How much should you spend on Google Ads a month?

Most small businesses spend between £500 and £1,000 a month to get steady results, with £300 to £500 as a testing budget. But there is no fixed right answer. The number that fits you is worked backwards from what a job is worth, how many jobs you want, and what each lead costs you.

How much does a Google Ads click cost for a tradesman in the UK?

It runs from about £2.81 to about £26.95, and urgency drives it more than the trade does. On UK keyword data pulled in August 2026, a locksmith click averages around £26.95 and an emergency plumber around £22.57, while a plasterer is about £2.88 and a landscaper about £2.81. The same trade changes price with the search: an emergency plumber click is nearly three times a general plumber click at £8.00, and an emergency electrician is £15.18 against £6.90 for a standard one. These are keyword-tool estimates of what advertisers pay, not figures from our own account, and your real cost moves with your town, your quality score and who else is bidding.

Is £10 or £20 a day good for Google Ads?

Ten pounds a day is a testing budget, not a lead machine. It is enough to see whether people are searching and where you are wasting money, but usually too little to gather the data you need to optimise. It goes further where clicks are cheap and vanishes fast in pricey trades. Twenty pounds a day is more workable for most local trades.

What is the minimum budget for Google Ads?

There is no official minimum, you can start with a few pounds a day. But below roughly £30 a day you often will not get enough clicks and conversions to tell what is working, so you end up paying without learning. If your budget is very tight, spend it on one tight campaign rather than spreading it thin.

How does the daily budget work?

You set an average daily budget. Google can spend a bit more on busy days and less on quiet ones, but over a month it will not charge you more than your daily budget times about 30.4. So a £20 daily budget is capped at roughly £608 for the month. On any one day it can spend up to twice the daily figure, and changing the budget mid-month resets the cap rather than keeping the old one.

Why should I not start with too small a budget?

Google needs a certain amount of clicks and conversions before it, and you, can tell which searches are worth paying for. Too small a budget starves it of that data, so you cannot separate the searches that win jobs from the ones that waste money. You end up paying for the learning without ever getting to use it.

Can I change my Google Ads budget whenever I want?

Yes. You can raise, lower or pause your budget at any time, with no contract on the ad spend itself. It is sensible to hold it steady for a few weeks while a new campaign settles, then adjust once you can see your cost per lead.

How much do agencies charge to manage Google Ads?

Freelancers typically charge around £200 to £800 a month and agencies around £500 to £1,500, usually on top of your ad spend, though some take a percentage of spend instead. Doing it yourself saves the fee but costs you time and a real risk of early waste while you learn.

How much of my budget goes on clicks versus fees?

If you run the ads yourself, all of it goes on clicks. If someone manages them, you pay their fee on top of the ad spend. Either way, judge the whole cost against the jobs it wins, not against the click price on its own.

Last updated 24 August 2026

How much should you spend on Google Ads?

There is no magic number, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your business is guessing. As a rough guide, most small businesses spend between £500 and £1,000 a month for steady results, with £300 to £500 as a testing budget. What that buys depends on your trade: a click costs a plasterer under £3 and a locksmith closer to £27.

But the right figure for you is not plucked from a list, it is worked backwards from what a job is worth, how many you want, and what each lead costs. Here is how to set yours, what different budgets actually get you, and the one mistake that wastes more money than any other.

Start here

Two things set your budget.

Forget the round numbers for a second. What you should spend comes down to two things about your business: what a customer is worth to you, and how many more you want. A boiler engineer whose average job is £2,000 can afford to spend far more to win one than a business whose average sale is £40. That is the whole reason there is no single answer.

This guide is about the how much. If you are still weighing up whether ads are the right move for you at all, we answered that in are Google Ads worth it for a small business. If you are choosing between channels first, see Google Ads vs Facebook Ads, and how to get more leads covers the wider picture beyond the ad budget.

The method

Work it backwards.

Do not start with a budget. Start with the number of jobs you want, and work back to what that costs. It takes four steps.

Jobs you want
say five more a month

Leads you need
close one in three, so fifteen

Cost per lead
roughly £50 to £100 each

Your budget
fifteen leads at £60 is £900

A worked example

£900 a month to make £10,000.

Say you want five extra jobs a month and you close one in three of the leads you get. That is fifteen leads. At £60 a lead, that is a £900 budget. If a job is worth £2,000 to you, you are spending £900 to bring in £10,000 of work. Change any of those numbers for your own trade and you have your starting budget, grounded in your business, not a guess.

The tiers

What each budget actually gets you.

Roughly what to expect at each level. Your own numbers will move with how dear your clicks are, but the shape holds.

Monthly budget	Per day	What to expect
Under £300	Under £10	Testing only. Enough to see demand, rarely enough to rely on for work
£300 to £500	£10 to £17	A proper test. You start to learn which searches convert
£500 to £1,000	£17 to £33	Where results tend to become steady for a local business
£1,000 and up	£33 and up	Scaling. More areas, more services, once you know it pays

The daily budget, explained

You set a daily figure, Google averages it over the month.

You do not hand over a lump sum. You set an average daily budget, and Google spends a bit more on busy days and less on quiet ones. Over a month it will never charge you more than your daily budget times about 30.4, so £20 a day is capped at roughly £608 a month. Two things people get caught by: on any single day Google may spend up to twice your daily budget, so a £20 day can bill £40 and it is not an error, and changing the budget part-way through a month resets the cap rather than holding the old one. You can change or pause it whenever you like.

What a click costs

What one click actually costs in your trade.

A Google Ads click costs a UK trade somewhere between £2.81 and £26.95, and the trade you are in matters less than how urgent the job is. An emergency plumber click runs about £22.57 against £8.00 for a general plumber. Plasterers and landscapers pay under £3. Here is the spread across 12 trades.

