Stop paying per lead: what tradies get instead

You booked one job from six leads last month. Do the maths. At $50 a lead, you spent $300 to win one job. Two customers never replied, one was price shopping with no intention to hire, and one went with someone cheaper. The other two? You were the sixth tradie to call, and the job was already gone.

That's not bad luck. That's the model. Pay-per-lead platforms earn revenue from every lead purchase, whether you win the job or not. The more tradies who buy the same lead, the more the platform earns. You're not a customer in this arrangement. You're the product. 1productreview.com.auView source

Four things pay-per-lead platforms charge you for that have nothing to do with winning a job

The billing works against you before you've even called the customer. Here are the four structural points where the money disappears.

You pay the moment you see the job, not the moment you win it

On hipages and Oneflare, your credit balance drops the moment you tap to reveal a lead. You have contact details and a job description, but no customer contact yet. Not a word said, not a quote submitted, and the money is already gone.

That's what happens when the fee clears at reveal rather than at booking. As at June 2026, tradies commonly report paying roughly $30 to $80 per lead on hipages depending on trade category and job size; confirm current pricing directly on the platform. When conversion rates are low on shared-lead services, the real cost per booked job multiplies quickly before you even add subscription fees. 1productreview.com.auView source

The lead goes to multiple tradies, and the platform gets paid by each of them

hipages advertises a three-tradie cap per lead. Reviewers report the reality differs. In high-competition categories like electrical work in major metro areas, tradie Iman C. on ProductReview noted that 'far more tradies show up to quote the same job' than the three advertised. On popular jobs in busy metros, a single lead can go to many tradies at once. 1productreview.com.auView source

The economic result of a platform selling the same lead to multiple tradies: each pays a lead fee, and the platform collects from every one of them regardless of who wins. You're not buying a lead. You're buying a ticket in a lottery that's already sold to the person with the fastest finger on the accept button.

Fake and uncontactable leads are expensive, and refunds are built to be hard to claim

One Oneflare reviewer, Fadie C. from NSW, wrote in 2025 that 'at least 70% of the leads are fake', describing a pattern of messages never opened and calls never answered. That's one tradie's documented experience, not a verified platform-wide figure. But the structural problem is real: platforms earn from lead purchases regardless of lead quality, so the incentive to screen is weak. 2productreview.com.auView source

On hipages, the refund policy covers a limited set of circumstances: fraudulent leads, materially misrepresented jobs, and leads outside your service area. As at June 2026, tradies commonly report a time-limited refund window; confirm the current terms directly on the platform. Multiple tradies report submitting requests within the window and being knocked back anyway. 1productreview.com.auView source

In 2023, the ACCC secured a court-enforceable undertaking from hipages for conduct between 2018 and 2022, specifically for failing to disclose auto-renewal of 12-month subscriptions and early termination fees, and for making false representations to already-cancelled subscribers. That undertaking expired on 28 May 2026 and covered historical conduct, not current practices. It is documented as a track record. 3accc.gov.auView source

Subscriptions lock you in, and credits you don't use disappear

hipages subscriptions run on a 6 to 12-month initial term. The ACCC's 2023 undertaking documented monthly fees in the range of $25 to $999 depending on trade category; as at June 2026, tradies commonly report subscription costs in the hundreds of dollars per month (confirm current pricing directly on the platform). Credits expire. Tradies commonly report the pattern: a quiet month, credits stockpiled, then on returning to an active period the credits have expired with no refund and no rollover. 3accc.gov.auView source

Oneflare charged subscriptions in the range of $109 to $299 a month, with cancellation requiring contact with an account manager, no self-serve cancel button, and a 15-day pre-charge notice requirement that made last-minute exits costly. 2productreview.com.auView source 4productreview.com.auView source These are the structural terms of a service whose business model runs on committed subscription revenue, not on whether you win jobs.

Airtasker, which acquired Oneflare in January 2023, uses a different model: it deducts 10 to 20% from your payment after the job is done, not upfront. No subscription, but the commission still runs through the service and still prevents you from building a direct customer relationship. 5finder.com.auView source

What SureQuote does differently, mechanism by mechanism

Each of those four pains maps to a specific mechanic that SureQuote built to resolve it. Not a rebrand. A different structure.

Pay-per-lead vs SureQuote: the structural difference

Each row below is a mechanism, not a marketing claim. Every SureQuote entry in the right-hand column is drawn from the validated features ledger (June 2026). Competitor ranges are directional as at June 2026; confirm current pricing directly on each platform. 1productreview.com.auView source 2productreview.com.auView source

The $300 cap: what it means for small jobs and large ones

SureQuote's per-lead cost is 1.5% of the estimated job value, capped at $300. That cap is the ceiling, not the typical cost. A $2,000 painting job costs you $30 in lead spend. A $5,000 kitchen job costs $75. The cap only kicks in on jobs above roughly $20,000.

Compare that to a flat $50 per-lead fee on a $2,000 job. You're paying 2.5% at the hipages rate versus 1.5% at SureQuote, plus you're one of multiple tradies rather than one of three. The percentage model means small jobs genuinely cost less. Large jobs hit the cap. Either way, you know the maximum before you accept.

Three tradies per lead, not eight, and what happens when you're not chosen

Every lead on SureQuote goes to a hard cap of three tradies. No overflow unless the consumer rejects all three, in which case a fourth may be invited.

Here's the alignment: if the consumer rejects your quote and goes with someone else, you get credits back. That rebate exists because SureQuote's revenue depends on homeowners finding a tradie they want to hire, not on selling the same lead to as many tradies as possible. When a service makes money from lead quantity, lead quality is optional. When it needs jobs to actually get done, the incentives line up differently.

See the full job before you spend anything

Before you commit a credit on SureQuote, you see the full job brief. Scope, photos, the homeowner's estimated budget, and the AI-generated cost estimate based on the intake answers. You decide if it's worth pursuing before any money moves.

That resolves the pay-at-reveal pain directly. You're choosing a real job with a visible scope, not buying a name and a phone number and hoping for the best.

What the numbers look like when you run the comparison

Take an illustrative month: 25 leads at a per-lead fee on hipages. A portion of those leads are uncontactable. You're competing with multiple tradies on the rest. At a typical shared-lead conversion rate, you might book five jobs. Your cost per booked job includes every lead you paid for, not just the ones that converted. Add the subscription and it's higher.

On SureQuote, the same five jobs at an average value of $5,000 each would cost 1.5% per lead: $75 per lead, with a hard cap of three tradies competing for each. Five booked jobs, five leads, $375 total in lead spend. No subscription on top.

These are illustrative numbers. Your trade, your region, your job sizes, and your conversion rate all shift the outcome. The structural point holds: a percentage model with a cap and three competitors costs less per booked job than a flat fee with five or six competitors, at every job size under $20,000.

Where SureQuote is still growing

SureQuote is a newer platform and it is growing fast, with tradie feedback actively shaping what gets built next. The pricing model and lead mechanics are live and working. Some features that established platforms have built over years are still on the way. The gaps below are real and worth knowing before you decide.

SureQuote's current limits

These are real gaps, not marketing fine print. Know what is live today versus what is still being built. 3accc.gov.auView source