Angi vs Thumbtack: how the two lead platforms compare for service pros

Angi or Thumbtack: which one fits your business?

If you want tight control over what each lead costs and you can reply within minutes, Thumbtack gives you more levers to pull. If you want a steady monthly flow and are willing to work inside a budget or subscription that someone else prices, Angi is built for that. Both sell access to a customer who started on their site, and both bill you whether or not you end up doing the work.

Both are big. Thumbtack's pro sign-up page claims more than 30,000 leads a day. Angi's second-quarter 2026 release reports about 4.8 million leads in the quarter, down 13% from a year earlier, and an average of 106,000 active pros a month, 17% below a year earlier.

This page puts the two side by side using their own documents: Angi's SEC filings and help center, and Thumbtack's help center and Terms of Use, read in October 2026. If you are also weighing whether to buy leads at all, our three-way page on Angi, Thumbtack and owning your leads covers that question.

How does each platform charge you?

Angi. Its Form 10-K for 2025 names four ways pros bought in 2025: a monthly budget of leads at full price, a subscription package of discounted leads, double opt-in leads purchased singly, and offerings sold at a set price. The filing says lead revenue depends on the service requested, the product experience and the location. It also says the membership package comes with access to referrals that generally cost extra, so membership and leads arrive as separate charges. Angi publishes no price list for pros.

Thumbtack. Thumbtack's help article on paying for leads says Thumbtack aims to price each lead by what the job is worth, so the figure shifts with the kind and size of job, local pro supply and your market. When a customer reaches out to you directly from search results and the job matches your job preferences, you auto-pay for the lead. You choose the amount: a slider in the Pro app sets your lead prices, and that figure is the exact amount you pay per lead. Thumbtack's article on setting lead prices adds that you set a price for every service you offer, that Thumbtack may occasionally adjust its minimum prices (prices at or near the minimum may rise automatically when the minimums change, and Thumbtack says it will let you know), and that a weekly budget caps your total spend across all services. Opportunities (also called open leads) work the other way around. The price is visible before you write, and the fee applies only when the customer writes back.

The practical difference is who holds the dial. On Thumbtack you decide how aggressive to be on price, service by service. On Angi the package you choose sets the terms, and the per-lead price is Angi's call.

As for actual dollars, neither company publishes a rate card. Third-party reports put Angi leads at roughly $15 to $85 and Thumbtack leads at about $10 to over $100, depending on trade, job size and market (both figures reported by Housecall Pro in 2026, a software vendor, not by either platform). Treat those as rough ranges. Your own invoices are the only numbers that count.

How many other pros are chasing the same customer?

Thumbtack publishes a number. Under its Quality Commitment, a customer can reach no more than five pros while a search is less than four hours old, and more once that window closes. Thumbtack says most customers contact fewer, and the lead itself shows you how many pros the customer has reached out to. That count is useful: a lead where you are one of two is worth a faster, more careful reply than one where you are the fifth.

Angi now publishes a cap too. Its leads and Opportunities FAQ says Angi matches each homeowner request with up to five pros, and it attaches no time window. Two more things are on the record. First, in January 2025 Angi switched nearly all of its domestic experiences to homeowner choice, meaning a homeowner is connected only to pros the homeowner selects (Angi Q1 2025 earnings release). Second, its 10-K defines a lead as a connection between a consumer and a pro and adds that one homeowner's request may turn into several leads. The filing's 2025 totals, 20.195 million leads from 15.543 million service requests, come to roughly 1.3 leads for each request (our arithmetic). In the second quarter of 2026 the ratio was lower: 4.838 million leads against 4.311 million requests, or roughly 1.1 per request. Those are averages across every request, so they tell you little about any one job.

So both platforms now name the same ceiling of five. On Thumbtack the limit lasts four hours and the lead shows the count. On Angi the limit has no time window, and we found no statement that the lead shows how many other pros the homeowner chose.

What happens when a lead goes bad?

This is where the two differ most, so read both policies before you spend.

Angi gives credits, on conditions. The Angi lead credit page lists conditions before Angi will consider one. The lead has to be younger than 45 days, Angi expects a call attempt to the homeowner inside the first 24 hours, the account has to be in good standing, and pros on an annual subscription are excluded. Qualifying reasons are bad contact information, a job outside your ZIPs, work you don't do, a repeat of a lead from the past 45 days, or a charge made while leads were paused. Approved credits are applied on their own against later lead charges, and any still unused six months after they were issued lapse.

