps, weekend emergencies.
Daily posting isn’t on the list; it barely moves the map. For the drywall company whose numbers I publish, 120 calls came straight from the Business Profile between February and July 2026, about 21 a month across May to July, at zero cost. I won’t guess your call count; the mechanism is the same. Setup order: the Business Profile service page.
2. Local Services Ads for HVAC (pay per lead, and you’re a full category)
These are the results at the very top of Google with the Google Verified checkmark, which replaced Google Guaranteed on October 20, 2025 (the money-back guarantee ended November 7, 2025; explained here). You pay when a real person calls, messages or books, not per click. Drywall has to use a side door; HVAC is one of the 36 home-service categories Google offers in 2026 (the list is in every Local Services Ads category). Screening is set per category and differs by state, so check the sign-up flow for your state. What decides whether it pays:
- Job types. Turn on only the work you do: repair, replacement and installation, maintenance, whatever your market’s list calls them. Turn off duct cleaning if you don’t do it. Google cut the “job type not serviced” credit in 2024, so the job-type list is the only filter between you and a lead you pay for and can’t use.
- Answer in three rings, especially in the crunch. Response rate feeds the ranking, and the first heat wave is when it gets measured. Since October 1, 2026, a missed call during your listed business hours can be charged as a lead if the caller stays on the line more than about 20 seconds (migration email checklist).
- Rate bad leads the day they land. No dispute button since mid-2024; Google’s automated review credits invalid leads within about 72 hours, and a “Very dissatisfied” rating is what gets a borderline one looked at again.
- A budget that stays on all week, planned by season. The budget that fits April is not the budget for the first week of July.
The migration: from August 2026 Google is moving these ads into Google Ads as a pay-per-lead Performance Max campaign type, and HVAC is on the list for the first wave (accounts with home or storefront service; service-area businesses without storefronts follow in late 2026). Your weekly budget becomes a daily budget (weekly divided by 7) with a monthly cap of the daily figure times 30.4. Export your lead history before the account moves; see the migration guide and the budget guide.
What it costs: I don’t have an HVAC number and won’t quote a vendor table. The one account I publish, drywall repair in the Kansas City metro, ran $36.77 to $46.66 per charged lead across April to July 2026, with 52 charged leads in July at $39.89 (month by month). HVAC replacement is big-ticket and emergency-heavy, both of which push cost per lead up, so expect a bigger number; the flip side is that your tickets run multiples of drywall’s, so the same engine needs fewer booked jobs to pay for itself. Get your number in five minutes: start the Local Services Ads sign-up with your trade and ZIP, and on the budget step Google shows its own estimated cost per lead and leads-per-week range for your area. Screenshot it and compare it to a third of your revenue per lead for each job type (the steps). How I run the ads: the Local Services Ads service page.
3. A website that asks for the job (and holds the shoulder months)
The map listing gets the emergency call. The website is where the replacement gets researched, and it’s the one channel that works in April and October when nobody’s system is dying. Most HVAC sites lose both: every service is a paragraph on one page, no price anywhere, phone number in the footer. Build it like this:
- One page per money job: AC repair, AC replacement, furnace repair, furnace replacement, heat pump installation, ductless mini-split, maintenance plans, emergency repair. No page for work you don’t do.
- Prices as ranges. “A full system replacement usually runs between X and Y depending on size and efficiency” is what the October researcher came for.
- The trade and the city in the first line, then a real city page for each suburb you serve.
- The ask on every page: phone in the header, tap-to-call, a three-field form, a tracked source on every request. Financing, if you offer it, on the replacement pages.
Why the ask matters, from the drywall account I publish: a site that had never had a quote form got one on May 31, 2026, and took 21 requests in June and 29 in July, about one a day, with paid search switched off. A drywall site I rebuilt went from a 1.93% to a 10.51% conversion rate on the same traffic by making the ask (that story). HVAC tickets are bigger, so far fewer requests pay for the build. What I build: the websites-that-rank page.
4. Google Ads search campaigns (small, exact match, after the first three)
Search ads on exact-match terms (“ac repair” plus your city, “furnace replacement” plus your city) work in HVAC and are the fallback for job types the pay-per-lead ads don’t carry well in your market. They’re also where HVAC budgets go to die: broad match, no negatives, no call tracking, paying for “hvac jobs hiring” clicks in a heat wave when clicks cost the most. Run them small, exact-match, call-only ads scheduled to your answering hours, and only after the first three channels are converting. In the drywall account I publish, we turned paid search off (paid search sessions fell from 304 between January 1 and May 14, 2026 to 27 between May 15 and July 31) and the site still took about one quote request a day in July. What I’d run: the Google Ads service page.
5. Referral partners who see the failing system first
Home inspectors write “HVAC system at end of service life” on a report and the buyer wants a quote before closing. Realtors have listings with an original furnace the inspection will flag. Property managers have tenants calling at 6 am with no heat. Remodelers moving walls need ductwork moved. Plumbers hear “while you’re here, the AC is making a noise.” Insulation contractors and electricians (new circuits for a condenser, panel work for a heat pump) stand in the same basement a week before you do.
