How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Facebook? (Price Guide)

Facebook ads run on an auction, so there is no fixed price list. You set a budget, choose a goal, and pay as the ads are shown or clicked. What an ad costs depends on who you target, what you want people to do, and how many other advertisers want the same audience at the same time.

That makes the useful numbers the unit prices (cost per click, per thousand views, and per lead) and the monthly budgets businesses actually set. This guide covers both, using figures from published benchmark reports. Source dates and check dates appear in each table, and the headline range was checked on Oct 13, 2026.

Budgets vary more than prices do, because you choose the number. Reports describe several common levels.

Published figures disagree because they survey different groups. A study of marketers may include many very small advertisers, which pulls the typical spend down. A report on established small and mid-size businesses lands higher. Pick the line that resembles your business, not the one that looks most comfortable.

Facebook lets you start small. The platform allows a very low daily spend, and guides recommend a bit more if you want enough data to judge a campaign.

A budget that tiny buys few impressions, so it works best as a test. If you want to learn which audience or image works, give each test a few days so the system has time to deliver the ads.

Cost per click (CPC) is what you pay each time someone clicks your ad. It is the number most useful for traffic campaigns that send people to a website.

Click costs move with industry and season. Finance, insurance, and other competitive categories tend to cost more per click than fitness, travel, or retail. Prices also rise during the holiday shopping period, when more advertisers compete for the same people.

Cost per mille (CPM) is the price of showing your ad 1,000 times. Awareness campaigns, where the goal is reach rather than clicks, are usually billed this way.

Two of these figures describe all advertisers and one describes ecommerce brands, so the numbers are not directly comparable. A high CPM is not automatically bad. If the audience is narrow and likely to buy, you may accept paying more to reach them.

If your goal is form fills or sign-ups, cost per lead (CPL) is the figure to watch. It reflects both what the ad costs and how many people who see it complete the form.

A lead is worth different amounts to different businesses. A cheap lead that never answers the phone costs more in practice than a pricier one that books an appointment, so compare CPL with what a customer is worth to you.

• Audience. Narrow or high-value audiences cost more to reach than broad ones.
• Industry. Competitive categories bid up prices.
• Objective. Traffic, awareness, and lead campaigns are priced differently.
• Season. Costs climb around major shopping periods.
• Ad quality. Ads people respond to tend to be cheaper to run than ads they ignore.
• Placement and format. Video, carousel, and image ads can each perform and price differently.

Each source measures something slightly different: a time window, an industry mix, a campaign type. A monthly budget range from one report and a spending survey from another will not match.

Use these as a planning range, then replace them with your own numbers once your campaigns have run. Your account's own cost per click and cost per lead are a better guide than any industry average.

You can set up and run Facebook ads yourself through Meta's ad tools. Some businesses hire an agency or freelancer, who usually charges a management fee on top of ad spend. The data on this page covers ad spend only, so agency fees would be extra. Ask any provider how fees are calculated and what reporting you will receive.