THE SHORT ANSWER
A typical heat pump project in Austria lands at EUR 9,450 to EUR 18,900 in 2026, with a midpoint near EUR 14,200. Gross margin on that midpoint is usually 20 to 30 percent, or EUR 2,850 to EUR 4,250. Against a modelled cost per lead of EUR 100 to EUR 150 and 3 to 5 exclusive leads per signed customer, acquisition consumes roughly 7.3 to 28.4 percent of the gross margin on one job.
Contractors quote job value from memory, and memory drifts upward in a good year and downward in a bad one. This page gives a modelled band for heat pump work in Austria in 2026, then does the arithmetic that makes a band useful: what it leaves as gross margin, and how much of that margin a customer costs to win.
The band is wide on purpose. What moves a project from one end to the other is whether the property needs new emitters, the heat load of the building, and air source against ground source. Local context matters too: in Austria, because Austria shares its language with a market nine times its size, sloppy geo-targeting is the single most common cause of wasted budget here.
The numbers, at a glance
Midpoint contract value: around EUR 14,200, inside a working band of EUR 9,450 to EUR 18,900 for heat pump work in Austria
What is left after materials and labour: EUR 2,850 to EUR 4,250 of gross margin, being 20 to 30 percent of the midpoint contract
Lead spend per signed customer: EUR 300 to EUR 800, at 3 to 5 exclusive leads each costing EUR 100 to EUR 150
Margin consumed by acquisition: 7.3 to 28.4 percent of one job's gross margin, counting nothing from repeat or referral work
What a typical heat pump project is worth in Austria
The heat pump band above describes a complete, permitted, installed project for a private homeowner. It excludes VAT, excludes anything a landlord or housing association would tender competitively, and excludes emergency call-out work, which prices on a different logic entirely.
What separates the bottom of the band from the top is whether the property needs new emitters, the heat load of the building, and air source against ground source. Austria is a market of roughly 9.1 million people, and the number of installers chasing that population is what decides how firmly you can quote the upper half.
Bottom of the band, around EUR 9,450. A straightforward job on an accessible property with standard specification and nothing unexpected behind the wall.
Midpoint, around EUR 14,200. The job most quotes are written for, with one or two upgrades the customer asked for after the first visit.
Top of the band, around EUR 18,900. Larger scope, difficult access, or a household that chose the premium option in every category.
Why a proper heat loss calculation pays for itself
A room-by-room heat loss calculation takes two to three hours and is the difference between a quote you can defend and one you will lose money on. Undersizing produces a cold house and a warranty argument. Oversizing produces short cycling, poor seasonal efficiency and a customer who tells the neighbours the technology does not work. It also lifts contract value directly, because the calculation is what justifies the larger unit and the emitter upgrades to a homeowner who arrived expecting a straight swap. Contractors who charge a survey fee and credit it against the installation report both higher conversion and higher average job values.
The same heat pump job, priced across the border
Two markets can have identical lead prices and completely different job values, which is why the two indices are kept apart. Austria sits at 1.05 on the construction cost index. Converted to euro for comparison, heat pump work prices like this:
Austria (index 1.05) - EUR 9,450 to EUR 18,900
Germany (index 1.06) - EUR 9,550 to EUR 19,100
Spain (index 0.72) - EUR 6,500 to EUR 12,950
Italy (index 0.80) - EUR 7,200 to EUR 14,400
Use the comparison for pricing intelligence rather than for arbitrage. A Austrian contractor quoting from a neighbouring country's list will be wrong on labour, on the standard specification and usually on the permitting effort as well.
Use your median job, not your average job
The mean is the wrong statistic for a contractor. One heat pump project at the top of the band drags the average above anything you will quote next week, and a marketing budget built on it overspends quietly for months.
Take the median of your last twenty signed contracts instead. In a band of EUR 9,450 to EUR 18,900 the mean typically sits 8 to 15 percent above the median, because the distribution has a long right tail and no left one: there is a floor below which the job is not worth doing, and no ceiling above it. Budget against the median and let the large jobs be upside rather than assumption.
Air source and ground source are two different businesses
Ground source is not a premium version of air source, it is a different job with a drilling subcontractor in the middle of it. Borehole work commonly runs EUR 50 to EUR 90 per metre and a domestic installation needs 100 to 200 metres, so the ground loop alone can exceed the entire cost of an air source system. Contract values of EUR 25,000 to EUR 35,000 are normal, lead times are longer, and the buyer is usually a rural homeowner with land and no gas connection. If both come from the same enquiry flow, qualify on plot size and rig access before the first visit rather than after it.
