Tomas owns an appliance repair shop. On Monday he opens a Google Ads account and stops at the budget field, which is asking him for a number he has no basis for. On Wednesday a rep phones to say that businesses like his "typically spend a healthy amount." On Thursday a friend says he burned through his budget in days and got nothing. By Friday Tomas has to type something into that box or close the tab. Nobody has told him what the number is supposed to be based on.
Tomas's problem is the general one. Google Ads has no price list, so any figure you hear is somebody's average, and averages hide the things that decide your bill. This page explains how the pricing works, which parts of the cost are yours to set, and how to choose a first budget you can defend.
There is no sticker price, only an auction
Google does not charge a monthly fee or require a minimum. You pay when someone clicks your ad, and the price of that click is set in an auction that runs each time a person searches. Your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, and how many other businesses want the same searcher all feed into it. You then set a daily budget, which is the most Google will spend on your behalf on an average day.
So the honest answer to the question is that you decide how much to spend, and the market decides how much each click costs. Your daily budget controls the first. The second you can influence but not dictate.
The costs that sit around the clicks
Ad spend is the largest line, but it is rarely the only one. Before you settle on a budget, check which of these apply to you.
| Cost | Who you pay | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend (clicks) | Variable. You cap it with a daily budget, and it stops when you pause. | |
| Landing page or website fixes | A developer, or your own time | Clicks sent to a slow or confusing page are wasted money. |
| Conversion tracking setup | A specialist, or your own time | Without it you cannot tell which clicks produced calls or jobs. |
| Management | A freelancer, an agency, or you | Optional. It is a fee or a share of spend, and the terms vary widely. |
| Your own time | Nobody, but it is not free | Reviewing search terms and answering leads quickly both take real hours. |
Why the same click costs one shop far more than another
Click prices differ by industry, location, and how many competitors are bidding on the same search. The highest top-of-page bid advertisers pay for terms in this space is $139.40. That is a ceiling, not what a typical owner pays, but it shows how far apart the extremes are. A lawyer bidding on an injury case and a florist bidding on a delivery search are in different price worlds.
Your own click price will also shift with the quality of your ad, how tightly you target your service area, and which search terms you allow. A broad campaign that matches irrelevant searches costs more per customer than a narrow one, even if the click price looks identical.
A small question that spikes when budgets get planned
Across seven related phrasings, roughly 170 people a month search for this cost question. The most-searched month in the last year was April 2026, at 110 searches a month for the exact phrase. The quietest was September 2025, at 70. It is a niche question that peaks in spring, when owners plan the year's spend. If you are asking it, you are in good company, and most of the others are asking it at the same stage: before they have set anything up.
Work backward from what a customer is worth
A better starting point than "what do ads cost?" is "what can I afford to pay for a customer?" Take what an average job earns you after materials and labor. Estimate the share of inquiries you normally turn into paying customers. Those two figures give you a ceiling for what a lead can cost before the ad loses you money.
From there, the budget is a test allowance, not a forecast. Pick an amount you could lose without harming the business, and run it long enough to collect a meaningful number of clicks and inquiries. If you have no idea what your close rate is, that is worth knowing before you spend anything. The guide on how cost per lead misleads across industries covers why borrowed benchmarks fall short here.
What Tomas could do before Friday
He can write down what an average repair job leaves him with, and how many calls it usually takes to book one. He can restrict the campaign to the towns he actually serves. He can decide, in writing, what the test costs in total and when he will review it. And he can make sure a phone call or form submission is counted as a result, so that he sees jobs instead of clicks. That last step is the one most first-time advertisers skip, and it decides whether the test teaches them anything.
Some trades may also be eligible for Google's pay-per-lead local program instead of the click-based auction. It is worth reading up on before you commit, since it changes what you pay for.
Running it yourself, or with a second pair of eyes
Plenty of owners run a small, local campaign on their own and do fine, especially with a narrow service area and a clear offer. Outside help earns its place when the spend is large enough that a wasted month hurts, when tracking is tangled, or when you cannot tell whether the leads you get are any good. Even then, a one-time review of your account can be enough. Ask any provider how they charge, who owns the account, and what you will see in the reports.