Google Ads cost per click by industry
Across the 146 kinds of business measured here, a typical Google Ads campaign pays from $1.20 a click (bakery and custom cakes) to $21.10 (personal injury law). The business in the middle pays $5.40.
Each figure is for the whole US, from Google's own search counts and click prices for the year to August 2026, scaled to what campaigns actually paid. The same data runs the Google Ads budget calculator, and how it is worked out is at the foot of the page.
$5.40
The middle of 146 businesses
17x
The gap between the dearest click and the cheapest
17 of 146
Businesses whose typical click costs less than the low end of Google's top-of-page bids
All 146 businesses, dearest click first
By kind of business
The middle business in each group. Legal is dearest at $10.10 a click and events and food cheapest at $1.90. Clicks cost most where one customer is worth the most to the businesses bidding, since that is what each of them can afford to pay for a chance at one.
| Group | Businesses | Middle cost per click |
|---|---|---|
| Legal | 13 | $10.10 |
| Home services | 45 | $7.50 |
| Business services | 10 | $5.50 |
| Real estate and finance | 10 | $5.10 |
| Health and wellness | 19 | $5.00 |
| Pets | 5 | $3.70 |
| Auto and vehicles | 11 | $3.60 |
| Education and childcare | 8 | $3.60 |
| Retail and online | 8 | $3.30 |
| Personal care | 8 | $2.90 |
| Events and food | 9 | $1.90 |
Why Google's own numbers read higher
Keyword Planner shows a top-of-page bid range for each search: what advertisers bid to show above the results. It is not what a campaign pays on average. Google charges what it takes to beat the ad below, most campaigns show below the top on many searches, and longer searches with fewer bidders cost less. For 17 of the 146 businesses here, the typical click costs less than even the low end of Google's range.
Published studies go the other way and are measured: LocaliQ reports what real campaigns paid, but for an industry at a time, so one home services figure covers a locksmith and a solar installer, and none of it is split by state. The figures here keep LocaliQ's level and use Google's prices for everything LocaliQ does not split: each business, each of its services and each state.
How the figures are worked out
Searches. How often people search for each service, from Google's own search counts for the year to August 2026 (Keyword Planner, through DataForSEO), for the country and every state. A business is a set of services and a service a set of searches, and a business's figure pools its services by how often each one is searched.
Click prices. Google's average price for each search, scaled by 0.591 to what typical campaigns paid across the 13 home-service trades LocaliQ measured one by one. Where LocaliQ measures the business itself (33 of the 146), its median sets the price level. Elsewhere the level is the median for the business's industry, moved a third of the way toward Google's scaled price, from LocaliQ's search advertising benchmarks (April 2025 to March 2026) and its studies of home services, healthcare, automotive and real estate campaigns. No service is priced above the high end of Google's top-of-page bids for its searches.
States. A state's figure is the national one moved by how dear the same searches run there in Google's prices. A state is listed for a business only with 1,000 searches a month or more; below that there are too few auctions to price it.
Rounding. Click prices are rounded to ten cents and searches to two or three figures. Every price is a median: half of campaigns pay more and half pay less.
What they leave out. Your own ads, landing page and reviews, which move both your price and your position; match types and negative keywords; and searches that name a town. After a month of running, your own cost per click is the figure to use. The full method is on the budget calculator, which reads the same files, so the two always agree.
Written by Grant Epley. Last reviewed October 11, 2026. Search data to August 2026.
Work out a budget from the same prices
The calculator takes the same prices, adds how often people search where your customers are, and finds the budget past which the next lead costs more than one is worth to you.