Installer guide · 9 min read
Short answer: Solar leads are priced in one of five ways: per lead (a raw or qualified enquiry), per booked appointment, per attended appointment, a monthly retainer or a share of ad spend for a managed campaign, and occasionally a share of revenue. Each can be shared with several installers or exclusive to one. On the prices UK suppliers published on 23 Oct 2026, domestic solar leads start at £18 and commercial leads at £150, with booked commercial appointments from £250. The model matters more than the sticker price, because it decides who pays when a lead never reaches a site. TNW Marketing charges per attended commercial appointment, £250 to £1,000+VAT, with no retainer.
Pricing: £250 to £1,000+VAT per attended appointment, set by system size and qualification. No retainer, no monthly fee.
Every pricing model below is used by at least one UK solar lead supplier. This page explains the models; to choose who to buy solar installer leads from, our comparison sets 15 UK providers side by side with every published price, each one's no-show terms and the checks an appointment should pass. For the commercial price list on its own, see commercial solar lead prices in the UK.
This page explains how each model works and who carries the cost when a lead comes to nothing. The examples are the prices and terms each supplier published on its own website, read on 23 Oct 2026.
| Pricing model | What you pay for | Who carries the risk | Published UK example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per lead | An enquiry: contact details and a few answers | You: chasing, qualifying and booking | Lead Pronto: domestic leads from £18, commercial leads from £150 |
| Per accepted lead | An enquiry that meets the supplier's standard, often bought in prepaid blocks | Mostly you, though leads that miss the standard are replaced | PoweredLeads: from £45 per accepted homeowner lead |
| Per booked appointment | A meeting already in your diary | Shared: check whether you pay for no-shows | Lead Pronto: from £250 |
| Per attended appointment | A meeting that took place with the decision-maker | The supplier | TNW Marketing: £250 to £1,000+VAT, billed only for qualified, attended surveys |
| Retainer or managed campaign | Time, ads or a share of ad spend, whatever it produces | You | Lead Pronto branded campaigns: a fee of 25% of ad spend |
| Revenue share | A share of the revenue from work you win | Shared | Offered by Lead Pronto; terms not published |
A per-lead price buys an enquiry. Your team still has to call it, check ownership, energy spend and roof, find the person who signs, and book the survey. Many enquiries never get that far, so a low price per lead can still mean a high cost per survey.
Some suppliers charge only for leads that meet an agreed standard and replace the rest; PoweredLeads, for example, sells accepted leads in prepaid blocks. Others sell from a dashboard where you choose which leads to buy, as Boiler Guide does. Either way, the qualifying work after the lead arrives is yours.
A per-appointment price moves the calling, qualifying and booking to the supplier. The question to ask is what counts as an appointment. Paying per booked appointment can still mean paying for a meeting nobody turns up to, unless the terms say otherwise. Paying per attended appointment means you pay only when the meeting happens.
Our guide to pay per appointment solar leads explains how the model works and what counts as an attended meeting.
A retainer pays for activity: ads, outreach or a team's time, whatever it produces in a given month. A managed campaign is similar, often priced as a share of ad spend, with the enquiries landing in your name for your team to work. A quiet month costs the same as a busy one.
For the trade-offs in full, see pay per lead vs retainer, and for how pay per lead contracts define a lead across sectors, pay per lead in the UK.
Any of the models above can be sold shared or exclusive. Shared leads are cheaper per unit because the supplier sells the same enquiry several times; exclusive leads and booked surveys cost more because they are sold once. They differ less on price than on how much work is left for your team after the lead arrives, and who carries the cost when it comes to nothing.
To see which supplier sells which, with every published price and each one's no-show terms, see our comparison of 15 UK solar lead providers. If you buy from Lead Pronto today, our guide to Lead Pronto alternatives compares ten other suppliers on lead type, exclusivity, price and no-show terms. Most suppliers selling solar installation leads are selling homeowner enquiries, so check which kind before you compare prices.
| Shared solar leads | Exclusive solar leads | Booked site surveys | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | Contact details and a few answers | Contact details and a few answers | A time in your calendar with the decision-maker |
| Who else gets it | Several installers at once | Nobody | Nobody |
| Who qualifies it | You, after it arrives | You, after it arrives | The supplier, before booking |
| Who chases it | You, racing the others | You | Nobody: the meeting is already booked |
| Typical buyer | Domestic installers chasing volume | Domestic and smaller commercial installers | Commercial installers |
Stephen James has built around 220 commercial solar projects in the UK. When he bought leads for a company he worked for, they were shared out to three or four other installers, were not qualified properly and often did not reach the decision-maker; in the end they claimed a lot of the money back. In his words: "You're in competition, you paid for a lead, and suddenly you've got four other companies being sold that same lead." He now buys exclusive leads for Luz Solar, where every meeting is with an MD or finance director.
