CentriWebGoogle Ads pricing has no set fee or price list: you choose a daily budget, you are charged when someone clicks your ad, and the price of each click is set in an auction every time someone searches. In Australia, Google adds 10% GST to the charges for accounts with an Australian business address, so what you pay is your click spend plus GST.
That means two businesses in the same suburb can pay very different amounts for the same search. The rest of this article explains what you control, what decides the click price, and how to work out a budget before you spend anything. Google facts below come from Google’s own help pages, as at November 2026.
How Google Ads pricing works: you set the budget
You set an average daily budget for each campaign. According to Google’s budget and bids help page, it is an average, worked out over the month, and you can multiply it by 30.4 (the average number of days in a month) to estimate your monthly spend.
Two limits sit on top of that average, set out on Google’s page about daily and monthly limits:
- Daily limit: on any one day, a campaign can spend up to two times its average daily budget for most campaign types. Busy days use more, quiet days use less.
- Monthly limit: across a month you are not charged more than 30.4 times your average daily budget for most campaigns.
Google’s page on bidding says bid amounts are ultimately up to you, and neither page we opened sets a minimum spend. You can start small, though a very small budget may run out early in the day and tell you little.
A worked example with your own numbers
Say you set a campaign at $50 a day. On a busy Tuesday it could spend up to $100. Over a month it will not be charged more than $1,520 (30.4 times $50). For an Australian account, add 10% GST, so the most you would pay that month is $1,672. Swap in your own daily figure to see your ceiling.
What decides the price of a click
You set a maximum cost per click (max CPC), which is the most you are willing to pay. The amount you are actually charged, the actual CPC, is usually lower. Google’s actual CPC page says you pay only what is needed to clear the minimum thresholds and beat the ad ranked below yours. If you use automated bidding, the actual CPC can go above a max CPC you set.
Who shows, and in what order, is decided by Ad Rank. Google’s Ad Rank page lists six things that feed into it:
- Your bid.
- The quality of your ad and the page it sends people to.
- Minimum Ad Rank thresholds an ad has to reach to show at all.
- How competitive the auction is.
- The context of the search: the words used, location, device and time.
- The expected effect of extras such as sitelinks and call buttons.
The same page says higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click. Ad Rank is worked out fresh for every search, which is why the price moves from one click to the next.
Quality Score: a diagnostic, not a dial
Google gives each keyword a Quality Score from 1 to 10. Google’s Quality Score page says it is built from expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, each rated against other advertisers. Google also says it is not an input in the auction. Treat it as a hint about where your ads or landing pages are weak, not as a number to chase.
What drives Google Ads cost for a local business
Within those rules, a few things make the most difference to what you spend for each enquiry:
- The searches you choose. A search such as “emergency plumber near me” is worth a lot to many businesses, so more of them bid on it. Broad or vague searches bring clicks from people who will never buy.
- Where and when ads show. Limiting ads to your service area and working hours stops money going on clicks you cannot serve.
- The landing page. A page that matches the search, loads fast and makes it easy to call or enquire helps quality and turns more clicks into enquiries.
- What happens after the click. If calls go to voicemail or forms wait two days for a reply, every click costs more per job won. Our guide on how fast to reply to an enquiry covers that side.
Google Ads cost in Australia: GST, invoices and other countries
Google’s tax page says all Google Ads sales in Australia are subject to 10% GST, and that this applies to accounts with Australian business addresses. If you are registered for GST, talk to your accountant about how to claim it.
If you advertise in more than one country, the rules differ:
| Where | What Google’s pages say is added |
|---|---|
| Australia | 10% GST for accounts with an Australian business address |
| New Zealand | 15% GST for accounts with a New Zealand business address |
| Canada | GST/HST for customers with a Canadian billing address who have not added a registration number |
| United States | No federal tax listed; Google lists Washington state sales tax on digital advertising from 1 January 2026 |
| Ads shown in some other countries | A jurisdiction surcharge based on where ads are served, for example 2% for the United Kingdom |
Google’s surcharge page did not list Australia when we opened it. These are Google’s billing rules, not tax advice, so check your own position with your accountant.
Costs that are not on the Google bill
Click spend is the part Google charges. Most businesses also pay for some of these, and they belong in the budget:
- Someone to run the account. Your own time, a staff member, a freelancer or an agency. Campaigns need weekly attention: search terms to exclude, ads to test, budgets to move.
- Landing pages. Sending ads to a generic home page usually wastes money. A page per service or area is common.
- Tracking. Without conversion tracking, you cannot tell which keywords bring calls and enquiries. See our guide to marketing attribution.
- Follow-up. A CRM or text-back system so enquiries from paid clicks are answered quickly.
How much do Google Ads cost: setting a first budget
Nobody can tell you the right figure without looking at your searches, area and margins, and anyone who quotes a click price without that is guessing. You can get a better estimate yourself:
- Use Keyword Planner. Google’s Keyword Planner page says it estimates monthly searches for keywords and the average cost to show on them, and forecasts clicks and conversions for a given spend. You need a Google Ads account with billing set up to use it.
- Work back from one job. Decide what a new customer is worth to you after costs. If a job brings $2,000 of profit and you would happily spend $200 to win it, that is your target cost per job.
- Do the sum as an example. If a click costs $8 and one in ten clicks becomes an enquiry, each enquiry costs $80. If one in three enquiries books, each job costs $240. Use your own rates once you have them.
- Run a test long enough to learn. Pick a daily budget you can afford for a full month, track calls and forms, then decide whether to raise it, change the keywords or stop.
If search ads are not paying their way, compare them with other channels. Our guides to SEO vs Google Ads and Google Ads for builders go further.
Where CentriWeb fits
CentriWeb runs ad campaigns with reporting that ties spend to enquiries and booked work, and sets up the landing pages, tracking and follow-up that decide whether clicks turn into customers. See our marketing work. If you run Google Ads yourself and the numbers already add up, keep doing what works.