Thumbtack refunds some leads automatically and reviews the rest. Its refund policy describes automatic refunds for leads flagged by its Trust and Safety team and for Smart Match leads you turn down as the wrong fit, and the Quality Commitment adds a Fair Shot Refund when the customer has not answered any pro within 72 hours. A Thumbtack moderator restated that rule on the company's community forum on October 29, 2026, and an earlier reply in the same thread says the refund may be issued if Thumbtack's requirements are met. Anything else is case by case: you ask within 45 days of the charge, and the policy lists the situations most likely to qualify, such as a job that changed significantly, an invalid phone number, a fixed date you had already blocked off, a Terms of Use violation, a duplicate within 45 days, or a first reply of no thanks on an Opportunity. Thumbtack says it usually answers within 24 to 48 hours, and that all refunds are at its sole discretion.

Where the money lands matters too. Approved Thumbtack refunds land in your Thumbtack account unless you act. Moving the money to your card means contacting Thumbtack within 10 business days of approval, and prepaid credit packages, promotional balances and courtesy credits are never paid out to a card. Angi's help page describes credits applied automatically to future Angi lead charges and says nothing about refunds to a card.

Both platforms say the same thing about the most common disappointment. Thumbtack's refund FAQ says plainly that a customer choosing another pro is not a reason for a refund, and Angi's 10-K says the fee for a match is due whether or not the work goes to you.

What happens when you leave, or get removed?

Angi. Its help article on deleting business account information says you can no longer see your Angi profile, reviews or past leads once your login is deleted, while your public profile stays searchable. Deleting your login does not cancel your agreement, so you still have to call Angi to cancel and stop lead charges.

Thumbtack. Its Terms of Use (current version dated July 10, 2026) set out these account rules:

• Thumbtack may limit, suspend or close an account with or without cause, and with or without notice.
• A pro whose account is ended that way gets no refund of fees and no compensation.
• Prepaid packages and promotional credits become unusable once Thumbtack suspends or terminates an account.
• Thumbtack's license to the content you posted survives termination, and it has no obligation to delete or return that content.
• Fees are final and non-refundable except as its budget terms or refund policy allow.

You can close a Thumbtack account at any time. The practical rule on both platforms is the same: keep prepaid balances low, and copy every customer you win into your own records as you go, because the platform account can end on terms you don't set.

Who does each platform suit?

Thumbtack tends to fit:

• Owners who answer leads from their phone within minutes. Thumbtack's own refund page tells pros to respond as quickly as possible, because the fastest helpful reply often wins the hire.
• Jobs you can price from a description and a few photos, so the first message can include a real number.
• Owners who want to raise or lower spend by service, week to week, without calling a sales rep.
• Businesses that like seeing how many competitors are on a lead before deciding how hard to chase it.

Angi tends to fit:

• Companies with someone in the office who calls every new lead within hours, well inside the 24-hour call attempt Angi's credit rules expect anyway.
• Owners who prefer a fixed monthly budget or package over managing prices service by service.
• Trades with steady, repeatable request types, where a subscription of discounted leads can be planned around.

Neither is a good fit for a crew that can't pick up the phone during the day. On both platforms a lead you reach late is a lead you paid for and probably lost. Our guide to speed to lead covers how to fix that before you spend anything.

How to test them against each other

1. Run each for the same 60 days in the same services and area, so season and demand are equal.
2. Tag every lead by source in your CRM the moment it arrives. Our guide to tracking lead sources shows a simple setup.
3. Log every credit and refund request with the date, the reason and the outcome. A credit or refund lowers your real cost only if you actually use it or get it back on your card, so record which ones you used.
4. Compare cost per booked job, including membership or package fees, minus credits you actually used. Credits that expired count as money spent. The lead cost calculator does the arithmetic.
5. Keep the winner only for the services where the numbers hold. Platforms often work for one job type and not another.

The option that isn't on either platform

Both marketplaces bill per lead, and the flow of new leads depends on your budget staying funded. The owned route removes that toll for customers who can find you directly: a website laid out by service, a Business Profile collecting reviews, phones someone always picks up, and a CRM that keeps every customer you win, wherever they came from. It takes months to build, so most owners run it alongside a marketplace at first. We run our own service companies on that stack, and the first jobs any platform sends you are the cheapest place to start it: put each one in your own list and ask for a Google review.

Frequently asked questions