LSA vs Google Ads: Cost per Lead Compared Inside the Same Businesses Running Both

A charged Local Services lead cost a blended $49.02 across the five accounts we run Local Services Ads for, in the 30 days to October 20, 2026. Those accounts got 323 leads, and Google charged for 234 of them. One business ran Local Services Ads and Google Search side by side from March 13 to June 10, 2026, on nearly identical budgets. Its LSA leads came in at $19.28 each, and its Search leads cost $134.59. That's roughly 7 times more per lead for Search.

A cheaper lead isn't automatically the better channel, though, and our Search sample in this comparison is small. We manage both products for the same clients, so we can publish spend and lead counts from the same businesses in the same 90-day window.

Where the numbers come from

As of October 16, 2026, we run 64 active Google Ads accounts and 2 Local Services accounts, 66 in all from Conway, Arkansas. We've run paid search since May 2016. Our study covers four home-services clients, anonymized by trade: a plumbing company, a tree and outdoor services company, a fencing contractor and a home inspection company. The window is March 13 through June 10, 2026, pulled from the Google Ads API and each account's Local Services lead records.

We set three counting rules, because they matter more than the totals:

• An LSA lead means a billed lead: a contact Google actually charged the client for. These accounts received 597 contacts in the window, and Google billed for 473 after its automated credit system removed the rest. We compute cost per lead on the 473, because that's what the clients paid for.
• A Search lead means a tracked phone call from an ad or a contact form submission. We don't count page views, direction clicks or micro-conversions.
• Every number is a floor. We round down in everything we publish.

The cost-per-lead table

Account	Channel	90-day spend	Leads	Cost per lead
Home inspection	LSA	$1,311.37	68 billed	$19.28
Tree and outdoor services	LSA	$3,229.22	155 billed	$20.83
Fencing contractor	LSA	$4,246.42	134 billed	$31.69
Plumbing company	LSA	$6,542.07	116 billed	$56.40
Home inspection	Google Ads Search	$1,480.44	11 strict	$134.59
Fencing contractor	Performance Max	$12,206.82	210.94 attributed*	$57.87*

LSA cost per billed lead ran $19.28 to $56.40 across four different trades. Category drives the spread: Google prices leads differently for a plumber than for a home inspector, and plumbing sits at the expensive end of our set. Every LSA account beat every non-LSA channel in the table, and the only direct LSA-versus-Search matchup isn't close.

The head-to-head: one business running both channels for 90 days

The home inspection company is the only account in the set that ran LSA and Search at the same time from March 13 to June 10, 2026. That makes it our only direct comparison.

The budgets were nearly identical: $1,311.37 on LSA and $1,480.44 on Search. LSA produced 68 billed leads (79 contacts in all). Search produced 11 strict leads: 5 tracked phone calls from ads plus 6 contact form submissions. That works out to $19.28 per LSA lead against $134.59 per Search lead, roughly a 7x gap inside one business.

Because Search lead counting always has edges, we stress-tested the denominator. Count 2 more imported call conversions and Search improves to $113.88 per lead. Count only the account's 8 primary-goal conversions and it worsens to $185.06. The most generous reading still prices a Search lead at close to six times the LSA figure.

LSA vs Performance Max: the fencing account

The fencing contractor gives us a second paid-versus-LSA comparison, this time against Performance Max. Over the same 90 days, four Performance Max campaigns spent $12,206.82 and recorded 210.94 lead conversions (tracked calls plus quote requests), a $57.87 cost per lead. LSA in the same account spent $4,246.42 for 134 billed leads at $31.69 each. LSA leads cost about half.

Performance Max conversion counts are platform-attributed and partly modeled, which is why the lead count has decimals in it. The count also includes a couple of repeat phone calls. An LSA billed lead is a person Google charged money for; a Performance Max conversion is partly an attribution estimate. So the true gap is probably wider than the table shows.

