Search for HomeAdvisor reviews and you will find thousands of them, most with five stars. Read who wrote them and the picture changes. The people rating HomeAdvisor are mostly homeowners rating the contractor who showed up. The contractor who paid for that homeowner’s phone number rarely appears in that average.
Short answer for contractors: HomeAdvisor and Angi are the same company, you pay for leads that are often sold to more than one pro, and the federal government has already looked at how those leads were sold. HomeAdvisor reviews for contractors are worth reading, as long as you know which ones you are reading.
HomeAdvisor and Angi are one company
If you came here comparing HomeAdvisor with Angi, you can stop comparing. Angi Inc. says in its 2025 annual report to the SEC that it owns and runs Angi, Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, plus Handy, and that it still operates under all of those names. IAC, the former parent, spun Angi off as its own public company on March 31, 2025.
On the contractor side the names blur together. The HomeAdvisor sign-up page is titled “Angi for Pros”, and HomeAdvisor’s lead product is sold as Angi Leads. Angi Ads is a separate product with a separate contract. So the real choice is between the products, and the brand on the login screen does not change who you are paying.
How HomeAdvisor charges contractors, in Angi’s own words
Angi does not publish a price list, and any per-lead figure you read online comes from a third party. What Angi does publish is how the money comes in. The same annual report lists three ways pros pay: fees for consumer matches (leads), contracts for advertising, and membership subscriptions.
The leads themselves come in two kinds, according to Angi’s own pro page. Market Match connects you with homeowners looking for a local business. Exact Match promotes your profile, and you only pay after the homeowner has viewed it and chosen to connect with you. In both, you set the budget, the job types and the zip codes.
Ask your rep which one you are on, in writing, along with the contract length. A Market Match lead and an Exact Match lead are different purchases, and most online reviews do not say which one the reviewer bought.
Whatever the price per lead turns out to be, the number that decides whether it pays is your cost per booked job. We worked through the arithmetic on what an Angi lead costs per booked job in an earlier post, so it is not repeated here.
What HomeAdvisor’s ratings actually measure
On Trustpilot, HomeAdvisor had a TrustScore of 3.8 from 22,678 reviews when we checked on October 14, 2026. 84% of them were five stars and 3% were one star. Trustpilot notes that anyone can write a review there, and most of these come from homeowners describing a plumber or a painter they found through the site.
That is a fair measure of one thing: whether homeowners got matched with someone who did the job. It says almost nothing about whether the contractor made money on the lead.
The Better Business Bureau tells a different story on the same day. HomeAdvisor holds an A+ rating there, is not BBB accredited, and had 162 complaints filed in the last three years. A BBB grade and a complaint count measure different things, so an A+ and 162 complaints can sit side by side.
If you want contractor reviews specifically, filter for them. On Trustpilot, search the reviews for words a pro would use, such as “leads”, “charged” or “refund”. You will get a much smaller set, and it reads very differently from the headline score.
What the FTC found, and how it ended
The most detailed contractor complaint about HomeAdvisor was filed by the Federal Trade Commission rather than by a contractor. In March 2022 the FTC issued an administrative complaint alleging that since at least mid-2014 HomeAdvisor had made false or unsupported claims about its leads. According to the FTC, pros were told their leads would match the services and areas they picked, many did not, and HomeAdvisor claimed its leads turned into jobs at rates it could not back up. Its sales agents also described a paid mHelpDesk software trial as free.
HomeAdvisor agreed to a consent order. The FTC’s case record shows the proposed order in January 2023, requiring up to $7.2 million in redress for service providers, and the final order on April 21, 2023. In November 2023 the FTC returned more than $3 million to businesses that had paid for HomeAdvisor memberships.
Two things are worth keeping straight. The FTC’s complaint states allegations it had “reason to believe” were true, and the order was a settlement HomeAdvisor signed, not a court verdict. The order also bans HomeAdvisor from making false or unsupported claims about its leads going forward, which is a reason to get any close-rate promise from a sales rep in writing.
