How much do MCA leads cost? Price benchmarks by type and age

Ask five MCA lead vendors what a lead costs and you'll get five numbers between four cents and four hundred dollars. All of them can be right, because "MCA lead" covers everything from a live phone transfer to a row in a spreadsheet that's three years old. Here's the whole price ladder in one place, with what drives each number.

The ladder, top to bottom

Type	Typical price	Sold as
Live transfer (owner on the line now)	$75 – $400 each	Per call, often with a qualification guarantee
Real-time exclusive lead	$50 – $200 each	Per lead, delivered within minutes of the inquiry
Real-time shared lead (sold to 3–5 buyers)	$10 – $50 each	Per lead
Fresh submission / full application (under 30 days)	$20 – $100 each	Per application, sometimes quote-only
Aged submission, 30–90 days	$0.75 – $1.00 per record	Per record, list of 100+
Aged submission, 90–360 days	$0.25 – $0.50 per record	Per record, list of 200+
Worked leads with agent dispositions	$0.50 – $1.50 per record	Per record; price tracks how recent the last contact was
UCC filing leads (funded merchants, public record)	$0.20 – $0.75 per record	Per record, often by state and filing month
Aged leads, 12 months+ with mobile and email	$0.05 – $0.13 per record	Per record, lists of 5,000+
Bulk raw business records	$0.01 – $0.03 per record	10k / 50k / 100k blocks

These are ranges we see across published vendor price lists and marketplace listings in 2026. Any one vendor sits somewhere inside them.

What actually sets the price

Four things, roughly in order of weight:

Age. The single biggest factor. Price roughly halves each step down the age ladder because contact rates fall as records get older.
Depth of information. A record with stated revenue, time in business and amount requested (a submission) is worth three to five times a record with a name and a phone number at the same age. The owner has already qualified themselves.
Exclusivity. Exclusive real-time leads cost five to ten times shared ones. Aged data is never exclusive, so the question becomes how many times a record can be resold. A cap of three sales is common among careful vendors; no cap is common among careless ones.
Origin. Data the vendor generated itself (its own applications, its own call notes) commands a premium over compiled or repurchased lists, because it's rarer and legally cleaner.

Minimums and how vendors package it

Most self-serve aged-data stores set a minimum order around $200 and a minimum record count per list (100 for premium tiers, 500 to 1,000 for cheap tiers). Some sell prepaid credits with a bonus (buy $1,000, get $1,200 of credit). Bulk raw data is sold in blocks: 5,000 records for around $250, 10,000 for around $500, 25,000 for around $900.

Cost per record is the wrong number

The number that matters is cost per live conversation, and after that, cost per funded deal. A worked example:

1,000 aged submissions at $0.35 = $350
Contact rate over three dialing passes: say 12% = 120 conversations, about $2.90 each
Of those, 8 to 12 turn into a submitted file; 1 to 2 fund

Whether that's a good buy depends entirely on your average commission per funded deal. For most ISOs it is, comfortably, which is why aged data has been a staple for a decade. Run the same math on a $60 real-time lead and you'll see why shops use both: real-time for the closers, aged for the floor.

Hidden costs to add in

Scrubbing. DNC and litigator scrubs cost a fraction of a cent per record but are not optional.
Dialer minutes and agent time. Cheap records with low contact rates cost more in dialing than in data.
Replacements. Ask what the vendor does about disconnected numbers. Some replace above a threshold; many don't. Price accordingly.

Red flags on a price list

"Fresh" data with no date on the record. If the age can't be verified, it's whatever the vendor says it is.
Prices far below the ranges above. Usually a repurchased list being resold many times over.
Records that include SSNs, dates of birth or bank details. The seller is passing you a compliance problem, not a premium.
No answer to "how many times is this record sold?"

Updated 2026-09-28. Prices quoted are market ranges we observe, not offers; our own lists and current prices are on the Buy Data page. We supply data; compliance with TCPA, DNC and CAN-SPAM for any outreach is the buyer's responsibility.