Blended: LSA against everything else we paid for

Our blended Local Services figure comes from a newer window than the study. A charged lead cost $49.02 in the 30 days to October 20, 2026, and Google charged for 234 of 323 leads. Those leads came in through five accounts: plumbing, fencing, lawn care, landscaping and pest control, child care and preschool, and home inspection. A published Local Services benchmark runs $53 to $57.

Bucket	Window	Leads	Blended cost per lead
Local Services, five accounts	30 days to October 20, 2026	234 charged of 323	$49.02 per charged lead
Paid non-LSA (Search and Performance Max), two accounts	March 13 to June 10, 2026	221.94 attributed	$61.67

The two rows cover different windows and different accounts, so read them as a direction, not a matched test. All four Local Services accounts in the spring study came in under the $61.67 that Search and Performance Max cost together. They're also counted on the stricter standard.

Why LSA leads cost less

The gap comes from how LSA works, so it shows up outside these four businesses too.

You pay for contacts, not clicks. Search charges for every click: the researcher, the competitor, the person who bounced in four seconds. LSA charges only when someone contacts the business through the ad. The whole risk of a visit that goes nowhere sits on Google's side of the table instead of yours.

Google credits the junk. Clients in our four accounts received 597 contacts from March 13 to June 10, 2026, and paid for 473. Google credited or never charged the other 124, about one in five: spam, wrong-category requests and mismatches. Search has no equivalent refund for a useless click.

There's no landing page to lose the lead. A Search click still has to survive your website: page speed, the form and where the phone number sits. An LSA lead goes from the ad to the phone. Weak landing pages and broken conversion tracking are two of the most common ways the Search accounts we review bleed money. Either problem inflates a Search cost per lead, and neither can touch an LSA number. Our PPC audit checklist shows how to check both.

LSA sits at the top of the results. LSA listings appear above traditional Search ads and show review stars and sometimes the Google Verified badge. That's usually as far as a homeowner with water on the floor scrolls. Our study of 1.3 million search terms from 56 accounts over 12 weeks in 2026 backs up the intent: near-me searches made up 14.3% of home-services impressions. LSA is the format built for exactly that searcher.

What the cost-per-lead gap hides

Four limits of LSA keep Search in our plans, even at a higher cost per lead.

LSA can't create demand. We ran a separate call-volume analysis for the plumbing company in this study and found its organic calls and its LSA calls rose and fell together. LSA harvests the demand that already exists in your market and category. It can't push a new service, target a specific high-value job type or build an audience for later.

The categories are fixed. LSA works off Google's service categories. If the profitable job you want more of doesn't map cleanly onto one, Search is the only paid channel that can name it. A keyword can say "trenchless sewer line replacement." An LSA category can't.

Volume has a ceiling. An LSA account in a small market can run out of leads to win long before the budget runs out. Search inventory is bigger and easier to control, which matters once a business outgrows what LSA can hand it.

You give up intent control. Search lets you choose the queries, write the ads and exclude what you don't want. On LSA, Google decides which jobs match you. It retired manual disputes in 2024, so your only recourse after a mismatch is the automated credit system and the lead ratings you feed it. The averages in our table include that slop. A tightly managed Search campaign for one premium job type can be worth a higher cost per lead because of what each job is worth.

What this data cannot tell you

The study has four limits:

• The Search sample is one account. Only the home inspection company had Search spend in the window. The tree and fencing accounts had paused Search campaigns with $0 in spend, and the plumbing account had no Search campaigns at all. The 7x figure is one matchup, not a portfolio average.
• The window is peak season. March 13 to June 10 is spring, the strongest stretch of the year for outdoor trades. Off-season cost per lead can run higher, especially for tree and fencing work. Our newer blended figure, from the 30 days to October 20, 2026, reads $49.02 per charged lead.
• Performance Max counts leads more loosely than LSA. The $57.87 Performance Max figure rests on platform-attributed, partly modeled conversions. Treat that comparison as a direction.
• Counting always wobbles a little. Lead timestamps against billing-date boundaries create up to one lead of drift per account. It doesn't change any conclusion, and every number in the study is still a floor.