What changed in 2025
Many of the reviews you will read describe HomeAdvisor before 2025, and the business has moved since. In January 2025 Angi rolled out what it calls homeowner choice. Its annual report credits that change for a 72% drop in its Network revenue, the requests that reach Angi pros through third-party websites.
The same report shows the scale. Across 2025, homeowners submitted about 15.5 million service requests, down 10% from 17.2 million in 2024. Those requests turned into about 20.2 million leads, down 17%. Angi defines a lead as a connection between a homeowner and a pro, and says plainly that one request can become several of them. The average number of pros active each month fell 19%, from about 152,000 to 122,000.
Revenue moved the same way. U.S. lead revenue slipped 3% to $587 million, advertising revenue fell 31% to $215 million, and membership subscription revenue fell 32% to $29 million.
For you, the practical point is narrow. Fewer leads per request should mean fewer contractors chasing each homeowner. Whether that shows up in your own close rate is something only your invoices can tell you, and a review from 2021 cannot.
The Bay Area view: homeowners search Google first
One local number matters more than any rating. When we measured Bay Area search demand in September 2026, homeowners in San Jose and San Francisco searched “plumber near me” about 4,000 times in a typical month, taking the median month to leave out reporting spikes. In October 2026, “homeadvisor reviews” registered about 10 searches a month in each city. The full method is in our Bay Area contractor search data.
Homeowners here go to Google, and the map pack is the first thing they see. A call from your own Google Business Profile was not sold to anyone else, and it costs nothing extra once you rank. Getting there is what local SEO for Bay Area contractors is for, and it takes three to six months to move. That wait is the honest case for HomeAdvisor: it can fill a calendar while your own listing is still empty.
Reading HomeAdvisor reviews for contractors before you sign
- Get the product in writing. Market Match or Exact Match, Angi Leads or Angi Ads, the monthly budget, the contract term and how to cancel.
- Read the right reviews. Filter Trustpilot and the BBB for reviews from pros in your trade. Ignore the headline score; homeowners wrote it.
- Measure cost per booked job from month one. Total spend divided by jobs completed. It is the only rating that applies to your business.
- Turn every HomeAdvisor job into a Google review. A review on HomeAdvisor helps HomeAdvisor. A review on your Google Business Profile helps you rank for years. Here is how to ask customers for Google reviews without it feeling awkward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is HomeAdvisor the same as Angi?
Yes. HomeAdvisor is a brand of Angi Inc., which also runs Angi and Angie’s List. Its lead product for contractors is sold as Angi Leads, and its pro sign-up page is branded Angi for Pros.
Are HomeAdvisor reviews written by contractors or homeowners?
Mostly homeowners. HomeAdvisor’s 22,678 Trustpilot reviews, checked in October 2026, are mainly homeowners rating the pro they hired, which is why 84% are five stars. Contractor experiences show up more in BBB complaints and in the FTC’s 2022 complaint.
What did the FTC do about HomeAdvisor?
In March 2022 the FTC alleged that HomeAdvisor misrepresented the quality and source of the leads it sold to contractors. HomeAdvisor agreed to a consent order, finalized in April 2023, providing up to $7.2 million for service providers, and the FTC returned more than $3 million in November 2023.
How much does HomeAdvisor charge contractors?
Angi does not publish prices. Its annual report says pros pay lead fees, advertising contracts and membership subscriptions, and the price per lead depends on your trade, area and budget. Get the terms in writing, then track your cost per booked job.
Should a Bay Area contractor use HomeAdvisor or build their own Google listing?
HomeAdvisor can fill a calendar while you have no reviews. Bay Area homeowners search Google directly far more often, so a Google Business Profile and website you own usually cost less per job once they rank, which takes three to six months.
Read the reviews, then read your invoices
HomeAdvisor’s star rating answers a homeowner’s question. Your question is whether the leads pay, and the answer is in your own numbers, not in 22,678 reviews written by somebody else.
If you want someone to look at those numbers with you, our free marketing audit compares what you spend on leads with what your own Google listing could bring in. If HomeAdvisor is still the better deal for you right now, we will say so.