Security alarm leads cost between roughly $20 and $200 each for residential work, and $200 to $500 for commercial. Here is the spread by lead type, with the booking rate attached, because the two numbers only mean something together.
| Lead type | Price | Typical booking rate |
|---|---|---|
| Aged (30+ days) | $5 to $15 | 2% to 6% |
| DIY / self-install interest | $15 to $35 | 8% to 15% |
| Shared (4+ buyers) | $20 to $40 | 5% to 10% |
| Semi-exclusive (2 to 3 buyers) | $40 to $75 | 8% to 14% |
| Exclusive monitored security | $75 to $150 | 12% to 20% |
| Live transfer | $80 to $175 | 20% to 35% |
| Scheduled appointment | $100 to $200 | 25% to 45% |
| Commercial | $200 to $500 | Lower volume, longer cycle |
Those are the numbers every other page on this query will give you. They are correct and they are almost useless on their own, because they answer the wrong question.
The question that decides whether your company grows is not what a lead costs. It is what a lead is allowed to cost. In this trade, that ceiling is not set by your ad budget or by what a competitor pays. It is set by arithmetic you can run in about four minutes, and most alarm dealers have never run it.
Why the sticker price tells you almost nothing here
In most trades a lead converts into a job, the job has a price, and the math closes in one step. A plumber pays $57 for a Local Services Ads lead, books it at 44.5 percent, collects a $1,714 average ticket, and knows immediately whether the channel worked.
Alarm does not work that way. Your lead does not convert into a job. It converts, or fails to convert, into an asset: a monitored account carrying recurring monthly revenue that a consolidator will one day buy from you at a multiple. The install is a cost of manufacturing that asset. Sometimes the install is a loss you accept on purpose.
That changes the unit you are buying. A closed sale with no monitoring attached is not a customer acquisition. It is a one-time equipment sale that produced install margin and zero enterprise value. You paid an acquisition price for an asset you did not receive.
Watch out
This is the number most dealers do not track separately: cost per acquired monitored account, not cost per closed job. If those two metrics live in the same column of your spreadsheet, a channel that sells plenty of cash installs and almost no monitoring contracts will look healthy for months.
The gap is wider than it used to be. SafeHome's 2026 market report found DIY installation has overtaken professional installation for the first time, with 49 percent of alarm system users installing their own systems against 42 percent hiring a professional, and 51 percent saying they would rather self-install. About 28 percent of US internet households, roughly 30.2 million, pay for a security service at all. More of the people filling in your form are equipment shoppers than your attach rate assumptions were built on.
The ceiling: what you are actually allowed to pay
Work backwards from the asset. Here is the whole formula.
Account value created per lead = RMR x resale multiple x close rate x monitoring attach rate
Run it on a normal residential dealer:
- RMR of $45 per month
- Resale multiple of 35x for residential monitoring on a multi-year contract
- Close rate of 15% on exclusive leads
- Monitoring attach rate of 70%
That gives $45 x 35 = $1,575 of account value per signed monitored account. Multiply by the 15 percent close rate and the 70 percent attach rate, and each lead you buy produces about $165 of account value on average.
So a $150 exclusive lead consumes about 91 percent of the asset it creates, before you have paid for a panel, a truck roll, a technician or a single minute of sales time. Not a disaster if your install margin is strong and you intend to hold the accounts for a decade. A disaster if you were planning to sell in three years.
A workable rule: divide the account value created per lead by two or three to leave room for install cost, service, overhead and profit. On the numbers above, that puts a defensible maximum around $55 to $82 per lead. Which is well inside shared and semi-exclusive territory, and well below what most exclusive brokers charge.
If that ceiling feels uncomfortably low, the answer is usually not to accept a worse ceiling. It is to move the inputs: raise the attach rate, raise the close rate, or raise RMR. Each of those multiplies. Lead price only adds.
Most alarm dealers cannot answer "what did a monitored account cost me last quarter" because the lead source, the close, the attach and the cancellation all live in different systems. We build the tracking that connects them, so the ceiling above stops being a guess.
The attrition ladder that moves your ceiling by 40 percent
The multiple in that formula is not a constant. It is a direct function of how well you keep accounts, and the swing is enormous. Per CT Acquisitions' 2026 breakdown of alarm company valuations:
| Annual attrition | RMR multiple | Value of a $45 account |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5% | 40x to 50x | $1,800 to $2,250 |
| 8% to 12% | 32x to 40x | $1,440 to $1,800 |
| 12% to 18% | 25x to 32x | $1,125 to $1,440 |
| Above 18% | Mostly unsellable | Effectively install margin only |
Same account, same RMR, same trade. A dealer running sub-5 percent attrition can pay roughly 60 to 80 percent more per lead than a dealer at 12 to 18 percent and still be making the identical decision in return terms.
