Google Ads Cost Calculator
Pick your industry and country. See real click costs, a budget that fits them, and the leads it should buy.
Updated September 2, 2026
Budget calculator
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Based on your industry's click costs
Leads / month
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Revenue / month
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Profit after ads
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Break-even cost per lead: —
Generate this campaign freeWhat Google Ads cost by industry
What advertisers actually pay per click and per lead in 21 small-business industries, measured by LocaliQ and WordStream across 13,474 US search campaigns.
| Industry | US cost per click (USD)○ | US cost per lead (USD)○ | Conversion rate○ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Events & venues | $1.63 | $27 | 6.07% |
| Restaurants & catering | $2.05 | $31 | 6.71% |
| Landscaping & lawn care | $2.42 | $26 | 9.16% |
| Real estate | $3.22 | $103 | 3.14% |
| B2B SaaS | $3.98 | $64 | 6.27% |
| Automotive | $4.35 | $30 | 14.52% |
| Architecture | $4.60 | $59 | 7.81% |
| Med spa & aesthetics | $4.62 | $39 | 11.77% |
| Chiropractic | $4.76 | $40 | 11.89% |
| Healthcare clinics | $4.76 | $40 | 11.89% |
| Education & tutoring | $4.81 | $77 | 6.21% |
| Non-profit | $5.42 | $67 | 8.13% |
| Fitness & gyms | $6.17 | $67 | 9.16% |
| Engineering services | $7.14 | $91 | 7.81% |
| Home care & senior care | $7.17 | $55 | 13.13% |
| B2B fintech | $7.76 | $124 | 6.27% |
| Dental | $8.00 | $73 | 10.96% |
| Roofing | $8.85 | $97 | 9.16% |
| Law firms & legal | $9.87 | $132 | 7.50% |
| HVAC | $10.06 | $110 | 9.16% |
| Plumbing | $11.99 | $131 | 9.16% |
Running Meta as well? See what Facebook ads cost by industry — same 21 industries, same job values, a different auction.
Sources and footnotes
- ◐ Google Keyword Planner — Bytown's September 2, 2026 pull, shown under What you'd bid: the 25th–75th percentile of top-of-page bid midpoints across each industry's 12-keyword basket. A bid, not a price — what you would bid to sit at the top, before the auction discounts you. It runs well above the average paid, by 3x in plumbing. US converted from CAD at 1.3896 (Bank of Canada, September 1, 2026).
- ○ LocaliQ 2026 — the published cost per click and cost per lead, from LocaliQ & WordStream's search advertising benchmarks (updated June 1, 2026), for the closest matching category: 13,474 US search campaigns, April 2025 to March 2026. Where several industries here share one LocaliQ category — plumbing, HVAC, roofing and landscaping are all Home & Home Improvement — the category figure is split between them in proportion to their top-of-page bids, which leaves the measured category average unchanged. These are the figures the calculator runs on. They are averages, not ranges — LocaliQ publishes no spread, and we do not invent one.
- ○ Conversion rate — cost per click divided by cost per lead: the conversion rate an advertiser paying those two measured costs actually experiences, so every row's arithmetic checks out. LocaliQ also publishes a conversion rate per category, averaged separately across their campaigns; because an average of ratios is not the ratio of averages, theirs does not divide the other two columns. Across all industries the two agree to a tenth of a point — 8.13% implied against 8.18% published — so we publish the one this table's own numbers support. LocaliQ counts calls, forms and chats as conversions, which is why local service industries reach double digits.
- △ Bytown estimate — the market-size multiplier (±15%) is our field estimate, not study data. Canadian cost per lead is also an estimate.
- † — Google withholds Keyword Planner metrics for most chiropractic keywords (sensitive-health category), so that row has no bid range of its own. Its published cost per click and cost per lead are LocaliQ's Physicians & Surgeons figure, carried unsplit for want of bids to split it by; only the What you'd bid cells read withheld.
- Compare converts Canadian figures to USD at 1.3896 so both columns are in the same currency.
How the math works
Click costs come from Google
The published costs are LocaliQ and WordStream's measured US category figures. Their categories are coarser than the industries here, so where several rows share one category we split its figure between them in proportion to their top-of-page bid medians — the category's measured average is preserved, never moved, and a row alone in its category is untouched. Separately, each edition we price a fixed basket of 12 high-intent keywords per industry through Keyword Planner, for the US and Canada, de-duplicate Google's close-variant rows, and report the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile of top-of-page bid midpoints under What you'd bid. Those are bids, not prices, and they are not used to compute anything on this page. Canada has no published benchmark, so its columns scale the US averages by the Canada/US bid ratio — about half — and are labelled estimates.
