- Shared solar leads run $25 to $100 and exclusive run $100 to $250, per ActiveProspect, July 31, 2026. In health insurance the gap is far smaller.
- The two marketplaces that publish measured distribution data sell each shared lead to about two buyers. The figure in common circulation is three to eight.
- Published close-rate gaps come from companies selling exclusive leads. The one named-author source we found puts the gap at 10 percent against 7 percent.
- Exclusive earns its premium only when the price multiple is smaller than your own close-rate multiple. In solar that bar is 2.8x.
A shared solar lead costs $25 to $100 and an exclusive one costs $100 to $250, according to ActiveProspect’s July 31, 2026 roundup of solar lead pricing. In under-65 private health the same split runs $10 to $25 shared against $25 to $60 exclusive, per Bill Rice’s March 13, 2026 breakdown at Aged Lead Store.
An exclusive lead goes to one buyer. A shared lead goes to several at once, and that count is smaller than the industry says. How a lead gets won in the milliseconds after someone hits submit is covered in our guide to ping-post lead distribution.
Quick answers:
- What is the difference between exclusive and shared leads?
- How much more do exclusive leads cost?
- How many buyers get a shared lead?
- Do exclusive leads convert better than shared leads?
- How do I know if a lead is really exclusive?
What exclusive and shared leads cost right now
The premium depends entirely on the vertical. We pulled published 2026 ranges for the verticals where buyers ask this most. Solar carries a clean price gap. Health insurance and home services do not.
| Vertical | Shared lead | Exclusive lead | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar | $25 to $100 | $100 to $250 | ActiveProspect, Jul 31 2026 |
| HVAC | $25 to $75 | $45 to $300 | PipelineOn, May 18 2026 |
| U65 private health | $10 to $25 | $25 to $60 | Aged Lead Store, Mar 13 2026 |
| ACA marketplace | $10 to $30 | $30 to $80 | Aged Lead Store, Mar 13 2026 |
The biggest published gap is an absolute one. EverQuote, the largest publicly traded lead marketplace, tells its own agents that a shared auto lead costs “$4-5 dollars less per lead than when purchasing an exclusive lead” on its agent education page. That page dates to September 15, 2020, so read it as the marketplace’s framing rather than today’s rate card. A few dollars sits a long way from the two-to-five-times premium the category asserts.
In HVAC the exclusive label can cost less than the shared one. Fixr, which sells exclusive HVAC leads, publishes a table putting a two-buyer repair lead at $100 against exclusive repair leads at $80 to $120. A seller of exclusive inventory pricing exclusive below shared is arguing against its own premium, which is what makes the figure worth repeating. That page carries no byline and no date.
How many buyers a shared lead really goes to
Two companies publish measured distribution numbers, and both are around two buyers. EverQuote states that its “shared leads are distributed with a maximum of three insurance agencies” and that “on average, EverQuote sends one consumer lead to 1.9 agents.” SolarReviews, the largest residential solar lead supplier, states on its solar leads page that “on average, our leads are only sold to 2.3 companies per lead.”
The number everyone repeats is three to five, and nobody measured it. That figure appears verbatim across unrelated vendor pages, including Aged Lead Store’s “3-5 agents per lead” for ACA. One widely read guide claims Angi leads reach three to eight contractors and sometimes sixteen. None carries a denominator.
This changes the arithmetic you were sold. A premium justified by “you are one of eight” looks different when the honest answer is you are one of two. Ask any seller for the average and maximum buyers per lead in writing, and ask what the average actually was last month.
The close-rate gap you were quoted is unsourced
Every published comparison asserts exclusive leads close far better, and none shows its work. Across the vendor pages we read, shared close rates are quoted from 2 percent to 20 percent and exclusive from 10 percent to 60 percent. The claims contradict each other by a wider margin than the effect they describe.
The most-copied version of this table labels itself an example. OneLife Marketing Solutions publishes a widely mirrored comparison showing 18 percent for shared web leads against 28 percent for exclusive, captioned as a representative Medicare Supplement funnel comparison with no methodology and no sample size. It is an illustration circulating as data.
The one named-author source we found reports a much smaller gap. Bill Rice’s March 2026 health-insurance breakdown puts fresh exclusive leads at a 10 percent close rate against 7 percent for fresh shared. That is roughly 1.4 times, against the three-to-five-times figure the category advertises. Note who benefits from the larger number: the companies publishing it sell exclusive leads at a premium, and a wide gap is the argument for that premium.
The underlying effect is real. Being second or third to call costs contacts, and Harvard Business School researchers reported in The Short Life of Online Sales Leads that “most companies are not responding nearly fast enough.” The direction is established. The size of it in your account has never been measured for you.
The break-even test, and when each one wins
One line decides this and you can run it today. Exclusive is worth its premium when the price multiple is smaller than the close-rate multiple you actually achieve.
