Free tool · Google Ads
Google Ads Budget Calculator: what your budget really buys
Results
Clicks a month
554
about 18 a day
Leads a month
45
10.4 a week
Cost per lead
$66.26
benchmark: $66.26
Daily budget to enter
$99
monthly ÷ 30.4, as Google does
Where the money goes each month
Bars for leads and clients are scaled up 5x so small numbers stay visible.
Sources
The benchmarks behind the presets
Each preset fills in a cost per click and a conversion rate. The industry averages come from WordStream by LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026 (search campaigns that ran from April 2025 to March 2026, averaged by industry). The last row is one account I run, not an average.
| Preset | Category used | Avg. CPC | Conv. rate | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Law firms | Attorneys & Legal Services | $9.87 | 5.55% | WordStream / LocaliQ |
| Med spas | Beauty & Personal Care | $4.62 | 10.35% | WordStream / LocaliQ |
| Limo & chauffeur | Travel | $2.14 | 5.83% | WordStream / LocaliQ |
| All industries | All-industry average | $5.42 | 8.18% | WordStream / LocaliQ |
| My law firm account | A real estate law firm account I manage (California and Nevada) | $13.19 | 10.26% | My case study, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026 |
Two of these are stand-ins, and I'd rather say so than pretend. The report has no med spa or limo category, so the med spa preset uses Beauty & Personal Care and the limo preset uses Travel. Treat them as a first guess and replace them with your own account data as soon as you have a month of it.
How to use the calculator
Pick a preset or type your own numbers
If you already run ads, use the average cost per click and conversion rate from the last 30 to 90 days in your account. Your own numbers beat any benchmark.
Enter the monthly budget
The hint under the box shows the daily figure. That is what you type into the campaign settings, because Google budgets by the day.
Choose what you know
If you know your conversion rate, keep the first option. If you only know what a lead is worth to you, switch to target cost per lead and the calculator shows the conversion rate you'd need.
Add your close rate if you have it
Open the optional section and enter how many leads become clients and what a client is worth. Now you see cost per client and revenue, which is the number that pays the bills.
Save or share the result
Every number you type goes into the page address. Copy the link to send it to a partner, or bookmark it and compare next month.
How to read the results
Clicks a month is simply budget divided by cost per click. It is the number I look at first. Under about 100 clicks a month, a campaign has very little to learn from, and a couple of lucky or unlucky days can make the cost per lead look much better or worse than it really is.
Leads a month is clicks times conversion rate. This assumes every conversion is a real lead: a call, a form or a booking. If your account counts page views or button clicks as conversions, the real figure is lower.
Cost per lead is budget divided by leads. In target mode it is fixed at your target, and the useful number becomes the conversion rate you'd need. If that comes out well above the benchmark for your industry, either the target is unrealistic for search or your landing page has to do a lot of the work.
- A benchmark is a midpoint, not a promise. Half the accounts in any average do worse than it.
- Cost per click changes by city and by season. Run the numbers again before you set next quarter's budget.
- Cost per lead is only half the story. A $200 lead that closes one time in three beats a $60 lead that never closes.
- New campaigns usually start worse than they settle, while bidding learns which searches convert.
Worked examples
Here is what the presets give for a few realistic budgets. The numbers come from the same formulas the calculator uses.
A law firm with $3,000 a month
At the legal average of $9.87 a click and 5.55% conversion: about 304 clicks and 16.9 leads a month, at roughly $177.84 each.
The report also lists an average cost per lead of $131.63 for legal. That isn't a mistake on either side: each metric is averaged separately across campaigns, so the averages don't multiply out exactly ($177.84 from the rates). It is a good reminder that you can't treat benchmarks as one real account.
A real law firm account at the same budget
Using my real estate law firm account ($13.19 a click, 10.26% conversion), $3,000 buys about 227 clicks and 23.3 conversions at about $128.56.
Clicks cost more than the average but convert at nearly twice the rate, and the cost per conversion ends up close to the benchmark. Over Dec 1, 2025 – Jun 17, 2026 the account averaged $128.57 per conversion. The full account breakdown explains how.
A med spa with $2,000 a month
On the Beauty & Personal Care averages ($4.62, 10.35%): about 433 clicks, 44.8 leads and $44.64 per lead.
