Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for Contractors: Honest Breakdown

Short answer first: if somebody is already looking for what you do, Google gets them. If nobody is looking yet, Facebook creates the want. Most residential contractors should start on Google, because search is where the emergency roof and the leaking window and the "we finally have the money" kitchen actually happen. Facebook earns its budget second, for the big discretionary projects nobody types into a search bar and for staying in front of people who already met you.

That's the real answer. But the reason contractors keep arguing about this is that the numbers look like they say the opposite, so let's go through what the numbers actually say and where they lie to you.

The Numbers, Straight Up

WordStream publishes the benchmark reports most of the industry quotes. Their 2026 search report looked at 13,474 US search campaigns running from April 2025 through March 2026, and their Facebook report covers roughly 1,300 campaigns. Both report medians, not averages, so a couple of monster accounts can't skew them.

Here's the Home and Home Improvement category on both platforms.

Look at that last row and the argument seems over. Facebook leads cost less than half what Google leads cost. Why would anyone pay $91 when they could pay $41?

Because a lead is not a job.

Why the Cheaper Lead Is Often the Worse Lead

A Google lead started with a person typing something into a box. "Roof replacement near me." "Deck builder Des Moines." "Bathroom remodel cost." That person has a problem, has decided to solve it, and is now shopping. You did not create that demand. You showed up in front of it.

A Facebook lead started with somebody scrolling past their cousin's vacation photos. They were not looking for you. Your ad interrupted them, the offer was good enough to stop the thumb, and they tapped a form. That is a genuinely valuable thing, but it is a completely different human being than the one on Google, and treating them the same is how contractors decide "Facebook doesn't work."

I want to be careful here, because this is where marketing people start quoting close rates they made up. I don't have a clean, sourced industry number for how much better Google leads close than Facebook leads for residential contractors, and neither does anybody who tells you it's exactly 3x. Don't let someone sell you on a stat like that. What I can tell you is the structure of the difference, and the structure is this: on Google the customer picked the moment, and on Facebook you picked it. Everything downstream follows from that.

One more number worth staring at. In WordStream's Facebook data, Home and Home Improvement had one of the *lowest* conversion rates on the platform at 5.22%, and it dropped 36% year over year. Traffic-objective clicks for our category also run $0.99, one of the three highest CPCs on Facebook. Home improvement is a hard sell on social. Not impossible. Hard.

What Google Is Actually Good At

Three things, in this order.

Local Services Ads. These sit above everything, above regular search ads and above the map pack, and you pay per lead instead of per click. For roofers and remodelers in most markets these are the first ad dollars I'd spend, because the pricing model matches how a contractor thinks. You are buying phone calls, not clicks.

One thing changed here that a lot of contractors missed. Effective October 20, 2025, Google retired the green "Google Guaranteed" badge along with "Google Screened" and "License Verified by Google," and replaced all three with a single blue Google Verified badge. The Money Back Guarantee that used to come attached to the Google Guarantee was discontinued at the same time. If you are still using "Google Guaranteed" in your sales pitch or on your truck, that program does not exist under that name anymore. The verification itself, license, insurance, background check, still happens, and it still shows on your profile.

Regular search ads for high-intent keywords. The $8.33 click is expensive because everyone in your zip code figured out the same thing. But the person clicking is in the market today. The waste on Google is almost never the clicks you paid for, it's the ones you paid for that had no business being served: "how to shingle a roof yourself," "roofing jobs hiring," "roofing supply near me." A negative keyword list is the highest-ROI hour you will spend in that account.

Retargeting people who already visited. Cheap, and the most forgiving ad you can run.

What Facebook Is Actually Good At

Also three things.

Projects people want but weren't shopping for. Nobody wakes up and searches "outdoor living space." They see a photo of a covered patio with a fireplace at 9pm on a Tuesday and think, "we could do that." Pools, outdoor kitchens, whole-home exteriors, sunrooms, additions. This is Facebook's home field, and Google is genuinely bad at it because the search volume doesn't exist yet.

Staying in front of your own people. Everyone who visited your site, everyone who watched 15 seconds of a job video, everyone on your customer list from the last five years. This audience is small, cheap to reach, and closes far better than cold traffic because they already know your name. If you run one Facebook campaign, run this one.

Hiring. This one always surprises people. If you're chasing an installer or a lead carpenter, Facebook reaches tradespeople in your county in a way no job board does.

A warning on lead forms. Meta's Advantage+ tools and the instant lead form make it very easy to collect a pile of names that go nowhere, because the form is two taps and nobody typed anything. If you run lead ads, add a qualifying question, and call the lead within five minutes, not the next morning. A tool like Hatch exists specifically because speed to lead is the whole ballgame on social. A cheap lead you call on Thursday is not a lead.

The Honest Breakdown by Trade

This is where I'd actually put the first dollar, by the kind of work you do.

Notice the pattern. The more urgent and problem-driven the job, the more Google wins. The more visual and discretionary the job, the more Facebook wins. Storm-damaged roof: Google. Sunroom somebody has been daydreaming about for four years: Facebook.

The Part Almost Everyone Skips

Here is the thing that decides whether either platform works, and it has nothing to do with the platform.

You have to know which ad produced which job. Not which lead. Which *job*. Most contractors run ads for eight months, look at a bank balance, and make a gut call. That's not measurement, that's a mood.

The fix is boring and takes an afternoon. Put a tracking number on your ads so calls from Google and calls from Facebook ring differently. CallRail and WhatConverts both do this for residential contractors, and WhatConverts in particular is built around tying a lead all the way to revenue instead of stopping at the form fill. Then write the source on every job in your CRM. Then, once a quarter, add up what each channel cost and what it actually sold.

When you do that, the CPL argument we started with mostly resolves itself. You'll find that your $91 Google leads became jobs at a rate that made them cheap, or you'll find your $41 Facebook leads closed well enough to keep, and either way you'll be making the decision with your own numbers instead of somebody's benchmark chart.

Give each channel 90 days before you judge it. Both platforms need learning data, and both punish you for turning campaigns on and off every two weeks.

What I'd Do With a Real Budget

Say you've got $1,500 a month, which is a realistic starting number for a residential contractor doing $1M to $2M.

Month one through three: all of it on Google. Local Services Ads if your trade and market support them, otherwise tight search campaigns on five to ten high-intent keywords with an aggressive negative list. One landing page per service, not your homepage. Tracking numbers live from day one.

Month four: pull $300 off Google and put it on Facebook retargeting only. Website visitors and your customer list. Nothing cold.

Month six: if the retargeting is producing, add a cold Facebook campaign with your best before-and-after photos, aimed at the most visual thing you sell.

That order matters. Start where the demand already is, prove you can convert it, then go create demand. Contractors who do it backwards spend a year making pretty ads for people who weren't going to buy anyway.

And before any of this, make sure the free stuff is done. Your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your existing customer list. Ads amplify whatever you already have. If your closing process leaks, paid traffic just makes the leak faster and more expensive.

The One-Sentence Version

Google costs more per lead and is worth it because the customer was already looking. Facebook costs less per lead and is worth it when nobody is looking yet. Run Google first, prove it, then let Facebook do the job Google can't.