Costs, sourced and dated
What Google Ads costs in Birmingham
The public benchmarks, your own figure in ten minutes, and what to budget
There is no published cost per click for Birmingham, and every figure on this page carries its source and its date or it is not here. The nearest public benchmark, from LocaliQ and WordStream on 1 June 2026, puts the average search click at $5.42 across all industries, ranging from $2.05 for restaurants to $9.87 for legal services, in mostly American accounts. Treat those as the order of magnitude, not as a rate. Your own Birmingham number comes from Google's Keyword Planner with the city set as the location, and the steps are below, followed by what a budget buys at three click prices and what the management fee adds.
The benchmark
The only dated public figures, by the sectors this site is built for
Source: LocaliQ and WordStream, Search Advertising Benchmarks, published 1 June 2026, US dollars, mostly American accounts on Google and Microsoft Ads. The cost per lead column is that source's average across its accounts and depends entirely on the conversion rates in them; it is here for the ratio between sectors, not as a target.
| Sector, as the source names it | Average cost per click | Average cost per lead | The Birmingham page for it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attorneys and legal services | $9.87 | $131.63 | Solicitors |
| Home and home improvement | $8.33 | $90.92 | Trades |
| Dentists and dental services | $8.00 | $72.97 | Clinics are taken case by case |
| Business services | $5.87 | $93.69 | Manufacturing and B2B |
| Industrial and commercial | $5.87 | $75.19 | Manufacturing and B2B |
| Automotive: repair, service and parts | $4.35 | $29.96 | Automotive |
| Shopping, collectibles and gifts | $4.14 | $49.40 | Shopping ads |
| Real estate | $3.22 | $102.51 | Property and lettings |
| Automotive: for sale | $2.27 | $44.26 | Automotive |
| Restaurants and food | $2.05 | $30.57 | Restaurants and hospitality |
| All industries | $5.42 |
Why dollars: the benchmark is American and converting it would invent a precision the data does not have. The ratio between sectors is the useful part: a legal click costs roughly five restaurant clicks, in Birmingham as in Ohio.
Your own figure
Ten minutes in Keyword Planner gets a Birmingham number
Keyword Planner lives inside any Google Ads account, including one that has never spent a penny. It shows a bid range for a search in a chosen location, which is the nearest thing to a Birmingham cost per click that exists.
- 1
Open Keyword Planner, choose "Get search volume and forecasts"
In the Tools menu of any Google Ads account. Creating an account to use it costs nothing as long as you do not publish a campaign.
- 2
Type the five searches a customer would make
"emergency plumber Sutton Coldfield", "MOT Tyseley", "conveyancing solicitor Harborne": the words a customer types, not the words your industry uses.
- 3
Set the location to Birmingham, or to your radius
Not the UK. The location changes the bid range because it changes who else is bidding.
- 4
Read the top-of-page bid range
Two columns, low and high. Real clicks land inside or near that range depending on your Quality Score. Write the high figure down.
- 5
Divide it by your expected conversion rate
At one enquiry in twenty clicks, divide by 0.05. If the answer is bigger than what an enquiry is worth to you, Google Ads is not your first spend, and no budget changes that.
What a budget buys
Three budgets at three click prices, with the management fee added
Clicks are the budget divided by the cost per click; enquiries assume one in twenty clicks converts, which a page built for the search achieves in most service sectors and a homepage does not. The fee is our tier for that spend band, so the all-in column is what the enquiries actually cost.
| Monthly ad spend | Clicks at £2 / £5 / £10 | Enquiries at 1 in 20 | Fee (tier) | All-in a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £600 | 300 / 120 / 60 | 15 / 6 / 3 | £249 (Starter) | £849 |
| £1,500 | 750 / 300 / 150 | 37 / 15 / 7 | £399 (Growth) | £1,899 |
| £5,000 | 2,500 / 1,000 / 500 | 125 / 50 / 25 | £599 (Scale) | £5,599 |
The bottom row is not a recommendation to spend £5,000. It is there to show that at £10 a click, £600 buys three enquiries, which is too few to learn from, and that a solicitor's account and a café's account are different sizes for a reason. Prices exclude VAT; the fee tiers and the £199 setup are on the pricing page.
Why the number moves
Four things that change what a Birmingham click costs, none of them the budget
- Who else is bidding that hour. Evenings and weekends have fewer agencies and franchises in the auction; competitor budgets that run out at lunchtime make afternoons cheaper. The schedule follows the data.
