For Lead Generators & Sellers
You do the hard part by generating the leads. Then you sell them wholesale to an aggregator that keeps a cut of every dollar. Lead Router lets you build your own direct buyer network: a storefront buyers shop, prepaid SKUs they fund, real-time routing that picks the winner, and billing on your own Stripe.
Real-Time
Routing decision
Ping-post
Real-time auction
Prepaid SKUs
Lead inventory
Your Stripe
Buyer billing
The Wholesale Tax
The costs of selling through an aggregator
Aggregators take a cut of every dollar today. They also concentrate your revenue into the kind of customer list that gets discounted when you sell the business.
10–31%
What aggregators keep of every dollar transacted. MediaAlpha discloses a 14% take rate; EverQuote keeps a 31% variable marketing margin.
$5–25 vs $75–100
A shared auto-insurance lead wholesales for $5–25. Sold exclusively to an agent, the same lead brings $75–100.
39%
EverQuote’s single largest customer is 39% of its revenue. Sell through aggregators and you stack your concentration risk on top of theirs.
~1%
Your largest customer’s share of revenue when 1,000 buyers buy direct. That is the profile acquirers look for.
Sources: MediaAlpha and EverQuote FY2024 SEC filings; FOCUS Investment Banking (2025); industry pricing data; Bulow & Klemperer, American Economic Review (1996).
Why It Stays This Way
What keeps sellers stuck on wholesale
Direct buyers pay more. Everyone sells wholesale anyway, because managing hundreds of small buyers used to be more work than it was worth.
Aggregators take margin on every dollar
Selling wholesale means a middleman resells your leads and keeps a cut. That cut is 10 to 31 percent of the transaction, based on public filings.
One buyer becomes your whole business
When five aggregator accounts are all your revenue, any one of them is a concentration risk. Acquirers cut valuations by 20 to 35 percent when a single customer is more than roughly 20 to 30 percent of revenue.
Managing hundreds of buyers is manual work
Onboarding, billing, filters, and caps for hundreds of small buyers used to mean manual work multiplied by every buyer.
No store or online signup
Without a catalog buyers can browse and a wizard they can sign up through, every new buyer means a sales call and a spreadsheet. That limit is what keeps sellers dependent on a handful of aggregators.
How Lead Router Solves It
Everything a direct buyer network needs
Storefront, onboarding, routing, and billing: the operating layer that makes selling direct to hundreds of buyers practical.
Buyer storefront with prepaid SKUs
Publish your lead products as SKUs in a Shopify-style catalog. Buyers browse specs and pricing, fund a balance, and buy prepaid inventory with a card. The routing engine draws down that inventory as matching leads arrive, with first-in, first-out tracking so every prepaid pack is used in order. See Buyer Storefront.
Self-serve buyer onboarding wizard
A new buyer creates an account, funds a balance, picks the products they want, and sets filters and caps, with no manual back-and-forth for every deal. That is what makes a network of hundreds of direct buyers practical. See the onboarding wizard.
Ping-post and waterfall routing
Let buyers bid on a lead in real time before committing, or pass a lead down a ranked list until it sells. The engine checks every buyer contract at the same time when a lead arrives and picks winners by price, priority, weight, or round-robin. See ping-post and waterfall routing.
Caps, dedup, and filters per buyer
Every contract carries daily, weekly, and monthly caps, number-range and list-match filters, schedule windows, and buyer-level deduplication so a buyer never pays twice for the same person. See cap management and lead dedup.
Buyer billing on your own Stripe
Buyer charges, prepaid top-ups, and balances run through your connected Stripe account. The money moves directly between you and your buyers. Lead Router is the routing and billing layer, not the merchant of record for your lead sales.
One API to receive every lead
Partners and your own landing pages post leads to a single documented endpoint using the partner's posting key, with the campaignId sent in the request. The same lead flows into the routing engine no matter where it came from. See the lead API.
The Bigger Picture
What selling direct changes
- Full price per lead. Each direct buyer pays you the exclusive or shared price, not a wholesale rate after an aggregator’s cut.
- Spread your revenue. A thousand buyers, each at about 1 percent of revenue, is the kind of spread-out customer base acquirers pay a premium for, unlike five concentrated aggregator accounts.
- Own the relationship. Buyers transact on your storefront, fund balances on your Stripe, and see only your brand. You run the network instead of supplying one.
Connect capture, quality, and buyer delivery
Explore the detailed workflow and configuration requirements for each capability.
Capture and qualify
Browser posting keys, allowed-origin rules, step-by-step form capture, and consent certificates all support lead intake. Published quality models and any enrichment you turn on feed the eligibility rules.
Sell and retain buyers
Offer lead or call products, guided setup, and a role-specific buyer workspace. Payment, contract configuration, and delivery readiness determine when a buyer can receive traffic.
Frequently Asked
FAQ
Questions lead sellers ask before building a direct buyer network.
How is selling direct different from selling to an aggregator?
An aggregator resells your leads and keeps part of each sale. With direct sales, each buyer pays you. You also take on buyer setup, delivery, billing, and support. Lead Router gives you a store and tools to manage those steps.
What is a buyer storefront?
A Shopify-style catalog where your buyers browse the lead products (SKUs) you publish, see specs and pricing, and buy prepaid inventory with a card. Each SKU carries its own price, filters, and caps. Buyers fund a balance or buy prepaid lead packs, and the routing engine draws down that inventory as matching leads arrive.
Who pays for lead billing, me or Lead Router?
You do, on your own Stripe account. Buyer charges, prepaid top-ups, and balances run through your connected Stripe account, so the money moves directly between you and your buyers. Lead Router is the routing and billing layer, not the merchant of record for your lead sales.
Can buyers onboard themselves?
Yes. A self-serve onboarding wizard walks a new buyer through creating an account, funding a balance, choosing which products they want, and setting their filters and caps. You review, run the required delivery test, and approve. There is no manual back-and-forth for every buyer, which is what makes a network of hundreds of small direct buyers manageable.
How does the routing engine decide who wins a lead?
Every lead is checked against your buyers’ contracts in real time: buyer status, balance, schedule, geo and demographic filters, caps, and cross-buyer dedup. Ping-post lets buyers bid on a lead before they commit to buy it. Waterfall routing passes a lead down a ranked list until it sells. Your distribution rule (price, priority, weight, or round-robin) picks the winners, and every buyer contract is checked at the same time.
Built For Lead Sellers
Stop selling wholesale. Build your own buyer network.
A storefront buyers shop, prepaid SKUs they fund, real-time routing that picks the winner, and billing on your own Stripe. One platform from lead intake to buyer payment.
Every feature is part of the plan. Usage is billed in credits.