What is a good cost per click?
The one your conversion rate and margin can carry. A five dollar click is cheap for a product with a four hundred dollar margin and ruinous for one with a ten dollar margin. Published averages mix both together.
CPC Calculator
What one click costs, and what it costs by the time it becomes an order. Fill in two of the three.
Fill in any two of spend, clicks and cost per click. Add a conversion rate and the click price turns into the figure a budget is spent against.
Everything here is worked out in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and there is no account to make.
Leave this blank to work it out from the other two.
%
Optional. Turns the click price into a cost per conversion.
Optional. Adds revenue and ROAS.
Result
The numbers below are an example so the tool opens working. Replace them with yours.
How the number is worked out
- A click price on its own says nothing about whether the traffic was worth buying. The figure that matters is what the click costs by the time it becomes an order, which is why the conversion rate field is here.
- Cheaper clicks are usually less interested clicks. A campaign that halves its cost per click and quarters its conversion rate has made every order more expensive.
What comes out
You will see
- Cost per click
- Whichever of the three you left blank, worked out from the other two
- Conversions at a rate you supply
- Cost per conversion, which is the click price divided by that rate
- Revenue and ROAS, when you add an order value
- A warning when all three values are entered and they do not agree
How to use it
Three steps, and the third one is the point
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Enter spend and clicks
From one platform and one window. A blended cost per click across two platforms describes neither of them.
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Leave the click price blank
Or enter a click price and a budget, and leave clicks blank, to see the traffic a budget buys.
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Add your conversion rate
This is the step that makes the number useful. A click price is not a cost you can judge until you know how many clicks a sale takes.
What a cost per click is worth knowing
Cost per click is spend divided by clicks: what one visit costs. It is the price you pay to get somebody onto the page, and nothing more than that.
Which is why it is a poor way to judge a campaign on its own. At a 2.4% conversion rate a 1.50 click costs 62.50 per order, and at 1.2% the same click costs 125. The click price did not move; the only thing that changed was what happened after it.
The result here shows both, in that order, so the second one is not something you have to work out separately.
Cheaper clicks are usually less interested clicks
The obvious way to lower a cost per click is to widen the targeting or move to a cheaper placement. Both of those reach people with less intent, and less intent converts worse.
So a campaign can halve its click price and still make every order more expensive. Nothing in the cost per click shows that, and a report built on it will read as an improvement.
Add the rate and the two numbers argue with each other, which is the point.
The tool
What this one does
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Solves in three directions
Leave spend, clicks or the click price blank and the tool works out that one.
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Turns clicks into conversions
Give it your rate and it says how many of those clicks become orders, and what each one cost.
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Carries through to ROAS
Add an order value and the whole chain appears: clicks, conversions, revenue, return.
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Keeps the platform out of it
This is arithmetic on numbers you supply. It does not estimate, forecast or apply a benchmark from somewhere else.
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Checks three entered values
All three filled and disagreeing by more than one percent gets named rather than quietly resolved.
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Works in your currency
Six currencies, formatted the way each one is normally written.
Reading the result
What each line is telling you
- Cost per click
- What one visit costs. Comparable between campaigns on the same platform, and misleading between platforms.
- Cost per conversion
- The figure to hold against your margin. This is what the budget is really buying.
- Conversions at that rate
- Arithmetic on the rate you entered, not a forecast. Change the rate and this changes with it.
- ROAS
- Appears once there is an order value. It is gross, so check it against your margin before calling it a result.
A free tool answers one question.
A search audit answers the rest.
We look at your search visibility across Google and the answer engines, and tell you what is costing you orders. No charge for the first look.
In practice
What you can do with it
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Decide whether a bid is affordable
Take your margin, divide by your conversion rate, and you have the highest click price that still works. Then compare it with what you are paying.
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Judge a cheaper placement honestly
Run the old placement and the new one with their own conversion rates. The cheaper clicks often lose.
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Work out what a budget buys
Enter the click price you expect and the budget, leave clicks blank, and the traffic falls out.
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Set a rate target instead of a bid target
If the click price cannot fall, the rate has to rise. This shows how far.
Questions
CPC Calculator questions
Why did my cost per click go up after I improved the ads?
Often because better ads win more auctions, including more competitive ones. Check the cost per conversion rather than the click price: if that fell, the campaign got better and the click price is the wrong place to look.
How is CPC different from CPM?
CPM prices being seen and CPC prices being clicked. If you know the clickthrough rate you can convert between them, which is what the CPM calculator does.
Can I compare cost per click across platforms?
Carefully. A search click from somebody typing a buying query and a feed click from somebody scrolling are not the same thing, whatever they cost. Compare the cost per conversion instead.
Should I use average cost per click or max CPC?
Average, from what the account did. Max CPC is a ceiling you set, and on most auctions you pay less than it.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing uploaded.
The rest of the set
Fifteen more, all free, all in the browser
- CPM Calculator Work out what a thousand impressions costs, or what a budget buys at a given CPM.
- CTR Calculator Clickthrough rate from clicks and impressions, or the impressions a target needs.
- Conversion Rate Calculator Conversion rate from visitors and conversions, with revenue per visitor beside it.
- ROAS Calculator Return on ad spend, the ACoS behind it, and whether your margin leaves any profit.
- CPA Calculator Cost per acquisition from media spend, and the ceiling your margin allows.
- CAC Calculator What winning a customer really costs, including the parts a platform cannot see.
- ARR Calculator Annual recurring revenue, with the net new figure that shows the direction.
- AOV Calculator Average order value, and what a target is worth against the same order count.
- Cost Per Lead Calculator What an enquiry costs, and what it costs once the unqualified half is priced in.
- llms.txt Generator Build an llms.txt file that tells AI crawlers which pages on your store matter.
- LTV Calculator Work out what a customer is worth over time, so you know what you can pay to win one.
- Schema Markup Generator Generate the JSON-LD a product, article or FAQ page needs, ready to paste.
- Break-even ROAS Find the return on ad spend where a campaign stops costing you money.
- CRO ROI Calculator See what a conversion rate change is worth against the traffic you already have.
- Hreflang Generator Produce the hreflang tags a multi-country store needs, without the usual mistakes.
Cost per click is an outcome of the auction, not a setting. It falls when relevance rises, so the levers are the ad and the page behind it before they are the bid.
Where this comes up