ABI construction leads: what you get, what it costs, and what else works

What Barbour ABI sells

Barbour ABI sells UK construction project leads: projects valued over £100k, tracked from pre-planning to contract award and updated every day, with phone, mobile and email contacts for the people involved, researcher-confirmed project values, bidder histories and sector filters. The idea is that a regional sales manager at a brick or insulation manufacturer can pull a list of £500K to £5M residential projects in their patch, see who's specifying, and get in touch before the order goes out.

That research is what you're paying for. The underlying planning data is public: every local planning authority (LPA) in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publishes an application register. What Barbour ABI adds on top is a UK research team that makes more than a million phone calls a year, confirms values and start dates by direct contact, and attaches names and roles to projects. That human layer takes time and money to produce, which is why the platform sits at enterprise prices.

It also tracks how a project moves through its stages, from pre-planning through approval to contract award, with bidder histories from its tender research team, and it sells a product specification tool that shows manufacturers where their products, and their competitors', have been specified. Subscribers get its AI search, Just Ask, at no extra cost. For a cladding or M&E subcontractor that needs to quote at the right moment, that timing can matter as much as the initial lead.

What Barbour ABI costs, and how it's sold

Barbour ABI has no price list, but its own ROI page says average subscription costs range from £4k and works its example on an average annual subscription of around £7,500. The figure moves with the sectors, locations, users and API licences you choose. Its only published client terms, for contracts signed between 16 October 2024 and 11 May 2026, set an initial 12 months (or another agreed period) that then roll on until either side gives 90 days' written notice, by registered post or courier. For comparison, 2024 reviews quote Glenigan renewals of £3,500 to £6,800 a year. Both are built for teams with a dedicated business development function and a budget to match.

The sales process is gated. Its site offers a free trial and 10 free leads, but each comes through a form that asks for your phone number, and its free search tool shows a sample of projects, then asks you to book a demo. There is no published plan you can start using on your own today. For an owner-managed groundworks firm with three estimators, or a regional timber merchant with one person covering new business, that process can feel disproportionate to the size of the spend they're considering.

None of that is a knock on the model. It suits national contractors, large merchants and manufacturers with structured sales teams. It does mean, though, that the product isn't built for every business with a legitimate use for construction lead data.

Where planning applications fit into the picture

Barbour ABI's project data starts, in most cases, with a planning application. A developer submits plans to their local authority, and the application appears on the public register with a description, site address, applicant name and agent. Everything that comes after that, the verified contacts, decision tracking and programme dates, is the value Barbour ABI layers on top.

That makes the planning application the earliest public signal, and SiteLens puts it in front of the trades it needs, typically the morning after the council publishes it. If you're a roofing materials supplier or a scaffolding contractor, the day a relevant application is published is the day you want to know about it.

Government planning statistics, published quarterly by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), show tens of thousands of planning decisions issued in England alone each quarter, across residential, commercial and infrastructure schemes. Many are householder extensions, small conversions and minor new builds: the steady work most trades live on, and exactly what a trade filter is for. Barbour ABI's leads platform tracks projects valued over £100k, and covers smaller home improvement work in a separate analytics report.

The gap that self-serve tools fill

For a specialist subcontractor working a 30-mile radius, or a materials supplier with a handful of regional reps, the case for Barbour ABI is harder to make. You would be paying for researched contacts on larger projects when what you actually need is narrower: every planning application of a given type in your area, as soon as it's published, so you can make contact yourself.

SiteLens brings in every new application across 380+ UK councils each night and classifies each one by project type, trade and scale. Plain-English briefs say what is proposed, and estimated value bands name their basis. You can save an alert for, say, roofing work within 25 km of Birmingham and get a morning email of the matches. SiteLens does not phone each project: it puts the planning signal in front of you early, with enough context to decide whether a scheme is worth chasing and the firms behind it matched to Companies House.

The pricing sits in a different bracket. SiteLens starts on the Free plan (full map access and one saved alert), rises to £39/mo, or £29/mo billed annually, for Pro, and £99/mo, or £79/mo billed annually, for a Team plan that adds hourly alerts, up to 5 users and larger exports, and you can try Pro free for 7 days with no card. Barbour ABI's own average of around £7,500 a year would pay for 16 years of Pro at £39 a month.

When Barbour ABI is still the better call

If your sales team needs direct phone, mobile and email contacts for decision-makers, researcher-confirmed project values, bidder histories and stage-by-stage tracking across a national pipeline, Barbour ABI or Glenigan is probably worth the conversation. That human-verified layer is expensive to build and maintain, and no self-serve tool replicates it exactly.

Large materials manufacturers with dedicated specification managers, national framework subcontractors, or companies running high-volume outbound business development are the natural users. For them, the cost of a bad contact or a missed tender window is higher than the annual subscription.

In practice, the two tools answer different questions. Barbour ABI is strongest on who the decision-makers are once a project is heading to site. SiteLens is built to flag what has just been submitted or approved in your area, and where. Both start from planning data, and which one you need comes down to where in your sales process you want the intelligence.

How to use planning data as a lead source in practice

Whether you use Barbour ABI, SiteLens, or a combination of both, the approach is similar. Start with application type and geography. For a groundworks subcontractor, that might mean filtering for residential major applications and commercial full applications within your operating radius. For a window manufacturer's regional rep, it could be any new-build residential application above a unit threshold.

The validation date matters more than the decision date for early outreach. An application validated today has a statutory target of 8 weeks for most types and 13 weeks for major schemes, though in practice plenty run longer (MHCLG publishes decision-speed figures broken down by application type). That gap is your window to reach the architect, developer or main contractor before the specification is fixed.

Once you have the application, the applicant and agent are named on the public register. Companies House records fill in a lot of the rest: registered address, directors and related companies. SiteLens matches the applicants, agents and contractors to Companies House on every plan, including free, and Pro opens the record behind them: the directors, people with significant control and filing health, plus the planning history at the address. On Pro it also gives you the agent's published email and phone, and 15 contact lookups a month for a firm's business email and phone, so you reach the right company fast.

Practical next steps

If you're weighing up whether Barbour ABI is worth the investment, the most useful first step is to spend time with the free planning data directly, either through individual council portals or a platform like SiteLens that aggregates them. That shows you how much volume actually exists in your area and sectors, which is the number that decides whether a bigger paid tool would pay for itself.

The SiteLens Free plan needs no card: the full map, search across 380+ UK councils and one saved alert, and you can try Pro free for 7 days, also with no card, when you want the names. It's a sensible way to sense-check the pipeline in your patch before committing to any paid subscription, whether that's SiteLens Pro or an enterprise contract with one of the larger providers.