Is HomeAdvisor (Angi Leads) worth it? An honest look

Owners who ask "is HomeAdvisor worth it?" usually mean one of two different things. It helps to pull them apart:

Is the service itself the problem? That covers how leads are sold and billed, what counts for a credit, and what the Federal Trade Commission alleged and how that case was settled.
Is it the wrong fit for your business? That covers how fast you reply, how big your jobs are, what trade you're in, and whether it's your only source of work.

The first is the same for everyone. The second is different for every business, and it's usually what decides the answer.

A few terms first. A lead is the contact details of someone asking for your kind of work. A shared lead is one request sent to several businesses at once. Cost per job won is what you paid for leads divided by the jobs they turned into.

How does HomeAdvisor charge contractors?

HomeAdvisor's pro site now calls its service Angi Leads. HomeAdvisor and Angi belong to the same company. Angi Inc.'s 2025 annual report says it operates under brands including Angi, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor and Handy.

Here is what Angi's own pages and filings say, as of October 3, 2026:

What you pay or agree to	What Angi says
Lead fees	You specify your type of work and your area, and pay a fee for each lead you match to. "Different sized jobs have different Lead Fees." The annual report says pros pay for a match whether or not they end up doing the job.
Membership	Angi sells membership subscriptions to approved pros. Basic annual membership includes a profile page on HomeAdvisor.com and Angi.com, an app and online tools.
Lead types	In 2025 pros used full-priced leads within a monthly budget, discounted leads in a subscription package, "double opt-in" leads bought one at a time, and pre-priced offerings.
Renewal and cancelling	Under the services agreement, once the period in your order ends, it renews automatically one month at a time. You pay in advance. Either side can end the agreement with at least two business days' notice. You cancel by email, and your account must be paid in full first.
Pausing	You can turn the service on or off in your profile, and set a date for it to turn back on.

What Angi's public pages don't show is a price list. We couldn't find lead prices, or how many pros receive each lead, on the pro pages we read. Angi's FAQ points you to a phone line for details. For an older, dated figure: in its March 2022 release, the FTC said providers paid an annual membership fee of $287.99 plus a separate fee for each lead. Today's price may be different. So before you sign, ask in writing: what will a lead for my main job type cost, and how many other pros get the same lead?

What does HomeAdvisor really cost per job once I count the leads that go nowhere?

The lead price isn't the number that matters. The cost per job won is. Pull your last 20 leads and write down:

A: what you paid for those 20 leads, including any membership share.
B: how many became paid jobs.
C: your average gross profit per job (the price minus materials and labor).

Cost per job won = A ÷ B. If that's well below C, the leads are earning their keep. If it's close to C, or above it, they aren't.

Here is the arithmetic using a figure one owner passed on. A landscaper on Alignable wrote in 2019 that, from speaking with other businesses, they "pay $55.00 or more for a lead and Home Advisor gives the same lead to 10 or more contractors." That is secondhand and from 2019, so treat it as an example, not a price list.

20 leads at $55 is $1,100.
If you win 2 of them, each job cost you $550 in leads.
If you win 1, that job cost $1,100.
If a job earns you $4,000 in gross profit, $550 is affordable. If it earns $600, the leads take most of the profit.

Swap in your own numbers. The sum takes ten minutes and tells you more than any review site.

I've spent about $1,500 and barely got any jobs. Should I keep paying?

You're not alone in asking. An owner on YouTube said HomeAdvisor cost him $1,500 the year before, and that he let it happen. It is easy to keep paying for a channel because stopping feels like a gamble.

Run the sum above on that $1,500. If it bought 2 jobs, each cost $750. Then ask one test question: what happens if you turn it off for a month? A bath refinishing owner on Alignable wrote in 2017 that he turned off his HomeAdvisor leads to see whether the business coming in would drop. "It had no impact whatsoever." Your result may differ, but a short pause is a cheap way to find out. Angi's FAQ says you can switch the service off and set a date for it to come back on.

Is it just me, or has HomeAdvisor gotten worse for contractors?

Many owners in our research have complained about it. Here is what we can say from public records and owner ratings.

What the FTC alleged, and how it was settled. On March 11, 2022, the FTC issued an administrative complaint against HomeAdvisor. It alleged that since at least mid-2014 the company had made false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims about the quality and source of its leads, including how often they turned into jobs. The complaint also alleged that many leads didn't match the services or areas pros had chosen, and that many of the consumers didn't intend to hire soon.

On April 21, 2023, the FTC said it had finalized a consent order settling those allegations. The order requires HomeAdvisor to pay up to $7.2 million for redress. It bars false or misleading claims about its leads, including that they are people ready to hire. On November 28, 2023, the FTC said it was sending more than $3 million in refunds to businesses that paid for HomeAdvisor memberships.

What owners rate it. Alignable is a networking site for local business owners. On its vendor rating page, HomeAdvisor scored 3.6 out of 10 across 119 ratings when we checked on October 3, 2026.

