Cost Per Click (CPC) Statistics (2025–2026): Benchmarks by Platform & Industry
The average cost per click on Google Ads in 2025 is $5.26. On TikTok, you might pay as little as $0.02. On LinkedIn, you could be paying $5.58 or more — and arguably getting your money’s worth. CPC varies so wildly across platforms and industries that “what’s a good CPC?” is almost the wrong question. What matters is whether the click pays for itself downstream.
That said, benchmarks exist for a reason. If you’re paying $8 per click in an industry where the average is $2, you need to know. And if you’re paying $6 where the average is $8, you have something to protect.
This article covers CPC benchmarks across every major platform, broken down by industry, device, and campaign type — sourced from WordStream, LocaliQ, Superads, and others — updated to reflect 2025 data.
CPC at a Glance
| Platform | Average CPC (2025) | Best For |
| Google Search | $5.26 | High-intent, bottom-funnel |
| Google Display | $0.63 | Awareness, retargeting |
| Microsoft/Bing Ads | $1.54 | B2B, desktop, cost efficiency |
| Facebook Ads | $1.11–$1.72 | B2C, broad targeting |
| Instagram Ads | $1.43 | Visual, lifestyle, DTC brands |
| LinkedIn Ads | $5.58+ | B2B, decision-maker targeting |
| TikTok Ads | $0.02–$1.00 | Gen Z, brand awareness |
| YouTube Ads | $3.56 | Video-first, mid-funnel |
| Amazon Ads | $0.98 | Product-focused, purchase intent |
| X (Twitter) Ads | ~$0.08 | Real-time, news-driven campaigns |
A few things worth flagging before diving in: these are averages, and averages lie. CPC is shaped by your Quality Score, bidding strategy, audience targeting, ad creative, and the time of year. The benchmarks below are starting points for calibration — not targets to optimize toward in isolation.
Google Ads CPC by Industry
WordStream’s 2025 Google Ads Benchmarks, based on a large sample of real advertiser accounts, remain the most cited reference point for Google CPC data. CPC increased for 87% of industries in 2025 — continuing a multi-year upward trend.
| Industry | Average CPC | YoY Change |
| Attorneys & Legal Services | $8.58 | -4.0% |
| Dentists & Dental Services | $7.85 | — |
| Home & Home Improvement | $7.85 | — |
| Education & Instruction | $6.23 | +41.9% |
| Personal Services | $5.81 | — |
| Business Services | $5.58 | — |
| Beauty & Personal Care | $5.70 | +60.1% |
| Automotive Repair & Services | $3.90 | — |
| Real Estate | ~$2.88 | — |
| Travel | $2.12 | — |
| Restaurants & Food | $2.05 | — |
| Arts & Entertainment | $1.60 | -7.0% |
The legal industry’s dominance at the top isn’t surprising — a single retained client can be worth tens of thousands of dollars, so an $8.58 click is a rounding error if it converts. Beauty and personal care’s 60% YoY increase is the real story though. Intensified DTC competition and the rise of social commerce are driving brands to outbid each other aggressively on branded and category terms.
On the positive side: 65% of industries saw better conversion rates in 2025, which means higher CPCs don’t automatically mean worse ROI. As one LocaliQ senior manager put it, costs are rising but performance is rising with them — the advantage goes to whoever has the better post-click experience.
CPC by Platform
Google Search vs. Display
Search and Display serve different purposes, and their CPC gap reflects that.
- Search average CPC: $5.26 — captures bottom-funnel intent; users are actively looking for something
- Display average CPC: $0.63 — reaches passive audiences across the web; better for awareness and retargeting
Search campaigns dominate Google spend — they account for 56.2% of all Google ad spend despite being the most expensive format, because the intent quality justifies the cost. Display ads are cheap per click but convert at lower rates.
The average CTR on Google Search is 6.66%. Average conversion rate is 7.52%. Average cost per lead is $70.11 across all industries. These three numbers together matter more than CPC alone.
Microsoft/Bing Ads
Bing is significantly underused relative to its cost advantage. The average CPC is $1.54 — roughly 40% lower than Google’s — with a CTR of 2.83% and a conversion rate of 2.94%.
