Thumbtack charges pros for leads, not for membership. Joining is free and there are no annual fees, but every time a customer who matches your job preferences contacts you, Thumbtack charges your card the lead price you set for that service. There is no public rate card: Thumbtack prices leads by job type, job size, how many pros are available and your market, then lets you choose an exact price per service and a weekly cap.
Short answer. On Thumbtack you pay the exact lead price you set for each service, every time a matching customer reaches out, whether or not you get hired. A weekly budget caps the total. What matters is not the price of a lead but the price of a customer: a $25 lead that wins one job in five costs $125 per customer, which is 41.7% of a $300 job. Run your own numbers in the calculator below before raising your bids.
Gig page figure is the Starter plan's 8% on a completed order plus card processing at 2.9% + $0.30, paid only when a client orders. The plan itself is $9 a month.
How much does Thumbtack charge for leads?
Thumbtack charges the exact lead price you set for each service, and the amount differs by trade, job size, local competition and market. Thumbtack's help center says its goal is "to make the cost match how valuable the job is", which is why a wedding photographer and a math tutor in the same city see very different prices. It does not publish a price list, so the only reliable number is the one in your own account.
Two settings decide what you spend. The lead price is what you pay per lead, set per service with a slider in the Pro app under Services, then Manage lead prices; Thumbtack shows an estimate of how many leads each price should bring. The weekly budget is the most you will spend across all services in a week. Thumbtack's own example: a $10 lead price and a $90 budget means nine leads, then nothing until the budget resets on Monday.
One detail catches pros out. Thumbtack may raise its minimum lead prices, and if your prices sit at or near the minimum they can rise automatically. Thumbtack says it will tell you, but check your service prices after any notice.
Does Thumbtack charge a fee to join?
No. Thumbtack's pro page states there is no charge to join, no annual fee and no membership fee. Your cost is the leads. That makes Thumbtack cheap to try and easy to overspend on, because the bill scales with demand rather than staying flat. Your card is charged for each lead as it arrives until you have spent $1,000 in total on the platform; after that, Thumbtack bills in bulk on a day you choose or whenever you reach $50 of spend. Only credit and debit cards are accepted, not prepaid cards.
Direct leads vs Opportunities, and which one you pay for
| Lead type | Who reaches out | When you pay | Price shown first? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct lead | The customer contacts you from search results | Automatically, when the job matches your preferences | No, it is your preset lead price |
| Opportunity (open lead) | You contact the customer first | Only if the customer responds to you | Yes, on the lead details |
Direct leads are the ones that drain budgets, because you pay before you have exchanged a word. Opportunities are safer: you see the fee first, and you pay only when the customer replies. If that first reply is a clear "no thanks", it is one of the situations Thumbtack lists as likely to qualify for a refund.
Do you pay for Thumbtack leads that don't respond?
Not always. Under Thumbtack's Fair Shot Refunds, a lead is refunded automatically if the customer replies to no pro at all within 72 hours of the request. You only qualify if you accepted and answered within four business hours (8am to 8pm your local time), made first contact through Thumbtack messages or a Thumbtack number, and did not share your own phone number or email before the customer replied. Break any of those and the refund is off, even if the customer ghosted everyone.
That last condition shapes your workflow. Keep the first exchange inside Thumbtack, and only once the customer has replied send your own tools, such as a scheduling link for the consultation call. Customers can contact at most five pros in the first four hours of a search, so speed is the other half of winning the job.
Can you get a refund on a Thumbtack lead?
Yes, case by case, within 45 days of the charge. Thumbtack lists the situations that most likely qualify: the job changed significantly (for example, a new location outside your travel area), the customer's first reply on an Opportunity is a clear no, the lead breaks Thumbtack's Terms of Use, the customer needs an inflexible date you had blocked in your calendar, the phone number is invalid, or you got a duplicate lead for an identical job within 45 days. Answers usually come in 24 to 48 hours, and approved refunds go back to your Thumbtack balance, not your card.
What does not qualify is the ordinary case: the customer replied, compared quotes and hired someone else. That is the cost of doing business on a pay-per-lead marketplace, and it is the number the calculator above is built around.
Is Thumbtack worth it for freelancers?
It depends on one ratio: lead spend per customer against the value of a job. Because you pay per lead and win only some of them, the real price of a customer is your lead price multiplied by how many leads it takes to land one job. These are scenarios, not Thumbtack figures; plug in your own from your payment history, which lists every lead and Opportunity you paid for.
| Your lead price | Win 1 in 3 | Win 1 in 5 | Win 1 in 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $30 per customer | $50 per customer | $80 per customer |
| $25 | $75 per customer | $125 per customer | $200 per customer |
| $50 | $150 per customer | $250 per customer | $400 per customer |
Read the table against your job size. A pro who wins one lead in five at $25 spends $125 to land a $300 job, 41.7% of the revenue, before materials or time. The same $125 on a $2,500 wedding shoot is 5%, which is why Thumbtack tends to work for high-ticket local services and hurt on small jobs. Repeat clients change the math in your favor, since the second job from the same customer costs no lead at all.
Thumbtack vs a gig page you share yourself
Thumbtack sells you access to customers who are already searching. A gig page does the opposite job: it turns people you already reach (past clients, referrals, your Instagram, Google Business profile, local Facebook groups) into orders, without paying per inquiry. The two are not substitutes, and many pros run both. The difference is when you pay.
| On a $300 job | Thumbtack | Gig page, Starter | Gig page, Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| When you pay | Every matching lead, hired or not | Only on a completed order | Only on a completed order |
| Cost of this job | Your lead price x leads per win ($125 at $25 and 1 in 5) | $33.00 (8% plus card processing) | $24.00 (5% plus card processing) |
| Monthly fee | None | $9 | $19 |
| Brings new customers | Yes, from Thumbtack search | Category listing; mostly you share the link | Category listing with higher placement |
| Fixed packages with scope | No, you quote each request | Yes, up to three tiers | Yes, unlimited gig pages |
The practical setup for a remote-friendly pro (photographers selling editing packages, designers, videographers, tutors, web designers) is to keep Thumbtack lead prices only on the services where the job value justifies them, and send everyone else to a page with fixed tiers. Our guides to selling graphic design services and selling video editing services show the tier structure, and the freelance fee calculator compares what Fiverr, Upwork and a gig page leave you on the same job.
How to lower your Thumbtack cost per customer
- Price leads by service, not across the board. Thumbtack lets you set a different lead price for each service. Bid up on the jobs worth most to you and down (or off) on the small ones.
- Narrow your job preferences. Every direct lead that matches your preferences is charged automatically, so a loose travel radius or a job type you rarely win is money spent on customers you will not get.
- Answer within four business hours, inside Thumbtack. It is the condition for Fair Shot Refunds and the biggest driver of who gets hired.
- Use Opportunities when your budget is tight. You see the price first and pay only when the customer replies.
- File refunds inside 45 days. Changed jobs, duplicate leads and invalid phone numbers are refundable; most pros never ask.
- Turn won customers into repeat orders off the platform's meter. Give every past client a link to your packages so the next booking costs no lead. Our guide to getting clients without an audience covers where else that link earns its keep.
The short version
Thumbtack is free to join and charges the exact lead price you set each time a matching customer contacts you, capped by a weekly budget, with automatic refunds only when the customer answers no pro at all. There is no published price list, so judge it by cost per customer, not cost per lead: lead price times leads per win, divided by the job value. If that share is above what you would pay a marketplace that only charges on completed orders, move the low-value services to a gig page with fixed packages and keep Thumbtack for the jobs that pay for the lead.