What owners say, in their own words:

A remodeler on Alignable in 2019: "50% of the time they were only expecting information, not a phone call."
A remodeler on Alignable in 2019, passing on what other contractors had told him: "Leads were horrible, just price shoppers, not reliable customers."
A contractor on YouTube said he had a very bad experience with Angie's List after it came under the same company as HomeAdvisor.

These are owners' experiences, not findings about every account.

Are Angi leads worth it now that Angi and HomeAdvisor are the same company?

The brand name matters less than how the lead is sold. The same questions apply whichever name is on the invoice:

Is the lead shared, and with how many pros?
Did the person ask to be contacted, or fill in a price-check form?
What might a credit cover? Angi's lead credit guidelines say credits are at its discretion. Cases that may be eligible include duplicates, a wrong zip code you don't serve, a job type not in your profile, a competitor testing the system, and contact details that are all wrong or disconnected.
What doesn't it cover? A customer who doesn't call you back, has already found someone, changes their mind or is just "shopping" isn't eligible. Neither is a job you didn't win.
How long do you have? Credits must be requested within 30 days of the charge. They come as store credit for future charges, and expire after six months if unused.

If most of your lost leads fall in the "not eligible" list, credits won't fix your numbers.

Does HomeAdvisor work better for some trades than others?

Yes, according to the owners in our research on pay-per-lead services. Trades with fairly standard jobs did better: handyman, cleaning, landscaping, roofing, HVAC and general contracting. Niche and specialty trades did worse.

For remodelers, the deciding factor is job size against lead cost. A large remodel can absorb several lost leads. Small jobs can't.

Can HomeAdvisor use my business name on its site?

Here is what the Angi Leads services agreement says, as of October 3, 2026:

You grant Angi Leads a "non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide" license, during the agreement, to use content you provide, to the extent needed to deliver the services.
Angi Leads may publicly refer to you as a customer during the agreement. Any other public reference to you needs your written consent.

Your own agreement or order may have other terms, so read it. If this matters to you, ask before you sign: where will my business name appear, and with whose phone number? Get the answer in writing. And make sure your own Google Business Profile is complete, so people searching your name find you first.

Where HomeAdvisor genuinely fits

Saying it never works would be false. When we tried to disprove our own research on pay-per-lead services in general, about 13 in every 100 owner statements we gathered were positive. A tree service owner on Alignable wrote in 2017: "My biggest ROI to date is by far with HomeAdvisor." The owner of an air systems company wrote on Alignable's HomeAdvisor rating page that "it has worked really well for us."

The owners it worked for had a lot in common:

What the satisfied owners did	Ask yourself
Replied fast. A landscaper on Alignable wrote in 2017 that "you must be quick, accurate and have competitive price."	Can someone call a new lead back within minutes?
Used it to get started, before referrals picked up	Are you building a base, or already busy from referrals?
Treated it as one channel among several	If it shut off tomorrow, would you still have work?
Did standard-scope jobs	Is there a clear category for your main job?
Had staff ready for the volume	Who answers when five leads land at once?
Switched leads on and off and tracked results	Do you know which job types pay?

Two honest limits on these numbers. Four of the 13 positive statements came from a vendor's own success-stories page. And we couldn't read Reddit in that round of research.

Where else could that money go?

If the sum doesn't work, these are the main alternatives. They are types of approach, not a list of other vendors:

Approach	How you pay	Who owns the customer	Honest catch
Your Google Business Profile	Free; your time	You	Google says local results rest mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and says you can't pay for a better spot. Slow to build.
Reviews from past customers	Free; your time	You	Google lets you share a review link or QR code, but bans incentives for reviews.
Past customers you've already served	Your time: a call, text or card	You	Only works if you kept their details and stay in touch.
Referrals	Your time, maybe a thank-you	You	Hard to scale fast, and you have to ask.
Google Local Services Ads	Per valid lead, priced by location, job type, lead type or bidding mode	Google sends the contact to you	Still pay-per-lead. Google says it began moving these ads into Google Ads in August 2026, starting with some US home service advertisers.
Your own website	Build and upkeep costs	You	Needs reviews and a Google profile behind it to get found.

A remodeler on Alignable who had heard from other contractors about HomeAdvisor recommended a different route: a company website, with search work and Google ads. Sources you own take longer to build. But nobody else is sold the same customer, and they don't stop when you stop paying.

When HomeAdvisor is the right call

Stay with it if your cost per job won is well below your gross profit, you can reply within minutes, and it's one source of work among several. If it's paying by those numbers, keep it. Start building your own sources alongside it.

It's a poor fit if you can't reply quickly, if your jobs are small next to the lead fee, if your trade is specialized, or if it would be your only source of work.

Angi updates its pages and terms from time to time. We checked every page cited below on October 3, 2026. If something here no longer matches, Angi's current terms are the ones that apply to you.