What does Google Ads cost in your industry?

"What does a click on Google Ads cost?" — the honest answer is: it depends on the industry. Across the 15 industries in this table the average cost per click (CPC) in the DACH Search Network ranges from about 0.90 € in E-Commerce / Shopping to 5.50 € in Lawyers. Most local service providers and trades sit between €1.50 and €3.00 per click — the expensive outliers are legal, finance and insurance, where individual keywords go double-digit.

A single "average CPC" across all industries is therefore barely meaningful. Always compare yourself only with your own industry — and more importantly: it isn't the click price that decides, but what an inquiry (cost per lead) and a won deal end up costing you. A high CPC in a high-margin niche can be highly profitable, a low CPC with a weak conversion rate expensive.

Why the German figures are lower than the widely-cited US benchmarks, and how they come about, is in the methodology. Put your own numbers in context in the live comparison above.

The backbone of this table is real DACH ad accounts from my consulting practice (over €1M in managed budget, focused on lead gen & local service providers), supplemented with Keyword Planner data for typical industry keywords in the German-speaking region. So the absolute values come from German campaigns — not from a US study with a rule-of-thumb markup.

Honestly framed: this is a practitioner data base, not a representative panel study. The lens is sharpened on lead gen and local service providers, and individual regions and niches can deviate significantly. Take the figures as a compass for "am I in the normal range?" — not as official statistics.

As a cross-check I use the LocaliQ/WordStream Search Advertising Benchmarks 2026 — the largest regularly published primary source (thousands of campaigns across Google & Microsoft Ads). But note: it measures the US market in US dollars only. An official "WordStream DACH study" does not exist — anyone citing it has "Germanised" US figures with estimated markups. US overall average 2026: CPC $5.42, CTR 6.64 %, conv. rate 8.18 %, CPL $66.69. Rule of thumb from practice: German search CPCs are usually 30–50 % below the US figures. That is why I use the US study only to sanity-check the relationships between industries — the absolute values above are calibrated against German accounts.

Important for context: benchmarks are a compass, not a verdict. A "too high" CPC in a high-margin niche can be highly profitable, while a "good" CPC with bad tracking is worthless. Always check your economics with the break-even ROAS calculator — and use the search terms analysis to see how much of your budget evaporates without conversions.