How much does a lead cost in different industries?

A lead is the contact details of a person who has shown interest in buying: they left a request, called, or wrote in a chat or messenger. Cost per lead (CPL) is ad spend divided by the number of inquiries received. It should be calculated for each channel separately and for two kinds of lead separately: a raw lead is any contact left, and a qualified lead is a person who fits the profile and is ready to talk. The gap between them is severalfold: in real estate a first inquiry costs about 3,100 RUB (about $36), a qualified one 15,600 RUB (about $180).

There is no single price: according to Kaufman Lab data as of September 10, 2026, a lead costs from 400 RUB to 58,379 RUB (about $5–680) depending on the industry, a 146-fold spread. The cheapest are inquiries to car repair shops (400–1,700 RUB) and for consumer loans (500–1,200 RUB); the most expensive are qualified leads in luxury real estate (58,379 RUB) and in enterprise AI integration (25,000–70,000 RUB, about $290–820). The figure closest to an average is 3,211–3,611 RUB (about $37–42) per B2B inquiry, from data by Callibri, a Russian call-tracking service, on 674,871 inquiries, but it cannot be carried over to a specific business. The study covers 11 industries: real estate, healthcare, cars, loans, software development, AI integration, B2B SaaS, marketing agencies, communities, crypto projects and social media. Betting, microloans, alcohol and public procurement are excluded: there, advertising is restricted by law or a lead in the marketing sense does not exist.

In real estate a first inquiry costs 2,400–5,100 RUB (about $28–60) depending on the channel, a qualified one 10,000–18,000 RUB (about $117–210), and in the luxury segment 58,379 RUB (about $680). In healthcare an inquiry cost 2,472 RUB (about $29) in January 2025 and 2,717 RUB (about $32) in June: these are Callibri figures for 1,150,000 inquiries from 605 clinics. In the car business the price depends on the segment: a lead for a used car costs 1,500–3,000 RUB (about $18–35), for a new mass-market car 2,500–4,500 RUB (about $29–53), for a premium car 8,000–15,000 RUB (about $93–175), and an inquiry to a car repair shop 400–1,700 RUB in Moscow and St. Petersburg and from 400 RUB in the regions.

In B2B a qualified lead costs 10,000–15,000 RUB (about $117–175), in the enterprise segment 25,000–70,000 RUB (about $290–820), and getting it to a signed contract costs 150,000–600,000 RUB (about $1,750–7,000). The median for B2B SaaS is 5,500 RUB (about $64); through Telegram a lead comes out at 2,500–6,000 RUB, through webinars at 4,000–10,000 RUB with a 30–40% conversion to a deal. In AI integration a raw lead costs 5,000–15,000 RUB (about $58–175): the niche looks new, but the search auction is already crowded. Queries about AI integration and LLM agents show 5 ads each, and the advertisers are studios for small businesses, not enterprise integrators. A ready-made B2B lead can be bought on a lead exchange for 100–700 RUB (about $1–8), but that is a contact with no qualification.

Take the average deal size and multiply it by 20%: that is the limit on the cost of acquiring one customer. Multiply that amount by your lead-to-deal conversion, usually 5–10%, and you get the ceiling on lead price. With a 300,000 RUB deal (about $3,500) the ceiling is 3,000–6,000 RUB (about $35–70); with a 3 million RUB deal (about $35,000) it is 30,000–60,000 RUB (about $350–700). Anything below the ceiling is open to negotiation; anything above it loses money, whatever the market average is said to be. This is the only useful benchmark. Comparing your price with the industry average says nothing, because deal size sets the price, not the industry.

Start with losses at intake, not with the price: according to Callibri, real estate companies miss 82.5% of calls, and clinics leave one call in three unanswered, so a lead that was paid for is simply lost. Next, change the channel: SEO delivers a lead about 40% cheaper than search ads, and in Yandex Direct, the ad platform of Russia's largest search engine, the display network is 1.5–2 times cheaper than search, though lead quality is lower. The third lever is segmentation: for car dealers a lead for a mass-market car costs a third of a premium one, and mixing them in one campaign means overpaying for both. Most important, a cheap lead is not a profitable one: at 800 RUB per lead, 2 in 100 people who contact a car dealer visit the showroom.

A follower is a contact who does not yet want to buy anything, so followers and leads do not belong in one table. A follower on VK costs 30–115 RUB (about $0.35–1.35), on Telegram 80–400 RUB (about $1–5) depending on the niche: beauty 80–120 RUB, psychology 150–250 RUB, marketing 200–350 RUB, finance 250–400 RUB. A single view is cheaper still: 0.61–1.47 RUB on VK Video, 0.85–1.61 RUB on TikTok, 0.97–3.60 RUB on YouTube and 2.16–6.27 RUB on Telegram, according to Didenok Team data on 1,788 creators for October–November 2025. A paying member costs 3,700–8,500 RUB (about $43–100), because about 4.1% of a free audience converts to payment. Crypto projects pay for a wallet: a DeFi user costs about $85, an exchange deposit $100–200, and a user retained after an airdrop $500–1,000.