THE SHORT ANSWER
A typical windows and doors project in the United Kingdom lands at GBP 4,350 to GBP 10,400 in 2026, with a midpoint near GBP 7,350. Gross margin on that midpoint is usually 22 to 32 percent, or GBP 1,600 to GBP 2,350. Against a modelled cost per lead of GBP 50 to GBP 100 and 4 to 6 exclusive leads per signed customer, acquisition consumes roughly 9.5 to 32.7 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. Below is a 2026 band for windows and doors projects in the United Kingdom and, more usefully, what happens when you divide it: margin on the midpoint job, and what winning that job costs before a single tool comes off the van.
Treat the width of the band as information rather than vagueness. The variables are frame count, material choice between PVC, aluminium and timber, and glazing specification, and on top of them sits the market itself: 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 4,350 to GBP 10,400 for a standard windows and doors job in the United Kingdom, midpoint around GBP 7,350
Gross margin: 22 to 32 percent of contract value, which is GBP 1,600 to GBP 2,350 on the midpoint job
Cost to win one customer: GBP 200 to GBP 550 in lead spend, assuming 4 to 6 exclusive leads per signed job at GBP 50 to GBP 100 each
Acquisition as a share of margin: 9.5 to 32.7 percent of the gross margin on a single job, before any repeat or referral value
Where the windows and doors 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 frame count, material choice between PVC, aluminium and timber, and glazing specification. 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 4,350 for the simple version of this job on an accessible property.
Around GBP 7,350 for the version most quotes describe, including the upgrades customers ask for once they have seen the first price.
Around GBP 10,400 once scope, access or specification all move in the same direction.
PVC, aluminium and timber are three different margin profiles
Material choice is the largest single determinant of contract value in this trade. PVC is the volume product with the thinnest margins and the deepest competition. Aluminium prices roughly 40 to 70 percent higher for the same aperture, sells on sightlines and large glazed openings, and holds better margin because fewer companies quote it credibly. Timber is a restoration product with long lead times, high material cost and buyers who are not collecting three quotes. Most window companies are unintentionally PVC businesses because that is what their website shows, and one credible aluminium reference project changes the mix of enquiries that arrive.
Break-even on a block of 70 leads
A single lead price is hard to judge. A block is not. 70 exclusive leads cost EUR 4,340 and should convert into 11 to 17 signed windows and doors jobs at a midpoint of EUR 8,650 each, which is EUR 95,350 to EUR 147,400 of work booked and EUR 21,000 to EUR 47,150 of gross margin.
Break-even therefore arrives inside the first job. The useful question is not whether EUR 62 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.
Contract value against gross margin
Contract value is the figure contractors quote each other. Gross margin is the figure that pays wages. For windows and doors work in the United Kingdom the gap between them is 68 to 78 percent of the contract, so the GBP 7,350 midpoint leaves GBP 1,600 to GBP 2,350 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 window and door companies 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.
When these numbers say do not buy leads
Be willing to reach the negative conclusion. If acquisition already consumes more than a quarter of gross margin at this job value, buying more volume makes the problem bigger rather than smaller. Here that line is crossed at roughly GBP 400 per signed customer, and the modelled cost is GBP 200 to GBP 550.
Three situations where the honest answer is no. You cannot call a new enquiry within an hour during working hours. Your quote-to-win rate on windows and doors work is below one in eight. Or your diary is already full for the next six weeks, in which case extra leads become slower callbacks on all of them rather than extra jobs. Fix the constraint first; the leads will still be for sale next month.
Dividing job value by what a customer costs
The whole calculation in one line: GBP 50 to GBP 100 per exclusive lead, 4 to 6 leads per signed customer, GBP 200 to GBP 550 to win that customer, against GBP 1,600 to GBP 2,350 of gross margin on the midpoint job. Acquisition is therefore 9.5 to 32.7 percent of the margin from one project.
Compare that against the alternatives rather than against zero. A shared lead at half the price, reaching four window and door companies at once, typically needs two to three times as many to produce a sale, which lands in the same place or worse and costs three times the sales effort. The cheapest sticker price is rarely the cheapest customer.
London day rates and the rest of the country
UK job values split roughly three ways. London and the South East run 20 to 30 percent above the national figure on labour, with congestion charging, parking suspensions and permit costs on top. The Midlands and the North West sit close to the national average, and parts of the North and Wales below it. Scaffolding and skip hire vary just as much as labour does. Taking enquiries nationally on one price list means the London jobs subsidise nothing and the northern ones quietly price you out. Segment the price list before you segment the marketing.
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.
Glazing specification is the upsell most people accept
Triple glazing, acoustic laminate, solar control coatings and warm edge spacers are cheap to add at manufacture and expensive to retrofit, which makes them the ideal option to present at quote stage. Acoustic glass sells itself on any road with traffic and typically adds 10 to 18 percent to the glass line for a marginal increase in fitting time. The mistake is offering it as a technical footnote. Offer it as a choice the customer can picture: this specification for the two bedrooms facing the road, standard units everywhere else, with both prices on the same page.
How to work out your own number instead of using this one
Pull your last twenty signed windows and doors 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 windows and doors work and a labour and materials index of 1.02 for the United Kingdom 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. 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
If the arithmetic works at your conversion rate, this is what buying that volume costs outright, with no retainer sitting on top of it:
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
What is the average windows and doors job worth in the United Kingdom in 2026?
Modelled at GBP 4,350 to GBP 10,400 for a complete installed project for a private homeowner, excluding VAT, with a midpoint near GBP 7,350. The width is real: frame count, material choice between PVC, aluminium and timber, and glazing specification all move the figure materially.
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 windows and doors lead in the United Kingdom runs GBP 50 to GBP 100, and it takes 4 to 6 of them to sign a customer. Against gross margin of GBP 1,600 to GBP 2,350 on the midpoint job, that is 9.5 to 32.7 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 GBP 7,350 midpoint, acquisition is 9.5 to 32.7 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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