Lead generation
What $200, $500 and $2,000 of B2B leads actually gets you
Lead pricing looks arbitrary until you understand what actually costs money to produce. Then the cheap quotes start to make a different kind of sense.
How much do B2B leads cost?
Between roughly $0.20 and $5.00 per verified contact, depending on how narrow the targeting is and how much of the work is manual. A bulk database export sits at the bottom; a researched list with verified direct emails and a tight qualifying test sits at the top. The price gap is almost entirely about who checked the data and how hard the person was to find.
What actually costs money
Three things, and understanding them explains every price difference you will see:
- How narrow the qualifying test is. “US SaaS companies” is cheap. “US SaaS companies with 50–200 staff using HubSpot whose VP of Sales started in the last year” is expensive, because most candidates get rejected and rejection still takes time.
- Whether anyone verified. A database export is nearly free to produce. Confirming each address is a real mailbox costs money per record.
- How obscure the companies are. Well-known firms are in every database. Independent local businesses are in none, and have to be researched individually.
The tiers
| Budget | Typically buys | What is usually missing |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | 300–800 contacts from a database export against broad criteria. Name, company, generic email. | Verification, direct addresses, decision-maker targeting |
| $500 | 400–1,000 verified contacts against a defined ICP, with LinkedIn URLs and firmographics. | Deep research, hard-to-find sectors, direct dials |
| $2,000 | 500–1,500 researched contacts, narrow qualifying test, verified direct emails, source recorded per record. | Little — at this level you are paying for research time |
Counts are ranges, not promises. A tighter brief always yields fewer rows for the same money, which is the correct outcome.
Why the cheapest tier is rarely cheapest
Take 1,000 unverified contacts at $200 — $0.20 each, and it looks excellent.
Now the realistic arithmetic. Around 20% bounce, so 200 are dead on arrival. A further share are the wrong role, because broad criteria cannot target a decision-maker. You are left with perhaps 400 genuinely usable contacts, so the real cost is $0.50 each.
And you have taken a 20% bounce event on your sending domain, which affects every campaign that follows. That cost does not appear on the invoice at all.
Questions that expose a bad quote
- “What is your bounce guarantee?”
A provider confident in verification will replace bounces free. One who says “we cannot control that” has not verified anything.
- “Where does each email come from?”
“Our database” means a copy of unknown age. A real answer names sources and can show the origin of a given row.
- “What happens when you cannot find an address?”
The correct answer is a blank cell. If they always hit the requested count exactly, they are pattern-guessing to fill quota.
- “Can I see 25 free samples first?”
Anyone confident in their work will do this. Verify the samples independently before ordering the full list.
Cost per lead versus cost per meeting
Cost per lead is the wrong number, and it is the one everybody optimises.
Compare: 1,000 unverified contacts at $200 producing three meetings costs $67 per meeting. Three hundred verified, well-targeted contacts at $350 producing eight meetings costs $44 per meeting — from a list that looked nearly twice as expensive per row.
Track cost per meeting booked, not cost per row. It is the only figure that reflects whether the data was any good.
What we charge, and why
Lead generation starts at $350. That covers a defined ICP agreed in writing, sourcing against current company data, verified work emails, LinkedIn profiles and firmographics, delivered CRM-ready.
We will not quote for 10,000 contacts at $200. Not as a negotiating position — producing that volume at that price requires an unverified database export, and we would be selling you a deliverability problem.
Last reviewed 2026-07-28.
Questions
Common questions
What is a good cost per B2B lead?
For a verified, well-targeted contact, $0.50-$2.00 is a realistic range. Below about $0.20 per record you are almost certainly buying an unverified database export. The more useful measure is cost per meeting booked, which accounts for how many of those contacts were real.
Why do lead prices vary so much?
Three factors: how narrow the qualifying criteria are, whether anyone verified the data, and how well-known the target companies are. A broad, unverified list of large companies is cheap to produce. A narrow, verified list of small independents is not.
Are cheap B2B leads worth it?
Rarely. The bounce rate means you pay for records you cannot use, and the reputation damage to your sending domain persists well beyond that campaign. A smaller verified list almost always produces more meetings per pound spent.
Can I get a sample before buying?
You should always ask, and any confident provider will agree. We send 25 sample leads free against your actual criteria so you can verify them independently before committing.
How long does a lead list take to build?
A straightforward brief for well-known companies: 2-5 working days. A narrow qualifying test in a hard-to-research sector: one to two weeks. Anyone promising thousands of researched contacts in 24 hours is running a database export.
Want this done for you?
Send a sample of your data. We will tell you what is wrong with it and what it would take to fix — free, within one business hour.