Google Ads Cost Calculator
Find out how much Google Ads will cost you. Enter a monthly budget to see the clicks and leads it buys, or the number of leads you need to see the budget — starting from 2026 medians for your industry.
- Free, no sign-up
- 2026 medians, 23 industries
- Budget or lead goal
- Management fee included
1. What do you want to know?
What you pay Google, before any fees
2. Your clicks
Picking an industry fills in the 2026 medians. Replace them with numbers from your own account if you have them.
Median: $5.42
Clicks that become a lead. Median: 8.18%
3. Management (optional)
Leave 0 if you run the account yourself.
Per month. Flat fees and % of spend both go here as dollars.
4. Revenue (optional)
Add both to see customers, revenue and return on ad spend.
Your close rate
Total monthly cost
$2,000
Paid to Google. Add a management fee to see the full cost.
- Clicks a month
- 369
- Leads a month
- 30.2
- Cost per lead
- $66
- Daily budget
- $66
Your cost per click
$5.42 — about the median for all industries ($5.42).
Return on ad spend
Add your close rate and average sale value in step 4 to see customers, revenue and whether the ads pay back.
Medians from WordStream by LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026 (13,474 US search campaigns, April 2025 – March 2026). Half of advertisers pay more, half less. The daily budget is the monthly budget divided by 30.4, the number Google bills against.
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Get a free Google Ads auditHow much does Google Ads cost?
Google Ads has no fixed price. You set a budget and pay for each click, and the price of a click is set by an auction every time someone searches. In the 12 months to March 2026, the median click on Google Search cost $5.42 and the median lead cost $66.69, according to WordStream by LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks from 13,474 US search campaigns.
A budget of $1,500–2,000 a month buys about 280–370 clicks at that median price. At the median conversion rate of 8.18%, that is 20–30 leads a month. Your industry and city can move both numbers a long way, which is what the calculator above is for.
On top of the clicks, there are two other costs:
- Management. Agencies usually charge either a flat monthly fee or a share of ad spend, commonly 10–20%. Our own Google Ads management is a flat $750 a month for budgets up to $10,000.
- Tracking and landing pages. Call tracking and a page built for the ad are not required, but without them you cannot tell which clicks became customers.
Cost per click and cost per lead by industry
Medians for US Google Search campaigns, April 2025 – March 2026:
| Industry | Cost per click | Conversion rate | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attorneys & Legal Services | $9.87 | 5.55% | $131.63 |
| Home & Home Improvement | $8.33 | 8.05% | $90.92 |
| Dentists & Dental Services | $8.00 | 10.67% | $72.97 |
| Personal Services | $7.17 | 12.34% | $54.60 |
| Health & Fitness | $6.17 | 6.94% | $67.36 |
| Business Services | $5.87 | 4.85% | $93.69 |
| Industrial & Commercial | $5.87 | 8.2% | $75.19 |
| Career & Employment | $5.81 | 3.05% | $67.36 |
| Education & Instruction | $4.81 | 13.14% | $77.48 |
| Physicians & Surgeons | $4.76 | 12.43% | $40.04 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | $4.62 | 10.35% | $39.25 |
| Apparel / Fashion & Jewelry | $4.44 | 4.5% | $97.51 |
| Automotive — Repair, Service & Parts | $4.35 | 15.51% | $29.96 |
| Shopping, Collectibles & Gifts | $4.14 | 4.01% | $49.40 |
| Animals & Pets | $4.06 | 16.22% | $31.50 |
| Furniture | $3.97 | 2.99% | $106.70 |
| Finance & Insurance | $3.39 | 2.64% | $74.44 |
| Real Estate | $3.22 | 3.7% | $102.51 |
| Sports & Recreation | $2.77 | 7.69% | $44.26 |
| Automotive — For Sale | $2.27 | 6.01% | $44.26 |
| Travel | $2.14 | 5.83% | $44.70 |
| Restaurants & Food | $2.05 | 8.05% | $30.57 |
| Arts & Entertainment | $1.63 | 5.91% | $26.84 |
| All industries | $5.42 | 8.18% | $66.69 |
Source: WordStream by LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026. Each column is a separate median, so a median cost per click divided by a median conversion rate does not equal the median cost per lead. The calculator works from cost per click and conversion rate; put in your own numbers when you have them.
What decides how much you pay per click
Every search starts an auction. Google ranks the ads by Ad Rank: your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, and the context of the search. Three things follow from how it works:
- You rarely pay your full bid. Google charges the minimum needed to beat the ad ranked below yours, rounded up to the next cent.
- Quality lowers the price. Ads Google rates as more relevant clear the auction thresholds with a lower bid. Low-quality ads can end up paying close to their maximum bid even with little competition.
- The top of the page costs more. Ads shown above the search results face higher thresholds than ads below them.
The rest is competition. Legal, home services and dental clicks top the table above: one customer is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars to the businesses bidding, so they bid more.
How Google spends your budget
You set an average daily budget in Google Ads, not a monthly one. On a busy day Google can spend up to twice that amount, and makes up for it on quieter days. Over a month you are never charged more than the daily budget times 30.4, the average number of days in a month.
So for a $2,000 monthly budget, enter about $66 a day. The calculator shows this number as "Daily budget".
How to set a budget that pays back
Start from what a customer is worth, not from what you'd like to spend:
- Work out the most you can pay for a lead. Take the average job or sale value, multiply by your margin and by the share of leads that become customers. For a $500 job, a 50% margin and half of leads booking, a lead is worth $125 to you before ad costs. The CPA calculator does the math.
- Compare it with the cost per lead in the calculator. If the estimate is above what a lead is worth, more budget makes the loss bigger, not smaller. Fix the conversion rate (landing page, call handling) or the targeting first.
- Give it enough leads to learn from. At 10 leads a month, one lead more or less moves the cost per lead by 10%. Judge the first quarter as a whole, not each month.
- Check return on ad spend once you have sales. The ROAS calculator shows the break-even point for your margin.
Local Services Ads cost differently
For home services and some professional services, Google also offers Local Services Ads. You pay per lead (a call, message or booking) instead of per click, and the price depends on your category and area. In 2026 Google is moving them into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with a pay-per-lead goal, starting with US home services in August 2026. This calculator covers Search ads, where you pay per click.
Where budgets get wasted
The most common leaks are settings, not ad copy: location targeting that also reaches people outside your area, search partners left on without a check of their cost per lead, broad match with no one reading the search terms, and recommendations Google applies automatically. We describe all six on our Google Ads management page, along with a 10-point checklist you can run on your own account.
Google Ads cost FAQ
There is no fixed price: you choose the budget. At the 2026 median of $5.42 per click and an 8.18% conversion rate, $1,500–2,000 a month buys about 280–370 clicks and 20–30 leads. Management fees come on top, usually a flat monthly fee or 10–20% of ad spend.
The median click on Google Search cost $5.42 across US industries from April 2025 to March 2026, according to WordStream by LocaliQ. It ranges from $1.63 in arts and entertainment to $9.87 for attorneys and legal services.
Work backward from what a lead is worth to you, then budget for enough leads to learn from. As a rule of arithmetic, below about 10 leads a month one lead more or less swings your cost per lead by 10% or more, so results are hard to read.
Google can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a busy day and balances it with quieter days. Over a month you are never charged more than the daily budget times 30.4.
It is as accurate as the cost per click and conversion rate you put in. The defaults are industry medians, so half of advertisers pay more and half less. Replace them with the numbers from your own Google Ads account for a real forecast.
No. Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click, and the price depends on your category and area. The calculator covers Search campaigns, where you pay per click.
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