Microsoft Ads revenue grew 13.4% between 2024 and 2025 and is expected to grow another 12.2% in 2026. The platform’s real edge for B2B advertisers is LinkedIn profile targeting — you can layer job title, company size, and industry onto search intent, something Google can’t do. For B2B campaigns specifically, most performance reports suggest allocating 15–20% of PPC budget to Bing alongside a Google-first strategy.
Facebook & Instagram
Facebook’s global median CPC averaged $1.11 across January 2025 to January 2026, with a seasonal peak of $1.32 in November (Q4 auction pressure) and a reset to $0.85 in January 2026, per Superads’ analysis of $3B in ad data.
The U.S.-specific figure sits higher at $1.72, reflecting the more competitive domestic market.
Instagram’s average CPC is $1.43 — slightly above Facebook, driven by higher engagement rates and premium visual placements. Reels tend to offer lower CPCs than feed placements, but require creative that actually fits the format. Brands running static images on Reels are wasting the format.
Both platforms peak hard in Q4. If you’re running holiday campaigns, expect to pay 20–30% more per click than you would in Q2.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn is the most expensive platform per click at $5.58 average CPC, with some estimates putting the realistic range at $2–$4 for standard campaigns and higher for competitive B2B verticals. CPM averages $26.91.
The case for paying it: LinkedIn’s average conversion rate for B2B campaigns is 6.10%, and MQL-to-SQL conversion rates are 14–18%, compared to Google’s 7–12%. The lead quality difference — reaching people in a professional mindset, with verifiable job titles — can justify a CPC that looks painful next to Facebook’s.
There’s also a specific format worth knowing about: LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads (launched 2025) use individual executive profiles rather than company pages. They show 1.7x higher CTR, 62% lower CPC, and 48% higher lead form completion compared to standard Sponsored Content, according to B2B PPC benchmark reports.
TikTok
TikTok’s CPC range is wide — $0.02 to $1.00 for auction-based in-feed ads, with a reported cost per link click of $0.74 in January 2025. The low floor reflects the platform’s younger, less commercially saturated ad auction.
Premium formats are a different story entirely. TopView Ads run $50,000–$150,000 per day. Branded Hashtag Challenges start at $50,000. Those aren’t CPC buys — they’re takeover-style brand investments.
For most advertisers, the relevant TikTok opportunity is in-feed auction ads, where creative quality matters far more than bid size. The platform’s algorithm rewards engagement over spend, which means a well-made $500 campaign can outperform a mediocre $5,000 one.
YouTube
YouTube’s average CPC sits at $3.56 — about 2.5x TikTok’s. Most YouTube campaigns are measured by cost-per-view (CPV) at $0.05 rather than CPC, since video ads primarily serve awareness and mid-funnel goals rather than direct clicks.
YouTube is most efficiently used as a funnel entry point — build familiarity cheaply through skippable in-stream ads, then retarget those viewers on Google Search or Display where intent is higher and conversion is more measurable.
Amazon Ads
Amazon’s average CPC is $0.98, making it one of the more affordable clicks relative to the intent behind it. Someone clicking an ad on Amazon is, by definition, shopping. Amazon Advertising reported $17.7 billion in total ad revenue in Q3 2025, which tells you how seriously brands are treating it.
The challenge with Amazon CPC isn’t the cost — it’s attribution. Product-level ROAS on Amazon can look excellent while obscuring the fact that you’re mostly paying for clicks from people who would have found you organically anyway.
What Drives CPC Up or Down
CPC isn’t just a market price — it’s partly within your control. These are the main levers.
- Quality Score (Google) / Relevance Score (Meta). A strong Quality Score can cut your Google CPC by 20–40%. It’s calculated from ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience. A weak landing page doesn’t just hurt conversion — it literally costs you more per click because Google penalizes poor post-click experiences.
- Match type. Exact match keywords typically cost more per click than broad match — but they convert at higher rates. Broad match captures more volume at lower CPC but with more wasted spend. The right balance depends on your margin and conversion rate.
- Device. Mobile clicks are generally cheaper than desktop across most platforms, but desktop converts at higher rates — especially in B2B. Microsoft Ads skews desktop-heavy, which partly explains its stronger B2B conversion performance despite lower CPCs.
- Seasonality. Q4 is expensive across the board. In retail, CPCs can spike 20–50% in November. Legal and healthcare see their own seasonal peaks around open enrollment and tax season. If you’re planning annual budgets, build in seasonal CPC buffers.
