Across all online sources the average is 0.4% to 1.2%. Leads from social ads run 1% to 2%, agents who buy leads commonly report1 to 3%, and 3% to 5% is top-producer territory. Pick the one you actually believe.
The referral and team columns pay no ad spend. Neither costs anything up front, which is the whole reason agents take them, and charging them for a budget they never spent would rig this comparison in our favor.
The referral column assumes 35% of the gross commission. Zillow-style programs take up to 40% of your commission at closing, and 35% sits inside every published or reported range, below the top of each.
The team column assumes a 50/50 split, which is what team agreements commonly set when the team provides the lead and pays for the marketing.
The agency column uses $2,500 a month, the bottom of what agencies publish for full-funnel work: $2,500 to $5,000 a month, ad spend excluded.
The agency column's term is 3 to 12 months, which is what marketing agencies publish generally; every one we read that names a figure sets six or twelve months and charges to leave early. Agencies publish that they run the marketing, not that they answer the lead: where answering and booking exist at all they are a separate paid add-on.
Teams publish no standard term, so the team column reads not applicable rather than claiming an advantage. What a team agreement settles instead is who keeps the leads when you leave, which is not a cost this calculator can price.
The do-it-yourself column on a paid platform uses $299 a month, the bottom of what the lead platforms publish: $299 to $1,800 a month, ad spend extra.
On free tools it uses $20 a month: AI usage and a texting carrier from $10 each, with the video room and the calendar counted at nothing. That is a floor, and it flatters the column.
Ad spend is the same budget under the agency, do-it-yourself and Wizley columns. Under the first two it buys a campaign of your own; under ours it joins your city's campaign, charged to your card with 10 percent on top for running it (7 percent by bank). That fee is in our column and not in theirs, and so is the $50 setup.
Your share of the leads is your share of the city's spend. Put in a fifth of what the zone spends and you get about a fifth of the leads, closest to you first.
There are settings where a referral costs you less than we do, and this calculator says so when you are in them.
The do-it-yourself column pays about 30% more for every lead than the other ad columns, because a solo campaign stays in the ad system's learning stage (its cost per result runs 20 to 50% above a trained campaign's). That is the only efficiency difference this calculator prices; it never assumes the city campaign gets cheaper as agents join.
These are your assumptions, not our promise. Nothing here is a guarantee of results.