0413 107 893The honest answer has three parts. There's what you pay Google per click. There's how much monthly budget you need for the system to work at all. And there's what you pay someone to manage it. Most articles on this topic dodge the numbers. We manage Google Ads accounts across Australia every day, so here are the real ranges.
Part 1: What clicks cost in Australia
Google Ads is an auction. Cost per click, or CPC, depends on how many competitors want the same search and how much a customer is worth to them. That's why a lawyer pays twenty times more per click than an online shop.
These are the CPC ranges we see across Australian accounts in 2026:
| Industry | Typical CPC range (AUD) |
|---|---|
| Legal (criminal, family, personal injury) | $15 - $80+ |
| Trades and home services | $8 - $30 |
| Medical and allied health | $4 - $15 |
| B2B services and SaaS | $6 - $25 |
| Real estate | $3 - $10 |
| E-commerce (Shopping campaigns) | $0.60 - $3 |
Two caveats. First, these are averages across broad categories. "Emergency plumber Perth" costs far more than "how to fix a dripping tap". Second, CPC is the least important number in your account. A $50 click that becomes a $15,000 client beats a $2 click that becomes nothing.
Part 2: How much budget you actually need
The most common mistake Australian small businesses make is running Google Ads on a budget too small to generate usable data. Google's automated bidding needs conversions to learn from. Starve it and it never gets smart.
Here are rough minimums we recommend:
- Local service business (single suburb or city): $1,000 to $2,000 per month in ad spend
- Competitive local services (legal, dental, cosmetic): $2,500 to $5,000+ per month
- E-commerce: $1,500 to $3,000 per month to start, scaling with return
- National campaigns: $5,000+ per month
Can you spend less? Yes. Will it work? Occasionally, in low-competition niches. But if your industry's CPC is $20 and your budget is $500 per month, that's 25 clicks. Not enough for Google's bidding to optimise, or for you to judge anything.
The better question isn't "how little can I spend". It's "what does a lead cost, and what is it worth". In one of our accounts, restructuring brought cost per lead down from $452 to $68 in two months, and delivered 12 times more leads from the same budget. The budget didn't change. The management did.
A real Australian account we manage. Note the average cost, cost per conversion and conversion rate columns. Those are the numbers that matter, not the raw CPC.
Part 3: What management costs in Australia
You have three options.
Do it yourself: free, except for your time and mistakes. Google Ads gives self-managed accounts plenty of rope. Auto-applied recommendations, broad match defaults and the new AI Max features all tilt towards spending more, not less. Some owners do fine. Most quietly subsidise Google.
Freelancers: roughly $300 to $800 per month. Quality varies enormously. Ask to see results from accounts similar to yours, and make sure you own the account, not them.
Agencies: roughly $400 to $2,000+ per month in Perth and most Australian cities. E-commerce management usually starts higher, around $600 to $700, because Shopping feeds add complexity. Watch for two pricing traps. Percentage-of-spend fees reward the agency for spending more of your money. Lock-in contracts reward them for signing you rather than keeping you.
Our own Google Ads management Perth service starts at $499 per month per account. Flat fee, no commission on your ad spend, no lock-in contract, and we build dedicated landing pages at no extra cost. For multi-platform campaigns across Microsoft Ads, Meta or TikTok, see our PPC management Perth page.
So what's the total?
For a typical Australian local service business, expect $1,500 to $2,500 per month all-in. That's $1,000 to $2,000 in ad spend plus management. For competitive industries, budget $3,000 to $6,000 all-in. For e-commerce, expect $2,000 to $4,000 all-in to start. If that's you, read why clients call us the best Google Ads agency for e-commerce in Australia.
Whether that's expensive depends entirely on the return. If a $2,000 monthly investment produces 25 leads and you close a third of them at $1,000 average value, you've turned $2,000 into $8,000. If the same spend produces junk clicks and no calls, it's the most expensive thing you buy all year. The difference is rarely the budget. It's the setup, the tracking and the ongoing management.
Get a real number for your business
Generic ranges only go so far. If you want to know what Google Ads would actually cost for your industry, your location and your goals, book a free strategy session. We'll tell you, including whether we think Google Ads is the right channel for you at all. We've been doing this since 2016, we're Google Partner certified, and we hold a 100% 5-star rating on Google. Here's why we're rated the best Google Ads agency in Perth.