Exclusive, verified MCA leads run $65–$120 on the open market. Real-time shared leads run $10–$30, fresh applications $15–$45, live transfers $50–$300, and aged data under $5. But cost per lead is the wrong number to compare on — at two to four funded deals per fifty exclusive leads, a $60 lead works out around $750–$1,500 per funded deal.
Here is the price of everything on the market, so you have the whole picture before the argument about which number matters.
| Lead type | Typical range | What you are paying for |
|---|---|---|
| Exclusive, verified | $65–$120 | One buyer, verified contact, realtime delivery |
| Exclusive, unverified | $30–$65 | One buyer, contact details unproven |
| Fresh application (0–30 days) | $15–$45 | Recent, but already worked by others |
| Real-time shared | $10–$30 | Split across three to five buyers |
| Live transfer | $50–$300 | A merchant already on the phone |
| UCC / business data | $0.02–$0.20 | Public filing data, no intent, heavily worked |
| Aged data | $0.50–$5 | Resold repeatedly, months to years old |
Because your rep costs the same either way. That is the entire argument and it is worth sitting with for a second.
Say a $15 shared lead takes four times the dials to reach a merchant who has already spoken to three brokers. Your lead line went down. Your labour line went up by more than it went down. You did not save money — you moved it to a column you were not watching, and you spent your reps’ morning on it.
Cost per funded deal. It is the only figure that survives contact with reality, and any vendor should be able to walk you through it at their typical outcome rather than their best one.
The same spend, divided by what it produced. A shared lead at a third of the price stops looking cheap the moment it takes twice as many to fund one deal — and if it takes four times as many, it is the expensive option.
Exclusive figures are client-reported. Shared figures are illustrative.
Because "lead" describes a dozen different products. Two quotes thirty dollars apart are usually not the same thing priced differently — they are different things. Before comparing numbers, get these five answers from both:
| Ask | Cheap answer | Expensive answer |
|---|---|---|
| Who generated the traffic? | Bought from an aggregator | We run our own ads |
| How is the phone proven? | Format validation | One-time code the merchant enters |
| How many buyers? | Three to five | One, permanently |
| How old is the record? | Days to months | Seconds |
| How does it arrive? | CSV or portal | Webhook POST in realtime |
A vendor at the cheap end of every row is not overcharging you. They are selling a genuinely cheaper product, and if your operation suits it, buy it. The error is comparing a right-hand-column lead to a left-hand-column price and concluding one vendor is greedy.
Size it so the result means something. Under about 25 leads, one good week or one bad week swings your entire read — you will not learn whether the feed works, you will learn what happened that fortnight.
They save money per lead. Whether they save money depends entirely on whether your floor can work the extra volume at the same speed. A 500-lead order at $50 is only cheaper than a 50-lead order at $60 if all 500 get called as fast as the 50 would have been.
This is where most large orders go wrong. The discount is real, the leads are the same quality, and the outcome is worse because the same three reps are now working ten times the volume with the same number of hours. If you are scaling an order, scale the floor first or throttle the delivery.
Fifty exclusive leads at $60 is $3,000. Say your floor calls within fifteen minutes and works each record properly. At the benchmark our clients report, that produces two to four funded deals.
Commission at ten points on a $62k average funded deal. Even the bottom of the range is roughly four times the spend — which is the point of running the low number rather than the high one.
Funded-deal counts and average deal size are client-reported.
Now run the same exercise on a vendor quoting $25. If their leads fund one deal per fifty rather than two to four, your cost per funded deal is $1,250 against their $1,000 headline saving — and you spent twice the rep hours to get there.
Exclusive verified leads run $65 to $120 on the open market. Exclusive unverified run $30 to $65, fresh applications $15 to $45, real-time shared $10 to $30, live transfers $50 to $300, and aged data under $5. UCC and business data lists run cents per record.
At the benchmark of two to four funded deals per fifty exclusive leads, a $60 lead works out to roughly $750 to $1,500 per funded deal. Compare vendors on that figure rather than on cost per lead, and ask each to walk you through it at their typical outcome rather than their best one.
Because they are different products. Price tracks who generated the traffic, whether the phone number was proven by a one-time code or only format-checked, how many buyers receive the record, how old it is, and whether it arrives in realtime or as a batch file. A cheap lead is usually cheap for identifiable reasons rather than because the vendor is generous.
About fifty. Below roughly twenty-five, one good or bad week swings the entire result and you learn nothing durable about the feed. Decide your success threshold before the leads arrive so the outcome is not argued about afterwards.
They lower cost per lead, but they only save money if your floor can work the extra volume at the same speed. A large discounted order worked slowly produces a worse cost per funded deal than a small order worked fast. Scale the floor or throttle delivery before scaling the order.
We will tell you straight up if we cannot help you. No commission deals, no free trials, no chasing you for three weeks.