"Meta or Google?" is one of the most common questions service businesses ask when they start running ads — and it's usually the wrong question, because the honest answer depends entirely on how well you're tracking what happens after the click.
Meta Lead Ads tend to generate a higher volume of enquiries at a lower cost per lead, especially for visually-driven categories (real estate, education, fitness, beauty). The tradeoff is intent: a lead who filled a form inside Instagram is often earlier in their decision than someone who searched for you.
Google Ads typically brings fewer, more expensive leads — but higher intent, since the person searched for what you offer. This tends to convert better for categories with clear, high-value search demand (legal services, healthcare, B2B software).
The comparison almost always breaks down the same way for businesses that don't have a unified pipeline: Meta leads pile up faster than they can be called, so response time drags, and conversion rate looks artificially low. Google leads get called quickly because there are fewer of them, so they look artificially strong. The channel isn't the deciding factor — response time is.
The only way to actually answer "which converts better for us" is to track both channels in the same pipeline, with the same follow-up standard applied to both, and let the data — not assumptions — tell you where to spend more.
That's the exact comparison LeadOS is designed to make visible: every Meta and Google lead in one pipeline, tagged by source, so you can see conversion rate by channel instead of guessing from memory.