The Signal
How much does B2B lead generation cost, and what should be included?
Two of the three providers below publish no price at all. The one that does starts below €1,000 a month, for a service that hands you the replies and leaves qualification, scheduling and every sales conversation with your own team. So before comparing fees, settle what the unit is: a contact, a reply, a meeting that actually happens and a real opportunity are four different things.
By Alfredo Silva 9 min read
One provider offers interested replies. Another books meetings. A third supplies a team to research prospects, call them and manage outreach.
All three might call it lead generation. Their prices buy different things.
For a business owner that makes the first question straightforward: what will arrive on my desk, and what happens next?
What does B2B lead generation cost in 2026?
Here are three published reference points, checked on 8 October 2026. These are provider examples rather than an independent market average, and none of them is a Blackorange price.
| Provider | What it publishes | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| Leadsmate | Start €895, Groei €1,195 and Volledig €1,595 per month. Enterprise from €2,095. Prices stated excluding VAT. | Managed email outreach only, at different campaign volumes and targeting scope. Interested responses are handed over, which leaves qualification, scheduling, no-show follow-up and every sales conversation with you. |
| Belkins | No fee published anywhere on the pricing page. Plans are described by volume instead: 30+, 100+ and 200+ appointments a year. | Multi-channel outreach with research, messaging, reporting and appointment scheduling listed as included. The figure you are quoted comes from a sales call. |
| SalesHive | No fee published. One bundled programme on a stated flat monthly fee, with $0 setup. | A strategist, US-based SDRs, an email responder, lists and appointment setting under a single fee, so more of the work sits with the provider. Cold calling, offshore calling, email and list building are named as services rather than priced tiers. |
Swipe the table sideways →
Sources, all checked 8 October 2026: Leadsmate, Belkins pricing and SalesHive pricing. Two of the three publish no number at all, which is itself the most useful thing on this table: for most of the market, the price is the output of a sales conversation.
Notice what Belkins publishes in place of a fee. Selling against a count of appointments a year makes the number easy to compare, and puts the entire weight of the deal on the definition of one word. So that is where to start, before any of these figures mean anything.
What does the provider mean by a lead?
Before accepting a price per lead, agree what the unit is.
| Term | A definition worth agreeing in writing |
|---|---|
| Contact | A person at a company that matches your targeting criteria. |
| Positive reply | A response expressing some interest, such as a request for information. |
| Qualified meeting | A meeting with someone who meets agreed criteria. Specify whether it has to actually take place. |
| Sales opportunity | A conversation your own sales team has accepted as a credible potential deal. |
A request for a brochure can be useful. It is still several steps from a sales opportunity, and if your contract counts it as one, you will pay for the gap.
For meeting-based pricing, define acceptable company types, participant roles, exclusions and what happens after a cancellation. For a retainer, define the work and the review process just as carefully. Each arrangement needs its own way of judging whether it is doing its job. There is more on what separates a booking from a qualified lead, and on why show rate is the number that exposes the difference.
What are you paying for?
A useful proposal makes these responsibilities explicit. An unclear one leaves you to discover in month two which of them you still own.
| Part of the work | What to look for in the proposal |
|---|---|
| Targeting | Which companies and decision makers fit, which are excluded, and why. |
| Research and data | How prospects are selected, contact details checked and relevant developments investigated. |
| Campaign setup | Messaging, sending infrastructure, approvals and who is responsible for monitoring delivery. |
| Outreach | Channels, follow-up sequences, campaign limits and how changes get tested. |
| Reply handling | Who answers questions, qualifies interest, schedules calls and follows up with no-shows. |
| Reporting and handover | What you can inspect, how results are defined, and which records and assets you keep. |
Personalisation included is the line most worth unpacking. Ask to see an example. You should be able to explain why that company was selected and why the message would matter to the person receiving it.
A manufacturer announcing a new product line might be worth investigating for a specialist distributor. That announcement is a reason to research. It does not establish that the manufacturer wants a new distribution partner, and a message written as though it does will read that way. This is the distinction that decides whether sales intelligence is worth anything: the value is in the decisions that follow the information, not in the information arriving.
Calculate the whole commitment
Imagine a three-month programme. Every figure below is an illustrative scenario, not a quote, a benchmark or a forecast.
| Cost | Calculation | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | One-off | €1,500 |
| Managed service | €2,000 × 3 months | €6,000 |
| Additional tools and data | €150 × 3 months | €450 |
| Your team's time | 6 hours × €75 × 3 months | €1,350 |
| Total economic cost | €9,300 |
Swipe the table sideways →
Cash paid to providers is €7,950 before applicable taxes. The remaining €1,350 is your own team's time at an assumed hourly cost. If tools are already inside the service fee, that row comes out.
Suppose the programme eventually produces 15 qualified meetings that actually happen. Cost per held meeting is €9,300 ÷ 15 = €620. If three of those meetings become clients, acquisition cost in this example is €9,300 ÷ 3 = €3,100 per client.
That is arithmetic, not an expected conversion rate. It includes only the costs listed above, so add proposal and closing time if that falls outside the allowance.
Run it on your own numbers
The figures below start at the worked example. Change any of them and the totals follow. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no email gate, and the assumptions are yours rather than ours.
How many clients would make it worthwhile?
Start with what is left after you have delivered the work. Suppose a new client generates €10,000 in first-year revenue and costs €5,000 to serve. That leaves €5,000 in contribution before acquisition costs and general overhead.
| Clients won | First-year contribution | Less the €9,300 programme |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | €5,000 | −€4,300 |
| 2 | €10,000 | €700 |
| 3 | €15,000 | €5,700 |
Swipe the table sideways →
Two clients cover the modelled cost with very little room. Three leave some headroom. Neither outcome is guaranteed, and the timing matters as much as the count: evaluate affordability alongside the potential return, and give it long enough to observe your actual sales cycle.
When is a smaller engagement the better start?
A broad campaign is hard to justify while you still cannot say who buys, why they buy, or what makes a company worth approaching.
In that situation a defined research or pilot engagement does more. Give it a specific decision to support: whether a segment contains enough suitable companies, whether your proposition starts relevant conversations, or whether your team can follow up on what it produces.
Scope should follow capacity, not ambition. For an independent consultant a small set of carefully chosen companies may be exactly right. A business with a full sales team needs broader coverage to keep it busy. The right size depends on how many opportunities you can realistically pursue, and a programme that produces more than you can handle is not a bargain.
Seven questions to ask before signing
- What exactly counts as a result?
- Can you show how you would select prospects for our business?
- Which costs sit outside the quoted fee?
- Who owns replies, qualification, scheduling and follow-up?
- What must our team provide, and how much time should we reserve?
- What can we inspect and keep when the engagement ends?
- When do we review performance, and what are the exit terms?
The answers should let you compare both the invoice and the workload it creates. If you are further along and actively comparing providers, there is a longer version of this: twelve questions to ask an agency, each with the evidence to ask for alongside it.
How Blackorange approaches pricing
Blackorange scopes a one-off build followed by ongoing monthly work. The engagement depends on the market and what has to be built, and it is not priced per lead or per meeting. There is no price list, because the same engine is different work in different markets: one territory and one kind of signal is not six countries every week.
If you are weighing outsourcing, the useful first decision is where you need help. SONAR™ is the research that decides who to approach and when. RELAY™ is the outreach itself. Which one you need depends on where your own process is getting stuck.
See how engagements are scoped and priced
Still deciding whether to outsource at all? Hiring an SDR against outsourcing compares the two as operating models rather than as invoices.