Google publishes no minimum budget or price per lead for Local Services Ads (LSA). When we reached the budget screen for a DFW roofing client in September 2026, it warned that anything under $327 a week would likely bring no leads. At $327 the monthly maximum came to $1,421, and Google projected three leads a week, which works out to about $109 a lead. No lead had been billed by early October, so treat the $109 as Google’s estimate. That floor held for one client’s ZIP codes, and yours may sit higher or lower.
The owner of an $11 million roofing company reports spending about $14,000 a month on LSA for around 11 jobs, and calls it the best thing they run. A Florida roofer who had used LSA since its launch quit in 2026, saying more than two thirds of their paid leads were junk. “My average price for lead has risen tremendously (nearly $250),” they wrote on r/Roofing.
You also can’t dispute a bad lead the way owners did before July 2024. Google decides which charged leads to credit, and it no longer credits a call from outside your service area or about a job you don’t do. That makes the job types and service area you choose at setup your main protection against paying for calls you can’t take.
Google’s 10-leads-a-week advice came to about $4,700 a month in DFW
For that client’s ZIP codes the budget screen offered weekly presets of $327, $1,090 and $1,635. Google recommends its automated bidding, Maximize leads, and a budget for at least 10 leads a week. At the projected $109 a lead, that’s about $1,090 a week, the middle preset, or a little over $4,700 a month.
The budget you set is a weekly average. Google can spend more than that in some weeks, though never more than the monthly max. Once the max is spent, the ad stops until the next month unless you raise the budget, and a change made mid-month resets what’s left to spend.
Google’s estimate for a DFW roofing lead went from $80 to about $109 in six weeks
In August 2026 the signup flow recommended a target of $80 a lead for roofing in that client’s ZIP codes, with $96 as an alternative. By late September, at the $327 floor, Google projected about $109. Both are Google’s estimates, and until that account bills real leads I can’t tell you what a signed job from LSA costs in DFW. Your own signup flow will show Google’s recommended target for your ZIP codes, which is the closest thing to a local price Google gives.
Price shoppers and canceled bookings still count as paid leads
Google charges you for a lead when:
- you answer a call, or call the homeowner back, and speak with them
- you miss a call during your business hours and the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds
- you get a text or email
- you get a voicemail
- you get a booking request
Google started charging for missed calls on October 1, 2026, whether or not you call back. Your business hours are the ones on your Google Business Profile, and an unanswered call is charged only if it also comes inside your ad schedule. Voicemail or a recorded greeting counts as connected, so a call that reaches either in those hours is charged after 20 seconds even if the caller leaves no message. A phone menu costs nothing unless the caller presses a key, and the 20 seconds start from that first press. Once a lead is charged, more calls or messages with the same number or email within 15 days aren’t charged again.
Until October, the same help page also listed leads Google wouldn’t credit, among them a homeowner asking for advice or researching prices, a booking that gets canceled, someone who never answers your callback, a call about a service you listed but don’t do, and a valid call outside your business hours.
Google describes LSA leads as customers who “specifically selected your profile out of all the rest,” but it never says a phone lead goes to you alone. Message leads, which usually cost less, can be shared. In November 2025 Google told advertisers about a feature that lets a homeowner message several providers at once, and it labels those leads and may discount them more.
Google now decides which bad leads to credit
Google said that from July 2024 it would credit LSA leads automatically. It assesses each lead when the homeowner makes contact and doesn’t charge for the ones it judges invalid or low quality. Its models then reassess charged leads and may credit them, in most cases within 30 days, though the original charge still shows on your invoice. The one lever left to you is the “Rate this lead” survey, which Google says can occasionally earn a credit, so rate every bad call.
“In my opinion, Google guarantee ads are by far and away the most efficient paid leads I’ve ever experienced,” an owner on r/Roofing wrote in February 2024, before the change, adding that Google was quick to refund scam and salesperson calls. A year later, when agencies complained that lead quality had dropped, Google’s Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin said Google now credits more leads overall than it did under manual disputes. Google published no numbers behind that.
Your setup screens decide which bad calls you pay for
When we started that client’s signup in August 2026, the service area defaulted to four counties plus the town of Forney, roughly the whole Dallas-Fort Worth metro of about 7 million people. General Contractor and Painter tabs opened with commercial projects, home building and home remodel already checked, and skylight work was checked under Roofer. LSA had pulled those categories from the company’s Google Business Profile, and unchecking service types inside LSA didn’t remove them. Take any category you don’t do off your Business Profile before you start, then check every tab before you launch.
