Free Tool
Google Ads Cost
Calculator
Find out what Google Ads would cost your business, and what it could bring in. Pick your trade and town, tell us what a job is worth, and see your estimated spend, enquiries and jobs. No jargon, no email needed.
Typical South African click prices built in · Honest ranges, not promises · No lock-in · Read the full cost guide
Example estimate
A plumber in a major metro with a R12,500 monthly ad budget and a R3,500 average job. Ad spend only: an estimate, not a guarantee.
The Calculator
Work out your real numbers.
Four quick questions. We fill in typical click prices and conversion rates for your trade, so you don’t need to know any Google Ads jargon. Everything updates as you go, and nothing is sent anywhere.
LeadSurge Google Ads estimate
What to expect each month
Three cases, so you can plan around the safe one and treat the best one as upside.
When does it pay back?
Total cost (ad spend plus any fees you enter) against gross profit from new jobs, with the learning period built in.
Show the chart as a table
Worth knowing
Straight talk about what these numbers mean for you.
Where your budget goes
From click to paying customer, in the expected case.
Most clicks never become enquiries, and that is normal. It is why we judge an account on cost per enquiry and cost per job, not the price of a click. More in our cost guide.
What moves the needle
Extra jobs a month at the same budget.
What if you spend more or less?
Expected case at three ad budgets.
| Ad budget | Enquiries | Jobs | Total / mo |
|---|
What you get with LeadSurge
What management includes, and what gets added as your budget and goals grow. Pricing is custom, scoped after a free audit. See how pricing works.
Included in every account
Added as your budget and goals grow
Ad spend is always paid to Google directly, from your own account and card.
Your first 90 days
- Month 1: build and learnAudit, campaigns, tracking, negatives and ad copy go live. Calls can start in the first week, but the data is noisy while Google calibrates.
- Month 2: refineWasted searches get cut, bids tuned and the landing page tightened. Cost per enquiry should start trending down.
- Month 3: the first fair readEnough clean data to judge whether the channel works for your business at this budget.
Read Before You Rely On This
This calculator applies simple, transparent arithmetic to typical South African ranges and to the numbers you give it. It cannot see your competitors, your website, how quickly you answer the phone or how good your quotes are, and all four move the result. Treat every figure as a planning estimate, and use it to sanity-check a proposal or your own account, not as a guarantee. Past results from other accounts are not a promise of yours.
The Maths
How this calculator works
No black box. Every number on this page comes from five plain steps, applied to your trade, your town and the few answers you gave above.
The estimate covers ad spend only. Management fees vary by agency and scope, so add any fee you are weighing up under Fine-tune and the totals update. Ours is custom, scoped after a free audit. Price per click comes from Google’s ad auction, where you usually pay less than your maximum bid, which is why click prices differ so much by trade and town. Google’s own definition of actual cost per click explains the mechanics, and conversion tracking is how an account counts the calls and forms that matter.
See the exact formulas
Clicks = Monthly budget ÷ Cost per click
Enquiries = Clicks × Share of clicks that become enquiries (for your trade and website)
Jobs = Enquiries × Share of enquiries you turn into jobs
Revenue = Jobs × Average job value × Repeat-work factor
Cost per enquiry = Ad spend ÷ Enquiries | Cost per job = (Ad spend + any fee you enter) ÷ Jobs
Gross profit = Revenue × Gross margin − (Ad spend + any fee you enter)
Break-even jobs per month = (Ad spend + any fee you enter) ÷ (Job value × Repeat-work factor × Gross margin)
The learning period assumes about half of steady-state results in month one and about 80% in month two, then full results from month three. The conservative case lifts click prices 25%, cuts enquiries by a quarter and cuts your win rate by a fifth. The optimistic case does the reverse.
Benchmarks
Typical Google Ads costs by trade in South Africa
Cost per click is an auction — the more businesses bidding on a keyword, the higher the price. These are the ranges we typically see. Treat them as illustrative, not a quote; your real numbers depend on your town, your competition and how well your account is built.
| Trade | Typical cost per click | Clicks that become enquiries | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning services | R6 – R20 | 9 – 12% | Lower competition, high volume |
| Roofing / waterproofing | R10 – R30 | 6 – 8% | Spikes in storm season |
| Plumbing / electrical | R12 – R35 | 7 – 9% | Emergency intent, pricier in metros |
| HVAC / aircon | R10 – R28 | 7 – 9% | Seasonal in most of the country |
| Construction / renovation | R10 – R30 | 4 – 6% | Long sales cycle, high job value |
| Solar & security | R15 – R45 | 6 – 8% | Demand-driven, climbing |
| Attorneys / legal | R35 – R90+ | 5 – 7% | The most expensive category in SA |
Painters, pest control and removals are not in this table, so the calculator models them on the closest comparable trade. See the full breakdown in what Google Ads really costs in South Africa, or pick your trade on the industries page.
Reading The Result
What actually counts as "good"?
There is no universal good cost per lead, and any calculator that hands you one flat number without asking about your job value is guessing. A R400 cost per lead is disastrous for a R1,200 cleaning job and excellent for a R60,000 solar install. The only honest benchmark is your own break-even point — your average ticket, multiplied by your close rate, multiplied by your margin if your ticket is revenue rather than profit.
