PPC Budget Calculator
Wondering what your PPC budget should be? Do you know what it would cost to get those 20 extra leads per month? We created this calculator to help answer these very questions.
To use the calculator, simply:
- Pick your industry, and benchmark numbers will populate
- Choose your starting budget or total number of customers you need every month
- Edit the benchmark numbers to match your business's average numbers (or leave the benchmarks if you do not know)
- Review the results on the right, and play with the numbers until your goals are clearly defined!
Enter a number in every field to see your results.
Monthly ad budget
- clicks
- leads
- customers
Your click cost against break-even
- Cost per lead
- Cost per customer
- Revenue for every $1 of ad spend
- Daily budget to set in Google Ads
- Revenue per month
- Ad spend plus management fee
- Left over each month
Benchmark cheat sheet
Typical Google Ads numbers by industry, for when you have none of your own. Press Use to load a row into the calculator.
| Industry | Cost per click | Clicks that become leads | Load into calculator |
|---|
Source: WordStream Google Ads Benchmarks 2026, from 13,474 U.S. search campaigns running April 2025 through March 2026. Figures are medians. "Clicks that become leads" is the report's conversion rate. The report has no figures for how many leads become customers or what a customer is worth, so those two stay yours.
The math, with your numbers
Every result above comes from these lines. Return on ad spend counts ad spend only. The management fee comes out in the last row of the results.
What does PPC cost?
Two things. Ad spend goes to Google, billed for every click on your ad. Click prices are set by auction, so they move with your industry, your city, and the keywords you bid on.
Management is what you pay a person or an agency to build and run the account. Keep the two apart when you compare quotes, so you can see how much of your money reaches Google.
How much should I spend on Google Ads?
Start with the number of new customers you want each month. Multiply by the clicks it takes to win one, then by what a click costs. That is the budget.
If it is more than you can spend, switch the calculator to budget mode. It shows what a smaller budget buys and how long you would wait between customers. A budget that buys one customer every few months also takes that long to tell you whether the campaign works.
What is a break-even click cost?
It is the most you can pay for a click before a new customer costs more than they bring in. revenue per customer × close rate × lead rate
If your click cost is above it, a bigger budget makes the loss bigger. One of three numbers has to move first: more clicks turning into leads, more leads turning into customers, or more revenue from each customer.
Getting your own numbers
- Cost per click and lead rate. Start from the cheat sheet. Once your ads have run for a month or two, swap in the numbers from your own account.
- Leads that become customers. Count last month's new enquiries and how many of them became customers. A rough count beats a guess.
- Revenue per customer. Use the average across new customers, so one big job does not set the budget.
These are estimates from the numbers you enter. Real results depend on your market, your ads, and how fast leads get a reply. Daily budget uses 30.4 days per month, the same average Google Ads uses.
Want the real numbers for your market?
Benchmarks are averages. On a free call we pull actual click costs for your industry and area, and tell you whether the math works before you spend anything.
Get Your Free PPC Audit