Google Ads has no fixed price. You set the budget, and with cost-per-click bidding you pay for each click, at a price set by auction. Google's own estimates for the UK searches below run from under £1 a click to over £40. Add Google's 2% UK fee and any management fee: ours starts from £600 a month including VAT (£500 plus VAT at 20%).
What are you actually paying for?
A Google Ads bill has up to four parts.
- Ad spend. What Google charges for the clicks, paid to Google directly. You set a daily budget for each campaign, which Google describes as the average amount you'd be comfortable spending a day (Google Ads Help, choose your bid and budget).
- Google's 2% UK fee. Since 1 November 2020, Google has added a 2% "UK DST fee" to invoices for ads shown in the UK, driven by the UK's Digital Services Tax. It's charged on top of your ad spend and on top of any account budget you've set (Google Ads Help, jurisdiction-specific surcharges, checked 05/10/2026).
- Management. If someone runs the account for you, their fee. Ours starts from £600 a month including VAT (£500 plus VAT at 20%), with ad spend paid to Google separately.
- VAT on the management fee, at the standard 20% rate (GOV.UK, VAT rates) when your supplier is VAT registered, as we are.
There's a fifth cost that never appears on the invoice: the landing page and the tracking. Ads that send people to a slow or vague page waste the spend, and without conversion tracking nobody can tell which clicks became enquiries.
How much does a click cost in the UK?
It depends almost entirely on the search. The table shows Google's own estimates of what advertisers have bid to appear at the top of the page for a handful of UK searches. The low figure is roughly the 20th percentile of those bids and the high figure roughly the 80th (Google Ads Help, Keyword Planner forecasts).
| Search (United Kingdom) | Estimated top-of-page bid, low to high |
|---|---|
| scaffolding hire | £0.77 to £5.38 |
| loft conversion | £1.51 to £7.41 |
| builders near me | £1.54 to £6.18 |
| commercial cleaning | £2.71 to £16.67 |
| accountants near me | £3.75 to £14.70 |
| commercial roofing | £4.85 to £25.22 |
| emergency plumber | £5.53 to £37.19 |
| health and safety consultancy | £8.02 to £47.28 |
| it support | £8.76 to £47.01 |
Source line (caption): Google Ads keyword data for the United Kingdom, retrieved through DataForSEO on 03/10/2026. Estimates move with competition, season and location, so check the searches that matter to you before you set a budget.
Two things stand out. The spread is enormous: the top of the range for "it support" is almost nine times the top of the range for "scaffolding hire". And business-to-business searches can cost as much as emergency ones: at the top of Google's range, advertisers bid more than £40 for a click on "it support" or "health and safety consultancy".
Why do some advertisers pay less for the same click?
Because the highest bid doesn't automatically win. Google ranks ads on your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, how competitive the auction is and the context of the search, such as the person's location, device and time of day (Google Ads Help, Ad Rank). Google says that with highly relevant keywords and ads, you can win a higher position at a lower price than a competitor who bids more.
You also rarely pay your full bid. Google charges the minimum needed to beat the ad ranked below yours, so the actual cost per click is often lower than the maximum you set (Google Ads Help, actual cost per click).
That's why part of the cost of Google Ads is in your hands. Tight keyword choices, negative keywords that keep out the searches you don't want, ads that match what people searched for and pages that answer it all bring down the price of a useful click.
Can Google spend more than your daily budget?
For most campaigns with an unchanged budget, Google can charge up to twice your average daily budget on a day, with a monthly spending limit of 30.4 times that daily budget (Google Ads Help, average daily budgets).
For those campaigns, multiply the unchanged daily budget by 30.4, then allow for the 2% UK fee. Budget changes and some campaign types have different limits, so check the campaign's budget report rather than treating that calculation as a universal cap.
What does a month of ad spend buy?
Divide the monthly ad spend by the cost of a click and you have a rough number of clicks. Take Google's top-of-page range as the price of a click (you'll often pay less, as above). At its range for "builders near me" (£1.54 to £6.18), £1,000 of ad spend buys roughly 160 to 650 clicks. At its range for "it support" (£8.76 to £47.01), the same £1,000 buys roughly 21 to 114.
Clicks aren't enquiries. How many become enquiries depends on how well the page answers the search, how easy it is to get in touch and how strong the offer is, and it varies too much from one business to the next for an average to mean much. So measure your own. With conversion tracking in place, the first months of a campaign show what an enquiry really costs you, which is the number worth managing.
Then work backwards from what a new customer is worth to you. We explain how to set a budget that way on our Google Ads management page.
What does it cost to have us run your Google Ads?
Our Google Ads management starts from £600 a month including VAT (£500 plus VAT at 20%). Ad spend is paid to Google separately, there's a three-month minimum term, and you get a report every month. The fee rises with the complexity of the account and the amount of spend. It covers:
- account structure, keyword research and negative keywords;
- ad copy, and advice on the landing pages the ads send people to;
- conversion and call tracking through Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads;
- search term reviews, bid and budget changes, testing and the monthly report.
We judge an account on what each genuine enquiry costs, not on clicks. A campaign that buys cheap clicks and no customers isn't performing, however good the click-through rate looks. The three-month minimum gives a campaign long enough to be tested properly, and every price we charge is on our pricing page.
Questions about Google Ads costs
Do you pay for Google Ads if nobody clicks?
Not with cost-per-click bidding, which charges for each click on your ad rather than each time it's shown. So the cost follows the visits you get, useful or not. That's why choosing the right searches, and keeping out the wrong ones with negative keywords, matters as much as the bid.
Why is my cost per click lower than my bid?
Because Google charges only what's needed to clear its Ad Rank thresholds and beat the ad ranked below yours, not your full bid. Your maximum bid is the most you're willing to pay, and the actual cost is often lower, sometimes much lower. It can go above your maximum if Enhanced CPC or bid adjustments are switched on.
What is the 2% fee on my Google Ads invoice?
It's Google's UK DST fee: 2% of the cost of ads shown in the UK, added to invoices since 1 November 2020 because of the UK's Digital Services Tax. It's charged on top of your ad spend and on top of any account budget you've set, so allow for it when you work out what Google Ads will cost.