THE SHORT ANSWER
A typical heat pump project in the United Kingdom lands at GBP 7,800 to GBP 15,600 in 2026, with a midpoint near GBP 11,700. Gross margin on that midpoint is usually 20 to 30 percent, or GBP 2,350 to GBP 3,500. Against a modelled cost per lead of GBP 100 to GBP 150 and 3 to 5 exclusive leads per signed customer, acquisition consumes roughly 7.2 to 28.0 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 the United Kingdom 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 the United Kingdom, English-language auctions attract bidders from outside the country, which lifts click prices above what the local competitive density alone would justify.
The numbers, at a glance
Typical project value: GBP 7,800 to GBP 15,600 for a standard heat pump job in the United Kingdom, midpoint around GBP 11,700
Gross margin: 20 to 30 percent of contract value, which is GBP 2,350 to GBP 3,500 on the midpoint job
Cost to win one customer: GBP 250 to GBP 650 in lead spend, assuming 3 to 5 exclusive leads per signed job at GBP 100 to GBP 150 each
Acquisition as a share of margin: 7.2 to 28.0 percent of the gross margin on a single job, before any repeat or referral value
Where the heat pump number comes from in the United Kingdom
Everything here is a complete installed job for a private household, excluding VAT and excluding competitively tendered work. Emergency repairs are excluded too: urgency prices on availability rather than on scope, and mixing the two produces an average that describes neither.
Inside that definition the spread comes from whether the property needs new emitters, the heat load of the building, and air source against ground source. The United Kingdom is a market of roughly 68 million people, which is the pool every one of those quotes is written into.
Around GBP 7,800 for the simple version of this job on an accessible property.
Around GBP 11,700 for the version most quotes describe, including the upgrades customers ask for once they have seen the first price.
Around GBP 15,600 once scope, access or specification all move in the same direction.
Contract value against gross margin
Contract value is the figure contractors quote each other. Gross margin is the figure that pays wages. For heat pump work in the United Kingdom the gap between them is 70 to 80 percent of the contract, so the GBP 11,700 midpoint leaves GBP 2,350 to GBP 3,500 behind.
Overheads, vehicles, insurance and the owner's own salary all come out of that, which means the money genuinely available to win the next customer is a fraction of the margin rather than the whole of it. Decide what share you will spend on acquisition before you look at any supplier price list. Established heat pump installers tend to land between 10 and 20 percent of gross margin. Businesses in a deliberate growth phase run at 30 and accept that payback arrives on the second job.
Subsidy paperwork is a cost line, so price it as one
Almost every heat pump market in Europe now runs a grant scheme, and almost every homeowner expects the installer to handle it. That work is real: eligibility checks, product registration, photographs, performance data and a submission that can take an hour or two per job, plus the cash flow cost when the grant reaches the customer months after you have been paid. Build it into the price rather than treating it as goodwill. The healthiest margins in this trade belong to installers who quote the gross price, show the grant as a separate line the customer will receive, and never discount against money they do not control.
The lever is scope, not negotiation
Every ratio on this page improves faster from the revenue side than from the cost side. Adding emitter replacement and buffer tanks to a heat pump job adds 15 to 30 percent and is often unavoidable rather than optional, and it is sold to a household that has already chosen you. Winning one more customer at the same margin costs GBP 250 to GBP 650 in lead spend; upgrading the scope of one you have already won costs a better quote and twenty minutes.
Price the option, do not mention it. An option with a number attached is bought roughly three times as often as an option described in a sentence.
Put both versions on one page. Two priced columns beat two separate documents, because the comparison is the sale.
Give the upgrade a reason that is not money. Noise, comfort, disruption avoided later, and a guarantee that covers the whole job rather than half of it.
Some UK work carries a grant claimed by the installer, and most does not
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays GBP 7,500 towards an air source heat pump in England and Wales, and unusually it is claimed by the installer and shown as a deduction on the invoice, so the customer sees a net price from the first conversation. Insulation work reaches households through supplier-funded obligations instead. Everything else, which includes most replacement, fitting and improvement work, arrives with nothing attached. That split matters more than the individual amounts. In the grant-backed segment your quote is read as a net number and the scheme rules decide who is allowed to compete at all. In the unbacked segment you are quoting a full price into a household that has just been shown a subsidised one for a different job, and the answer to that is scope and certainty of date, not a discount.
Certification schemes decide who you compete against
British home improvement runs on registration schemes, and each one filters a trade differently. MCS governs renewable heating and generation for grant-eligible and export-eligible work, FENSA and CERTASS self-certify replacement glazing against building regulations, Gas Safe is a legal requirement, and TrustMark sits over much of the rest. Each carries an annual cost, an audit regime and an installation standard, and each removes a slice of the low-price competition from your market. For job value that is a net positive, because the registered segment quotes higher and argues about price less. The trap is holding the registration and never using it in the sale. A quote that does not name the scheme, and say plainly what an unregistered competitor cannot legally certify, carries the cost of the gate without the benefit.
The emitters decide the price, not the heat pump
The unit is the most predictable part of a heat pump quote. What swings the contract is everything around it: a buffer tank, a new cylinder, upsized radiators or underfloor circuits, and the pipework to connect them. A house already running at low flow temperatures converts close to the bottom of the band. A house with panel radiators sized for a 70 degree boiler needs emitter work that routinely adds EUR 2,000 to EUR 6,000. Establish which of the two you are standing in before you put a number on paper, because the difference is larger than any discount you will ever be asked for.
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 13,750 each, which is EUR 68,850 to EUR 110,150 of work booked and EUR 13,750 to EUR 33,050 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.
Working capital at this contract value
Job value determines how much cash the business needs, not just how much it earns. On a GBP 11,700 project, materials and subcontract labour typically leave the account two to five weeks before the final invoice is paid, which is GBP 5,250 of exposure per job before anything goes wrong.
The remedy is structural rather than clever: a deposit near GBP 3,500 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 GBP 11,700 project is not a household that will pay the balance.
Turning this benchmark into your own figure
Start from invoices, not quotes: a median of twenty signed heat pump contracts is worth more than any published average, including this one.
Take materials and installation labour out of each contract so you are working with margin rather than turnover.
Divide the number of enquiries you received by the number of customers you signed. That ratio, not the lead price, is what most contractors get wrong.
Price a signed customer by multiplying that ratio by the quoted lead price, then express it as a share of your median margin.
Re-run all five twice a year. Job values drift, conversion drifts faster, and a benchmark from eighteen months ago is a guess.
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. Job values here start from an industry band for heat pump and are scaled by a construction cost index for the United Kingdom of 1.02 against a Benelux baseline of 1.00. That index tracks labour and materials, deliberately separate from the advertising auction multiplier used on our cost-per-lead pages, because the two move independently. Figures are modelled in euro and converted at 0.85 GBP per EUR 1, so the local number is indicative rather than a spot price.
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 the United Kingdom?
Between GBP 7,800 to GBP 15,600 for a private household in 2026, midpoint around GBP 11,700, 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.
Why is the band so wide?
Because whether the property needs new emitters, the heat load of the building, and air source against ground source genuinely swings the price that much. A narrow average would be more comforting and less true. The useful move is to establish where your own typical job sits inside the band, then price your marketing against that point rather than against the midpoint.
Is job value in the United Kingdom rising or falling in 2026?
Material prices have largely stabilised after the volatility of the early decade, while installation labour remains the tighter constraint across most of Western Europe. The practical effect is that job values drift upward slowly and the labour component grows as a share of each quote. Re-check your own median twice a year rather than trusting a published figure.
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 GBP 11,700 midpoint, acquisition is 7.2 to 28.0 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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