So what should you run?

Across our own home-services book, we decide in this order:

1. If your trade has an LSA category and your market has demand, start with LSA. The billing model means a bad week costs you little, and from March 13 to June 10, 2026, our accounts' billed leads ran $19.28 to $56.40 depending on trade. Setup is mostly verification, reviews and answering fast, and our home services page shows how we run it for trades.
2. Add Search for what LSA can't reach. That means specific high-value job types, new service lines, markets where LSA volume caps out, and defense on your own brand name. Fix conversion tracking before you judge the channel, because an untracked Search account always looks worse than it is.
3. Run both when the budget allows. They sit in different slots on the same results page. A business with the LSA listing up top and a Search ad below it shows up twice for the same emergency search.

As of October 21, 2026, every price we charge is on our pricing page. For a trade, Open Spots Local runs Local Services Ads for $997 every 4 weeks, plus a $1,997 build. Open Spots Search is $497 every 4 weeks, plus a $997 setup, for one Google Search campaign. Growth runs both, and more platforms, from one budget, starting at $1,750 every 4 weeks plus a $3,997 build. On Open Spots, we pay Google and take last week's exact charges from your business bank each Monday, up to the weekly cap you set. We add nothing on top.

Open Spots Local carries our Lead Guarantee: A set number of Local Services leads, in trades and states that have a number. Our lead guarantee applies to Local Services leads only. Search Ads may bring extra leads but have no guaranteed minimum. Cycle to cycle, every Open Spots plan carries the 30-Day Stop. Stop anytime in your first 30 days, and the fee never starts. The ad account and its call data are yours either way.

Questions people ask

Are Local Services Ads cheaper than Google Ads?

In our accounts, yes. From March 13 to June 10, 2026, across four home-services businesses, LSA leads cost $19.28 to $56.40 per billed lead. The one account running both channels at the same time paid $134.59 per Search lead against $19.28 for LSA. That Search figure comes from a single account with 11 leads, so it's one data point, not an industry average. Your trade, your market and your tracking all move these numbers.

How much does a Local Services Ads lead cost?

A charged Local Services lead cost a blended $49.02 across the five accounts we run Local Services Ads for, in the 30 days to October 20, 2026. Those accounts got 323 leads, and Google charged for 234 of them. From March 13 to June 10, 2026, billed leads cost $19.28 for home inspections and $20.83 for tree and outdoor work. Fencing leads cost $31.69 and plumbing leads cost $56.40. Google sets lead prices by category and market, so budget from your own category, not someone else's average.

Do Local Services Ads charge per lead or per click?

Per lead. You pay only when a potential customer contacts you through the ad, and Google credits leads that don't qualify, like spam or wrong-category requests. From March 13 to June 10, 2026, our four accounts received 597 contacts and Google billed them for 473, so about one contact in five cost nothing. Google Ads Search works the opposite way: you pay for every click, whether or not it ever becomes a lead.

Should I run Local Services Ads and Google Ads at the same time?

If the budget supports it, yes. LSA listings sit above the traditional ads, so running both puts your business on the same results page twice. We start most trades on LSA first because the billing model is safer. Then we add Search for job types the LSA categories don't cover, for new services and for markets where LSA volume hits its ceiling.

Can Local Services Ads replace Google Ads completely?

It gets close for some small trades. But LSA mostly rides demand that already exists; in one plumbing analysis we ran, the company's LSA calls and organic calls rose and fell together. LSA works off fixed categories, there's no landing page, and you can't target a specific job type the way a Search keyword can. We keep Search in the mix for high-value work that LSA can't name.

How we run Local Services Ads and Search for trades

Our in-house AI drafts these guides from what our team in Conway sees in the accounts we run. How we write and check them