THE SHORT ANSWER
Expect to pay EUR 55 to EUR 140 for an exclusive lead in Dublin, roughly 30 percent above the Irish national average. Behind that price sits a metro of about 650,000 households, an estimated 22,000 to 39,000 of which commission qualifying home-improvement work each year. Start with the local business profile and purchased exclusive leads; open a paid search account only once you can calculate what a click is worth from your own close rate.
The gap between a national cost-per-lead figure and what you actually pay in a capital city is large enough to sink a budget. This page treats Dublin as its own market: what a lead costs here, how much demand the metro can realistically supply in a year, and which channels are worth the effort at this scale.
What makes this metro its own market is roughly a third of the national population inside one metro, which means most national campaigns are effectively Dublin campaigns. Everything below, from the lead price to the channel order, follows from it.
The numbers, at a glance
Cost per exclusive lead: EUR 55 to EUR 140 depending on trade, roughly 30 percent above the Irish national average
Metro size: roughly 1.5 million people, or about 650,000 households within the metro area
Annual enquiry pool: an estimated 22,000 to 39,000 households commissioning qualifying home-improvement work each year
Cheapest and dearest trade here: flooring leads model at EUR 55 to EUR 100, air conditioning leads at EUR 85 to EUR 140
Drive time is the real boundary of your Dublin market
Contractors draw their service area in kilometres and then lose money in minutes. In a metro the two are barely related: congestion, rivers, ring roads and one-way systems mean a job ten kilometres away can be further in practice than one twenty kilometres out on a clear route.
Price the difference. If a crew hour is worth EUR 55 to you, then two extra hours of travel a day is EUR 110 daily and roughly EUR 2,420 a month in capacity you never invoiced. That is more than most contractors spend on leads, and it is invisible because it never appears as a line on anything.
The fix is unglamorous: set the radius in minutes measured at the hour you actually travel, cluster surveys by direction so one trip serves three addresses, and turn off targeting outside the boundary rather than accepting the work and absorbing the drive.
A small national market saturates faster than people expect
With a population of around five million concentrated heavily in a few urban areas, a national Irish campaign can exhaust its addressable audience within weeks and cost per lead climbs sharply once it does. The correct responses are geographic rotation, creative refresh, and buying exclusive leads to smooth the gaps rather than pushing more budget into an audience that has already seen you four times.
What an exclusive lead costs in Dublin
Lead prices in Dublin run EUR 55 to EUR 140 across the three trades modelled below, and that band is roughly 30 percent above the Irish national average. The premium exists because installer density inside a metro is higher than across the country as a whole, and every one of those installers bids on the same short list of high-intent keywords.
Air conditioning: EUR 85 to EUR 140 per exclusive lead. 4 to 6 leads normally convert into one customer, and the buyer is a homeowner or small office that wants cooling before summer. Peak demand runs the first heatwave.
Kitchen and bathroom: EUR 70 to EUR 125 per exclusive lead. 5 to 8 leads normally convert into one customer, and the buyer is a homeowner planning a full room renovation. Peak demand runs January and September.
Flooring: EUR 55 to EUR 100 per exclusive lead. 5 to 8 leads normally convert into one customer, and the buyer is a homeowner replacing carpet or worn laminate. Peak demand runs autumn.
The distance between the cheapest and the dearest trade on that list tracks job value rather than difficulty. A lead worth a five-figure contract will always cost more than one worth a four-figure contract, because the person bidding against you can afford it and knows it.
Protected structures and solid brick in the inner suburbs
The Georgian and Victorian streets that ring the city centre contain a large number of protected structures, where sash windows, brickwork and roof profiles cannot be changed at will. Solid brick walls also rule out the standard cavity product. The work that does sell here is careful: secondary glazing, sash refurbishment, internal insulation detailed for moisture, and roof repair in matching materials. It is slower and it is better paid, and it requires you to demonstrate the specialism before anyone will call.
The commuter belt supplies the volume
The consistent, repeatable retrofit work is not in the old city, it is in the estate housing built through the 1990s and 2000s across the outer suburbs and into the neighbouring counties. Those houses are uniform, unprotected, reaching their first major renewal cycle, and owned by households with mortgages and children and a reason to improve. Target them by drive time from your depot rather than by county name, because the county boundary means nothing to the road network.
How much campaign this metro can carry
There is a ceiling, and it is set by the audience rather than by your budget. With a modelled 22,000 to 39,000 projects a year, Dublin produces roughly 1,800 to 3,200 enquiries a month across every home-improvement trade combined.
Spread across ten trades that is something like 180 to 320 a month in any single specialism, before you subtract the share going to firms that have been here for twenty years. That is the number to plan against, and it is why doubling spend in a small metro raises frequency rather than reach.
Watch frequency rather than impressions. When cost per lead starts climbing without any change in the auction, you have run out of people, not out of money, and the answer is new creative or a wider area rather than a higher bid.
The size of the Dublin opportunity, in households
Population is the wrong denominator. What you can sell to is households, and Dublin has roughly 650,000 of them inside a metro of about 1.5 million people.
Of those, a modelled 22,000 to 39,000 commission qualifying work in any given year, which is somewhere between one household in twenty-nine and one in seventeen. That is a useful sanity check the next time somebody calls this metro untapped. It is not untapped. It is worked, by firms that already live there.
Before you plan against that pool, apply the local condition: roughly a third of the national population inside one metro, which means most national campaigns are effectively Dublin campaigns. It decides which slice of the pool your trade can actually reach, and it is the reason two contractors in the same city report completely different market sizes.
How to start buying leads in Dublin
Set your service boundary in drive-time minutes measured at the hour you actually travel, not in kilometres on a map.
Pick the trade you close best. On this page that is most likely flooring at EUR 55 to EUR 100 a lead, because volume is easier to learn on than margin.
Claim and complete the local business profile, add the service area, and get the first ten reviews before spending anything on advertising.
Buy a small block of exclusive leads to measure your real close rate rather than the one you assume you have.
Track cost per signed customer, not cost per lead. At these prices a kitchen and bathroom customer costs roughly EUR 635.
Only open a paid search account once you know what a click is worth, which you cannot know until the two steps above are done.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote. Metro figures apply a local premium of roughly 30 percent above the Irish national average to the national band, and the household count assumes an average of 2.3 people per household applied to the metro population. Both are modelling assumptions, stated so you can substitute your own.
How Flock Leads prices this
Leads in Dublin are sold exclusively and priced by volume rather than by trade, so the per-lead cost falls as the block gets larger. Compare the per-lead figures below against the EUR 55 to EUR 140 modelled above for this metro.
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
Book a 15-minute fit check | See lead package pricing
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Why are leads more expensive in a city than nationally?
Because more contractors bid for the same postcode. Metro auctions in Ireland run roughly 30 percent above the Irish national average, and the premium reflects competition rather than lead quality. The compensation is density: a city job sits closer to the next one, so the same crew completes more work per week.
How many home-improvement projects happen in Dublin each year?
An estimated 22,000 to 39,000, from a base of roughly 650,000 households. That is across every trade combined, so a single specialism is looking at a fraction of it.
Are purchased leads better than running my own ads here?
They are faster, not cheaper. Purchased exclusive leads give you volume this week at a known price. Your own local search presence is cheaper per lead once it matures but takes months to build. Most contractors in Dublin should run both and let the numbers decide the ratio.
How much does a signed customer actually cost?
Multiply the lead price by the number of leads it takes to close one. For kitchen and bathroom work in Dublin that models at about EUR 635 per customer against an average job value of roughly EUR 16,500, or 3.9 percent of revenue.
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