Budgets are click math
Starter buys about 5 clicks a day at your industry's average CPC; Recommended buys about 12. Monthly maximum is your daily budget × 30.4, the same rule Google uses for billing. The $5/day floor is a practical minimum, not Google's.
Cost per lead starts from measured averages
The prefill is LocaliQ & WordStream's 2026 cost per lead for the closest category, measured across 13,474 real campaigns. Canadian figures are an estimate. Drag the slider if you know your own number — your data beats any benchmark. The conversion-rate column is those two costs divided, not LocaliQ's separately averaged rate: publish all three of theirs side by side and the table stops adding up.
Revenue is your inputs, multiplied
Leads = monthly budget ÷ cost per lead. Revenue = leads × your close rate × your job value. Profit subtracts the ad spend. Nothing here predicts your account; it sanity-checks any budget a platform or an agency proposes.
The floor
Budget for at least 5 clicks a day in your industry. Below that, three bad clicks look like a failed channel.
The honest test
About 12 clicks a day for 2–3 months — enough for cost per lead to stabilize into a number you can plan against.
When to scale
Once measured cost per lead sits below break-even, raise budget 20–30% at a time. Above it, fix the funnel first.
What this doesn't include
Management fees, landing pages, and seasonality. The costs here are category averages, so a well-managed account on tight keywords can beat them and a broad one will not. If cost per lead is above break-even, more budget only loses money faster: our free SEO scan and landing-page check find the usual suspects.
Cross-check another channel: what Facebook Ads cost by industry · what ChatGPT Ads actually cost by vertical · ChatGPT Ads vs Google Ads
See the spend in the wild: 11 real dental ads running right now, with how long each has been live — or browse the full ad examples library, where every industry page carries these same click and lead costs beside its creative.
Google Ads cost questions, answered
How much do Google Ads cost?
You pay per click, and the click price is set by auction. Across LocaliQ and WordStream's 2026 benchmarks — 13,474 US search campaigns — average small-business clicks run from $1.63 (events and venues) to $11.99 (plumbing), with most local services between $3 and $7. Emergency home services and law firms sit at the top. Cost per lead runs $26 to $132 and does not track the click price.
How much does Google Ads cost per month?
Google bills up to your daily budget × 30.4. At $40/day, which is five clicks a day in dental, that is a $1,216 monthly maximum; at $96/day it is $2,918. Pick the daily number and the month follows. There is no monthly fee to Google and no minimum spend.
How much should I spend on Google Ads?
Enough to buy real data. Budget for at least 5 clicks a day to start, and about 12 a day for 2–3 months if you want a cost per lead you can trust. Multiply your industry's average cost per click by 5 and by 12 — that is the Starter and Recommended range this calculator shows.
What is a good starting budget for Google Ads?
The Starter number in the calculator: 5 clicks a day at your industry's average click cost. That is $10/day for restaurants, $40/day for dental, and $60/day for US plumbing. A good budget is industry math, not a universal figure — which is why advice like “$1,000 a month” misleads in both directions.
Can I run Google Ads on $5 a day?
You can, but check your industry first. At $2 a click, $5/day buys about 76 clicks a month, which is enough for a few leads at normal conversion rates. In legal, at $9.87 a click, the same budget buys about 15 clicks a month, and that decides nothing. It works where clicks are cheap and you are patient.
How does Google Ads pricing actually work?
You bid in an auction and pay per click, not per impression. There is no setup fee and no monthly fee to Google. Position depends on your bid and your ad quality, and you are charged the minimum needed to hold your spot — usually less than the suggested top-of-page bid. A daily budget caps spend at daily × 30.4 a month.
Is a top-of-page bid the same as cost per click?
The costs here are averages actually paid, measured by LocaliQ and WordStream across 13,474 US search campaigns; the all-industry average is $5.42. A top-of-page bid is a different number — what you would bid to sit at the top, before the auction discounts you to the minimum needed to hold the spot. Our own Keyword Planner pull of those bids is on the table's What you'd bid view.
How much do Google Ads cost in Canada?
Usually less. In our September 2026 Keyword Planner pull, Canadian top-of-page bids ran about half the US level for the same keyword baskets. No Canadian benchmark is published, so the Canadian columns scale the measured US averages by that ratio and are labelled an estimate throughout.
What is a good cost per lead?
Anything comfortably below break-even, which is your job value × close rate. At a $900 job and a 25% close rate, break-even is $225 per lead. LocaliQ's 2026 averages run $26 to $132 depending on industry, which leaves healthy margin at those economics. A good cost per lead is always relative to what a customer is worth.
How do I calculate how many leads a budget will get?
Divide monthly budget by cost per lead. A $2,918 month at dental's $73 average cost per lead is about 40 leads; close 25% of them and that is 10 new patients. Multiply by job value for revenue, then subtract the spend for profit — that is the whole calculator, and it works on a napkin too.