Domestic solar panel leads are a volume game: lots of homeowners, smaller systems, and the same enquiry often sold to several installers. Commercial solar leads (warehouses, factories, farms, offices and retail units) are fewer, but each project is far larger and the sale is slower. One bad commercial lead costs a surveyor a day out of the diary, so qualification and exclusivity matter far more than the price of the lead itself.
That is why commercial installers tend to judge suppliers on the cost of an attended site survey and the cost of a signed project, not the cost per lead. Our commercial solar lead cost guide shows how to work those numbers out, and the lead calculator tells you how many surveys you need each month.
Exclusive is the word most suppliers use, and it does not always mean the same thing. Before you pay a premium for exclusive leads, get these points confirmed in writing:
For what each costs, who carries the no-show risk and when shared leads can still make sense, see exclusive vs shared commercial solar leads.
Qualification is much of what you pay for. A qualified commercial lead has confirmed decision-maker access, property ownership or landlord consent, annual electricity spend above £30k, a suitable roof, half-hourly metering and a buying window within 3 to 9 months. The full checklist is in our guide to qualifying commercial solar leads.
The more of that is checked before you pay, the higher the price. At TNW Marketing, an appointment that comes with the customer's electricity bills and half-hourly data costs more than one checked by phone. The checks every TNW appointment passes are listed on our comparison of commercial solar lead providers, so you can hold other suppliers' lists against it.
We book site surveys for UK commercial installers. The detail is on pay per appointment solar leads, and you can hear it from installers in our video reviews.
If you have a calling team with spare time and sell mainly domestic systems, per-lead pricing can work. If your surveyors would rather sell than prospect, and you sell commercial systems, paying per appointment ties your spend to meetings that happen. A retainer suits brand and inbound work you can wait months for. Whichever you choose, compare suppliers on cost per attended survey and cost per signed project, not on the price of a lead.
When you are ready to buy solar leads, our UK comparison sets 15 providers side by side on price, exclusivity and no-show terms. For the published commercial prices on their own, see our commercial solar leads price list.
It depends on the model. A per-lead price pays for an enquiry (contact details and a few answers), a per-appointment price for a meeting already in your diary, and a retainer for a supplier's time whatever it produces. Shared leads are sold to several installers at once; exclusive leads and booked site surveys are sold to one. To compare the suppliers themselves, use our comparison of 15 UK solar lead providers.
It depends on the pricing model. On the prices UK suppliers published on 23 Oct 2026, domestic solar leads start at £18 (Lead Pronto) and exclusive homeowner leads at £45 per accepted lead (PoweredLeads). Commercial leads start at £150 and booked commercial appointments at £250 (Lead Pronto). TNW Marketing charges £250 to £1,000+VAT per exclusive, attended commercial appointment. Most other suppliers price on request.
Pay per lead buys an enquiry, and your team does the calling, qualifying and booking. Pay per appointment buys a meeting already in your diary, so the supplier does that work. Check whether a per-appointment price is for booked or attended meetings, because that decides who pays for a no-show.
A retainer pays for activity whatever it produces, so you carry the risk of a quiet month. Pay per appointment ties spend to meetings, so the supplier carries more of the risk. A retainer can suit long-term brand and inbound work; for a predictable flow of commercial surveys, paying per appointment is usually easier to measure.
For commercial solar, usually yes. A shared lead means the prospect is fielding calls from several installers at once, which drives down your price and wastes sales time. An exclusive lead is yours to win.
That the lead or appointment is sold to you alone and never resold, including after you turn it down. Some suppliers sell exclusive and shared leads side by side, so confirm in writing which you are buying, whose name the prospect hears, and what happens if you find it was sold elsewhere.
Yes. Each appointment goes to one installer only.
You pay per qualified, attended appointment: £250 to £1,000+VAT each, set by system size and qualification. There is no retainer or monthly minimum. You only pay for appointments that are actually attended, and any that aren't viable we replace.
See available projects, compare pay-per-lead vs retainer, read the commercial solar lead generation guide or watch client video reviews.