Lead Distribution Pricing: Per-Lead Fees vs Flat Pricing in 2026
Per-lead, per-seat and flat pricing are not good and bad models. They are a bet about who carries the volume risk, and the vendor prices that bet. What the six platforms we checked actually charge, and how to find your own break-even.
Every article on this subject, including the one that used to be on this page, ends up arguing that flat pricing is the honest model and per-lead pricing is the greedy one. That argument is wrong, and it is wrong in a way that costs money.
A pricing model is a bet about who carries the risk that your volume moves. Per-lead pricing puts it on you: a low floor, and a bill that follows your traffic upward. A flat fee puts it on the vendor, and a vendor who carries your volume risk prices the floor high enough to survive being wrong about it. In this category that floor runs from $500 to $1,500 a month. Nobody in either camp is being generous.
There is no good model, only a break-even, and it moves with your volume. Below roughly a thousand distributed leads a month, per-unit pricing is cheaper by a wide margin. Somewhere in the low tens of thousands the flat fees overtake it and never give the lead back. We are not a flat-price platform, whatever an earlier version of this page claimed: we charge per user for the CRM and per lead above every distribution cap, and past roughly 14,400 leads a month a flat competitor beats us.
The three models, and who is carrying what
Per unit. You pay for each lead, ping, transaction or record. The floor is low or absent, so the first month is cheap and the risk is entirely yours: a campaign that works doubles your platform bill in the same month it doubles your revenue, and a seasonal spike arrives as a surprise invoice. What you are buying is the option to be small.
Per seat. You pay per person with a login. Volume is free, headcount is not. The failure mode is not the price, it is the behaviour it produces: people stop getting access to the tool they need because each login has a number attached, and the operations manager who logs in twice a month works out of somebody else's screen.
Flat. One fee, and the vendor absorbs whatever you send. This is genuinely better once you are past the break-even, and before it you are paying for volume you do not have. A $1,500 floor is due in full in a month where you distributed forty leads, which is the month you can least afford it.
Most real price lists are hybrids, including ours, and the hybrid is usually where the fine print lives.
What the six platforms we checked actually charge
Checked on 26 September 2026 against each vendor's own pricing and documentation pages. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this table says so.
| Platform | Model | Floor | Unit above the floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| boberdoo | Flat tiers | $1,075 a month plus $250 setup | Tier set by average daily inbound actions |
| LeadByte | Not published | Not published, but no setup fee and a 30-day rolling contract | Not published |
| LeadConduit | Per transaction | $1,000 a month for a plan that includes it | Per integration touched |
| Leadflip | Hybrid | $49 a month | $0.10 to $0.20 a distributed lead above the cap |
| Lead Prosper | Flat floor, then per lead | $500 a month minimum | From about $0.05 a lead above 5,000 |
| LeadsPedia | Flat tiers | $1,500 a month including 25,000 leads | Numbers and per-minute charges billed separately |
Two observations that matter more than the numbers. First, the cheapest floor and the cheapest lead are never the same vendor: LeadsPedia has the highest floor on this list and the best wholesale rate on it, six cents a lead. Second, three of the six publish their model in full, and the other three want a conversation first.
The unit is where the money hides
This is the part most pricing comparisons skip, and it is worth more than any of the arithmetic below it. Two platforms can quote the same rate and mean completely different bills, because they are not counting the same thing.
boberdoo bills your tier on average daily inbound actions, and a ping is an inbound action. A seller who sends ten pings per accepted lead moves you up a tier without selling you anything.
Lead Prosper counts leads ingested. Their pricing page does not state how duplicates and leads that fail validation are counted against your 5,000, and that difference is a rounding error at 5,000 leads and a line item at 50,000.
LeadConduit charges per transaction, where a transaction is an event between LeadConduit and an outside service, per integration used, whether the lead is accepted or rejected. A flow with four enrichment steps costs four times a flow with one.
Leadflip bills leads actually distributed. That is the most flattering unit on this list for us, and we are not going to pretend that is a coincidence.
