- In the US, a top-of-page click on “emergency plumber” can cost up to $110.00, the highest of 40 trade searches (Google Keyword Planner, October 19, 2026).
- Across those 40 searches in eight trades, top-of-page bids run from $1.92 (“crane rental”) to $110.00 (“emergency plumber”).
- $500 a month buys 4 to 20 clicks on “emergency plumber” but 41 to 213 on “crane rental near me”.
- All-industry averages ($5.42 per click in WordStream’s 2026 data) understate trade costs: the cheapest high-end bid in our pull was $9.00.
One click on “emergency plumber” can cost $110. One click on “crane rental” can cost under $10. Both are Google Ads, and both get lumped into the same “average cost per click” you see quoted everywhere.
That average is why the cost of Google Ads gives so many owners a nasty surprise in their first month. So instead of one number, I pulled Google’s own click prices for 40 searches that US service businesses actually bid on, across eight trades, on October 19, 2026.
Below you’ll find the Google Ads cost for each one, what a monthly budget really buys, and how a click turns into a lead and then a booked job.
How much does Google Ads cost? The short answer
Google Ads is Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform, the main form of search engine marketing for local businesses. It has no fixed price. You set an advertising budget, and you pay each time someone clicks your ad. There’s no Google Ads price list, no minimum spend and no monthly fee from Google.
What you pay per click depends on the search. For the 40 trade searches in this guide, Google’s top-of-page bid ranges run from $1.92 at the low end to $110.00 at the high end.
Your monthly cost is simply the number of clicks you want times what each one costs. A $500 month buys four clicks on “emergency plumber” at the high end, or 213 clicks on “crane rental near me” at the low end. That spread is the whole story.
How Google Ads pricing works
Google Ads pricing is an auction that runs every time someone searches. Every advertiser who wants that search sets a maximum bid. Google then works out each ad’s Ad Rank from the bid and the ad’s quality, and the winner usually pays a little less than its maximum.
Quality matters more than most people think. Google’s Quality Score rates how relevant your ad and landing page are to the search. A sharper ad can show above a competitor who bids more, and pay less per click doing it.
The numbers in this guide are Google’s top-of-page bid ranges from Keyword Planner. Google describes the low end as roughly the 20th percentile of what advertisers have paid to show at the top of the page, and the high end as roughly the 80th. So the low end is “showing up”, and the high end is “showing up when it’s competitive”.
That’s the cost per click on Google Ads in plain terms. The exact bid settings for each account are where the skill is, and they change week to week.
Google Ads cost by trade: 40 US searches
Here’s the Google Ads cost per click for each search at the top of the page in the US right now. Searches a month is Google’s 12-month average.
| Trade | Search | Searches a month (US) | Top-of-page bid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | plumber near me | 823,000 | $12.22 to $82.33 |
| Plumbing | emergency plumber | 90,500 | $24.42 to $110.00 |
| Plumbing | plumbing services | 60,500 | $15.10 to $84.36 |
| Plumbing | drain cleaning | 90,500 | $4.07 to $51.55 |
| Plumbing | water heater installation | 33,100 | $8.25 to $60.00 |
| Plumbing | sewer line repair | 18,100 | $9.88 to $70.00 |
| HVAC | ac repair near me | 201,000 | $15.00 to $100.95 |
| HVAC | furnace repair | 201,000 | $10.81 to $75.00 |
| HVAC | hvac company near me | 110,000 | $13.34 to $81.81 |
| HVAC | hvac repair | 74,000 | $17.00 to $100.00 |
| HVAC | ac installation | 49,500 | $6.85 to $56.26 |
| HVAC | heat pump installation | 22,200 | $4.48 to $43.86 |
| Roofing | roofers near me | 165,000 | $13.79 to $75.00 |
| Roofing | roofing contractor | 135,000 | $10.18 to $59.44 |
| Roofing | roof repair near me | 90,500 | $14.59 to $69.26 |
| Roofing | roof replacement | 33,100 | $14.41 to $70.74 |
| Roofing | metal roofing contractors | 8,100 | $11.27 to $57.33 |
| Electrical | electrician near me | 368,000 | $5.73 to $55.00 |
| Electrical | electrical contractor | 40,500 | $4.95 to $35.37 |
| Electrical | ev charger installation | 14,800 | $4.64 to $31.77 |
| Electrical | emergency electrician | 12,100 | $11.30 to $66.00 |
| Electrical | electrical panel upgrade | 9,900 | $4.31 to $23.85 |
| Contractors | general contractor near me | 135,000 | $5.52 to $31.69 |
| Contractors | bathroom remodel | 135,000 | $9.58 to $55.00 |
| Contractors | kitchen remodel contractor | 40,500 | $7.00 to $42.41 |
| Contractors | home remodeling contractors | 27,100 | $5.68 to $32.65 |
| Contractors | home addition contractors | 22,200 | $5.00 to $32.00 |
| Solar | solar panel installation | 74,000 | $3.75 to $30.84 |
| Solar | solar companies near me | 14,800 | $5.13 to $41.31 |
| Solar | solar installers near me | 12,100 | $5.10 to $41.58 |
| Solar | residential solar | 1,300 | $4.60 to $31.08 |
| Siding | siding contractors near me | 40,500 | $10.98 to $74.73 |
| Siding | siding installation | 9,900 | $6.61 to $48.09 |
| Siding | siding companies | 6,600 | $12.55 to $82.86 |
| Siding | vinyl siding installers | 5,400 | $6.81 to $49.35 |
| Crane and rigging | crane service | 9,900 | $2.95 to $16.00 |
| Crane and rigging | crane rental | 9,900 | $1.92 to $9.00 |
| Crane and rigging | crane rental near me | 3,600 | $2.34 to $12.02 |
| Crane and rigging | rigging company | 1,000 | $3.46 to $17.81 |
| Crane and rigging | machinery movers | 590 | $3.74 to $19.51 |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
Source: Google Ads Keyword Planner, United States, pulled October 19, 2026.
