They say
“Thumbtack already shows my leads and hires.”
We say
It shows what happens on the platform. What the job was worth is on your invoice, which it never sees.
For Thumbtack
Being in the shortlist is what you pay for. Being picked is what pays you.
Export your Thumbtack leads, match them against paid jobs, and find out which categories and which job sizes are worth being in.
No API key Nothing to install in ThumbtackNothing to install No card requiredNo card
Thumbtack sits on the lead side in CloseRev: export the leads it sent you, each with the customer's contact details and the job they described, and match them against the invoices in your own system. Customers on a marketplace like this are usually weighing several pros at once, so the useful number is not how many leads arrived but how many ended in a paid job — and at what size. Revenue with no traceable lead is reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against Thumbtack's own documentation on September 25, 2026.
The gap
The leads come in at a steady rate. The jobs do not, and the two numbers have never been put side by side.
Thumbtack sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Customer phone or email
On each lead. Once the customer replies, the contact detail is what joins them to your own records.
- Needed
Service category and job details
What they asked for. Job size varies enormously within one category, and it decides what a win is worth.
- Needed
Lead date
When it arrived, which anchors the window.
- Optional
What the lead cost
Where you record it. It turns revenue per lead into cost per paid job.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Thumbtack.
Written for somebody with Thumbtack open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export your leads
One row per lead with the customer's contact detail, the category and the date.
-
Export paid jobs
From your invoicing system: contact detail, amount, date.
-
Keep the leads that went quiet
A customer who never replied still cost the lead, and they are the part of the file that says most about fit.
-
Split by category before comparing
A pro who does both small repairs and large installs is really in two marketplaces with different economics.
-
Upload both
The join runs on the phone and the email, normalised, with job size carried through.
What comes back
The page Thumbtack cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Home Services page — not from a Thumbtack account.
Traced to a channel$323,10068% of $475,200
Sales matched100 of 171high confidence only
Average sale$2,820per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 54 | $218,600 | |
| Meta Ads | 29 | $66,500 | |
| Email marketing | 17 | $38,000 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 71 | $152,100 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the lead and the ad share a row.
A comparison marketplace sells a place in the shortlist
On a marketplace where the customer describes a job and then looks at several pros, what the pro buys is the chance to be considered.
Whether they are chosen depends on price, reviews, response time and how the profile reads — most of which the pro controls and none of which appears in a lead count.
So a rising lead count with a flat number of paid jobs is not the marketplace getting worse. It is the pro being shortlisted more often and chosen at the same rate.
Matching leads to invoices separates the two, and the win rate that falls out is the number worth working on.
It is also the number most likely to be improved without spending anything more on the marketplace.
Job size decides whether a category is worth being in
Within a single category, a job can be an hour or a week. A lead for each costs broadly the same thing to receive and produces completely different revenue.
Averaged together, the small jobs drag the value of the category down and the large ones make it look better than it is for most leads.
Carrying the invoice amount through lets the report show the distribution rather than the average: how many wins were small, how many were large, and which categories produced which.
Pros who run this often find one or two categories carry the channel and the rest cost more than they return, which is a settings change rather than a cancellation.
Price comparison attracts price comparison
Where customers see several quotes side by side, the ones most likely to reply are frequently the ones shopping hardest on price.
That is a reasonable market, and it is a different market from a customer who called one business because a neighbour recommended it.
Measured together in one report, they look like the same thing. Measured apart, the marketplace customer usually wins less often and spends less when they do.
Neither is wrong. Knowing which is which is what lets a pro decide how much of the diary to hand to each.
A quiet lead is information, not noise
Many leads go nowhere: the customer hired someone else, changed their mind, or never read the reply.
Dropped from the file, those leads make the channel look efficient; kept, they show how often the pro is being considered and passed over.
Where the pattern concentrates in particular categories or particular times of day, it points at the profile, the pricing or the response time rather than at the marketplace itself.
The report keeps them visible for exactly that reason, next to the leads that became jobs.
Fair questions
“Thumbtack already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Most of my leads never reply.”
We say
Then that is the most useful part of the file, because it shows where you are being passed over.
They say
“I do lots of different jobs.”
We say
Which is why the report splits by category — a pro in several categories is really in several marketplaces.
No. It reads a file you exported, so your profile, messages and account stay where they are.
Your leads with the customer's contact detail, category and date, plus paid jobs from your own invoicing system.
You paid for them, and they are the clearest signal of where you are being considered and not chosen.
Yes, and it is usually the most useful split. A pro in several categories is effectively in several different marketplaces.
More than anything else in the file. The report shows the spread of job values, not just the average.
Yes, on revenue per lead and cost per paid job, which every channel can be put on.
Long enough for the job to be booked and paid — days for small jobs, longer for larger ones.
If the contact detail matches, the job is matched to the lead. That is the point of joining on the customer rather than on the platform's own record.
Yes — paid jobs divided by leads, per category, which is the number most likely to improve without extra spend.
Any paid job with no matching lead from any source. Its size is stated rather than distributed.
A contact detail, a category and a date on one side; a contact detail, an amount and a date on the other. No messages, no reviews, no job descriptions beyond the category. Encrypted in transit and at rest and deleted with the import.
Revenue per lead and cost per paid job by category, the spread of job sizes, quiet leads kept visible, and everything unmatched reported.
By trade
Trades that run Thumbtack.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Home ServicesWhich ads produced jobs, not just calls?
- Landscaping & Lawn CareWhich channels produced booked, paid work?
- Painting ContractorsWhich channels produced accepted estimates?
- ElectriciansWhich channels produced booked electrical work?
- Pest ControlWhich channels produced recurring customers?
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Lead and call file Angi Home service pros Lead and call file What to export Lead and call file Yelp Local businesses Lead and call file What to export Closed-sales file Jobber Landscaping, cleaning, pest control and small trades Closed-sales file What to export
All 119 systems 
Thumbtack and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in Thumbtack, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.