So the first question to a vendor is never "what does it cost". It is: what exactly do you count, and does a rejected lead count? Get the answer in writing, because it is the number your whole forecast rests on.
Per-unit pricing, with the arithmetic
At a rate of $0.02 to $0.20 a lead, which is the published range across the platforms above:
| Distributed leads a month | At $0.02 | At $0.05 | At $0.10 | At $0.20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $20 | $50 | $100 | $200 |
| 10,000 | $200 | $500 | $1,000 | $2,000 |
| 50,000 | $1,000 | $2,500 | $5,000 | $10,000 |
| 100,000 | $2,000 | $5,000 | $10,000 | $20,000 |
At a thousand leads a month this is obviously the right model. At fifty thousand it is the distribution layer alone costing more than most agencies pay for their entire software stack, and it arrives without a ceiling.
The thing to notice is not the size of the numbers but their shape: your infrastructure cost per lead never falls. At 1,000 leads and at 100,000 leads you pay the same five cents, so the efficiency you gained by growing went to the vendor rather than to your margin.
Per-seat pricing, with the arithmetic
| Users | At $25 | At $50 | At $100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | $50 | $100 | $200 |
| 5 | $125 | $250 | $500 |
| 10 | $250 | $500 | $1,000 |
| 20 | $500 | $1,000 | $2,000 |
Volume is free here, which is why per-seat pricing is common in CRMs and rare in distribution platforms: a distribution platform's cost is driven by traffic, not by logins.
One question worth asking before you sign: do buyer and partner portal logins count as users? Twenty partners at $50 each would be $1,000 a month so that your buyers can look at their own leads. We did not find a platform among the six above that charges for portal logins, so this is a question rather than an accusation, and the answer belongs in writing.
What flat pricing actually buys
Not simplicity. Insurance. The vendor takes the risk that you triple your volume, and the price of that insurance is the floor. That is why the flat-tier platforms in this category start at $1,075 and $1,500 rather than at $99, and why the cheapest flat tier is usually the worst value in its own price list: you are paying the premium and claiming nothing.
Flat pricing gets genuinely better the further past the break-even you go, because your cost per lead falls the whole way. boberdoo's own table is the clearest example on the internet: $1,075 a month at 25 inbound actions a day and $4,375 at a million. Four times the price for forty thousand times the traffic.
What we charge, including the part that argues against us
Distribution is a module you can book on its own, and it is a hybrid rather than a flat fee:
| Tier | Per month | Included | Above the cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distribution, 50 | $49 | 50 distributed leads | $0.20 a lead |
| Distribution, 200 | $89 | 200 distributed leads | $0.20 a lead |
| Distribution, 1,000 | $159 | 1,000 distributed leads | $0.10 a lead |
No setup fee, no user limit on this module, and the buyer portal and the monthly invoicing run are in every tier. CRM and automation are a second module priced in three seat bands, $69 for one user, $99 for three and $149 for unlimited, with $0.01 to $0.02 per record above the record cap. So we use all three models on this page at once: a flat base, a per-seat band, and per-unit overage.
Tier 2 costs $40 more than tier 1 and includes 150 more leads, but both charge the same $0.20 above their cap. Since 150 leads of overage is $30, staying on tier 1 and paying the overage is cheaper than tier 2 at every volume. What the $40 actually buys is the analytics that tier 1 does not include. If you only want the leads, tier 1 and then tier 3 is the cheaper path, and here is the table to prove it.
| Distributed leads a month | Tier 1 at $49 | Tier 2 at $89 | Tier 3 at $159 | Cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | $49 | $89 | $159 | Tier 1 |
| 200 | $79 | $89 | $159 | Tier 1 |
| 500 | $139 | $149 | $159 | Tier 1 |
| 600 | $159 | $169 | $159 | Tier 1 or 3 |
| 1,000 | $239 | $249 | $159 | Tier 3 |
| 5,000 | $1,039 | $1,049 | $559 | Tier 3 |
And the break-even against the rest of the category runs against us three times. Lead Prosper is cheaper past roughly 4,400 distributed leads a month, boberdoo past roughly 13,000, LeadsPedia past roughly 14,400. At 100,000 leads a month LeadsPedia is about four times cheaper than we are and no tier of ours changes that. Our price list is built for hundreds and low thousands, and it stops making sense somewhere in the tens of thousands. That is in the platform roundup with the full table.