This is the part that reframes the whole question. If your attrition is high, buying more leads is the more expensive of the two available fixes. Cutting attrition from 14 percent to 9 percent raises the value of every account you already own and every account you buy from here. Buying more leads at a broken multiple just increases the rate at which you convert cash into a depreciating book.
By the numbers
Account type moves the multiple too. Residential monitoring on multi-year contracts trades at 35x to 50x RMR. Small commercial monitoring trades at 32x to 45x. Large commercial fire and burglar accounts trade at 40x to 55x. Wholesale monitoring trades at just 20x to 30x. A commercial lead at $400 is often the better buy than a residential lead at $60.
The contract decision that quietly halves your budget
Here is the one nobody puts in a cost-per-lead article, and it may be the most expensive line in your business.
Month-to-month accounts trade at 50 to 70 percent of the multiple that multi-year contracts earn.
If you have moved to no-contract monitoring to compete with the DIY brands, you did not just change a sales objection. You cut the asset value of every account you sign by roughly a third to a half. Run it through the ceiling formula and your maximum defensible cost per lead falls by the same proportion. The $55 to $82 range above becomes something closer to $28 to $57.
That is a legitimate strategic choice. No-contract selling raises close rates and lowers the friction that kills alarm deals at the kitchen table. But it has to be a choice made with the number in front of you, not a concession granted deal by deal by a sales rep who has never seen a valuation model.
The same logic runs through communications. Cellular accounts carry a 2x to 5x RMR premium over landline, because carriers are retiring copper and landline books come with a forced conversion cost attached. If you are still signing landline accounts, you are manufacturing assets that a buyer will discount on sight.
What each channel costs an alarm dealer
Now the channel prices, with the caveat that matters: none of the big published home-services benchmarks break out security as a trade.
| Channel | Cost per lead | Exclusive | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referrals and installed base | Effectively $0 | Yes | Highest attach rate, no volume dial |
| Organic search | Falls toward $10 to $30 | Yes | 6 to 12 months to meaningful volume |
| Local Services Ads | $40 to $120 | Yes | Home Security is an eligible category |
| Shared broker leads | $20 to $40 | No | 5% to 10% close, price-shopped |
| Semi-exclusive broker | $40 to $75 | Partly | 8% to 14% close |
| Exclusive broker | $75 to $150 | Yes | 12% to 20% close |
| Paid search | $50 to $200 | Yes | $8 to $30 per click before conversion |
| Live transfer | $80 to $175 | Yes | 20% to 35% close |
| Commercial outbound | $200 to $500 | Yes | Best multiple, longest cycle |
Two things in that table deserve unpacking.
Paid search is the trap. Security keywords cost $8 to $30 per click because ADT, Vivint, Brinks and SimpliSafe set the auction floor with national budgets you cannot outbid. A landing page converting at 5 percent turns a $15 click into a $300 cost per lead. That is above your ceiling before a single sales conversation happens. Local dealers who win on paid search do it on narrow geographic and long-tail intent, not on the head terms.
Local Services Ads are underused in this trade. Home Security is a listed Local Services Ads category covering installation and monitoring of security systems, sitting in the same home services group as electrical and locksmith. Yet SearchLight's February 2026 benchmark, covering $6.72 million in LSA spend across 888 contractors and 126,650 leads, has no security line at all. The trade is not showing up in the data because comparatively few alarm companies are running the channel.
The closest proxies from that dataset: electrical at $39 per lead, the blended average at $53, and an overall book rate of 43.9 percent producing a $233 cost per paying customer. For comparison, the same firm's January 2026 Google Ads benchmark put blended paid search at $104 per lead and non-branded at $149. LSA came in 49 percent cheaper than blended Google Ads and 64 percent cheaper than non-branded.
If security CPLs land anywhere near the electrical figure, LSA is the only paid channel in the table that comfortably clears the ceiling we calculated. Two 2025 changes to know before you budget for it: Google consolidated its badges into a single Google Verified checkmark on 20 October 2025, and discontinued the $2,000 consumer money-back guarantee on 7 November 2025. A verified Google Business Profile has been mandatory since November 2024. If your profile is not clean, start there. Our guide on ranking in the Google map pack covers the groundwork.
Three costs that never appear in cost per lead
1. The attach failure. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the largest of the three. Every lead that closes without monitoring is an acquisition cost spent on an asset you did not build.
