Cost per lead is the number vendors advertise. Cost per closed deal is the number that pays you. Here is the math on both, including the cases where live transfers win.
Most agents compare lead sources on price per lead. That comparison is close to useless on its own: a $0.015 record and a $120 live transfer are not the same unit of anything. What matters is what you spend to put one signed policy on the books, and how much of your own time it costs to get there.
Below is the arithmetic for the three ways agents typically buy — using published 2026 industry ranges for live transfers and web leads, and our own funnel assumptions for aged data. Every number is a range, because every one of these varies by vertical, state, and how hard you work the list.
| Live transfer | Shared web lead | Aged data list | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per lead | $45–$160 | $8–$30 | $0.015 |
| Who makes contact | Already on the phone | You call, fast | You text or dial |
| Conversion | 15–30% of transfers | 5–15% of leads | 0.1–0.3% reply, then your appointment and close rates |
| Cost per deal (typical) | ~$375 | ~$150 on paper; $400–$800 reported CPA per bound P&C policy | ~$65 |
| Cost per deal (bad case) | ~$1,050 | ~$600 | ~$390 |
| Setup required | A phone | A phone and speed | SMS platform, 10DLC registration, DNC scrub |
| What you own afterward | Nothing | Nothing | The list — rework it for months |
Live-transfer and web-lead figures are published 2026 industry ranges. Aged-list figures use our own funnel assumptions, shown in full below. Your results will differ.
No hand-waving — this is the entire calculation for a 10,000-lead SMS campaign, and you can change every input yourself in our ROI calculator:
Now run a bad campaign. At 0.1% replies — the floor of the range we plan around — that same $390 produces 10 conversations instead of 18. Convert only one in ten of those into a policy and you land near $390 per deal: roughly what a live transfer costs at typical pricing, except you still hold 10,000 records you can rework next month while the transfer budget is simply gone. That is the honest floor of this model. It is not "cheaper on a good day and terrible on a bad one" — the bad day is a tie, and the good day is not close.
They genuinely are, in these situations, and any vendor who tells you otherwise is selling:
This is the most important paragraph on the page. A live transfer arrives with the vendor's consent posture attached. Aged data records are not consented insurance-form leads, carry no TCPA express consent, and are not DNC-scrubbed when we deliver them. Before you contact anyone on an aged list you are responsible for scrubbing against the National and applicable state Do-Not-Call registries, registering your 10DLC campaign with your SMS provider, and honoring every opt-out permanently. Budget for the scrub — it runs a few dollars per thousand records and it is not optional. Our walkthrough is here: how to DNC scrub an aged lead list. None of this is legal advice; talk to your own compliance counsel.
Run both. Use live transfers when you need conversations this week and have the budget per conversation. Use an aged list as the always-on layer underneath it — the thing that keeps your pipeline fed between transfer buys, at a cost per conversation nothing else matches. The agents who get the most out of aged data are not the ones who bought the most records; they are the ones who texted them on a schedule and actually worked the replies.
Usually, at volume. Our funnel assumptions put a 10,000-lead SMS campaign at roughly $390 in total spend and about six closed policies — near $65 per policy — versus roughly $375 per policy for a live transfer at $75 with a 20% close rate. Even a poor campaign holds up: at the floor of our range (0.1% replies, and only one in ten of those replies closing) aged data lands near $390 per policy — about level with a live transfer, except you still own the list afterward. Volume and consistent follow-up are what separate a $65 outcome from a $390 one.
Published industry ranges put live transfers at roughly $45 to $160 per transfer, with outliers from $25 up to $300 on high-commission lines such as IUL. They typically close at 15 to 30 percent, which is far higher than shared web leads at 5 to 15 percent.
A fraction of them do, and that fraction is the entire business model. Plan on 0.1% to 0.3% positive replies from an SMS campaign, not the response rates you would expect from a form fill. That is why aged data is priced per record rather than per lead — you are buying reach, not intent.
About $150 for the data at $0.015 per record, plus roughly $240 in SMS costs for two messages per lead at about $0.012 per segment, plus a DNC scrub of a few dollars per thousand records. The texting costs more than the data does, which surprises most first-time buyers.
They are aged consumer data records. No TCPA express consent is claimed or implied, and they are not DNC-scrubbed at delivery. The agent making contact is responsible for their own TCPA, DNC, and CAN-SPAM compliance, including scrubbing against the National and applicable state registries, registering a 10DLC campaign, and honoring opt-outs. This is not legal advice.
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