Free calculator
A month of Google Ads costs the clicks you buy multiplied by what each click costs in your market, and nothing else on Google's side. This calculator takes your average CPC, the clicks you want each day and the number of days, and gives the daily and monthly cost. It then adds cost per lead at a conversion rate you choose, because the break-even question is what a lead costs, and a cheap month that produces no leads is the expensive one.
Your numbers
What they mean
Your monthly cost is $3,000.00. A free Google Ads review shows what would move it.
The daily cost is clicks times CPC. Forty clicks at $2.50 is $100 a day, and 30 days of that is $3,000 before anyone charges you to manage it.
Cost per lead is CPC divided by conversion rate. At $2.50 and 5% each lead costs $50, and at 2% the same click price makes a lead $125. That is why I look at the landing page before I look at the bids.
Management is the other cost. Agencies charge a flat fee, a percentage of spend or an hourly rate, and my PPC pricing guide lists what eight of them actually charge. A percentage fee rises with the number on this page, which is why I charge a flat one.
CPC varies by industry from under $1 to more than $50 for legal and insurance searches, so the figure you type in matters more than the days. Once you have the monthly cost, my PPC budget guide shows how to split it across campaigns so the best performers never run out first.
Clicks per day times cost per click times days. Forty clicks a day at $2.50 for 30 days is $3,000. Add the management fee if someone runs it for you, and my PPC pricing guide lists what eight agencies actually charge.
Across industries the search average sits around $2 to $4, with legal, insurance and finance searches running well above $20 a click. Your own account shows the real figure after the first week, so treat any average as a placeholder.
No. Google sets no minimum, but a budget too small to buy about 100 clicks a month gives you nothing to learn from. Under $500 a month is hard to improve in most markets, because the data arrives too slowly.
Because the monthly cost is a choice and the cost per lead is a result. A $3,000 month at a 5% conversion rate is 60 leads at $50 each. The same month at 2% is 24 leads at $125, for exactly the same money.