The lead market for Australian tradies has, quietly, moved into three apps.
Hipages Group (ASX: HPG) reported in its FY24 results revenue of $75.2 million with more than 39,000 subscribing tradies on the platform, following the acquisition of Tradiecore and the New Zealand outfit Builderscrack. The FY25 half-year update in February 2025 showed rising subscription ARPU and churn stabilising around 1.7 per cent monthly. Oneflare, News Corp-owned, services roughly 200,000 registered businesses. ServiceSeeking rounds out the top three.
Combined, per Hipages’ own investor materials, the three originate an estimated 30 to 40 per cent of Australian consumer home-services leads. Roy Morgan research (2024) showed 52 per cent of Australians aged 25 to 49 now find trades via an app or search rather than word of mouth, up from 38 per cent in 2019.
The practical implication for an individual plumber, electrician or landscaper in 2026 is that the lead market for their services is no longer a word-of-mouth market. It is a platform market.
The take rates, in numbers
Hipages lead fees range from approximately $8 to more than $80 per lead, depending on category and postcode. Plumbing and electrical sit among the most expensive. A Choice investigation in 2024 noted tradies routinely spending $800 to $2,000 per month on lead credits, with no guarantee of conversion.
The effective take rate, on a job where the tradie buys multiple leads to win a single quote, can rival the 30 per cent cut the app stores take on a mobile game. For a one-person trade business, with a margin that was already tight after insurance, fuel and materials, that take rate is a material transfer of value from the tradie’s P&L to the platform’s.
Why it happened
The 2019-to-2024 shift was not accidental. Three things aligned.
First, consumer behaviour in the 25-to-49 age cohort moved decisively into app-based service discovery. The younger half of that cohort has never, in practical terms, asked a neighbour for a plumber recommendation.
Second, the HIA and MBA residential renovation data through 2024 and 2025 showed residential renovation spend at record levels (around $14.5 billion in approvals for FY24), while detached new starts stayed subdued. That pushed more trade work into the small-job, platform-friendly channel rather than the large-job, builder-relationship channel.
Third, the platforms’ operational excellence around take-up (consumer UX, SEO, CAC discipline, paid-media funnel) outran anything a tradie business could do on its own. The platforms did not win because they were the best value for tradies. They won because they were the best-designed funnel for the consumer.
I spent four thousand dollars on leads last year. I can tell you, to the dollar, what the platforms cost me. I cannot tell you, to the dollar, what my next customer is going to cost me. That is the platform’s job, not mine.
The ACCC’s lens
The ACCC’s Digital Platform Services Inquiry interim reports through 2024 and 2025 explicitly named online-services marketplaces as a category for future scrutiny. NSW Fair Trading received record complaint volumes about online-sourced trades in 2024.
The regulatory conversation in 2026 is live but not yet concluded. Likely directions include greater transparency on lead-credit refund policies, stronger obligations on platforms to resolve consumer-side complaints about platform-sourced tradies, and disclosure requirements around the commercial relationship between platforms and the consumers they route to tradies.
None of those likely interventions changes the underlying economics for a small trade business. They only change the information available.
What the smarter tradies do
The trade businesses I have spoken to that are managing the platform dependence best are doing three things.
- They treat the platforms as a channel, not a business. A proportion of revenue (20 to 40 per cent is typical among the well-run ones) comes through the apps. The rest comes from repeat work, referrals, Google Business Profile organic, and direct bookings via the business’s own website. Those channels have higher margin and are not controlled by a third party.
- They own their customer data. The platforms will not, in most cases, allow direct contact information to transfer. But a customer who has had work done can be asked, in person, for an email address, with a promise to schedule the annual service directly. The long-term value of that customer relationship is on the tradie’s balance sheet, not the platform’s.
- They track unit economics per channel. A lead that costs $32 from Hipages and converts at 25 per cent with an average ticket of $480 is telling a tradie something. The same tradie’s Google Business Profile organic leads, by contrast, might convert at 60 per cent with the same ticket. That comparison drives advertising decisions.
Those moves do not remove the platforms from the picture. They reduce the portion of the business that depends on the platforms to a level where a take-rate change does not threaten the P&L.
For most Australian trade SMBs, that is the best achievable outcome in 2026. The alternative, a business that runs on platform leads alone, is a business whose future revenue is, in practical terms, owned by a company the tradie has no equity in.
The phone the plumber is looking at matters. The one they should be reading is their own customer list.