You pay for an Angi or Thumbtack lead. The same homeowner may be contacting other contractors at the same moment. If your response routine is "someone sees the email when they get to it," you are paying for a lead and handing it to whoever gets there first.
This post covers what the two platforms say about how they distribute leads, which numbers you will see online that we could not verify, and a response routine built for paid leads. It extends the standards in how fast should a contractor respond to a lead.
What we checked, and what we could not
Platform rules change often, and some of the figures repeated by third-party blogs are not on the platform's own pages. We read the platforms' own pages in October 2026. Confirm the current rules in your own account before you change a process.
How Angi Leads distributes leads
Angi's pro-facing help site still carries the older HomeAdvisor name in places. The Angi Leads FAQ page says the service will "connect customers with multiple Angi Leads service professionals," and that lead fees differ by job size. The page does not give a number of professionals per lead and says nothing about response times.
You may see claims elsewhere that Angi sends a lead to up to four pros, with a different rule for homeowner-selected leads, and that calling within 15 minutes makes a connection twice as likely. Those figures were reported in search summaries of Angi's pro help pages. The pages that reportedly hold them redirected to a "not found" page when we tried to open them, so we could not confirm either number and do not rely on them here. If you have access to your Angi Leads account help center, look there.
What is safe to say: Angi sells the same homeowner request to more than one contractor.
How Thumbtack distributes leads
Thumbtack's pro jobs page describes the flow from the customer's side. Customers enter location, project details and deadline, and Thumbtack shows them a list of professionals who could be a good fit. Pros appear when their services and criteria, such as project type and travel range, match the request.
On cost, the same page says creating an account is free, and "you only pay when a lead contacts you." The cost depends on job size and location. Pros set a weekly spending limit and choose how many customers they want. The page tells pros to check the job details and reply quickly once a customer makes contact, and adds that winning the job is then up to the pro.
The page does not state how many professionals a customer sees, and it does not mention a response-time feature or auto-reply. A figure of four to five contractors per project circulates on third-party blogs. It is not from Thumbtack, and we could not verify it. Thumbtack has also changed its pricing and matching features over time, so use your account settings as the source of truth.
What this means for your response
Neither platform publishes a clean number of competitors, so plan for more than one. Three consequences follow.
Your edge is the first hour. On a shared lead, you control only one thing: how quickly you make a real contact. Price, reviews and availability are largely set before the lead arrives.
Notification routing is the first failure point. Paid leads often arrive as an app notification, an email or a text to a single person's phone. If that person is on a roof, in a crawl space or off shift, the lead sits. Route notifications to a shared inbox or a phone that someone always watches.
Cost per lead changes the math. If a lead costs you $40 and you reach 20% of them, your real cost is $200 per conversation. Missing leads is not a free mistake. Track the cost of the leads you never reached.
A response routine for paid leads
This is our recommended routine, not a platform requirement. It matches the paid-lead row in the response-time standard.
- Minute 0 to 5: call. One person owns it. Open with the job details from the lead so the customer knows you read it.
- Minute 5: text. If there is no answer, text right away. Name, company, one question about the job, two time options.
- Hour 1: second call. Different person if possible.
- Same day, evening: third touch. A call or text after the workday.
- Day 1 to 3: two more touches. Then slow down. The rest of the cadence is in our follow-up cadence guide.
- Log the outcome. Reached, booked, no answer, wrong number, out of area. Flag leads you could not reach so you can ask the platform about credits where its terms allow. Check your account for the current policy.
What to measure
For each platform, by month:
- Leads received and cost per lead.
- Median time to first contact attempt.
- Share of leads reached.
- Booked jobs and revenue per lead.
- Cost per booked job.
If the numbers show a lead source with a high cost per booked job and slow response times, fix the response before you cancel the source. A bad response routine makes every lead source look worse than it is. If the numbers stay poor with a fast response, then you have learned something real about the source.
Where automation helps and where it does not
An instant text ("Hi Maria, this is Dana at Ridge Plumbing. Got your water heater request. Is it leaking right now?") buys you a minute and starts the conversation. It does not replace the call. For paid leads, the human call at minute 5 still matters most.
Check the platform's rules before you wire automation into lead notifications. Some platforms limit how their lead data can be used or sent to other tools, and texting has its own rules. Our TCPA texting guide covers the latter. It is general information, not legal advice, so confirm with counsel.
For the bigger picture on what research does and does not say about response speed, read what the speed-to-lead research says. If you want the routing, first reply and follow-up built into your field service software, that is what our Booked-Jobs Recovery System does. See also our AI lead generation and follow-up service.
Frequently asked questions
How many contractors get the same Angi lead?
Angi's own pro FAQ says it connects customers with multiple service professionals but does not give a number on the page we could read. Third-party sources cite specific counts that we could not verify. Plan for competition.
Does Thumbtack tell me how many pros a customer sees?
Not on its pro jobs page. It says customers see a list of professionals who match their request, and that pros pay when a lead contacts them. It gives no count.
How fast should I respond to an Angi or Thumbtack lead?
We recommend a call within five minutes and a text right after if there is no answer. That is our operating standard, not a platform rule.
Should I automate the first reply to marketplace leads?
An instant acknowledgment helps. The live call still matters. Check the platform's data-use terms and the texting rules before you automate.