An earlier version of this page claimed that neither leads nor seats were ever charged here, and that you could process 1,000 or 100,000 leads at the same price. Both claims were false, and together they were the entire argument of the article.
The costs that are not on the pricing page
Real examples, all published by the vendors themselves and read on 26 September 2026:
- Setup and onboarding. boberdoo charges $250 once. It is small, but it is due before your first lead.
- Verification per lead. boberdoo's leadQC is $0.20 a lead on top of the tier. ActiveProspect's TrustedForm Verify and Retain start at $0.15.
- Branding and infrastructure. boberdoo lists $2,500 once to remove their footer and $3,500 once for custom DNS.
- Telephony billed separately. LeadsPedia's numbers are $1.50 to $3.00 each, toll-free $2.00 to $4.00, plus per-minute charges that their pricing page does not state a rate for.
- Consulting by the hour. boberdoo lists $195.
- Annual commitments. ActiveProspect's contracted plans require a $24,000 annual spend commitment. LeadByte publishes a 30-day rolling contract, which is the shortest on this list and worth asking others to match.
- Overage on a "flat" plan. Ours, above every cap. Ask every vendor who says flat where their cap is.
How to work out your own number
Four steps, and the first one is the one people skip:
- Get your real unit count, not your lead count. Pings, duplicates, failed validations, records stored, integrations touched. Ask each vendor which of these they bill and whether rejects count.
- Work out the floor. What you owe in your worst month, not your average one. Multiply by twelve if there is an annual commitment.
- Find the break-even. Set the flat fee equal to your floor plus your per-unit rate times your volume, and solve for volume. That single number tells you which side of the trade you are on today.
- Then ask how far you are from it. If you are within a year of crossing, price the model you will need rather than the one you need now, because migrating a live distribution setup between platforms is a project and not an afternoon.
| Document | Partner | Period | State | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-0184 | Nordkontor Vertrieb GmbH | 52 × 40 € | paid | 2.080,00 € |
| 2026-0185 | Rheinwerk Süd GmbH | 31 × 120 € | open | 3.720,00 € |
| 2026-0186 | Vialux Solar B.V. | 44 × 95 € | overdue | 4.180,00 € |
| preview | Alpsol Handels GmbH | 61 × 250 € | preview | 15.250,00 € |
A preview still changes. An invoice carries a number and does not.
One thing worth separating while you do this: what the platform bills you is a different question from what you bill your buyers, and only one of them is on a pricing page. The second one is where your margin actually is, and it needs a monthly run that produces documents rather than a spreadsheet.
- 44 records, September
- 4.180,00 €
- Returned inside the deadline, 2 records
- −190,00 €
If you invoice inside the EU, that run has to produce gapless numbering, the correct tax case including reverse charge, credit notes for returned leads, and a machine-readable format your buyer's accounting system accepts. That is the law rather than a preference, and it is the one line item on this page where the cheapest platform is not automatically the right one.
Related guides
- Best lead distribution platforms: seven platforms, published prices only, with the break-evens computed.
- How to invoice lead buyers: pricing rules, counting, and the invoice at the end of the month.
- Ping post vs direct post: whether your business needs an auction or a routing rule.
- How to build a lead distribution system: routing logic, caps and delivery channels.
- Why you do not need five tools for lead generation: the real cost of a fragmented stack.
How this page was written
Every competitor figure was read on 26 September 2026 on that vendor's own pricing or documentation pages, and where their pages do not answer a question this page says so rather than estimating. The generic rate tables are arithmetic on the published range and are labelled as such: they are not attributed to anyone.
The previous version of this page argued that flat pricing is the superior model and that we were a flat-price platform. We are not, and the argument rested on claims about our own price list that the price list does not support. Both are corrected above, including a table showing that one of our own tiers is never the cheapest choice.
If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.