How Much Does Google Ads Cost in Australia?
Google Ads has two price tags: the money that goes to Google, and the money that goes to whoever runs the account. Here are the real Australian numbers for both, plus the spend levels where ads stop working entirely.
Google Ads has two costs and they are separate. You pay Google for clicks, and you pay someone to run the account. Most Australian local service businesses land on $1,500 to $4,000 a month in ad spend plus $600 to $1,500 a month in management, both excluding GST. Clicks range from around $1 in retail to $60 for personal injury law.
What are the two separate costs in Google Ads?
Ad spend goes to Google. Management fees go to whoever builds and maintains the campaigns. They are different line items and any agency that blurs them into one number on an invoice is not doing you a favour.
Ad spend is an auction. You set a daily budget, Google charges you when someone clicks your ad, and the price of that click depends on how many other businesses are bidding on the same search and how relevant Google thinks your ad and your landing page are. Set $100 a day and you will spend roughly $3,000 across a month. Google can overspend on a busy day and true it up later, so judge it monthly, not daily.
Management is labour. Keyword research, negative keyword lists, writing and testing ads, bid strategy, conversion tracking, landing page feedback and reporting. On a small single-service account that is a few hours a month. On a $20,000 a month account with multiple locations it is close to a full-time job.
There is a third cost people forget about until the first invoice: the build. Setting up conversion tracking properly, getting call tracking working and writing a landing page that actually converts is usually $800 to $2,500 excluding GST as a one-off. Skip it and you are guessing, which is the most expensive way to advertise.
How much should an Australian local service business spend per month?
For a single-location service business in a capital city, $1,500 to $3,000 a month excluding GST is the realistic starting zone. Regional and outer-suburban operators can do genuine work on $800 to $1,500 because fewer businesses are fighting over the same searches. If you are chasing high-value work in Sydney or Melbourne (mortgage broking, cosmetic dentistry, commercial litigation) you will usually need $5,000 to $15,000 a month to hold enough impression share to matter.
The budget number is not the interesting part. What matters is how many clicks that budget buys, and whether that is enough clicks to produce leads at a rate you can actually measure.
Work it backwards. Say a click costs $12 and one in twenty clicks turns into an enquiry. That is $240 an enquiry. Ten enquiries a month costs you $2,400 in ad spend before management. Now the honest test: for a plumber averaging $600 a job with a 40 per cent close rate, ten enquiries is $2,400 in revenue, which is break-even and not worth the effort. For a mortgage broker earning $3,000 a settlement, the same maths is very good indeed. Same campaign, same cost, completely different answer.
What is the average cost per click in Australia by industry?
Search clicks in Australia typically run between $1 and $60. The spread is enormous because Google’s auction prices roughly track what a customer is worth to the industry bidding on them. A conveyancer will happily pay $40 for a click. A homewares store cannot.
These are search network ranges for capital city targeting. Regional targeting is usually 20 to 40 per cent cheaper, and remarketing or display clicks are far cheaper again (often under $1) though they convert at a fraction of the rate.
| Industry | Typical cost per click (AUD, ex GST) | What pushes it to the top of the range |
|---|---|---|
| Trades and home services | $6 to $18 | Emergency plumbing, electrical faults, locksmiths, anything with “24 hour” in the search |
| Legal | $15 to $60 | Personal injury, family law and compensation claims are the most expensive clicks in the country |
| Finance and insurance | $12 to $40 | Mortgage broking, SMSF, business lending, life insurance comparison terms |
| Healthcare and dental | $4 to $16 | Implants, orthodontics and cosmetic work; general GP and allied health sit at the low end |
| Retail and ecommerce | $0.70 to $2.50 | Branded product searches near Christmas and EOFY sale periods |
| Professional services | $5 to $20 | Accounting at tax time, IT support, business consulting and B2B software |
What do Google Ads management fees cost in Australia?