Once you know that number, judging an account gets simple. A real cost per lead comfortably under break-even, sustained over a few months, means the channel is paying for itself and then some. A cost per lead that keeps drifting up toward break-even — or past it — is the signal to look at the account, not to assume the channel has stopped working. The seven ways Google Ads quietly wastes your budget is the checklist we use to find out why.
The other trap is judging month one. Google's bidding system needs a steady flow of clicks and conversions to learn who to show your ads to. Most South African trades need roughly R150 to R300 a day in spend before that data is thick enough to optimise against, and it typically takes two to three months for a fair reading of your real cost per lead Learning Phase. Anyone promising a settled number in week one is selling, not measuring.
Keep Going
Go deeper on your numbers.
The calculator gives you the shape of the answer. These pages fill in the detail for your trade, your town and your budget.
Guide
What Google Ads really costs
Ad spend, management fees, the one-off build and the charges nobody quotes you.
Read the cost guide →Guide
Where budgets leak
The seven ways a Google Ads account quietly wastes money, and how to spot each one.
Find the leaks →Proof
Real accounts, real numbers
Four accounts our founder managed, with the reconciliation notes where a figure does not agree.
See the results →By trade
Built for your industry
Plumbers, electricians, roofers, HVAC, cleaning, construction, solar, security, legal and more.
Pick your trade →By town
Built for your area
Campaigns structured by suburb and town, not a national keyword list and a radius on a map.
Find your area →Who
Meet the two of us
Vogien and Tumaini build, run and report on every account. No juniors, no account managers.
About LeadSurge →Questions
Google Ads cost questions, answered.
How much does Google Ads cost in South Africa?
There are three separate costs: ad spend paid to Google, a management fee, and sometimes a one-off setup. Most South African trades need roughly R150 to R300 a day for Google’s system to learn, and a typical small service business starts around R10,000 to R15,000 a month of ad spend. Management fees vary by agency and scope. At LeadSurge we scope ours after a free audit and a conversation about your goals and budget. The full cost guide covers each part.
Do I need to know my click prices or conversion rates to use this?
No. Pick your trade and where you work and we fill in typical click prices and conversion rates. The only thing we ask you to supply is what a typical job is worth to you and how much you want to spend, or how many jobs you want. The fine-tune panel is there if you do know your own numbers.
What is a good cost per lead for Google Ads in South Africa?
It depends entirely on your average job value and close rate, not on a fixed rand figure. A R400 cost per lead is expensive for a R1,200 cleaning job and cheap for a R60,000 solar install. The number that matters is your break-even cost per lead, meaning your average job multiplied by the share of enquiries you close, and whether your real cost per lead sits comfortably under it.
How is cost per lead calculated?
Cost per lead is your monthly ad spend divided by the number of enquiries it produced. Enquiries come from clicks multiplied by the share of clicks that become a call, form or WhatsApp message, so a cheaper click or a better-converting landing page both push it down.
What is the difference between cost per lead and cost per sale?
Cost per lead is what you pay for an enquiry. Cost per sale is what you pay for an actual booked job, after your close rate is applied. A business that closes one enquiry in four pays four times its cost per lead for each sale, which is why close rate matters as much as ad performance.
Who pays for the ads, Google or LeadSurge?
You pay Google directly, from a Google Ads account in your own name and on your own card. Our management fee is separate and your ad spend never passes through us, so every rand stays visible to you and the account stays yours if we ever part ways.
What does LeadSurge management include, and what does it cost?
Every account includes keyword research and negatives, ad copywriting, conversion tracking setup, weekly optimisation and monthly reporting, with direct access to the two people running it. As budgets and goals grow we add more campaigns, a live performance dashboard, call tracking, landing page guidance, offline conversion imports, revenue-based bidding, multi-location support and strategy sessions. We do not publish prices: after a free audit and a conversation about your goals and how much you want to invest, we scope a management fee that fits. See how pricing works.
Why does the calculator show three cases?
Cost per click, the share of clicks that become enquiries and your close rate all vary, and one confident number would hide that. Plan around the conservative case, treat the optimistic case as upside, and expect the first two to three months to be a learning period rather than a fair test.
How accurate is this calculator?
It applies simple, transparent arithmetic to typical South African ranges and your own numbers, so it is only as accurate as those inputs. It cannot account for seasonality, ad quality, how well your landing page is built or how consistently your team follows up on enquiries. Treat it as a planning tool, not a forecast. A free audit replaces the typical ranges with data from your actual market or account.
Why might my agency report a different number to this calculator?
Agencies often report cost per conversion straight from Google Ads, which can include form submissions, calls and sometimes page views counted as micro-conversions, not all of which are real enquiries. This calculator only knows the numbers you enter, so compare like with like: real enquiries and real jobs.
Does a lower cost per click always mean a better result?
No. A cheap click that never converts costs more in the end than an expensive one that books a job. Judge an account on cost per lead and cost per sale, not the click price, which is exactly what this calculator is built to show.
Get Started
Want your real numbers, not estimates?
This calculator works from assumptions. A free audit works from your actual account — your real cost per click, your real conversion rate, and exactly where the budget is being wasted.
Request your free audit
Your estimate above is attached automatically, so we can check it against your real market.