Local Services Ads vs Thumbtack: what each one charges for

Mid-October changes a service calendar. Plumbers are a few cold nights from frozen-pipe calls, cleaners are booking holiday deep cleans, and movers are watching the summer rush drain away. It is a good week to decide where winter leads come from, and two pay-per-lead options usually end up side by side: Google’s Local Services Ads and Thumbtack.

Both charge per lead rather than per click. The differences hide in the fine print: what counts as a lead, how many other pros the customer is talking to, and what you get back when a lead goes nowhere.

Local Services Ads, as of this fall

Local Services Ads are the listings at the top of a Google search with a name, a star rating and, in most home service categories, a Google Verified badge. You choose service categories, job types and an area, not keywords, and Google decides which searches you appear for.

You pay for valid leads, and the definition is worth reading slowly. An answered call counts, and so do a text, an email, a voicemail and a booking request. So does a missed call during your business hours if the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds. The same customer is not charged again within 15 days of your last interaction, and Google credits leads it later judges to be poor quality. It no longer credits leads outside the job types or areas you serve, so the settings have to be right the first time.

The badge changed a year ago. Starting in October 2025 Google folded its older badges into one Google Verified badge, and the money-back guarantee ended for jobs booked from December 7, 2025. Thumbtack’s customer guarantee, covering money back and property damage, continues.

In August 2026 Google started folding selected Local Services accounts into ordinary Google Ads, where they run as Performance Max campaigns that still bill per lead; plumbing, house cleaning and moving were among the first categories to go. Its migration page says service-area businesses without a storefront follow in late 2026, and the administrator on your profile gets an email 14 days before the move. What changes:

• Manual bidding, including a hand-set maximum cost per lead, goes away. Separate targets per category now mean separate campaigns, which for now are set up through the Local Services sign-up page rather than inside Google Ads.
• Old performance reports do not move across. Google says a download will be offered later and to take screenshots first. Lead history and call recordings do move.
• Verification and the badge carry over, and Google allows up to two weeks for results to settle.

Thumbtack, from its own pro help pages

Thumbtack is a marketplace. A customer describes the project, answers a few questions and sees matching pros. When one contacts you and the job fits your preferences, you are charged automatically, at a lead price you set per service, out of a weekly budget that resets on Monday.

There are three other ways in. Opportunities are customers who contacted other pros without hiring anyone: quoting is free, you pay only if the customer replies, and each one closes after 48 hours or once five pros show interest. Preset jobs arrive already scheduled with no upfront charge; Thumbtack keeps a percentage of the job price instead, and offers them for some services to pros who meet criteria such as three or more reviews. Smart matching may send leads outside your preferences; decline one as not a fit and Thumbtack refunds it.

That refund, like Thumbtack’s others, goes to your Thumbtack balance by default. Its refund policy says it can be sent to the card you paid with instead if you contact support within 10 business days of the approval, unless the lead was paid from a credit package or promotional credit.

Competition is out in the open. A customer can contact five pros in the first four hours of a search, and when you reply through Thumbtack, each lead shows how many pros they messaged. Fair Shot Refunds credit the lead automatically when the customer replies to no pro within 72 hours, but only if you responded within four business hours, made first contact through Thumbtack, and kept your own number and email to yourself until the customer replied.

Side by side

	Local Services Ads	Thumbtack
How a lead reaches you	A Google searcher picks your profile, then calls, messages or books	A customer contacts you from matched results, or you quote on an Opportunity
Exclusive or compared	The caller picked your profile but may also try other advertisers, and Google does not show you whether they did	Up to five pros in the first four hours; replying through Thumbtack shows how many were contacted
What you pay for	Valid leads: calls, missed calls held past 20 seconds in business hours, messages, voicemails, bookings	Leads at your set price, Opportunities only on a reply, Preset jobs by a share of the job
Badge and screening	Google Verified, after checks that vary by category and location	Owner background check for every account, license verification in some trades, earned badges such as “Responds Quickly”; the Thumbtack Guarantee (money-back and property damage) still covers customers
Customer relationship and data	Leads page in Google Ads, downloadable into your CRM; messages pass through proxy numbers	Thumbtack messenger and numbers; a webhook can send each lead’s name and phone, but no email, to your tools
Reviews you build	Live on your Google Business Profile, shown across Search and Maps	Live on Thumbtack; up to 100 recent Google reviews can be imported in

Strengths and weak spots

Local Services Ads

Pros:

• Sits at the top of Google, where urgent jobs often begin.
• A customer who gets back in touch within 15 days is not billed as a second lead.
• Reviews you earn live on your own Business Profile and keep working beyond the ad.

Cons:

• A lead outside your job types or area is no longer credited back, so a loose setting gets paid for.
• There are no keywords to add or exclude; Google picks the searches.

Thumbtack

Pros:

• Fine controls by job type, travel area, schedule, lead price and weekly budget.
• Quoting on an Opportunity is free until the customer answers.
• Imports Google reviews, which helps an established pro who is new to the platform.

Cons:

• You are often one of several pros in the same conversation.
• Opportunities are charged outside the weekly budget, so that budget is not your ceiling.
• The refund rules mean keeping first contact on Thumbtack until the customer replies, which delays moving them into your own system.
• Reviews earned there mostly stay there.

Which one fits which pro

The plumber who answers live, day and night. Local Services Ads tend to fit. Frozen-pipe searches are urgent, the customer picked your profile, and fast pickup protects both your ranking and your money. If your account has moved into Google Ads, check the new campaign’s settings before the first hard freeze.

The handyman with a long list of small jobs. Thumbtack’s per-service lead prices suit modest tickets where a dead lead stings, and Preset jobs can fill a slow Tuesday if your services qualify.

The mover heading into the quiet months. Both can work. Thumbtack will consider refunding a fixed-date job like a move when you had already blocked that date. On Google, if your account has not moved yet, screenshot last season’s reports first; if it has, watch for the download page Google says is coming.

The cleaner building a recurring route. Either channel can bring a first clean. The return depends on whether it turns into every other week, and that happens in your follow-up, not on the platform.

Any owner who cannot reply for hours while on a job. Fix the answering before either one: Thumbtack’s automatic refunds need a reply within four business hours, and Google says missed calls may hurt your ranking on top of being charged.

Where Beyaoshy comes in

We run Google Ads for service companies, Local Services campaigns included, in ad accounts the business owns. The same team takes care of what happens once the phone rings: an AI receptionist picks up when the crew is up a ladder, and each lead lands in a CRM in the business’s own name with its follow-up already set. If your account has not moved yet, we save last season’s reports first, and we set up per-category campaigns through the Local Services sign-up page while Google Ads cannot.

Before you spend the winter budget

Pull the last three months of leads from both platforms and anything else you pay for. Mark each one booked, lost or never reached, then divide what each channel cost by the jobs it booked. If “never reached” is the longest column, the answering is the problem, and no budget shift will fix it.

Send us that list, or access to both lead pages, and the free plan starts there: we read your Local Services lead log beside your Thumbtack inbox, flag the charges that came from missed calls, out-of-area jobs or customers who went quiet, list the settings you lose when the account moves into Google Ads, and show which channel books your winter work for less.