Cost Per Call in 2026: Pay-Per-Call Pricing by Vertical (Insurance, Mortgage, Home Services)

About these numbers

This guide collects what the industry publicly reports, cites and dates every figure, and shows how to compare quotes on the same terms. Every figure is a range a named company published. Treat it as context for a quote, not a market rate. "Accessed" means the page carried no date and was read on November 1, 2026.

We don't publish our own rate card here. Our pricing is set per program (see "How MGM ScaleCraft prices" below).

Cost per call by vertical: what the industry publishes (as of October 2026)

Insurance: auto, home, Medicare, ACA, final expense

Auto is the high-volume line, and its published ranges sit in a narrower band. Quotely (updated August 2026) reports vendor auto calls at $35–$60, citing Elevarus's 2026 guide. AllCalls (March 30, 2026) lists inbound auto at $35–$55. OneLife Marketing Solutions (updated October 17, 2026) lists high-risk auto live transfers at $25–$55.

Home insurance has fewer public prices. AllCalls lists a standard homeowners call at $60–$75 with a 90–120 second billable duration, and $85–$110 for high-value properties ($500k+) at 120 seconds. Quotely's $30–$40 home figure measures something different: the media cost of calls an agency generates itself, with no per-call vendor margin. Don't put it next to a vendor quote as if it were the same product.

Medicare has the widest spread and the strongest seasonality. Published figures for the same "Medicare call" include:

• $40–$55 raw inbound and $50–$65 warm transfer for Medicare Advantage, with 120s and 90s thresholds (Elevarus, May 10, 2026, which labels them "operator observations, not published market rates").
• $45–$120 for a Medicare Advantage inbound call or live transfer, and $55–$125 for Medicare Supplement (OneLife, updated October 17, 2026).
• $45–$90, "AEP-weighted" (Quotely, August 2026).
• $17–$26 per call at a 15–25 second buffer, reported by an agency owner on r/InsuranceAgent (August 2026). That buffer is a fraction of the 90–120 seconds most vendor guides describe, which accounts for much of the price gap.

Insurance seasonality: AEP and Open Enrollment

Seasonality matters as much as the vertical. The Medicare Annual Enrollment Period runs October 15–December 7, and the Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment Period runs January 1–March 31, according to Medicare.gov. Sources disagree on how much AEP moves prices. OneLife expects "20–45% price inflation on Medicare leads during AEP." Quotely, citing HyperTarget's 2026 benchmarks, says Medicare payouts "roughly double or triple" in that window.

ACA demand clusters in HealthCare.gov Open Enrollment, November 1–January 15. OneLife lists ACA calls and transfers at $32–$85 in general and ACA transfers during OEP at $25–$45.

Mortgage and HELOC

Few vendors publish mortgage call prices, and almost none publish HELOC call prices. Here is what we found:

• MortgageLeads.com (2026 guide) puts pay-per-call at $30–$80 and live transfers at $75–$150.
• Mortgage Leads Co publishes live transfers at $95–$150, billed after 90 seconds: purchase $95, refinance $125–$145, cash-out refinance $135–$150, DSCR $150.
• Axel PR lists exclusive mortgage calls from $125 (reviewed September 30, 2026) and notes that buyers in busy metros often bid above the starting rate.
• For HELOC specifically, Live Calls and Leads lists exclusive direct inbound live calls starting at $55, with a 90-second buffer and a 500-call monthly minimum. Highlimit Leads does not publish a rate. It quotes HELOC transfers per campaign, also on a 90-second connection.

Mortgage pricing drivers

Product mix moves mortgage pricing more than any headline. Cash-out and investor (DSCR) calls are priced above purchase calls on the same rate card. Licensing footprint and state targeting also shift the quote. Our mortgage leads buyer's guide covers purchase vs refinance intent and the numbers lenders should track.

Home services: roofing, solar, HVAC, plumbing, windows

Home-services prices vary with the value of the job. Service Direct publishes the ranges its marketplace clients set: roofing $85–$550, air conditioning and heating $65–$325, plumbing $60–$255, electrician $55–$175, pest control $40–$195 and water damage restoration $500–$2,250. GetCallz lists exclusive calls at roofing $200–$300, HVAC $100–$150, plumbing $100–$180 and solar $150–$250, with a 60-second qualification buffer on solar. Axel PR lists exclusive solar calls from $165.

We found no published per-call price for window replacement that we could verify, so we don't quote one. Treat windows as quoted per program.

Financial and credit

We found no public per-call price for personal-finance or credit verticals that came from an identifiable seller and could be verified. Buyers in these verticals should expect pricing per program and should ask for the same terms listed in the next section.

What's inside a price: the terms that move it

Two quotes for the "same" call can describe different products. Before you compare prices, line up these terms.

