The cost of MVA leads, 2026.

Cost by supply model — exclusive vs shared vs pay-per-call

Exclusive almost always wins on cost-per-signed-case despite the higher headline CPL. The reason is the contact-rate floor: with shared, the same prospect is being called by seven other firms inside 90 seconds, and contact rate craters. We covered the full math here. Pay-per-call breakdown lives here.

Cost by case type — 2026 benchmarks

Cost by state — selected markets

State-level cost variation comes from three sources: market-CPC density, language demand (bilingual supply prices ~20% higher), and statute-of-limitations urgency. High-cost markets sit at the top of the CPL range, low-cost markets at the floor.

The full cost stack — lead price is roughly half of it

The invoice from your lead vendor is one line in a larger number. Firms that compare vendors on CPL alone routinely pick the option with the higher total cost, because the components that move most are the ones that never appear on an invoice.

The fourth row is the one worth auditing. A firm that signs cases it later drops has paid full acquisition cost for zero fee revenue, and that cost is silently redistributed across the cases it keeps. Tightening intake criteria usually improves cost per retained case more than any price negotiation will.

Why MVA lead prices rose into 2026

If you are comparing today’s numbers against a benchmark from two or three years ago, the gap is real rather than a vendor markup. Four forces pushed exclusive CPL upward:

• Paid search competition intensified. Personal injury has long been among the most expensive verticals in Google Ads, and per-click costs on crash-intent queries continued climbing. Lead prices track that input almost directly.
• Case values rose. Rising claim severity and litigation costs mean a signed MVA case is worth more than it was, which raises what every buyer can rationally pay for the lead that produces it.
• Compliance costs increased. Documented consent capture, record retention, and state mini-TCPA regimes add real cost per lead for vendors doing it properly — and are the corner most often cut by the cheapest supply.
• AI answers compressed top-of-funnel traffic. Informational searches increasingly resolve without a click, shrinking the pool of visitors from which leads are generated. Fewer, higher-intent clicks means a higher cost per lead.

None of this makes a $150 exclusive quote impossible — it makes it worth investigating. Ask what tier it actually is.

How to benchmark a quote you have been given

Most vendors quote on contact rather than publishing, so the practical question is not “what do MVA leads cost” in the abstract but “is the number in front of me reasonable.” Four checks settle it:

1. 01. Establish what tier you are being quoted. A $150 quote and a $450 quote are usually not the same product priced differently — they are shared versus exclusive, or aged versus real-time. Get exclusivity, recency, and screening confirmed before comparing the number to anything.

2. 02. Compare against the right band. Exclusive supply is $585–$1,105 by market, the same for every case type; premium case types differ in sign rate, not price. A quote below the $585 floor is a signal to ask harder questions, not a bargain.

3. 03. Adjust for your market. Los Angeles and New York sit near the top of the band; Ohio and Oregon near the floor. A quote that looks high nationally may be ordinary for a dense, heavily-advertised metro.

4. 04. Convert to cost per signed case. Multiply the quoted CPL by the number of leads needed at your own signed-case rate. This is the only step that makes two different quotes genuinely comparable, and it frequently reverses which one looks cheaper.

What other vendors publish

For external reference points, here is what other providers state publicly about their own pricing. These are their figures, not ours, taken from their public materials — useful for triangulating whether a quote sits inside the normal market range.

Competitor figures taken from each provider’s public website, last reviewed 2026-07-13. Verify current terms directly — offers change.

Why two vendors quote different prices for the same state

Price differences between vendors in the same market usually trace to one of five things, and only the first is really about margin:

• Business model. An operator running its own ads carries media risk and prices accordingly. An aggregator reselling publisher inventory has a lower cost base and less control over what it is selling.
• Screening depth. Every criterion applied before delivery removes leads from saleable inventory. Heavier screening necessarily costs more per surviving lead.
• Channel mix. Paid-search-sourced supply costs more to generate than social or co-registration traffic, and converts better.
• Exclusivity terms. A lead sold once has to carry its full acquisition cost. A lead sold three times can be priced at a third — which is the entire economics of shared supply.
• Volume commitment. Some vendors discount against monthly minimums or annual contracts. Whether that is worth it depends on how confident you are in month eight, not month one.

The cost the price tag doesn't show

The number on the invoice is only part of the actual cost of MVA leads. The hidden costs that move the per-signed-case math more than the per-lead price:

• Intake speed-to-lead. A 2-minute first-call response signs at 2× the rate of a 20-minute response. If your team isn't covering the calling windows the supply runs in, the cheapest CPL is a tax, not a bargain.
• Bilingual coverage. Across CA, TX, FL, AZ, NV — about 22% of MVA inquiries prefer Spanish. English-only intake on those leads converts at roughly 31% the rate of bilingual intake. The CPL stays the same; the signed-case rate halves.
• Script and qualification flow. A 90-second qualification call signs at 14% on the same leads where a 4-minute screening flow signs at 6%. Pure operational. See the intake-script field note.
• Server-side conversion tracking. If you're optimizing your paid acquisition on a browser pixel only, you're missing 25–35% of your match signal. The cost shows up as paid-acquisition CPL inflation, not as a line item.

Next reads

• Full pricing benchmarks — case type × state matrix
• How to verify a vendor’s exclusivity claim
• Pay-per-call MVA leads explained
• How to buy MVA leads — five-step checklist
• Cost per signed case — benchmarks across every channel
• Signed MVA retainers — the top of the price ladder