Expect $500 to $1,500 a month excluding GST for accounts spending under $10,000, and 10 to 15 per cent of spend above that. There are four common models and they behave very differently at different budget levels.
| Fee model | Typical Australian figure (ex GST) | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly fee | $500 to $1,500 per month | Spends up to about $10,000 a month; anyone who wants a predictable invoice | At very low spends the fee can be bigger than the ad budget, which is backwards |
| Percentage of ad spend | 10 to 20 per cent, usually with a $500 to $750 monthly minimum | Larger accounts, ecommerce, seasonal spend that moves around | Your agency gets paid more when you spend more. Ask how that conflict is handled |
| Hybrid | $400 to $800 base plus 8 to 12 per cent of spend above a threshold | Growing accounts moving from $3,000 to $20,000 a month | Make sure the threshold is written down, not verbal |
| Per qualified lead | $40 to $150 per lead depending on industry | Businesses that want risk shifted onto the agency | The definition of “qualified” is where the arguments happen. Get it in writing |
Our own preference at small budgets is a flat fee, because percentage-of-spend quietly rewards the wrong behaviour. If we are paid 15 per cent, the easiest way for us to make more money is to talk you into spending more, and the hardest way is to make your existing spend work harder. We would rather be paid the same either way. You can see how we structure Google Ads management for Australian businesses if you want the specifics.
One more thing on fees. If someone quotes you $199 a month to manage Google Ads, they are not managing it. At Australian labour rates that is barely an hour, and an hour a month buys you a monthly screenshot of the dashboard. That is not the same as someone reading search term reports.
What is the minimum viable Google Ads budget?
Roughly $750 to $1,000 a month excluding GST, and only in a cheap auction. Spending $300 a month on Google Ads is not a smaller version of spending $3,000. It is a different and worse thing, and most of the time it is money set on fire.
Here is why the floor exists. At a $10 click, $300 buys you 30 clicks a month. One click a day. If your website converts at a healthy five per cent you get one and a half enquiries, which means some months you get two and some months you get none. You cannot tell the difference between a badly built campaign and ordinary variation at that volume, so you can never improve it. Meanwhile the daily budget runs dry by mid-morning, so your ads are invisible for the part of the day when people actually ring tradies.
Google’s automated bidding makes this worse at the bottom end. Smart Bidding wants something like 15 to 30 conversions in a rolling 30 days before it has enough signal to be useful. At tiny budgets it never gets there, so it makes poor decisions with your money and you pay for the education. Small accounts are usually better on manual or maximise clicks bidding with a very tight keyword list until the volume is there.
Our rule of thumb before we take on an account: your monthly ad spend should buy at least 100 clicks in your industry. Under $10 a click that means $1,000 a month. At $30 a click for legal terms it means $3,000. Below 100 clicks a month, you cannot separate a bad campaign from bad luck, and neither can we.
What does a lead actually cost in Google Ads?
Cost per lead in Australia usually sits between $50 and $600 depending on industry. The figure is a function of two things you control (click price and landing page conversion rate) and one you don’t (how many competitors are bidding).
The number to compare it against is not another business’s cost per lead. It is your own close rate multiplied by your average job value. A $400 lead is fantastic for a commercial solar installer and ruinous for a mobile dog groomer.
| Industry | Typical cost per enquiry (AUD) | Typical value of the work won |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing, electrical, HVAC | $60 to $180 | $300 to $4,000 per job, plus repeat work |
| Legal | $150 to $600 | $2,000 to $30,000+ per matter |
| Mortgage broking and finance | $120 to $400 | $2,500 to $6,000 per settlement |
| Dental and allied health | $50 to $200 | $180 for a checkup, $6,000+ for implants or ortho |
| B2B and professional services | $100 to $350 | $3,000 to $50,000 per client lifetime |
| Ecommerce (cost per sale) | $25 to $90 | Whatever the basket is worth, so margin decides everything |
Where does Google Ads budget get wasted?
Four things account for most of the waste we see when we audit an existing account, and all four are fixable in a fortnight.
- Broad match with nothing holding it back. Broad match is Google’s default and it is greedy. A Penrith bathroom renovator on broad match will pay for clicks on “bathroom ideas”, “bunnings vanity”, “how to tile a shower” and “bathroom renovation jobs”. None of those people are hiring anyone. Broad match can work, but only with a serious negative list and conversion data behind it.
- No negative keyword list at all. Every account should have negatives for free, DIY, jobs, salary, courses, cheap, second hand, wholesale, and whatever your industry’s version of a tyre-kicker search is. We have seen accounts where a third of spend went on the word “free”.
