Solar Leads: What They Cost, Where to Buy Them, and How to Avoid Getting Burned

A solar installer spending $5,000 on leads this month could get 25 exclusive leads, 166 shared leads, or 500 aged leads. Which pile turns into revenue depends on your sales process, your market, and your vendor's definition of "qualified."

Lead Type	Price Range	Close Rate	Cost per Closed Deal	Labor Reality
Aged (30-85 days)	$0.10–$10	1–3%	$333–$1,000	7-12 dial attempts per contact
Aged (366+ days)	$0.10–$2	0.3–1%	$200–$667	Most numbers disconnected
Shared	$20–$125	0.5–1%	$2,000–$12,500	Must call within 5 minutes
Exclusive	$40–$250	1–15%	$267–$4,000	Time for proper consultative sales
Appointments	$150–$500	5–10%	$1,500–$10,000	Show up and close
Live Transfer	$100–$300+	8–20%	$500–$3,750	Warm handoff, but verify qualification live

That fifth column matters more than most vendors will admit. Aged solar leads at $2 each look irresistible until your sales rep spends 40 hours dialing to book three appointments. Exclusive leads cost ten times as much per unit but let your closer actually sell instead of playing phone tag with strangers who filled out a form six months ago.

Forget the per-lead sticker price. Run the same $5,000 through each type and see what comes out the other end. Average residential solar install: $25,200.

Exclusive at $200 each: 25 leads, 10% close rate, 2.5 deals, $63,000 in revenue. CPA: $2,000.

Shared at $50 each: 100 leads, 0.75% close rate, 0.75 deals, $18,900 in revenue. CPA: $6,667.

Aged at $5 each: 1,000 leads, 2% close rate, 20 deals, $504,000 in revenue. CPA: $250.

Aged leads win on paper by a landslide. In practice, turning 1,000 aged contacts into 20 deals requires a power dialer, at least two full-time appointment setters, and a CRM that won't buckle under the volume. Most two- to five-person solar companies aren't set up for that. They buy 1,000 aged leads, work 200 of them by hand, close one, and declare the whole category a scam.

Shared leads are the hardest category to make work. You're competing against three to five other installers for the same homeowner, and the winner is almost always whoever calls first. If your speed-to-lead is consistently under two minutes, shared can pencil out. If it's not, you're paying $50 to be the fourth person to call someone who already scheduled an appointment with the first.

We break down the shared-vs-exclusive math in more depth in our full comparison for contractors.

Most solar lead vendors sell residential. Commercial is a different animal entirely, and the supply of qualified commercial solar leads is thin.

	Residential	Commercial
Avg project value	$25,200	$150,000–$500,000+
Sales cycle	2–6 weeks	3–12 months
Exclusive lead cost	$40–$250	$200–$600 (when available)
Demand forecast	18% decline projected	Growing, especially C&I

Five to ten commercial leads per month at $400 each could fill a $1M+ pipeline. The challenge isn't price — it's finding vendors who actually generate commercial solar leads rather than residential leads relabeled as "commercial" because the homeowner mentioned they own a small business.

Ask any vendor claiming commercial solar leads to show you the intake form. If it doesn't ask about roof ownership, electrical panel capacity, and decision-making authority, the leads aren't really commercial.

The Section 25D residential clean energy credit expired December 31, 2025. That 30% federal tax credit — worth $7,560 on a $25,200 system — is gone.

Here's what that did to the solar lead market:

• Close rates dropped 15–25% across most markets
• Customer acquisition costs climbed roughly 25%
• Lead quality became the deciding factor between profitable and unprofitable campaigns
• The gap between good and bad vendors widened — mediocre leads that used to convert on the strength of the tax credit alone now just sit in your CRM

Some states have stepped in with their own incentives. California, New York, and Massachusetts still offer meaningful credits or rebates that give your sales team something to work with. Everywhere else, the pitch has to stand on utility savings and long-term ROI — which is a harder conversation and requires better-qualified leads to begin with.

If your solar lead vendor hasn't adjusted their qualification criteria since the ITC expired, they're selling you 2025 leads at 2026 prices. Ask them directly what changed in their intake process. Silence is your answer.

The solar lead market breaks into five distinct categories, each with a different risk profile:

Performance-Based Lead Companies

Companies like Pinecone Leads generate leads through their own marketing and sell them on a per-lead basis. You pay for results, not ad spend. The best ones offer return policies for leads that don't meet qualification criteria.

Lead Aggregators and Marketplaces

These platforms collect leads from multiple sources and distribute them — sometimes exclusively, often shared. Quality varies wildly depending on the source. Always ask where the leads originate.

