Lead Generation Ads Cost: Cost Per Lead by Industry on Meta and Google Ads

Lead generation ads cost about $27.66 per lead on Meta and $66.69 per lead on Google Search as a US all-industry average, according to published benchmark data compiled from thousands of advertiser accounts. Meta's average cost per click on lead campaigns is $1.92 against $5.42 on Google Search, and conversion rates land close together at 7.72 percent and 8.18 percent. So Google costs roughly two and a half times more per lead across the board.

That average is the least useful number in this article. Read the per-industry tables and the ranking scrambles so thoroughly that in one vertical it reverses outright. Here is the full picture, the reason it behaves this way, and what actually moves your own number.

Cost per lead by industry: Meta and Google Search side by side

Both sets below come from LocaliQ and WordStream's benchmark reports, which aggregate live spend across thousands of US accounts rather than surveying advertisers. The Google figures are from the 2026 search advertising benchmarks; the Meta figures are from the companion Facebook lead generation benchmark set. Where an industry appears in both, the comparison is like for like: a lead, not a click.

The spread runs from 9.7x to 0.8x. Three verticals, physicians, beauty, and dentists, are either cheaper on Google or close enough that the averages give you no guidance at all. Everything else is dramatically cheaper on Meta, and the biggest gaps sit in the highest-value categories.

Why legal costs seven times more on Google and dentists do not

The mechanism is intent versus interruption, and the size of the gap tracks how urgent the search is.

Somebody typing a lawyer query into Google usually has a legal problem in progress. That person is worth an enormous amount to any firm that reaches them first, every firm in the county knows it, and the auction prices in accordingly. $131.63 a lead is not Google being expensive; it is thirty firms bidding on one person who needs help today. Reaching a broadly similar person in a Facebook feed costs $18.17 because almost none of them are in trouble yet. You are buying attention rather than intent, and attention is cheap.

Dentists break the pattern from both ends. Dental search intent is mostly routine rather than urgent, so the auction is calmer and Google lands at $72.97, well below legal or real estate. Meanwhile dental is one of the most heavily worked verticals in feed advertising, so Meta's audiences are saturated and the price climbs to $76.71. The two meet in the middle and the usual advantage disappears.

Read the ratio column as a rough proxy for how much of your buying decision happens before the search. Categories where people research for months and then search once are expensive on Google. Categories where the purchase is discretionary or discovery-driven are cheap on Meta.

Is cost per lead the right number to optimize?

Mostly no, and the tables above are the reason. A $18.17 legal lead from Meta and a $131.63 legal lead from Google are not the same unit. One is a person who scrolled past a form, one is a person who was actively looking for a lawyer, and the close rates are not remotely comparable. Comparing them on cost alone will send you to the cheaper platform and a worse business.

The number that survives the comparison is cost per acquired customer, or at minimum cost per qualified lead. If Meta produces leads at $18 and 5 percent become clients, and Google produces leads at $131 and 25 percent become clients, Meta costs $360 per client and Google costs $524. Meta still wins, but by 1.5x rather than the 7.2x the CPL suggested. Shift the close rates a little and the answer flips. Very few advertisers track this, which is why so many pause a Google campaign that was working.

The practical version: tag the lead source, count how many reach a real conversation, and divide. If you have never done this, it is usually the single most profitable afternoon available to a small advertising account.

What actually lowers your cost per lead

In rough order of how much they move the number:

1. Creative variety. On both platforms the algorithm is choosing among the assets you supply, and a pool of one gives it nothing to work with. This is also the fastest lever, since it requires no budget change and no audience research.
2. A tighter offer. Free consultation is the most competitive offer in every service vertical, because every competitor runs it. A specific offer aimed at a narrower buyer lowers volume and usually lowers cost per qualified lead.
3. Fewer form fields. Three to four fields is the standard recommendation and LinkedIn publishes it in its own guidance. Each additional field costs completions.
4. Follow-up speed. This does not change CPL at all, and it changes cost per customer more than anything else on the list. A form fill from a feed ad is a warm moment that cools fast.
5. Creative refresh cadence. Rising CPL on a stable campaign is usually fatigue rather than an auction shift.

Point four is worth dwelling on, because it is where most of the money leaks. Lead ads produce contacts who were mid-scroll thirty seconds ago and who did not visit your website, read your pricing, or form any real impression of you. If that person hears from you two days later by email, the $18 you paid is gone. Teams that win with lead forms respond within minutes, which in practice means the response is automated: an instant reply that answers the first question and books the call while the prospect still remembers filling in the form. Nothing else in this list has a comparable effect on what a lead is finally worth.

How much do Facebook lead generation ads cost?

Facebook lead generation ads average $27.66 per lead in the US across all industries, at $1.92 per click and a 7.72 percent conversion rate on lead campaigns. Cheapest verticals are restaurants at $3.16 and real estate at $16.61; the most expensive is dentists at $76.71. Traffic campaigns run far cheaper per click, at $0.70, because they are buying visits rather than form submissions.

How much does Google Ads lead generation cost?

Google Search lead generation averages $66.69 per lead in the US, from a $5.42 average cost per click, a 6.64 percent click-through rate, and an 8.18 percent conversion rate. Legal is the most expensive vertical at $131.63, followed by furniture at $106.70 and real estate at $102.51. Google lead form assets themselves cost nothing extra; you pay the normal click price and the form simply removes the landing page step.

What is a good cost per lead?

A good cost per lead is any figure below what a customer is worth to you multiplied by the rate at which leads become customers. If a client is worth $3,000 and one lead in twenty closes, a lead is worth $150 to you and anything under that is profitable. Industry averages are a sanity check, not a target: they describe what other advertisers pay, not what your economics support.

This is why two businesses in the same vertical can rationally reach opposite conclusions about the same $70 lead. The one with a $400 average order value should stop. The one with a $12,000 contract value should spend considerably more.

Do lead form ads cost more than regular ads?

No. There is no surcharge for using a lead form on Meta, LinkedIn, or Google, and you pay the same auction price. What changes is the conversion rate and the quality mix. Removing the landing page typically raises the share of clicks that become leads, which lowers cost per lead, while lowering average intent, which raises cost per customer. The platform bill goes down and the sales effort goes up.

Where the money goes after the click

One last piece of arithmetic worth running. At the all-industry averages, a $1,000 monthly Meta budget buys roughly 520 clicks and about 36 leads. The same $1,000 on Google Search buys about 184 clicks and 15 leads. If your close rate on Meta leads is 5 percent and on Google leads is 20 percent, that is 1.8 customers against 3.0, and the platform that looked 2.4 times cheaper produced fewer customers for the same spend.

Run that calculation with your own two numbers before you decide where the budget goes. It takes ten minutes and it is more reliable than any benchmark table, including the one above.

Building the creative for both platforms

If you are running lead forms across Meta, LinkedIn, and Google, the creative requirements differ more than the cost data does: three headline limits, two image ratios, and a separate 552 x 200 image that only LinkedIn asks for. Our lead generation ads page puts all three form systems in one table and generates the full asset set from a product URL. For the verticals in the tables above, the real estate ad maker, law firm ad maker, and dentist ad maker cover the offers and creative angles that work in each. On the fatigue point, how often to refresh ad creative puts a cadence on it, and what Facebook ads cost a small business covers budget setting at the campaign level.

Benchmark figures in this article are from LocaliQ and WordStream's 2026 search advertising benchmarks and their Facebook advertising benchmark report, both compiled from aggregated US advertiser account data. Platform averages move; treat them as a reference point and measure your own.