Buy exclusive only if (exclusive price divided by shared price) is less than (exclusive close rate divided by shared close rate).
Run it on the solar numbers above. The midpoint of the shared range is $62.50 and the midpoint of the exclusive range is $175, a 2.8x price multiple. Exclusive solar leads have to close at least 2.8 times better to break even. If shared closes at 3 percent, exclusive needs 8.4 percent before it earns anything. Bill Rice’s measured 1.4x gap in health insurance would fail that test outright.
Now get your own two numbers. Buy 50 exclusive and 50 shared from the same source, same geography, same weeks, routed to the same reps. Track contact rate and close rate separately, because they fail for different reasons. Divide price paid by close rate achieved. That is your cost per acquired customer, and it is the only figure here about your business.
Exclusive wins when losing the race would be fatal. High revenue per customer, a small team, or slow consultative follow-up all point that way. Paying $175 to be the only caller is rational when a close is worth thousands.
Shared wins when you can win the race. Operations dialing in the first minutes convert inventory that slower buyers waste. At $10 to $30 in ACA you can absorb a lower close rate and still land a lower cost per acquired customer. Where the ranges overlap, buy on measured performance and ignore the label. Our HVAC lead generation, solar lead generation and U65 private health pages set out how we price calls and leads in each.
Check the lead is real before you pay for exclusivity
Exclusivity is a pricing term, not a quality term. It tells you how many companies received the record. It says nothing about whether a real person filled in the form. Buying sole ownership of a fabricated lead is the most expensive outcome in this market.
Fake leads travel the same pipes as real ones. Fraud-detection vendor Anura documents that “bots, malware, and human fraud farms are used to fill out forms,” and that fraudsters “purchase aged leads and recycle them as new leads” into ping-post distribution. A recycled record can be sold to you exclusively. The exclusivity is genuine and the lead is still worthless.
Ask for verification at capture before you negotiate exclusivity. That means a one-time passcode proving a real person controlled the phone number, plus bot and spam screening at submission. We cover this in our guide to verifying leads with one-time passcodes. A verified shared lead beats an unverified exclusive one at any price here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between exclusive and shared leads?
An exclusive lead is sold to one buyer. A shared lead is sold to several buyers at the same time, so you contact the same consumer as your competitors. In a ping-post auction the seller sends limited details to multiple buyers, collects bids, then delivers the full record. Astoria Company describes the exclusive version plainly: the full lead information is posted exclusively to the winning buyer, and the loser of the auction never sees the consumer’s personal data. Exclusivity is a setting the seller controls, so it is a commercial term rather than a technical property of the lead.
How much more do exclusive leads cost?
It depends on the vertical, and the gap is usually smaller than buyers expect. In solar, ActiveProspect’s July 31, 2026 figures put shared leads at $25 to $100 and exclusive at $100 to $250, about 2.8 times at the midpoints. In under-65 private health, Aged Lead Store’s March 2026 breakdown shows $10 to $25 shared against $25 to $60 exclusive. EverQuote tells its own agents the difference on auto leads is $4 to $5 per lead. In HVAC, exclusive leads can cost less than shared ones. Get the quote rather than trusting the label.
How many buyers get a shared lead?
About two, at the marketplaces that publish measured figures. EverQuote states a maximum of three agencies and an average of 1.9 agents per lead. SolarReviews states its leads are sold to an average of 2.3 companies. The widely repeated three-to-five figure, and claims of eight or sixteen buyers, appear across vendor pages without any denominator behind them. Because distribution is a seller configuration rather than a standard, ask for the average and maximum buyers per lead in writing, and ask what the average actually was last month.
Do exclusive leads convert better than shared leads?
Probably, though no independent measurement of the size exists. Every published close-rate comparison we found was produced by a company selling exclusive leads, and the figures contradict each other, spanning 2 to 20 percent for shared and 10 to 60 percent for exclusive. The most widely mirrored table describes itself as a representative example with no methodology. The most granular named-author source, Bill Rice at Aged Lead Store, reports 10 percent for fresh exclusive against 7 percent for fresh shared. Measure it on 50 leads of each before paying a premium sized by someone else’s marketing page.
How do I know if a lead is really exclusive?
Ask three questions and treat the answers as claims to verify. First, how is exclusivity enforced technically, so the same record is not also sold into another buyer’s system. Second, for how long is it exclusive, because some sources sell exclusively for a short window and then resell. Third, what happens when the same consumer surfaces again from a different source you both buy from. A source that stands behind exclusivity answers plainly and usually offers a lookback window and a replacement policy. Vagueness means exclusivity is a label on the invoice.
If you would rather skip the benchmarking exercise, we sell verified calls and leads priced per call and per lead, with the verification layer already in place. Book a free consultation and we will walk through the numbers for your vertical.