Aged Lead Databases

Bulk leads at $1 or less. Contact rates for 30–85 day aged leads run 20–35%. Older than that, you're looking at single digits. Good for large teams with dialer infrastructure. Terrible for small operations.

Door-to-Door Services

$150–$500 per set appointment. Higher close rates but hard to scale beyond a metro area. Works best as a supplement, not a primary channel.

Self-Generation (Paid Ads)

Running your own Google or Facebook campaigns costs $80–$300 per lead depending on market and ad skill. Full control, but you're now in the marketing business on top of the solar business. We dig into the tradeoffs between buying and building in our buy vs. build analysis.

Every channel has a different speed-to-result curve. This table shows what to expect when you're deciding where to put your next dollar.

Channel	CPL	Time to First Lead	Close Rate	Scalability
Exclusive vendor	$40–$250	Same week	1–15%	High — turn up volume on demand
Google Ads	$80–$300	1–2 weeks	5–12%	Medium — capped by search volume
Google LSA	$50–$150	1–2 weeks	8–15%	Medium — geographic limits
Door-to-door	$150–$500	Same week	10–20%	Low — labor-intensive
Referrals	$0–$100	Ongoing	20–40%	Low — can't force volume
SEO	$0 (after investment)	4–8 months	8–15%	High — compounds over time

The companies with the healthiest pipelines run at least three of these channels simultaneously: typically a lead vendor for immediate flow, Google Ads for high-intent capture, and a referral program for their highest-quality (and cheapest) deals.

Measure everything by cost per closed deal. A $250 exclusive lead that closes at 12% costs you $2,083 per customer. A $100 Google Ads lead that closes at 6% costs you $1,667. But the Google Ads lead required $3,000/month in management fees on top of spend. Context matters.

Ten questions to ask before you sign anything. Get real answers to all ten or walk away.

1. How do you generate the leads? (If they can't or won't explain their traffic sources, that's a problem.)
2. What does "exclusive" actually mean? Some vendors define exclusive as "sold to one solar company" while also selling the same lead to a roofing company and an HVAC company.
3. What's your return policy for bad leads? Wrong numbers, commercial properties, renters, out-of-territory — these happen. Reputable vendors replace them.
4. Can I see sample leads before committing?
5. What close rates do your current solar clients see?
6. Do you filter for state-specific incentives? Post-ITC, this matters.
7. What qualifying questions does your form include?
8. How fresh are the leads when I receive them?
9. Is there a minimum volume commitment?
10. What's the cancellation process?

Red flags that should end the conversation:

• Guaranteed close rates — no vendor controls what happens after you pick up the phone
• "Proprietary" lead sources they refuse to describe in any detail
• Six-month or longer lock-in contracts
• No replacement policy for disconnected numbers or wrong contact info
• No references from other solar companies (not "home improvement companies" — solar specifically)

Every vendor says their leads are qualified. The word is meaningless without specifics. Here's a baseline you should demand:

• Homeowner confirmed (not renting, not a property manager)
• Electric bill $100+/month
• Roof less than 15 years old
• No HOA restrictions that block solar panels
• Property within your service territory
• Installation timeline within 6 months

That's the floor. Some vendors offer tiered products — a "standard" lead that meets these basics and a "premium" lead that adds credit qualification or a confirmed appointment. The upcharge for premium tiers can be worth it when the standard leads include too many homeowners who are just browsing.

Ask how they verify. "The homeowner self-reported on the form" is different from "we confirmed via a phone screen before delivery." Both are legitimate, but they produce different lead quality and should carry different price tags.

Don't sign up with three vendors on Monday. Start small, measure everything, and scale what works.

Week 1 — Build your infrastructure. Get your CRM set up with a dedicated pipeline for purchased leads. Create a follow-up cadence: call within 5 minutes, text at 15 minutes, email at 1 hour, then daily calls for a week. Most solar leads die from slow follow-up, not bad data.

Week 2 — Test one exclusive vendor. Buy 20–30 leads. Track every outcome: contacted, appointment set, proposal sent, closed. Don't judge the vendor until you've worked the full batch.

Week 3 — Add a second channel. If vendor leads are converting, add Google Ads or a referral incentive. If they're not, fix your follow-up speed before blaming the source. Most companies that "tried leads and they didn't work" never called a lead within 24 hours.

Week 4 — Measure cost per closed deal. Not cost per lead. Not cost per appointment. Cost per signed contract. That's the only number that matters, and it's the number you use to decide what to scale.

The installers who fail at buying solar leads almost always share the same mistake: they bought too many leads too fast, overwhelmed their sales team, followed up too slowly, and blamed the vendor. Fix the follow-up first. The leads will work.

For a real-world example of this approach, see how one installer built a pipeline using exclusive leads in our solar installation case study.