Start With Exclusive or Shared, Because the Market Runs Both
Before comparing a single price, find out whether the lead or appointment goes to you alone or to whoever calls the homeowner back first. RGR Marketing sells solar leads through ping-post delivery with a 100-lead minimum order, filterable by bill size, roof shade, and credit band, but not exclusive to one buyer. Clean Energy Experts runs a pay-per-lead model with no contract and no minimum, phone-verified, priced by state from roughly $15 in North Dakota and Minnesota up to $1,000 or more on the West Coast.
Exclusive appointment sellers work differently. Solar Exclusive pitches pre-set exclusive appointments and markets "guaranteed appointments or you don't pay." RunsForYou sells exclusive leads at $90 to $350 and booked appointments at $150 to $600, with a commission-only option that pays only on a closed install. Omnivortex prices appointments starting at $400 with every appointment guaranteed exclusive. If a vendor is vague about which model you are buying, pin that down before anything else.
Ask for the Price in Writing. Most Vendors Will Not Give It to You
Published pricing is the exception in this category, not the rule. Solar Exclusive does not post a rate card, it routes every prospect into a strategy call. Invention Solar is the opposite case: it publishes a full aged-lead tier table, from $3.00 per lead at 0 to 7 days old down to $0.50 at 91-plus days. Aged Lead Store goes further, breaking pricing into three age bands: $1.20 to $1.50 for 30 to 85 days old, $0.35 to $0.40 for 86 to 365 days, and $0.17 to $0.20 for 366 to 2,000 days.
Across every source triangulated for this guide, the pricing bands cluster as follows: shared leads run $20 to $80, exclusive leads run $50 to $300 (most-cited $80 to $150 fresh, higher on the West Coast), and pre-set booked appointments run $150 to $600, with most vendors clustering $200 to $500. VA Horizon's own rate, $300 one-time setup and $249 per appointment, sits inside that cluster and is published without a strategy call required to see it.
Want this handled for you?
Exclusive, confirmed solar appointments. $300 setup + $249 per booked appointment.
Book a Solar CallRead What "Guaranteed" Actually Covers
Marketing language like "guaranteed appointments or you don't pay" is common, and it is worth pressing on before you sign. Ask exactly what is guaranteed: that an appointment gets booked at all, that the homeowner shows up, or that the homeowner turns out to be a real prospect once your rep is in the room. Those are three different promises, and a vendor's homepage rarely distinguishes between them. RunsForYou's commission-only option is a more literal version of risk-shifting: you pay nothing until a lead actually closes into an install, which is a fundamentally different arrangement than paying per booked appointment regardless of outcome.
Check Whether Their Qualification Criteria Still Assumes a Loan-Only Buyer
This is a 2026-specific question, and most buyers are not asking it yet. Third-party-ownership deals (lease and PPA structures) are projected to make up 65% of sales in 2026, up from 44% in 2025, and the share of reps selling zero TPO has dropped from 9% to 1%. A lead vendor still qualifying homeowners primarily on credit score and loan eligibility is filtering out exactly the buyers driving today's market. Ask directly whether the vendor's qualification process accounts for cash, loan, and TPO paths equally, or whether it was built for a market that no longer exists.
Check Their TCPA Record Before You Check Their Price
Momentum Solar settled a TCPA class action for $20 to $30 million over unsolicited telemarketing calls, with final approval in August 2025. That case involved the installer's own calling program, but enforcement does not stop at the brand doing the installing: a separate solar lead-generation company was sued directly in a TCPA class action after an aggressive response to the initial complaint. The lesson is that liability can reach the vendor supplying your appointments, not just your own sales team. Ask any vendor how they document consent, how they screen numbers against Do Not Call and reassigned-number lists, and whether they have ever been named in a telemarketing complaint or lawsuit.
A Five-Question Vetting Script for the Vendor's Own Sales Call
- "Is this lead or appointment exclusive to me, or shared with other installers or dealers?"
- "What's the per-unit price, in writing, including any setup fee or minimum order?"
- "What specifically does your guarantee cover: the booking, the show, or the qualification?"
- "Does your qualification process account for cash, loan, and TPO buyers equally?"
- "How do you document consent, and have you ever been named in a TCPA complaint?"
Five questions, five answers, in writing. A vendor who answers all five clearly can be compared against anyone else on equal footing. A vendor who dodges more than one is telling you something before you have spent a dollar.
What this means for you
- Exclusive versus shared changes who else is calling the same homeowner, ask which one you are actually buying before comparing price.
- A "guaranteed appointments" headline can mean three different things: booked, shown, or qualified. Get the vendor to specify which.
- TCPA liability can reach the vendor supplying your appointments, not just your own sales team. Ask about their compliance record directly.
Sources
The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Solar Exclusive, buy solar appointments
- RunsForYou, solar leads pricing
- Clean Energy Experts, cost of solar leads
- ClassAction.org, Momentum Solar TCPA settlement
- National Law Review, solar lead company TCPA case