How much do leads cost? Real 2026 prices by type of lead

What B2B leads cost in 2026 by type: contact data, marketing qualified leads, appointment setting and paid ads, with the maths for working out what a lead is worth to you.

9 min read · Published September 19, 2026

The short answer

The short version.

Callable B2B contact data costs 10 to 50 cents per record. LeadNumbers runs 15 cents at 500 a month down to 10 cents at 5,000.
A marketing qualified lead from paid channels costs $50 to $400 depending on the market.
A booked appointment from an outside setter costs $100 to $800.
Your ceiling is customer lifetime value times your acceptable acquisition share, divided by the leads it takes to win one customer.

Lead pricing looks chaotic because the word covers four different products sold on four different bases. Separate them and the numbers become simple and comparable.

The four things people call a lead

A contact record, a marketing qualified lead, a sales qualified lead and a booked appointment. Prices differ by three orders of magnitude between the first and the last.

A contact record is data: a named person you can reach. An MQL has shown some interest, usually by filling something in. An SQL has been spoken to and passes qualification. An appointment is a meeting on the calendar. Each step adds human work, and the price reflects exactly that.

Lead type	Typical price	What you are paying for
Contact record	10 to 50 cents	Sourcing, screening and contact detail checks
Marketing qualified lead	$50 to $400	Ad spend plus content and landing page work
Sales qualified lead	$150 to $600	The above, plus a human qualification call
Booked appointment	$100 to $800	A setter's time dialing until a meeting is agreed

Typical 2026 B2B price by lead type

What contact data costs, in detail

Expect 10 to 15 cents per contact when buying screened records with a mobile number or direct dial at monthly volume, and 30 to 50 cents from per-credit database tools once wasted credits are counted.

Database seats quote a low credit price and then charge you again in unusable records, monthly credit caps and rep hours spent filtering. Delivered subscriptions quote a flat rate per contact. The honest comparison is cost per contact that reaches a human, which is where mobile coverage matters more than any published price.

500 contacts a month: $75, about 15 cents each.
1,500 a month: $195, about 13 cents each.
3,000 a month: $360, about 12 cents each.
5,000 a month: $500, 10 cents each. Annual billing takes that to 8 cents.

Working out what a lead is worth to you

Multiply customer lifetime value by the share you will spend to acquire one, then divide by the number of leads it takes to win a customer.

If a customer is worth $6,000 over their life and you will spend 20 percent to win one, your acquisition budget is $1,200. If 400 contacts produce one customer, you can afford $3 per contact. Almost nobody in contact data charges anything close to that, which is why the interesting question is never the data price. It is how many contacts it takes to win, and that is driven by targeting accuracy and phone reachability.

Why the cheapest lead is usually the most expensive

Rep time dwarfs data cost, so any saving on the record is wiped out by extra dials against records that do not reach a human.

At $25 an hour and 20 dials an hour, every dial costs about $1.25 in labour against a record costing cents. Cutting the record price in half saves pennies. Halving the connect rate doubles a cost measured in dollars. This is the arithmetic that should govern every data purchase, and it is the one most procurement processes ignore.

Questions that change the real price

Ask about mobile coverage, deduplication, replacement policy, exclusivity and minimum commitment. Each one moves the effective cost per usable contact more than the headline rate.

A 10 cent record with no replacement policy and 40 percent switchboard numbers is worse value than a 15 cent record where every number is a mobile or direct dial and wrong ones are replaced free.

What share of records carry a mobile or direct dial rather than a switchboard?
Are records deduplicated against everything my account already received?
What happens when a number is wrong?
Can I change volume monthly, or am I locked in for a year?

Key takeaways

Compare like with like: a contact record and a booked appointment are not the same product.
Your ceiling comes from lifetime value and win rate, not from what vendors charge.
Optimise connect rate, not record price. Labour is the expensive part.

See the data behind the advice

Five ICP matched prospects with mobile numbers, direct dials and work emails, free. Same pipeline that fills a paid account, no credit card.

Get 5 free sample leads See pricing

Frequently asked questions

How much does a B2B lead cost in 2026?

Callable contact records run 10 to 50 cents. Marketing qualified leads run $50 to $400. Booked appointments run $100 to $800.

How much do leads cost at LeadNumbers?

15 cents per contact at 500 a month, 13 cents at 1,500, 12 cents at 3,000 and 10 cents at 5,000. Quarterly billing saves 10% and annual saves 20%.

Why are some lead lists only a cent or two per record?

Because they are old exports resold many times. The record is cheap and the conversation is expensive, since most of the numbers no longer reach the named person.

Is it cheaper to buy leads or generate them in house?

Buying is cheaper per contact at almost any volume once you cost a researcher's hours. In-house research makes sense only for very small, very high value account lists.

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