Break-even on a block of 25 leads
A single lead price is hard to judge. A block is not. 25 exclusive leads cost EUR 1,750 and should convert into 5 to 8 signed heat pump jobs at a midpoint of EUR 14,200 each, which is EUR 70,900 to EUR 113,400 of work booked and EUR 14,200 to EUR 34,000 of gross margin.
Break-even therefore arrives inside the first job. The useful question is not whether EUR 70 per lead is expensive in the abstract, but what happens to that arithmetic if your conversion is half the modelled rate, because that is the scenario worth planning for.
Vienna's Altbau stock is a different product entirely
A large share of Vienna's housing predates 1945, much of it with protected facades, box windows, internal courtyards and no two rooms the same size. Nothing about that stock comes off a shelf. Ceiling heights are three metres and more, openings are non-standard, service runs were retrofitted decades after the building went up, and anything visible from the street is a permissions exercise before it is a quotation. Contract values run far above the standard band as a result, and so do survey time, lead time and the risk of finding something unexpected once you open a wall or a roof. Taking Viennese enquiries on a national price list underquotes the inner districts badly. Ask for the building year in the first two minutes of the call, because it changes the price more than the scope does.
Nine states, nine building codes
Building regulation in Austria is set at Land level, so permit requirements, energy standards and some product approvals differ between Vienna, Styria and Vorarlberg. The same measure can require a notification in one state and nothing in another, and lead times to start on site are not comparable across the country. Price the administrative work instead of absorbing it, and when expanding beyond your home state treat each new Bundesland as a market with its own permitting learning curve rather than as extra postcodes bolted onto an existing one.
Working capital at this contract value
Job value determines how much cash the business needs, not just how much it earns. On a EUR 14,200 project, materials and subcontract labour typically leave the account two to five weeks before the final invoice is paid, which is EUR 6,400 of exposure per job before anything goes wrong.
The remedy is structural rather than clever: a deposit near EUR 4,250 at order, a stage payment against delivery, and a final invoice on handover rather than thirty days after it. It also functions as a qualification tool. A household that cannot pay a deposit on a EUR 14,200 project is not a household that will pay the balance.
How to work out your own number instead of using this one
Pull your last twenty signed heat pump contracts and take the median value rather than the mean, so one outlier project does not distort the figure.
Subtract materials and installation labour from each to get real gross margin, then take the median of that too.
Count how many enquiries it took to sign those twenty jobs, including the ones that never answered, to get your true leads-per-customer ratio.
Multiply that ratio by the lead price you are being quoted to get your actual cost per signed customer.
Divide that by your median gross margin. Above 25 percent, fix conversion or scope before you buy more volume.
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. Every figure derives from two inputs: a base band for heat pump work and a labour and materials index of 1.05 for Austria against a Benelux baseline of 1.00. The index is not the ad auction multiplier, and treating the two as one number is the most common error in cross-border benchmarking.
How Flock Leads prices this
Set against the margin numbers on this page, here is the actual price of buying exclusive enquiries rather than generating them:
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.
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Related answers
Frequently asked questions
How much does a heat pump project cost in Austria?
Between EUR 9,450 to EUR 18,900 for a private household in 2026, midpoint around EUR 14,200, excluding VAT and excluding competitively tendered work. Where a specific job lands depends on whether the property needs new emitters, the heat load of the building, and air source against ground source.
Does this figure include VAT?
No. Every number here is exclusive of VAT, because rates on home improvement work vary by country, by measure and sometimes by the age of the property. Quote your customer inclusive if that is the local convention, but do your margin arithmetic exclusive, otherwise the tax looks like profit.
How does this compare with what a lead costs?
A modelled exclusive heat pump lead in Austria runs EUR 100 to EUR 150, and it takes 3 to 5 of them to sign a customer. Against gross margin of EUR 2,850 to EUR 4,250 on the midpoint job, that is 7.3 to 28.4 percent of the margin from one project.
Why do you use a different index for job value and lead cost?
Because they measure different things. Lead prices track how many installers are bidding in a local advertising auction. Job values track labour rates and material logistics. Poland has cheap clicks and cheap labour, Ireland has mid-priced clicks and very expensive labour, and a single multiplier would misprice both.
Does a higher job value make lead buying easier?
Usually, yes, because the lead price is close to fixed while the margin scales with the contract. At the EUR 14,200 midpoint, acquisition is 7.3 to 28.4 percent of gross margin. Raise the average job by a fifth and that percentage falls by roughly the same proportion without a single change to what you pay per lead.
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