How much does Google Ads cost in Australia?
There are two costs. You pay Google for the clicks, and you pay whoever manages the account. Here's what both look like in Australia, with real click prices by industry and our own fees.
What a click costs in Australia
Google Ads is an auction, so there's no price list. What you pay for a click depends on how many other businesses want the same search and how much a customer is worth to them.
These are the top-of-page bid ranges from Google Keyword Planner for Australia. The low end is roughly what the cheapest 20% of advertisers paid to show at the top of the page. The high end is what the top 20% paid.
Plumbers
"plumber near me" $16 to $80 a click. "emergency plumber" $9 to $81.
Electricians
"electrician near me" $12 to $54 a click.
Pest control
"pest control" $8 to $27 a click.
Lawyers
"family lawyer" $12 to $46 a click. "personal injury lawyer" $21 to $183.
Dentists
"dentist near me" $6 to $23 a click. "dental implants" $6 to $24.
Physios
"physio near me" $4 to $14 a click.
Conveyancers
"conveyancer" $11 to $41 a click.
Real estate
"real estate agent" $8 to $88 a click.
NDIS providers
"ndis provider" $4 to $16 a click.
Google Ads pricing: what you pay us
A monthly management fee
Starts at $1,725 AUD a month. The exact fee depends on the size and complexity of the account, and you'll get a clear number before you sign anything.
Your ad spend, paid straight to Google
Google charges your card directly, in an ad account that stays in your name. The ad spend never passes through us, so there's no markup on it.
A 3 month minimum
That gives us time to rebuild the account and show results. If the ads aren't profitable for you and you can show us that from your numbers, we won't hold you to it.
Start with a $99 audit
We go through your current account and show you where the money is going. You'll know what you're working with before you commit to anything.
How to work out your Google Ads budget
Start from the number of new customers you want, then work backwards.
Say clicks in your industry cost around $20, and 1 in 10 clicks turns into an enquiry. Each enquiry costs about $200. If 1 in 4 enquiries becomes a customer, each new customer costs about $800 in ad spend. Want 5 new customers a month? That's roughly $4,000 a month on clicks.
Now look at the other side. If each of those customers is worth $3,000 to you, 5 of them bring in $15,000. Against that you've spent $4,000 on clicks and $1,725 on management, so $5,725 in total.
Put another way, each customer brings in $3,000 and costs $800 in clicks. That leaves $2,200, which already covers the management fee. One extra customer a month pays for the fee, and everything after that is growth.
Those numbers are only an example. In the audit we work them out from your own account and CRM, so the budget is based on what it costs you to win a customer.
What pushes your click costs up
How many businesses are bidding
Lawyers pay more than physios because a new client is worth more to a law firm, so more firms compete for the same searches.
How relevant your ads and landing page are
Google rewards ads that match the search and pages that answer it. Weak ads and slow pages mean you pay more for the same spot.
Broad match keywords
Broad match shows your ads for loosely related searches. You end up paying for clicks from people who were never going to buy.
Urgent searches
Searches like emergency plumber attract the highest bids, because the person searching wants the job done now.
Where Google Ads budgets usually leak
In almost every account we audit, part of the budget goes on clicks that were never going to turn into customers.
Brand searches counted as new customers
People who already know your name click your ad and get reported as new leads. Your cost per lead looks lower than what a new customer is really costing you.
DIY and job seeker searches
How-to questions, product searches and job seekers cost the same per click as a customer. Without a maintained negative keyword list, they quietly eat the budget.
Calls that never get counted
If call tracking is missing or set to Secondary, Google can't see your best leads and keeps bidding toward the wrong ones.
What a badly run account really costs
A pest control business in Melbourne had spent $426 on Google Ads and got one lead. For a business selling $300 callouts, that looked like a reason to switch Google off.
When we opened the account, the search terms were full of people shopping for DIY products, at around $9 a click. Three people had also called from the ads, but all three calls were set to Secondary, so Google never counted them. The real cost per lead was $106.
That's the cost of an account nobody is checking. You pay for clicks that were never going to buy, and you can't see the leads you're already getting. Fixing that often covers the management fee on its own, which is why we start every account with an audit.
Proof
Results from accounts like yours
What the spend turned into for three of our clients. Client names are withheld.
A Google Ads campaign that took a family law firm from no advertising at all to 199 leads over 15 months.
A combined Google and Meta Ads program that added over 600 new patients to a telehealth provider's books in a year, with steady growth month after month.
A subscription-focused Meta Ads campaign that took a DTC supplement brand from $15k to $90k in monthly revenue in just over a year.
Keep reading
Related
FAQ
Questions people ask
Google has no minimum spend. The businesses we work with spend anywhere from a few thousand dollars a month up to six figures a year, plus a management fee if an agency runs the account. The right number for you depends on your click costs, how many clicks turn into enquiries and what a customer is worth to you.
It depends on the industry. Going by Google Keyword Planner, a click on "physio near me" sits around $4 to $14, while "personal injury lawyer" runs from about $21 to $183. Most trade and service searches land somewhere between $8 and $80.
Most agencies charge a monthly fee, either flat or as a percentage of ad spend. Ours starts at $1,725 AUD a month. Whoever you hire, watch for setup fees, long lock-in contracts and agencies that keep the ad account in their own name.
Yes. Google charges your ad spend to your card, in an account you own. Our management fee is invoiced separately.
You can, if you have time to check your search terms, tracking and results every week. If you're not sure how your current account is doing, the $99 audit is a cheap way to find out before you decide.
Next step
Find out where your ad spend is going.
Get a $99 AUD Google Ads audit. We'll show you where money is being wasted and which leads you're missing out on.
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