Three things jump out when you look at it as an owner.
Emergency searches cost the most
“Emergency plumber” has the highest price in the whole table, up to $110.00 a click, and even its low end ($24.42) is the highest low end of any search here. Compare “drain cleaning” in the same trade at $4.07 to $51.55.
Electrical shows the same pattern. “Emergency electrician” runs $11.30 to $66.00, against $4.95 to $35.37 for “electrical contractor”. Someone with water on the floor calls the first number they see, and every advertiser knows it.
“Near me” searches are where the volume is
“Plumber near me” gets 823,000 searches a month, more than any other search here, and tops out at $82.33. “Ac repair near me” reaches $100.95. These are people ready to hire today, so they’re expensive and worth fighting for.
Some trades are far cheaper to advertise
Every crane and rigging search tops out below $20 a click. General contractor searches mostly sit between $5 and $55. If you’re in a trade with lower click costs, Google Ads can be very cheap per lead, as long as the clicks are the right ones.
Each trade has its own guide if you want more detail: plumbers, HVAC companies, roofers and crane and rigging firms.
Why the average Google Ads CPC you read online doesn’t fit your trade
Search for Google Ads benchmarks and you’ll find two numbers quoted again and again. WordStream puts the Google Ads average cost per click for 2026 at $5.42. LYFE Marketing says most businesses pay $0.11 to $4.52.
Both are averages across every industry, including cheap ecommerce clicks and Display Network ads on other websites. That’s why the average Google Ads CPC feels so low next to what a trade owner pays on the Search Network.
In our pull, the cheapest high-end bid of any trade search was $9.00, for “crane rental”. WordStream’s own report puts “home and home improvement” at $8.33 on average, among the most expensive categories it tracks. If you budget from a $5 click, you’ll run out of money in the first week.
Google’s Local Services Ads work differently again. You pay per lead rather than per click, which is why owners often weigh the two side by side. We compare them in Google Ads vs Local Services Ads.
From cost per click to cost per lead to cost per job
A click isn’t a customer. What you really want to know is the Google Ads cost per acquisition: what you pay for each call or form, and then for each job.
The maths is simple. Cost per lead is your cost per click divided by the share of clicks that call or fill in a form. Here’s a worked example with round numbers, not a benchmark:
- A $40 click with 1 in 20 visitors calling is $800 per lead.
- The same $40 click with 1 in 10 calling is $400 per lead.
- With 1 in 5 calling, it’s $200 per lead.
Then divide by your close rate. At $200 a lead and one job closed out of every three leads, each job costs $600 in ad spend. That number is the one to hold up against your average job value.
This is why “average cost per lead by industry” tables don’t help much on their own. The same click price can give a $200 lead or an $800 lead, depending on the landing page, the phone answer and the searches you pay for.
Real accounts show how wide that gap is. A plumbing account we built from scratch in Buffalo produced 89 tracked leads at $92 each in its first 90 days. A New York crane and rigging company we’ve run since 2021 is at $187 per lead in 2026, down from $393 in 2023, across 582 tracked leads since January 2024.
That crane number comes from a trade where clicks top out under $20, and it still costs $187 to get a lead. A cheap click doesn’t guarantee a cheap lead.
How much does Google Ads cost per month?
So how much does it cost to run Google Ads? Your monthly Google advertising cost is whatever budget you set. Google can spend up to twice your daily budget on a busy day, but over a month it won’t charge more than 30.4 times your average daily budget.
So the real question is what your budget buys. Here’s what $500 a month gets you at the low and high end of each range.