2. TCPA exposure on purchased data. Alarm is one of the most litigated verticals under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and purchased leads are where the exposure concentrates, because you are calling on someone else's consent record rather than your own. Statutory damages run $500 per violation and $1,500 for willful violations. Alarm.com agreed to a $28 million TCPA class action settlement over telemarketing conducted through its authorized dealer network, dealers who had already drawn enforcement from the FTC and from attorneys general in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. TCPA class filings hit 2,788 in 2024, a 67 percent jump over 2023.
None of that appears in a $30 aged-lead invoice. It should. Insist on certified consent capture through TrustedForm or Jornaya, scrub against the national Do Not Call registry, and treat any vendor who cannot produce a consent trail as more expensive than their price list suggests.
3. Attrition inside the holdback window. When you eventually sell, buyers hold back 5 to 15 percent of the purchase price for 12 to 24 months against accounts that cancel above the contracted threshold. Accounts you bought expensively and signed loosely are exactly the ones that churn inside that window. You pay for that acquisition twice: once at the lead, once at the holdback.
Tip
Speed is the cheapest lever on this entire page. Alarm buying is event-driven, a break-in on the street, a move, a new tenancy, and the urgency decays fast. Leads contacted within five minutes convert at three to five times the rate of leads contacted after thirty minutes. Cutting your response time costs nothing per lead and moves the close rate term in the ceiling formula directly. See how fast you should respond to a lead.
Two dealers, same cost per lead, different businesses
Both buy exclusive leads at $120. Both are in the same metro.
Dealer A closes 18 percent, attaches monitoring on 85 percent, averages $52 RMR, signs three-year agreements, and runs 6 percent annual attrition. That attrition supports roughly a 40x multiple, so each account is worth about $2,080. Per lead: 0.18 x 0.85 x $2,080 = $318 of account value created for $120 spent. A 2.7x creation ratio, plus install margin.
Dealer B closes 12 percent, attaches monitoring on 55 percent, averages $42 RMR, sells month-to-month, and runs 15 percent attrition. That attrition supports about 28x, and the month-to-month structure cuts it to roughly 60 percent of that, call it 17x. Each account is worth about $714. Per lead: 0.12 x 0.55 x $714 = $47 of account value created for $120 spent.
Identical cost per lead. One dealer is compounding, the other is liquidating. And Dealer B's most likely reaction to weak growth is to buy more leads.
Note
Nothing about Dealer B's problem is a lead cost problem. Attach rate, contract term and attrition account for the entire gap. Fixing any one of them beats negotiating $10 off a lead price.
The five numbers to run this on
Stop benchmarking your cost per lead against what another alarm company says they pay. Track these instead:
- Cost per acquired monitored account, by source. Not cost per lead, not cost per closed job.
- Monitoring attach rate, by source. Some channels deliver equipment shoppers and some deliver subscribers, and the difference will not show up anywhere else.
- Annual attrition, reported three ways: gross RMR loss, net loss after reactivations, and account count. Buyers will ask for all three.
- Average contract term at signing. This is the multiplier hiding inside your valuation.
- Ratio of account value created to acquisition cost. Dealer A above runs 2.7x. Under 1.5x, growth is costing you money.
Only the last one answers the question you actually asked. And it is the only one that keeps answering it when lead prices change.
The bottom line
Security alarm leads cost $20 to $200 for residential and $200 to $500 for commercial. That range is real, and it is the least important thing on this page.
What matters is that alarm is the rare trade where you can calculate your own maximum price with genuine precision, because the exit value of what you build is publicly benchmarked. RMR times multiple times close rate times attach rate gives you a number. Attrition and contract term move that number by more than any negotiation with a lead vendor ever will.
Run the formula before you renew a lead contract. If the ceiling comes out below what you are currently paying, the fix is upstream of the invoice. For where those leads should come from in the first place, see our ranking of the best lead sources for security alarm companies.
Sources
- SearchLight Home Services LSA Benchmark, February 2026: 888 contractors, $6.72M spend, 126,650 leads. searchlightdigital.io
- CT Acquisitions, Alarm Company Sale or Acquisition: RMR Multiples in 2026. ctacquisitions.com
- Leadgen Economy, Home Security Lead Generation: Complete 2026 Guide, lead pricing and booking rate table. leadgen-economy.com
- SafeHome.org 2026 Home Security Market Report, DIY versus professional installation. safehome.org
- BlueGrid Media, Every Industry Eligible for Google LSA in 2026, Home Security category and 2025 badge changes. bluegridmedia.com