Ask five vendors what Medicare leads cost and you will get five numbers, all technically true and none useful on its own. Price depends on what you are actually buying: how fresh the lead is, whether you own it exclusively, how tightly it is filtered, and what season the calendar shows.
After twenty-one years supplying more than 500 US call centers, here is the honest version: the tiers that set the price, the arithmetic that matters more than the sticker, and a clean way to budget your first test.
Live transfers sit at the top of the market. You are paying for a Medicare-eligible senior who has already been qualified and is on the line when your closer picks up. Nothing converts faster, and nothing costs more per unit, because the vendor absorbed the dialing, screening, and hold time you would otherwise staff.
Real-time exclusive leads are the premium self-dial format: an inquiry generated minutes ago, verified, and delivered to one buyer only. You pay for freshness and for the absence of competition on that record.
Targeted data lists, including T65 birthday-window and plan-interest files, occupy the middle. The per-record price is modest, and what you are really buying is precision: age bands, counties where the right plans exist, and signals like PPO interest that let agents open the correct conversation.
Aged leads, typically 30 to 90 days old, are the entry tier. The consumer raised a hand weeks ago, other buyers may have worked the record, and the price reflects all of that. In volume, on a disciplined dialing floor, aged files still produce enrollments at strong economics.
Per-lead price is the number everyone compares and the one that matters least. The number that decides your month is cost per conversation, and lead age dominates it.
Across our delivery data, fresh verified files average a 42 percent contact rate, while recycled industry data averages closer to 18 percent. Run the arithmetic on a file priced at half the per-lead cost of a fresh one: at 18 percent contact, each conversation costs you 0.5 divided by 0.18, about 2.8 price units. The fresh file at full price and 42 percent costs 1 divided by 0.42, about 2.4 units. The bargain file is roughly 15 percent more expensive per actual conversation, before counting the higher close rates that freshness brings.
That is the whole pricing debate in one calculation. Buy conversations, not rows in a spreadsheet.
Exclusivity. A record sold once costs more than a record sold five times, and it should: you are buying the absence of four competitors dialing the same senior.
Freshness and format. Minutes-old beats days-old beats weeks-old, and delivery mechanics (live transfer, real-time push, batch file) price accordingly.
Targeting depth. Every filter that saves your agents wasted dials, T65 windows, county-level plan availability, income indicators, plan-interest tags, adds cost at the data layer and removes cost at the dialing layer.
Compliance overhead. DNC scrubbing, consent documentation, and replacement policies are real work. Vendors who skip them can undercut on price precisely because you are the one absorbing the risk.
Seasonality. Demand spikes into the Annual Enrollment Period every fall. Capacity booked in summer is consistently cheaper than capacity fought over in October.
A quote dramatically under market usually means one of four things: the file is being sold to multiple buyers at once, the records carry no consent trail, the claimed recency is a guess, or there is no replacement policy standing behind bad data. Any one of those erases the discount; two of them can erase your quarter. The cheap file that triggers TCPA exposure is the most expensive purchase in this industry.
Work backward, not forward. Start from the commission value of an enrollment and the acquisition cost your book can carry. Then buy a small, controlled batch in one tier, one geography, and track three numbers honestly: contact rate, quote rate, and enrollments.
Those three numbers convert any per-lead price into your true cost per enrollment, and they tell you exactly which filters deserve scale. Our Medicare leads page breaks down the formats in depth, the PPO pillar covers the fastest-growing plan segment, and the services catalog shows every adjacent vertical the same infrastructure serves.
Because the honest price depends on your order: exclusivity, lead age, plan-interest tagging, geographic filters, and season all move the number. A published flat rate either overcharges simple orders or hides corners cut on complex ones, which is why serious wholesale pricing is quoted against your exact filter set.
Yes, for the right desk. Aged files trade contactability for volume economics, and high-dial outbound floors convert them profitably. The mistake is comparing them to fresh exclusive leads on per-lead price alone; compare cost per conversation and cost per enrollment instead.
Demand peaks around the Annual Enrollment Period from October 15 to December 7, when every agency scales at once. Buyers who lock volume commitments before the fall typically see better economics than those bidding for capacity inside the window.
Want the real number for your exact filter set? Pricing at wholesale is quoted against your specification: tier, volume, states, and filters. Request a quote and it comes back the same day, with the replacement policy in writing.