• Billable duration (buffer). This is the number of seconds a call must stay connected before you're charged. OneLife notes that 60, 90 and 120 seconds are all common. Elevarus recommends 90 seconds for warm transfers, 120 for raw inbound and 180 for aged calls, while one practitioner reports Medicare calls at a 15–25 second buffer. A low price on a short buffer can cost more per real conversation than a high price on a long one.
• Inbound vs transfer, and screening depth. OneLife's 2026 ladder for insurance prices a raw inbound call at $28–$60, a screened inbound call at $40–$85, a standard live transfer at $45–$110 and a deep-qualified transfer at $85–$160. The word "call" can cover any of those four products.
• Exclusivity. You need to know whether the caller goes to one buyer or to several. Mortgage Leads Co, for example, defines shared as "sold to a maximum of 3 buyers." Exclusive and shared calls are different products and shouldn't be compared on price alone.
• Credit and dispute window. Find out what happens to wrong numbers, out-of-area callers and calls under the threshold, and how long you have to dispute them. Axel PR states a 7-day credit window. Elevarus recommends windows of 7 days for warm transfers, 14 for raw inbound and 30 for aged calls. Our own window is 72 hours (see below). OneLife's example: "A $55 transfer with a 120-second billable threshold and no returns is often worse than a $75 transfer with a 90-second threshold and a clean credit process."
• Geography. Service Direct says "more competitive areas of the country command higher Call Lead prices." Axel PR says buyers in busy metros often bid above its starting rate.
• Consent and records. Ask whether each call comes with a TrustedForm certificate or Jornaya LeadiD, recordings and source details, and how long those records are kept. Documented sourcing costs more to produce than unverified traffic. Our compliance overview lists what we provide.
• Season. AEP (October 15–December 7) and ACA Open Enrollment (November 1–January 15) concentrate demand. Published estimates of the AEP premium range from 20–45% (OneLife) to "double or triple" (HyperTarget, via Quotely).

From cost per call to cost per sale

The per-call price matters less than what you pay per sale. Our Is Pay-Per-Call Worth It? page sets out the breakeven: breakeven cost per call = average ticket × close rate on inbound calls. Any price below that is profitable on media. Any price above it is not. Three published examples show how terms change the result:

• Duration changes the real price. Elevarus's effective-price formula is headline bid × (calls billable at 60s ÷ calls billable at your real threshold). In its example, if only 65% of warm transfers last 90 seconds, a $65 headline bid works out to about $100 per real transfer.
• Insurance, per bound policy. Quotely walks through a $1,500 spend that produces 54 calls (about $27.78 each). At 55% call-to-quote and 31% quote-to-bind, that's about 9 policies, or roughly $167 per bound policy. Run through the same funnel, a $55 vendor auto call lands near $325 per bound policy. Those are Quotely's own funnel rates, not a market average.
• Mortgage, per funded loan. Mortgage Leads Co's formula is cost per funded loan = lead price ÷ contact rate ÷ close rate. For inbound calls, the contact rate is effectively your answer rate, so missed calls raise the true cost.

Use your own rates

Use your own close, quote and fund rates. Neither our numbers nor a vendor's will match your sales floor. If you haven't measured your inbound close rate yet, run a short test before you scale.

Why published ranges disagree

The table above is less a contradiction than three different measurements:

• Marketplace bids vs network averages. Service Direct's roofing range ($85–$550) shows what contractors choose to bid for an exclusive call. Elevarus (April 29, 2026) points out that Aragon Advertising publishes about $60 for roofing as a representative cost inside its network, roughly ten times lower than Service Direct's top end. Both figures are accurate for what they measure.
• Buy side vs sell side. Some published numbers are publisher payouts, not buyer prices. Elevarus (as of September 2026) cautions that one network's $36–$48 ACA figure "is the publisher payout, not what a buyer pays."
• Different terms. The $17–$26 Medicare call on a 15–25 second buffer and the $45–$120 Medicare call in OneLife's table aren't the same product, and the buffer accounts for much of the gap.
• Self-generated vs bought. Quotely's $24–$40 auto and $30–$40 home figures are media costs for calls an agency generates for itself, not a vendor's per-call price.

Read the terms, not the midpoint

Look at the terms, not the midpoint. A quote that falls inside every published range tells you very little until you know the buffer, exclusivity, screening, credit window and consent records behind it.

A note on consent rules in 2026

Several vendor pages still say one-to-one consent is legally required. The FCC's 2023 one-to-one consent rule never took effect. The FCC postponed its effective date, and the Eleventh Circuit then vacated that part of the rule, with its mandate issued April 30, 2025. The FCC formally removed the revised language and reinstated the prior version of 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9), effective August 29, 2025.

The TCPA's existing consent requirements still apply. Many buyers still require seller-specific consent records as a matter of policy. A certificate doesn't guarantee compliance on its own, so have counsel review your campaigns.

How MGM ScaleCraft prices

We don't publish a rate card because the cost of a call depends on the program. Our pricing depends on vertical, geography, call-duration requirements and volume, and we set a cost per call or cost per lead that fits your unit economics. The terms we commit to are:

• Exclusive, owned traffic. Calls and leads come from our own consumer brands, with media bought in-house on Meta, TikTok and NewsBreak. Nothing is passed to a second buyer.
• A consent certificate on every lead. Every lead carries a TrustedForm certificate or Jornaya LeadiD, retained and retrievable for 5 years.
• A 72-hour credit window for verifiable wrong numbers, out-of-footprint transfers and calls under the agreed duration, backed by Ringba and Retreaver dispute logs.
• No long-term contracts and no setup fees. Most partners go live within 3–5 business days of onboarding.

Compare quotes on the same terms

If you're comparing quotes, send us the terms you've been offered and we'll quote against the same terms. You can also compare models in Pay-Per-Call vs Pay-Per-Lead.

FAQs