Google advises selecting every job type you do and setting service areas broadly, such as a whole county. It also suggests direct business search, where yours is the only LSA ad on a search for your company name and you pay only for new customers.
We trim a client’s area to the ZIP codes they work anyway, because Google no longer credits a call from a town you can’t serve, though I haven’t measured whether that costs less per signed job.
Put the account and billing in your company’s name. LSA bills through a linked Google Ads account, and if that account is suspended, LSA is too. We had started our client’s account under our agency login, so its billing screen came up pre-filled with our own payments profile. Changing only the card would have left the billing under us, so the owner created a new payments profile in the business’s legal name.
Your ad can go live before Google finishes checking your business
For US roofers Google lists general and professional liability insurance and any state license local law requires, plus background and business representative checks for select users. It says screening takes three to four weeks on average once the documents are in. Google’s pre-badge ads let you take leads after preliminary checks while you finish onboarding, though Google places them below fully verified providers.
Our client’s Texas account in September 2026 had no approval step before launch. Verification ran alongside the live ad and had to finish within 14 days or the ad paused, and the identity check reached the owner as an email from Google’s partner Evident. Nobody asked for an insurance certificate, though Google lists insurance among the requirements for roofers, so that may depend on the state or the account.
Owners still say Google Guaranteed, though Google has replaced that badge, along with Google Screened and License Verified, with a single Google Verified badge. It also ended the Money Back Guarantee, so homeowners can claim only for jobs booked through LSA before December 7, 2025, and only within 30 days of the job being finished. Google says the badge change doesn’t affect ranking.
When the calls stop, start with what Google says it ranks on
LSA ranks roofers in an auction on your bid plus how likely your ad is to produce a lead. Google judges that from how responsive you are (missed calls can hurt), the search itself (service, time and location), how relevant you are to it, and your profile’s quality: rating, review count, response time, photos and completed verification. Higher-quality profiles may rank higher and pay less per lead, Google says, and it never names distance from the homeowner as a factor.
Google recommends five or more reviews, and the top of a busy market sits far above that. A search of the LSA listings for “roofer plano tx” in August 2026 returned 20 advertisers, with review counts as high as 1,800 at 4.9 and 1,344 at 4.8, which put a roofer with 152 reviews at 4.9 mid-pack on volume. How Roofers Get More Google Reviews (and Deal With Fake Ones) goes further on reviews.
An owner on r/RoofingSales with more than 60 reviews and full screening got fairly regular calls until Google asked them to re-verify in June 2025, and none at all after. A Maryland owner with more than 200 five-star reviews had been charged for one lead in 2026 by March, on a $4,000 weekly budget with Maximize leads. Reviews don’t explain either case, and from outside those accounts I can’t tell you what did.
If your calls drop, look at whether the budget is spending at all, whether a profile edit or re-verification came just before the drop, how many calls went unanswered, and how your review count compares with the roofers above you. Missed Calls Cost Roofing Jobs: How Fast to Answer and How to Follow Up covers the call that rings while you’re on a roof.
LSA is moving into Google Ads, so screenshot your reports now
Google is turning LSA into “Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals,” starting in August 2026 with select US advertisers, roofing among them. Service-area businesses without a storefront, which describes most roofers, follow in late 2026, and accounts outside the US in 2027. You still pay per valid lead, and the ads keep their spots on Search and Maps.
The weekly budget becomes a daily average with the same monthly cap, and manual bidding goes away. Lead history and call recordings move across, but old performance reports don’t, so screenshot them before your date. Verified status carries over, and Google emails the account’s administrator 14 days ahead. The $327 floor we saw came from the old setup, so the minimum may look different afterward.
Judge LSA by what each signed job costs you
For the $11 million owner, who does about 60 jobs a month and maxes out the budget, LSA works out to about $1,270 a job, though they warn that their CRM attribution is rough. A $20 million owner also calls LSA their best platform, but says calls took a year or two to come steadily, far longer than the two weeks Google says its bidding model needs. They put that down to spend and account age.
Add up everything you spent, including the fee if someone manages LSA for you (as we do for clients), and divide by the jobs those calls turned into. Google’s lead reports mark each lead as charged, not charged, in review or credited, so match every charged one to a signed job or a dead end. How to Track Which Marketing Brings In Your Roofing Jobs covers the rest.
Before you pay Google per lead, see where your free listing already shows up. Run the free Google Maps heatmap with your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.