How much does a first-time buyer mortgage lead cost?

First-time buyer mortgage leads are the cheapest regulated lead in the UK paid-media market, but the quality gap between platforms is significant.

On Meta, cold first-time buyer leads currently cost between £4 and £8 on achievable campaign floors, and between £10 and £22 on typical mid-market campaigns. The best Platinum Prospects FTB broker account is running at a campaign floor of around £5 per lead on Meta lead forms. Meta rewards high-volume creative testing and emotional landing pages ("get on the ladder this year"), but the trade-off is lead quality: roughly 30 to 45 per cent of Meta FTB leads are qualified for actual mortgage applications, the rest being tyre-kickers, renters, or people with deposit shortfalls.

On Google, high-intent first-time buyer search leads cost between £22 and £43, with pure "first time buyer mortgage broker" match-type campaigns landing at the top of that range. Google leads convert to application at 55 to 70 per cent because the searcher has already decided they need a broker. Google is the right channel when pipeline conversion matters more than volume.

On Microsoft Advertising (Bing), FTB leads run 20 to 35 per cent cheaper than Google for equivalent intent and reach an older, property-owning demographic less common on Google Search.

The CPL you should be willing to pay depends on procuration fee plus protection attachment rate. A broker earning £600 proc fee and attaching protection at 40 per cent (adding roughly £250 indemnity commission) can profitably sustain a blended CPL of £30 to £45 across platforms, with a pipeline conversion rate above 25 per cent.

See the 2026 benchmark report for sector-by-sector CPL distributions and the first-time buyer mortgage case studies for live campaign numbers.