- Quality Score. Google's own measure of the ad's relevance and the landing page's experience. A better page pays less for the same position; that is why the page is part of the fee.
- The words. “Solicitor” costs more than “settlement agreement solicitor Solihull” and converts worse. Specific searches are cheaper and better, in every sector.
- The waste. An account paying for jobs, courses and Wolverhampton is spreading its budget across clicks that cannot buy, which is a different problem from an expensive click and a more common one.
Birmingham against the country
More competition, more searches, and a conurbation of overlapping radiuses
A city of 1,144,900 people (ONS Census 2021) with Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, the Black Country and Coventry around it has more businesses bidding on every trade than a market town does, and several agencies bidding for them. That pushes the price of the generic searches up. It also means more searches, better data and faster learning, so the specific searches are often no dearer than elsewhere.
The Birmingham-specific cost that catches people is the radius. The towns run into each other, so a fifteen-mile circle from the city centre buys clicks from Dudley and Solihull for a business that serves neither. The cheapest click is the one you did not pay for, and that is the first thing the free check reads.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Google Ads management
What the fee buys, week by week, and the settings that decide the cost.
Free Google Ads check
Already spending? Find out how much of last month went on clicks that could not buy.
Pricing
The three tiers, the setup fee and the comparison with a percentage of spend.
Get a quote
Send five searches and your sector; the reply includes the Keyword Planner read for Birmingham.
Questions about Google Ads costs in Birmingham
How much does a Google Ads click cost in Birmingham?
Nobody publishes a Birmingham figure, and anyone quoting one without a source has made it up. The nearest public benchmark, LocaliQ and WordStream's search advertising benchmarks published on 1 June 2026, puts the average across all industries at $5.42 a click, from $2.05 for restaurants to $9.87 for legal services, in mostly American accounts. Your own figure comes from Google's Keyword Planner with Birmingham set as the location, and it takes ten minutes.
How much should a Birmingham business spend on Google Ads a month?
Enough clicks to learn from and no more than the sum supports. At £3 a click and one enquiry in twenty clicks, £600 buys ten enquiries, and whether that is worth it depends entirely on what an enquiry is worth to you. Most small Birmingham service businesses start between £500 and £1,500 a month; the free check or the quote reply gives you the figure for your searches rather than a national average.
Is Google Ads more expensive in Birmingham than elsewhere in the UK?
For some searches yes, because a city of over a million people with several agencies bidding on every trade has more competition in the auction than a market town. For others no, because the same competition means more searches and better data. The only honest way to know is the Keyword Planner read for your searches; the difference between sectors is far larger than the difference between cities.
Why does the same search cost different amounts on different days?
Because it is an auction with a different set of bidders every hour. Evenings and weekends have fewer business bidders, so consumer searches are often cheaper then; competitor budgets running out by lunchtime makes the afternoon cheaper; and Quality Score, which depends on your ad and your landing page, changes what you pay for the same position against the same competitors.
What does the management fee add to the cost?
£249 a month for spend up to £1,000, £399 up to £3,000, £599 up to £8,000, plus £199 once to build the account. On a £1,000 budget the all-in figure is £1,249 a month, and the cost per enquiry in every report is worked out on that all-in figure, never on ad spend alone.
Can I find out what my competitors pay?
Not exactly. Auction Insights inside your own account shows which domains you meet in the auction and how often they outrank you; Keyword Planner shows the bid range for the search; neither shows a competitor's actual cost per click, because that depends on their Quality Score. Third-party tools estimate it, and their estimates for a single Birmingham suburb are guesses.
Does a bigger budget lower the cost per click?
No, it usually raises it. A larger budget lets the bidding reach for searches you were previously outbid on, and those cost more. The cost per click falls when the ad and the landing page improve Quality Score, when the wasted searches are excluded so the budget is not spread across nonsense, and when the schedule avoids the hours competitors bid hardest.
What is a good cost per enquiry in Birmingham?
One below what an enquiry is worth to you after the management fee, with room to spare. There is no benchmark that means anything across sectors: a £150 enquiry is expensive for a café and cheap for a conveyancer. The report shows yours against your own figure for what an enquiry is worth, which is the only comparison that matters.
Send five searches a customer would type. The reply has the Birmingham bid range for each and the budget it implies.
No account needed for that. If you already advertise, add the customer ID and the free check reads what you actually paid last month instead of the estimate.