- Competition. More advertisers bidding on the same keyword = higher CPCs. This is why long-tail keywords often deliver better ROI despite lower search volume — less competition means lower entry costs with roughly comparable intent.
CPC Trends: What’s Changed Since 2024
Overall CPCs are up 11.4% year-over-year across all platforms (Calcify Labs). But that headline number understates the variation.
- Beauty & Personal Care: +60.1% on Google — the biggest jump of any category
- Education & Instruction: +41.9% on Google — driven by edtech competition and rising enrollment marketing spend
- Legal services: -4.0% on Google — still the most expensive category, but one of the few that got marginally cheaper
- Arts & Entertainment: -7.0% on Google — the lowest CPC category, and it got cheaper
Smart bidding is making CPCs less predictable. Google’s AI-driven bidding strategies (Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, etc.) prioritize outcomes over cost control. Campaigns using smart bidding show sharper CPC increases than manual campaigns — Google has direct control over CPCs in these modes and will pay more if it predicts a high-value conversion. That can be worth it. It can also blow budgets.
Privacy changes are still pushing CPCs up indirectly. The post-iOS 14.5 environment means less precise audience targeting, which means more wasted clicks before finding converters. Advertisers compensate by bidding higher on what they can target. First-party data audiences are commanding premium placements because they’re the most reliable signal left.
CPC vs. What Actually Matters
CPC is a health metric, not a KPI — and that distinction matters. A cheap click that bounces is worth nothing. An expensive click from an in-market buyer is worth a lot. The numbers below put CPC in context.
| Metric | Google Search (2025) | Facebook (2025) | Microsoft Bing (2025) |
| Average CPC | $5.26 | $1.72 | $1.54 |
| Average CTR | 6.66% | 0.9% | 2.83% |
| Average conversion rate | 7.52% | 7.72% | 2.94% |
| Average cost per lead | $70.11 | — | $41.44 |
Facebook’s conversion rate (7.72%) now slightly edges Google’s (7.52%) — but Facebook’s CTR of 0.9% means you’re reaching a lot of uninterested eyeballs before you get there. Google’s 6.66% CTR reflects higher intent at the point of click.
The metric that ties this together is cost per lead (CPL) or cost per acquisition (CPA) — what you actually pay for a customer, not just a click. A $1.54 Bing click with a 2.94% conversion rate delivers a $41.44 CPL. A $5.26 Google click at 7.52% delivers roughly $70. Google generates the lead; Bing generates it cheaper. Both might make sense in your stack.
Key Takeaways
Don’t optimize CPC in isolation. A campaign with a $3 CPC and a 1% conversion rate is more expensive per lead than one with a $7 CPC and a 5% conversion rate. Always pair CPC data with conversion rates and revenue numbers before drawing conclusions.
Bing is consistently underallocated. At 40% lower CPC than Google with comparable conversion rates and unique B2B targeting through LinkedIn, most advertisers should be running 15–20% of their PPC budget on Microsoft Ads. The ROI data is solid and competition is lower simply because fewer people bother.
For B2B, LinkedIn’s CPC is easier to justify than it looks. High CPCs sting on a dashboard. They look different when you factor in that LinkedIn leads convert to pipeline at roughly double the rate of Google leads. Do the CPL math before writing it off.
Q4 budget planning needs a CPC buffer. November CPCs on Facebook peak at ~19% above the annual average. Google’s competitive industries can spike harder. If your Q4 campaigns are running on Q2 budgets, you’re going to run out of impressions early.
Creative quality is the cheapest CPC lever available. A better ad with a higher Quality Score directly reduces what you pay per click. Better landing pages do the same. Most advertisers under-invest in creative and over-invest in bid adjustments. The returns go the other way.
Sources:
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/2025-google-ads-benchmarks
- https://localiq.com/blog/search-advertising-benchmarks/
- https://www.superads.ai/facebook-ads-costs/cpc-cost-per-click
- https://www.shopify.com/blog/ppc-statistics
- https://thedigitalbloom.com/learn/b2b-ppc-2025-roi-lead-quality-report/
- https://marketinghubdaily.com/cpc-cpm-cpa-benchmarks-for-2025/
- https://calcifylabs.com/cpc-benchmarks/
- https://blog.coupler.io/ppc-statistics/
- https://tlinky.com/tiktok-advertising-cost/
- https://embryo.com/blog/top-facts-microsoft-advertising/
