Plenty of contractors run “Angi Leads vs HomeAdvisor” through Google trying to pick the better one. There isn’t a better one. According to the FTC’s own filing, HomeAdvisor, Inc. does business as Angi Leads and as HomeAdvisor Powered by Angi, same company, different badge. So the real comparison is Angi against Thumbtack, and then a much more useful question underneath both.
This confuses people constantly, and it’s not their fault, the branding changed several times. The clearest statement of it sits in a federal document rather than a marketing page, which tells you something on its own.
The Commission describes HomeAdvisor, Inc. as a Denver company “affiliated with Angi, formerly known as Angie’s List”, which also does business as Angi Leads and HomeAdvisor Powered by Angi. One entity, several names.
If you leave one for the other expecting different leads, you’re moving between doors on the same building. Same network, same model, same pool of homeowners.
Leads is pay-per-lead. Ads is a paid listing. Contractors sign up for one thinking they bought the other, then can’t work out why the bill looks wrong. Check which product you’re actually on.
Different company, genuinely separate, and its charging works differently. So “Angi vs Thumbtack” is a real comparison, and it’s the one worth spending your time on. Below.
Corporate description quoted from the Federal Trade Commission press release of 23 January 2023 regarding In the Matter of HomeAdvisor, Inc., FTC Matter No. 1923106. Corporate structures and brand names change; verify current arrangements independently. ES Studios is an independent marketing company and is not affiliated with Angi, HomeAdvisor or Thumbtack. All company names are the property of their owners.
Both sell you access to homeowners. The mechanics differ enough to matter for cashflow and for how it feels day to day. Neither publishes a national price list, so treat any dollar figure you read anywhere, here included, as an estimate rather than a quote.
Broadly, Angi sells you the lead itself. Thumbtack’s model bills around the customer making contact. Sounds better, and sometimes is, but a contact isn’t a job, so you can still pay for people who never reply again.
Both flex by trade, location and job size. Thumbtack’s pricing is widely described as moving with demand, so a busy season costs more. Your own account is the only place your real range appears.
Thumbtack casts wider, events, tutoring, odd jobs alongside trades. Angi sits closer to home improvement. If you’re a specialist trade, that focus can mean better-matched enquiries. Can. Not always.
Both run some form of credit or refund request with conditions and time limits, and it commonly returns account credit rather than cash. Which keeps the money on the platform. Read the current policy in your own account.
Spend an evening comparing feature lists and you’ll miss this. Whichever you choose, the shape of the deal is identical, and it’s the shape rather than the price that determines where you are in three years.
Several contractors, same homeowner, same few minutes. You’re in a race and a price fight from the first second, on both platforms.
Win or lose, the charge lands. Your cost per booked job is always a multiple of the headline number, and neither platform puts that multiple on the invoice.
The homeowner found the platform. Next job, they open the app again, not your number. You rented an introduction, and the relationship stayed where it started.
Neither builds anything you keep. The day the card declines, the enquiries stop dead. That’s the difference between buying leads and owning a position on Google.
We’re not going to put another company’s numbers on this page and let you read them as yours. What’s below is what we build and what we measure. Any client result we quote, we quote as that one client’s outcome, and we’ll open the live account on the call so you can check it yourself.
Nearly every local home-service search ends in the three-result Google box. That position is attached to your business, not rented per enquiry, and the homeowner is phoning you directly rather than being handed to four of you at once.
One flat monthly fee. No per-enquiry charge, no surge pricing in your busy season, no credit-request forms to fill in when a lead turns out to be nothing.
Every enquiry lands in your own CRM with its history. So next season you can market to people who already know you, for nothing.
The figures above describe what ES Studios builds, tracks and reports, not results achieved by any particular business. Where we share client outcomes elsewhere, they reflect that client’s individual situation and are examples of what’s possible, not a guarantee of the same results for every business.
Including the ones where the honest answer is “it depends on your market”.
Neither, because they’re the same company. The FTC describes HomeAdvisor, Inc. as doing business as Angi Leads and HomeAdvisor Powered by Angi. Switching from one to the other is not a change of supplier.
Depends on your trade, your city and the season, neither publishes a national price list, so nobody can answer that honestly for your business. The only comparison worth running is cost per booked job over a few months, on your own numbers.
Contractors report both ways, in every trade, which usually means the deciding factor isn’t the platform. On shared leads, reply speed does more work than source. Fix the answering before you switch, or you’ll take the problem with you.
Same shape. Shared enquiries, per-enquiry billing, their customer. The details differ and the arithmetic doesn’t. Trying a fourth one is a lot of effort for a different invoice header.
If you’re starting out with no rankings and an empty diary, buying enquiries beats sitting still, so yes, for a while. Just track cost per booked job on each from day one, and treat it as a bridge rather than the plan.
No. We’d be a fairly poor advert for this page if we did. We build your own ranking, reviews and call capture for a flat monthly fee, the enquiries come to you directly, and we never resell an enquiry to anyone. Here is what we do instead.
Book a 15-minute call. We’ll pull your market up live, show you who’s in the three-result box in the towns you cover, and work out what your bought enquiries are really costing per booked job. If a marketplace is genuinely paying for you right now, we’ll say carry on. No pitch deck, nothing you have to do afterwards.
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