- No conversion tracking. If Google does not know which clicks became phone calls and form submissions, its bidding is optimising for clicks, which is optimising for nothing. This is the single most common problem we find, and it means every performance report you have been shown was decorative.
- Sending traffic to the homepage. A homepage is a menu. Someone who searched “emergency electrician Parramatta” and lands on a general homepage has to find their own way to the right service, the right suburb and a phone number. A dedicated page that repeats their search back to them, with the phone number visible without scrolling and a form above the fold, will routinely double the conversion rate on identical traffic.
There is a fifth that costs less but stings: leaving the Display Network switched on inside a Search campaign. Google turns this on by default. It quietly spends a chunk of your budget on banner impressions across apps and news sites, and the clicks are largely accidental. Turn it off and run Display separately if you want it.
Be sceptical of anyone quoting you a guaranteed cost per lead before they have seen your account, your website and your industry’s auction. Australian consumer law takes a dim view of promises a business cannot substantiate, and in this channel nobody can substantiate that one up front. Estimates are fine. Guarantees are a sales tactic.
So what should you actually budget?
Add the three numbers together and set them for six months, not one. A typical Australian service business starting properly looks like $1,000 to $1,500 a month in ad spend, $700 to $1,000 a month in management, and a one-off $1,200 or so to build the landing page and get conversion tracking right, all excluding GST. Call it around $2,500 in month one and $2,000 a month after that.
Give it three months before you judge the account, because the first month is data collection and the second is when the negative keywords and bid adjustments start paying off. If it is not producing leads at a workable price by month four, the answer is usually the offer or the landing page, not the budget.
If you would rather not learn this on your own money, we can take the account over and run it for you with no lock-in contract, and you keep ownership of the Google Ads account either way. Our other costs and pricing guides cover what websites, SEO and hosting run to in Australia if you are budgeting the whole marketing spend at once.
Common questions
Do you pay Google before or after the clicks?
After, in most cases. Australian accounts run on automatic payments by default: Google charges your card either every 30 days or once you hit a payment threshold, whichever comes first. The threshold starts low (often $50) and climbs as your account builds history. You can prepay by switching to manual payments, which some businesses do to hard-cap spend, though it means your ads stop the moment the balance runs out.
Is there a minimum spend to open a Google Ads account?
No. Google has no minimum, and you can technically run a campaign on $5 a day. That is a different question to whether it will work. The practical floor for a service business is around $750 to $1,000 a month excluding GST, because below that you never gather enough clicks to tell whether the campaign is any good. Google will happily take your $150 a month indefinitely.
Does spending more money get me the top ad position?
Not on its own. Google ranks ads on Ad Rank, which combines your bid with expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. A business with a genuinely relevant ad and a fast, specific landing page can outrank a competitor bidding more per click, and pay less for the privilege. This is why fixing the landing page often cuts click costs by 20 to 30 per cent without touching bids.
How long before Google Ads produces leads?
Enquiries can arrive on day one, which is the main advantage over SEO. Reliable performance takes longer. Expect two to four weeks of gathering search term data and adding negatives, then another month of bid and ad testing before the cost per lead settles. Judge the account at the 90 day mark, not the 30 day mark, and never on the first fortnight.
Can I run Google Ads myself and skip the management fee?
Yes, and plenty of business owners do it competently. Budget four to six hours to set it up properly and about two hours a month afterwards reading search term reports and pruning waste. The trap is the middle ground: setting it up, never looking at it again, and paying Google for six months of broad match rubbish. If you cannot commit the monthly hours, either pay someone or turn it off.
Are the free Google Ads credits in my inbox worth using?
Mildly. The usual offer is spend $500 and get $500 back, sometimes more, and it is real money. But it only pays out after you have spent the qualifying amount inside a set window, so it rewards you for spending fast rather than spending well. Take the credit if you were going to advertise anyway. Do not let a $500 voucher be the reason you start.
Want a straight answer on what your budget would realistically buy?
Tell us your industry, your suburb and roughly what a job is worth to you, and we will tell you what monthly spend it takes to make Google Ads pay. No lock-in contracts, Australian based, and you own the account.