When Do Yelp Leads Come In? Data From 18,353 Leads

Leads arrive around the clock

The busiest stretch is 10 AM to 3 PM, at roughly 7 to 8 percent of the day's leads per hour. But the evening tail is long: 6 PM to 9 PM still brings in 14% of all leads, and something arrives every hour of the night. Saturday and Sunday together account for 23%.

By weekday, Monday and Tuesday are the busiest (17% of the week's leads each), then Wednesday 16%, Thursday 14%, Friday 14%, Saturday 13% and Sunday 10%. A Sunday is quieter, not empty: it still brings in more than half of a Monday's volume.

Emergency trades get the most after-hours leads

Trades where something breaks at home lead the list. HVAC and plumbing customers send half or more of their requests outside business hours, and they are also the most likely to include a phone number, which reads like a customer who wants someone now.

Planned projects sit lower but not low: even landscaping and masonry get 42% of their leads after hours. For every trade in the data, closing the inbox at 6 PM and on weekends means not answering two in every five leads until the next business day.

What customers ask for

• Plumbing: toilet repair 12%, drain repair 11%, inspections 9%, faucet repair 7%, water pipe repair 6%.
• Appliance repair: refrigerators 25%, washers 19%, dryers 13%, dishwashers 12%, ovens 6%.
• HVAC: repair 60%, installation or replacement 21%, maintenance 12%.
• Movers: in-state moves 90%, out-of-state 6%, packing 2%.
• Landscaping: landscape installation 14%, artificial turf 14%, design services 10%, landscape design 8%.

Share of each trade's leads by the job type the customer picked on Yelp.

Customers decide in minutes

For the 4,744 leads in the data that got an answer, the first reply took a median of 3 seconds. 45% of those customers wrote back. When they did, 41% replied within 5 minutes, half within about 9 minutes, and 68% within the hour.

That is the window in which a customer is still on Yelp comparing the businesses they messaged. A reply that lands the next morning reaches someone who has usually already talked to a competitor. It is the same pattern described in our speed to lead and Yelp response time guides, now with our own numbers behind it.

What this means for your business

• Plan for evenings and weekends: that is close to half of your Yelp leads, more if you fix things that break.
• Reply within minutes, not hours. Half of the customers who answer back do it within 10 minutes.
• Ask for a phone number or address early. More than half of customers do not offer one.
• If nobody can watch the inbox at 9 PM, use an auto responder that answers the actual question, not a template.

How we measured

Source: 18,353 leads sent through Yelp Request a Quote to 60 US local service businesses that used You Never Sleep at some point between August 2, 2025 and October 8, 2026. Most are in California, New York, Texas and Massachusetts. Arrival time is the customer's first message, converted to the business's local time zone (17,566 leads with a known location). After hours means before 8 AM, from 6 PM onward, or any time on a weekend.

Trade breakdowns include only trades with at least three businesses, so no single business's numbers can be read from this page. Reply figures use only leads the business answered through You Never Sleep (4,744); leads received while a business had replies turned off are counted for timing but not for replies. The businesses chose to use an auto responder, so they skew toward active Yelp advertisers in large metro areas. No customer names, messages or contact details are published.

Published October 8, 2026. The data is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page.

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