The average lead from search ads costs $66.69 in 2026, and the average lead from Facebook lead campaigns costs $27.39. Neither number tells you whether your own campaign is working. This post gives you both benchmarks with their dates and definitions, then shows you how to work out the most you can afford to pay for a lead in your own business. If you run paid advertising or are about to hire someone to run it, that second number is the one that matters.
What does a lead cost on Google in 2026?
WordStream by LocaliQ puts the average cost per lead for search ads at $66.69 in 2026, and says it fell for the first time in five years. The figure comes from more than 13,000 search campaigns across 23 industries, running between April 2025 and March 2026 on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, in a report last updated September 16, 2026. The campaigns are US-based, and WordStream notes that its averages are technically medians.
The spread by industry is wide. These are a few of the averages WordStream lists:
- Attorneys and Legal Services: $131.63
- Real Estate: $102.51
- Business Services: $93.69
- Home and Home Improvement: $90.92
- Dentists and Dental Services: $72.97
- Restaurants and Food: $30.57
Costs are still higher than when WordStream started these reports. Its 2016 average was $59.18, which it then called cost per action, so the 2026 figure is about 13% above it. In WordStream's report, a lead is a conversion: an action you chose to track in your ad account, on your website or offline, and the cost per lead is what it costs to acquire one of those.
What does a lead cost on Facebook in 2026?
LocaliQ puts the average cost per lead for Facebook campaigns that use the leads objective at $27.39, a slight decrease from $27.66 the year before. Its lead campaign tables, on a page last updated September 23, 2026, cover 14 industries and report an average conversion rate of 8.54% for these campaigns.
LocaliQ describes leads-objective campaigns as ads optimized to drive leads through actions such as form fills, messages and calls. They usually use Facebook Lead Ads, where people give you their details without leaving Facebook. LocaliQ calculates cost per lead by dividing total spend by total conversions. Its industry averages for these campaigns include:
- Dentists and Dental Services: $61.56
- Home and Home Improvement: $42.95
- Real Estate: $13.74
Why the two numbers are not like for like
Do not subtract one number from the other and call the difference a saving. The two reports cover different platforms, different industry lists (23 industries in the search tables, 14 in the Facebook lead tables) and different definitions of what counts as a lead, and the Facebook page does not say which months or how many campaigns its figures come from.
Real estate shows why this matters. The search average is $102.51 and the Facebook lead average is $13.74; the search figure is more than seven times the Facebook one. A gap that size is a reason to ask what each platform counts as a lead, not proof that Facebook is the cheaper channel. A person who searched on Google and then filled out your form and a person who tapped a form while scrolling Facebook may not be equally ready to buy, and a form fill on its own does not tell you which one you have.
LocaliQ's own team says the same thing. Its Facebook page quotes a LocaliQ product manager who pairs cost per lead with conversion rate and lead quality, and the WordStream report quotes LocaliQ's vice president of paid media products: you need to know which of your leads actually turned into customers.
A benchmark is an average, not a target
A benchmark is the middle of a crowd of advertisers across many industries, not what your business should pay. Both publishers say so in their own words: LocaliQ writes that no two Facebook ad accounts are the same, and WordStream notes that in many industries advertisers can run a high cost per lead and still turn a profit.
Use the benchmark as a sanity check. If your cost per lead is a fraction of your industry average, check that the leads are real and that your tracking is not counting junk. If it is several times higher, look at the page the click lands on before you blame the platform. Our post on why a website gets traffic but no leads covers the usual causes.
How to work out the most you can pay for a lead
The most you can pay for a lead is your close rate multiplied by the gross profit from one customer. That is your break-even cost per lead. Pay less and the campaign earns gross profit on average, before fees; pay more and it loses money on average.
- Gross profit per customer: what a new customer pays you, minus what it costs you to deliver the work (materials, labor, fees).
- Close rate: out of every 10 leads, how many become paying customers.
- Multiply them. Close rate times gross profit is your break-even cost per lead.
- Set your target below break-even, so there is room for your management fee and some profit.
Here are two examples. The numbers are made up for illustration only and do not come from any real business or study. Example one: a business earns $1,600 gross profit per customer and closes 1 lead in 5 (20%). Break-even is 0.20 x $1,600 = $320 per lead. If it wants to spend half its gross profit on ads, the target is $160 per lead, which means $160 / 0.20 = $800 of ad cost per customer.
Example two, also made up: a business earns $300 gross profit per customer and closes 1 lead in 10 (10%). Break-even is 0.10 x $300 = $30 per lead. At the $66.69 search average, each customer would cost $66.69 / 0.10 = $666.90 in ads against $300 of gross profit. The $27.39 Facebook average stays under break-even only if those leads close at 9.1% or better ($27.39 / $300), and that is the number you have to measure rather than assume.
Close rate is the number many owners do not have, because it needs every lead tracked from the ad to the sale. GrossiWeb's Google Ads management and Meta Ads management services both report in cost per lead, with conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4 and the contact form on your site recording the channel of each inquiry. Management starts at $750 a month per platform, with ad spend paid to Google or Meta separately, and the published tiers are on the pricing page.
What to do this week
- Write down your gross profit per customer and your close rate, and calculate your break-even cost per lead.
- Pull the last 90 days of cost per lead from each ad account, and check what each platform counts as a lead.
- Count how many of those leads became paying customers, by source.
- Only then compare your numbers with your industry row in the benchmarks, keeping the definition caveats in mind.
- If your cost per lead is under break-even but customers are few, look at your landing page and how fast you follow up. The lead generation and conversion page explains how we approach that.