That looks cheap, but Beauty & Personal Care is a broad category, not just aesthetics clinics. Searches for injectables, laser and body treatments usually cost more, so I'd plan with a higher cost per click and see where your own account settles.
Working backwards from a target
Say a new client is worth $3,000 and you want leads under $100. With clicks at $8, switch to target mode: you need a conversion rate of 8%. If your site converts at 4% today, the fix is the landing page and the offer, not a bigger budget.
How much should a law firm, med spa or limo company spend?
I get asked this more than anything else, and the honest answer is: enough to get a useful number of leads from the searches that matter most, and no more until those are working. A law firm that handles one practice area in one city needs far less than a firm trying to cover a whole state. A med spa promoting two treatments needs less than one promoting fifteen.
So I start with the leads, not the budget. Decide how many consultations or bookings a month would make the ads worth running, use the calculator to see what that costs, and then cut the scope until the budget fits: fewer services, a tighter area, fewer hours. A focused campaign with enough budget learns faster than a wide one that runs out by lunchtime.
For a law firm, intake matters as much as the ads, because the cost per signed client depends on how many calls get answered. For a limo or chauffeur company, I'd separate airport and corporate searches from weddings and proms, because they behave very differently and the travel benchmark is only a rough guide for either.
Mistakes I see when people set a budget
- Using the industry average for a market that is far more competitive, like personal injury in a big city.
- Counting every conversion action as a lead, so the conversion rate looks two or three times better than reality.
- Splitting a small budget across many campaigns, so none of them gets enough clicks to learn.
- Judging the account after one week. I want at least a few weeks of clean data before changing much.
- Setting a target cost per lead with no idea how many leads become clients.
- Forgetting the daily cap. If the budget runs out at noon, you miss every afternoon search.
My tips before you spend a dollar
Fix tracking first
If the conversion rate in your account is wrong, every number in this calculator is wrong too. I check what each conversion action really counts before I trust the data.
Count calls properly
For phone-led businesses I only count calls that last 60 seconds or more as conversions, so wrong numbers and hang-ups don't look like leads.
Target where people are
I set location targeting to people in or regularly in your area, not people who are just interested in it. That alone can stop a lot of wasted clicks.
Protect the budget with negatives
Search terms like "jobs", "free" or "course" eat budget fast in service businesses. A good negative keyword list makes every dollar in this calculator go further.
Want to see these ideas applied? My Google Ads management page explains how I run accounts week to week, and the ROAS calculator tells you whether the leads you get are actually profitable. To set bids, the max CPC calculator works out the most a click can cost at your conversion rate. Once the budget is set, draft the ads themselves with the headline and description generator.
FAQ
Google Ads budget questions
How much should I spend on Google Ads per month?
Work backwards from the number of leads you need. Divide that by your conversion rate to get clicks, then multiply by your cost per click. If the answer gives you fewer than about 100 clicks a month, the budget is probably too thin to learn from, and a narrower campaign (fewer services or a smaller area) usually works better than spreading it out.
How do I turn a monthly budget into a daily budget?
Divide by 30.4. That is the average number of days in a month, and it is the figure Google uses. Google can spend up to twice your daily budget on a busy day, but it will not charge more than 30.4 times the daily budget across a month.
Where do the benchmark numbers come from?
From WordStream by LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026, which averages search campaigns that ran from April 2025 to March 2026, averaged by industry. The "My law firm account" preset is different: it is one real account I manage, taken from my own case study. Every preset links to its source.
Why is my cost per lead higher than the calculator says?
Usually one of three things: your real conversion rate is lower than the one you entered, some of your conversions are not real leads (page views or duplicate form fills counted as conversions), or your cost per click has risen since you last checked. Put in the numbers from the last 30 to 90 days of your own account rather than the benchmark.
Is there a minimum budget for Google Ads?
Google does not set a meaningful minimum. The practical minimum is the budget that buys enough clicks for some of them to turn into leads. If your cost per click is $10 and your conversion rate is 5%, $500 a month buys about 50 clicks and two or three leads, which is too few to judge anything.
Does this calculator work for Performance Max or Local Services Ads?
It works for anything you pay for by the click, so Search and most Performance Max traffic. Local Services Ads charge per lead, not per click, so for those you only need your cost per lead and your budget.
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Want to know what your budget should be?
Send me your account or your numbers and I'll tell you honestly whether the budget, the targeting or the tracking is the thing to fix first.