None of them wants the HVAC work. They want someone who shows up when they said, quotes the same day, and never surprises their customer with a price. List 30 in your metro, drop off a card and a one-line offer (“text me a photo of the unit and the data plate, same-day quote, your client never hears a number you didn’t approve”), and check in monthly. Slow to start, then it doesn’t stop, and it brings replacement leads in the shoulder months when search doesn’t.
6. Maintenance plans: the retention channel that sells the next system
Your invoice history is a lead list, and in HVAC it’s the best one you own. Every repair customer from last July is a plan candidate this spring. Every plan member is two visits a year, two review asks a year, and the first call when the system finally quits. A plan member doesn’t search “ac replacement near me” in the heat wave; they call you, because you were in the basement in October and told them the heat exchanger had maybe two winters left.
Run it with a calendar: a text to every past customer in March and September offering the tune-up and the plan, a note before the first forecast heat wave, and a replacement conversation, price range in writing, on every plan visit where the unit is past its service life. April and October are when replacements get planned, and the plan base is who plans them. Zero acquisition cost, and it refills the reviews that lower next month’s cost per lead.
What I would not do
- Buy shared leads from the marketplaces that sell your own metro’s searches back to you. You’re one of four companies calling the same homeowner, you pay whether they answer, and the job goes to the lowest quote. Leads you own get cheaper every month; bought ones never do.
- Chase branding before the phone works. A truck wrap, a logo refresh and a “brand awareness” campaign feel like marketing; none of them produces a call you can count. The wrap can come out of the first replacement the listing sells.
- Turn every job type on. Every job type you switch on is a search you’re bidding for and a lead you’ll be charged for. Duct cleaning and commercial refrigeration switched on by a company that does neither is paying for its competitors’ calls.
The 30-day plan
| Week | Do this |
|---|---|
| 1 | Business Profile: “HVAC contractor” primary category, service areas, 10 photos (installs with the house visible, techs in uniform, a rusted unit beside its replacement), services list, Q&A seeded, review link saved as a text template. Phone in the website header, form on the home page. |
| 2 | Local Services Ads: screening documents in, job types set (duct cleaning off if you don’t do it), a budget that stays on all week, the five-minute estimate screenshotted, bad-lead rating on the calendar. Answer in three rings; text back missed calls within five minutes. |
| 3 | Referral list of 30 (inspectors, realtors, property managers, remodelers, plumbers, insulation and electrical contractors); first pass. Add the AC replacement and furnace replacement pages with price ranges and the financing line. |
| 4 | Read the numbers by job type: charged leads, cost per lead, cost per booked job for repairs and for replacements, calls from the map, form requests, response rate. Text every past customer the plan offer. Kill nothing yet; most channels need eight weeks. |
Questions HVAC owners ask
How much do HVAC leads cost? It depends on your metro, the season and the job type; replacement and emergency job types cost more per lead than planned maintenance. I don’t publish an HVAC number because I haven’t run one. Pull Google’s own estimate for your ZIP from the Local Services Ads sign-up flow (the five-minute method in LSA cost per lead by trade) and compare it to a third of your revenue per lead for each job type. For scale, the drywall account I publish ran $36.77 to $46.66 per charged lead in Kansas City, April to July 2026.
What is the cheapest way to get HVAC leads? The map listing and your past customers cost nothing: a Google Business Profile with the exact “HVAC contractor” category and reviews that name the job produces free calls, and a maintenance-plan text to last year’s repair customers produces tune-ups and replacement conversations at zero acquisition cost. Local Services Ads is usually the cheapest paid channel per lead because you pay for contacts, not clicks.
Is HVAC a Local Services Ads category? Yes, HVAC is one of the home-service categories Google offers in 2026, so you don’t need the side door drywall uses. Screening is set per category and varies by state, so check the sign-up flow for yours. Turn on only the job types you do and answer the phone in three rings.
How do I get HVAC leads in the shoulder months? April and October are when replacements get researched and maintenance gets booked, not when systems die. The website holds those months with replacement pages that show price ranges, the maintenance-plan base supplies the tune-ups, and referral partners supply replacement quotes tied to home sales. Use the quiet to stack the reviews that win the next peak.
How do HVAC companies get more replacement leads? Replacements are researched purchases that arrive looking like emergencies: the homeowner limps the old system along while quietly comparing companies. You win that comparison before the failure day with reviews that say “new furnace,” photos of clean installs on real houses, a replacement page that answers the price and financing questions plainly, and a plan visit where you told them honestly how long the unit had left. When it dies, they call the company they already picked.
Want the HVAC version of this run on your numbers? The HVAC plan shows what I’d build. Or send your trade and your number and I’ll record a short walkthrough of your listing, your ads and your site with the three fixes I’d make first, free, whether or not you hire me. Get the free audit →