- Emergency plumber: 4 clicks at $110.00, or 20 at $24.42.
- Ac repair near me: 4 clicks at $100.95, or 33 at $15.00.
- Roofing contractor: 8 clicks at $59.44, or 49 at $10.18.
- Electrician near me: 9 clicks at $55.00, or 87 at $5.73.
- General contractor near me: 15 clicks at $31.69, or 90 at $5.52.
- Crane rental near me: 41 clicks at $12.02, or 213 at $2.34.
That’s the honest Google Ads cost for small business owners in the trades. In a high-cost trade, $500 a month may buy only a handful of clicks at the top of the page, and a handful of clicks rarely gives you enough calls to judge anything.
Clicks aren’t leads, either. Plenty of owners post that they spent $500, got a stack of clicks and no calls. Before blaming the budget, check what those clicks were for and whether the calls were counted.
If you want to work out a number for your own business, our guide to how much a service business should spend on Google Ads walks through the formula, and the Google Ads budget calculator does the maths for you.
Where Google Ads money leaks before you get a lead
Most of the waste isn’t the click price. It’s paying for clicks that were never going to book. In the accounts we audit, the same leaks come up again and again.
- Calls aren’t tracked. In the trades, the phone call is usually the job. For our crane client, 63% of tracked leads were calls. If calls don’t count as conversions, Google can report zero conversions while your phone rang, and it optimizes for clicks instead.
- Searches are too broad. Job seekers, DIY questions and other towns all trigger ads unless someone reads the search terms report and blocks them. Our guide to negative keywords shows how to spot them.
- Ads run outside the service area. A click from 60 miles away costs the same and rarely books.
- Nobody answers. An emergency click at $80 that goes to voicemail is $80 gone.
If you’re not sure your calls are counted, start with conversion tracking. It’s the cheapest fix in the whole account. If the spend is gone and the phone is still quiet, our guide to why Google Ads isn’t working walks through the rest.
What Klexa charges on top of ad spend
Your ad spend goes straight to Google. Any agency fee is separate, and that’s where pricing models differ a lot.
Klexa doesn’t charge a management fee until the account books you a job. Klexa’s Google Ads service is built for US service businesses: contractors, roofers, HVAC and plumbing companies, and crane and rigging firms.
The founder, Alamgir Anwar, runs every account himself, there’s no contract, and calls are tracked before any ad spend goes out. You can read exactly how our pricing works, or compare fee models in our guide to PPC management services.
How we got these numbers (and how to cite them)
Every click price above comes from Google Ads Keyword Planner, pulled through the Google Ads API for the United States on October 19, 2026. The same pull covers all 40 searches across eight trades, so the rows compare like for like. Search volumes are Google’s 12-month averages. Bids are the top-of-page low and high ranges, which Google describes as roughly the 20th and 80th percentiles.
Prices vary by city, season and month, so treat these as national starting points for planning your online advertising. We refresh this table every quarter.
If you’d like to use the data, you’re welcome to. Please cite it as “Klexa, Google Ads cost by trade, October 2026” and link to this page.
Questions about Google Ads cost
Is $20 a day good for Google Ads?
$20 a day is up to $608 a month. For a plumber, that’s about 7 clicks a month at the high end of “plumber near me” ($82.33), or 49 at the low end. It can work in lower-cost trades or a small service area, but in plumbing, HVAC and roofing it’s usually too few clicks to judge.
Is $500 a month enough for Google Ads?
It depends on your trade. $500 buys about 6 to 36 clicks on “roofers near me”, but 41 to 213 on “crane rental near me”. In high-cost trades, $500 is a test, not a lead engine. Track every call from day one so you know what each click turned into.
How much does it cost to advertise on Google?
There’s no set price. You pay per click and set your own budget. For US service businesses, top-of-page clicks run from about $2 to $110 depending on the search, so a realistic monthly budget depends on how many calls you need and what each click costs in your trade.
Why did Google Ads charge me more than my daily budget?
Google can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a single day when traffic is high. Over the month it balances out: you won’t be charged more than 30.4 times your average daily budget. If you see charges you can’t explain, check the billing summary for each campaign.
Is Google Ads worth it for a small service business?
It can be, because it reaches people searching for your service right now. It’s worth it when calls are tracked, junk searches are blocked and someone answers the phone. The Buffalo plumbing account above, built from scratch, produced 89 tracked leads at $92 each in its first 90 days.
What is a good cost per lead for a service business?
A good cost per lead is one that leaves profit after your close rate. If one in three leads becomes a $2,000 job, a $200 lead costs $600 per job and is good. Work it backwards from your job value rather than from an industry average.
Want to know what your clicks should cost?
If you’re running Google Ads now and the cost doesn’t add up, I’ll look at your account with you and tell you plainly where the money goes.