Trade	What people search	Searches a month	Cost per click
Locksmith	locksmith near me	74,000	£26.95
Plumber, emergency	emergency plumber	12,100	£22.57
Electrician, emergency	emergency electrician near me	4,400	£15.18
Boiler engineer	boiler repair near me	6,600	£9.12
Plumber, general	plumber near me	90,500	£8.00
Electrician, general	electrician near me	74,000	£6.90
Roofer	roofer near me	33,100	£5.54
Painter and decorator	painter and decorator near me	18,100	£3.47
Builder	builder near me	22,200	£3.46
Tiler	tiler near me	6,600	£3.33
Plasterer	plasterer near me	14,800	£2.88
Landscaper	landscape gardener near me	2,400	£2.81

Google Ads keyword data for the United Kingdom, pulled August 2026. These are the tool's estimates, derived from top-of-page bid data rather than from anybody's billing, so treat them as the ceiling of a range rather than the middle: what you are actually charged is normally below the bid. They are not figures from our own account, and no two accounts pay the same. Your real cost moves with your town, the quality of your ads and landing page, and who else is bidding that week. Treat them as the shape of the market rather than a quote.

What this tells you

Urgency costs more than trade.

An emergency plumber click is nearly three times a general plumber click, and an emergency electrician more than double a standard one. Same trade, same van, different search. If your work is mostly planned rather than urgent, your clicks are cheaper than the headline suggests and your budget stretches further. Take the row closest to your trade, work out what a click costs you, and put that into the sum above instead of the £60 a lead we used as an example.

The mistake that costs most

Too small, spread too thin.

The single most expensive budget mistake is not spending too much, it is spending too little across too much. A small budget split over ten services and five towns never gathers enough data anywhere to learn what works, so every pound teaches you nothing. If money is tight, point it all at one service in one area, win there first, then widen out. A focused £300 beats a scattered £800 every time.

Who runs it

Do it yourself, or pay someone to run it.

Your budget is not only the ad spend. Someone has to run the account, and that is either your time or someone else's fee.

Run it yourself

No fee, every pound goes on clicks. But there is a real learning curve, and it is easy to burn money early on broad keywords, missing negatives and no tracking.

Pay someone to run it

A freelancer runs about £200 to £800 a month and an agency £500 to £1,500, usually on top of your spend. You lose the fee but skip most of the early waste.

That second option is what our Fast Start does. We run and tune the ads, you set the budget from £500 a month up, and the spend stays yours. If you would rather someone kept it working while you are on the tools, that is the idea.

Why us

Why take our word for it?

Because we would rather you spent the right amount than the most. If your budget is too thin to do anything useful yet, we will tell you to wait or start smaller and tighter, not talk you into a number that lines our pocket. We only do well when the spend actually brings you work.

Straight answers

Questions people actually ask.

How much should you spend on Google Ads a month?: Most small businesses spend between £500 and £1,000 a month to get steady results, with £300 to £500 as a testing budget. But there is no fixed right answer. The number that fits you is worked backwards from what a job is worth, how many jobs you want, and what each lead costs you.
How much does a Google Ads click cost for a tradesman in the UK?: It runs from about £2.81 to about £26.95, and urgency drives it more than the trade does. On UK keyword data pulled in August 2026, a locksmith click averages around £26.95 and an emergency plumber around £22.57, while a plasterer is about £2.88 and a landscaper about £2.81. The same trade changes price with the search: an emergency plumber click is nearly three times a general plumber click at £8.00, and an emergency electrician is £15.18 against £6.90 for a standard one. These are keyword-tool estimates of what advertisers pay, not figures from our own account, and your real cost moves with your town, your quality score and who else is bidding.
Is £10 or £20 a day good for Google Ads?: Ten pounds a day is a testing budget, not a lead machine. It is enough to see whether people are searching and where you are wasting money, but usually too little to gather the data you need to optimise. It goes further where clicks are cheap and vanishes fast in pricey trades. Twenty pounds a day is more workable for most local trades.
What is the minimum budget for Google Ads?: There is no official minimum, you can start with a few pounds a day. But below roughly £30 a day you often will not get enough clicks and conversions to tell what is working, so you end up paying without learning. If your budget is very tight, spend it on one tight campaign rather than spreading it thin.
How does the daily budget work?: You set an average daily budget. Google can spend a bit more on busy days and less on quiet ones, but over a month it will not charge you more than your daily budget times about 30.4. So a £20 daily budget is capped at roughly £608 for the month. On any one day it can spend up to twice the daily figure, and changing the budget mid-month resets the cap rather than keeping the old one.
Why should I not start with too small a budget?: Google needs a certain amount of clicks and conversions before it, and you, can tell which searches are worth paying for. Too small a budget starves it of that data, so you cannot separate the searches that win jobs from the ones that waste money. You end up paying for the learning without ever getting to use it.
Can I change my Google Ads budget whenever I want?: Yes. You can raise, lower or pause your budget at any time, with no contract on the ad spend itself. It is sensible to hold it steady for a few weeks while a new campaign settles, then adjust once you can see your cost per lead.
How much do agencies charge to manage Google Ads?: Freelancers typically charge around £200 to £800 a month and agencies around £500 to £1,500, usually on top of your ad spend, though some take a percentage of spend instead. Doing it yourself saves the fee but costs you time and a real risk of early waste while you learn.
How much of my budget goes on clicks versus fees?: If you run the ads yourself, all of it goes on clicks. If someone manages them, you pay their fee on top of the ad spend. Either way, judge the whole cost against the jobs it wins, not against the click price on its own.

Not sure what to spend to get booked up?

Tell us a bit about your business and we'll work out a realistic budget with you, based on what a job is worth to you. Got a question first? Just message us.

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