“How much should I spend on Google Ads?” is one of the most common questions businesses ask when they start thinking about paid search, and often one of the trickiest ones to answer. The reality is that there is no universal figure that works for every business. What you should spend depends on your industry, your competitors, margins, goals and, most importantly, how efficiently your campaigns are running.
With that said, there are some useful benchmarks and frameworks that can assist you with deciding on a budget that makes the most sense for your situation.
Why There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Answer
Google Ads budgets vary dramatically between businesses, and there’s a couple of reasons for that. Cost-per-click varies wildly by industry. In some sectors, a click costs a few pence. In others, particularly competitive fields like legal services or insurance, a single click can cost £50 or more.
That alone means the same £1,000 monthly budget could get you 10,000 clicks in one industry and just 20 in another.
Beyond that, your conversion rate, your average order value, and your customer lifetime value all affect how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer profitably.
Begin With Your Goals, Not A Budget Number
The biggest mistake businesses make is deciding on a Google Ads budget before deciding what they want that budget to achieve. It’s a completely backwards approach to take.
Instead, work in the opposite direction. Ask yourself: how many customers or leads do I want Google Ads to generate each month? What’s a customer worth to me, on average? And what can I afford to pay to acquire one and still make the numbers work?
From those figures, you can back out a realistic budget. If you need 20 customers a month, your average customer is worth £500, and you can afford to spend £100 to acquire one, your target ad spend is around £2,000 monthly – assuming that your campaigns actually hit those numbers.
Budget Guidance By Industry
While every business is different, there are broad ranges that tend to hold true across industries.
E-commerce And Retail
For most small to mid-sized online retailers, monthly Google Ads budgets typically start around £500–£2,000 and scale up from there. Costs-per-click are moderate in most product categories, and Shopping campaigns often deliver better efficiency than search alone.
A healthy target for most e-commerce businesses is between 3x and 5x, meaning you’re generating £3–£5 in revenue for every £1 spent. If your margins are thin, you’ll need a higher ROAS to be profitable.
Local Services
Businesses like plumbers, dentists and cleaning companies usually see moderate to high costs-per-click, often in the £5–£20 range depending on competitiveness. Monthly budgets typically start around £500–£1,500 for smaller operators and go significantly higher for businesses covering multiple locations.
Local services generally have high conversion rates when campaigns are well-targeted, which offsets the higher CPCs.
Legal Services
Legal is one of the most expensive industries on Google Ads, full stop. Costs-per-click for terms like “personal injury solicitor” or “divorce lawyer” regularly hit £30–£100 or more in competitive UK markets. Realistic monthly budgets for law firms typically start at £2,000–£5,000 and can easily reach five figures for firms competing in high-value practice areas.
The upside, though, is that legal clients often have high lifetime values, which can justify the higher spend.
B2B And SaaS
B2B budgets vary enormously, but most small-to-mid-sized B2B businesses running Google Ads for lead generation spend somewhere between £1,000 and £10,000 monthly. Costs-per-click are moderate to high in most B2B categories, and sales cycles are typically long, meaning you need to be patient with the data before drawing conclusions.
For SaaS specifically, budget scales with your average contract value. A SaaS product with a £500 annual price point can afford much less per click than one with a £50,000 enterprise deal.
Healthcare And Medical
Costs-per-click in healthcare vary widely by service type. Cosmetic and elective procedures like dental implants or laser eye surgery can see CPCs of £10–£40. General medical practices, on the other hand, tend to be lower. Budgets typically start around £1,000–£3,000 for private practices and scale with the value of the services being promoted.
Restaurants And Hospitality
For restaurants and hospitality businesses, Google Ads is often less critical than Google Business Profile and organic visibility. When used, budgets are typically modest – £300–£1,000 monthly – and often focused on specific goals like promoting private hire, events, or seasonal offers rather than day-to-day bookings.
Education And Training
Costs-per-click for education vary based on the type of programme, and are higher for competitive terms around universities and certifications. Budgets typically start at £1,000+ monthly and scale significantly for institutions competing nationally or internationally.
Give Your Budget The Time To Work
One of the most common mistakes new advertisers make is setting a budget too low to gather meaningful data, and then cutting the campaign after a few weeks when it doesn’t show results.
Google Ads needs a certain amount of volume before its algorithms optimise effectively. For automated bidding strategies to work well, you typically need at least 30–50 conversions in a 30-day window. If your budget is so small that you’re generating three or four conversions a month, you’re not really giving the platform enough to learn from.
If you can’t afford a budget that generates meaningful conversion volume in your industry, you may be better off focusing on other marketing channels until you can, rather than spreading a small budget thin across paid search.How much should you spend on Google Ads? Here’s a practical budget guide by industry
