$0.70 per click for traffic campaigns. $1.92 for leads. That is the average across 1,280 campaigns in WordStream's 2025 study, and the gap between objectives is bigger than the gap between most industries. Full table below, every figure linked to its source.
WordStream by LocaliQ · Data: April 2024 to June 2025 · Published September 2025
| Industry | CPC, traffic | CPC, leads | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| All industries (average) | $0.70 | $1.92 | WordStream |
| Animals and pets | $0.78 | n/a | WordStream |
| Apparel, fashion and jewelry | $0.86 | n/a | WordStream |
| Arts and entertainment | $0.49 | $1.08 | WordStream |
| Attorneys and legal services | $0.86 | $4.10 | WordStream |
| Automotive, for sale | $0.79 | n/a | WordStream |
| Automotive, repair and service | $0.81 | n/a | WordStream |
| Beauty and personal care | $0.74 | $3.06 | WordStream |
| Business services | $0.75 | n/a | WordStream |
| Career and employment | n/a | $0.86 | WordStream |
| Dentists and dental services | n/a | $9.78 | WordStream |
| Education and instruction | $0.86 | $1.65 | WordStream |
| Finance and insurance | $1.22 | n/a | WordStream |
| Furniture | $0.85 | $2.18 | WordStream |
| Health and fitness | $0.80 | $2.64 | WordStream |
| Home and home improvement | $0.99 | $2.23 | WordStream |
| Industrial and commercial | $0.86 | $1.80 | WordStream |
| Personal services | $1.00 | $2.08 | WordStream |
| Physicians and surgeons | $0.82 | $2.23 | WordStream |
| Real estate | $0.91 | $1.57 | WordStream |
| Restaurants and food | $0.72 | $0.74 | WordStream |
| Shopping, collectibles and gifts | $0.34 | n/a | WordStream |
| Sports and recreation | $0.41 | $1.07 | WordStream |
| Travel | $0.51 | n/a | WordStream |
Superads, rolling 13-month window · Accessed July 2026
| Measure | Median CPC | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 13-month median, Jul 2025 to Jul 2026 | ~$1.05 | Superads |
| Peak month (November 2025) | $1.29 | Superads |
| Low month (July 2026) | $0.77 | Superads |
Methodology: the figures on this page are published industry aggregates from the named sources, not Raintree client data. WordStream figures are averages across 554 traffic campaigns and 726 lead campaigns of US-based LocaliQ advertisers, April 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025. Superads figures are medians across more than $3B in tracked Meta spend over a rolling 13-month window, accessed July 2026. Rows show n/a where the source published no figure for that objective. Sources define industries differently, so compare direction and order of magnitude, not decimals.
CPC is a derived metric. Meta charges for impressions, so your cost per click is effectively CPM divided by click-through rate. That means every CPC problem is one of two problems: the auction is expensive (a CPM issue) or people are not clicking (a CTR issue). Diagnosing which one saves weeks of guessing.
The other thing the table shows: objective dominates industry. Attorneys pay $0.86 per click on traffic campaigns and $4.10 on lead campaigns, nearly 5x, for the same firms advertising to the same people. Traffic campaigns buy clicks from users Meta predicts will click anything. Lead campaigns buy clicks from users Meta predicts will fill out a form. You pay for the prediction quality.
Check CTR against your industry benchmark first. Below range means creative: test new hooks, formats, and first-three-seconds before touching budgets. If CTR is at or above range, your auction is the problem: audience too narrow, frequency too high, or a restricted category. Also confirm you are comparing the right objective. A lead campaign judged against traffic benchmarks will always look broken.
Cheap clicks deserve suspicion, not celebration. The $0.34 CPC in shopping and collectibles reflects impulse-friendly audiences, not superior media buying. If your CPC is low and your cost per acquisition is still high, the clicks are not converting: check landing page speed, message match between ad and page, and whether your tracking is feeding Meta enough purchase signal to find buyers instead of clickers. Our free tracking audit checks that last part in about 20 seconds.
$0.70 for traffic campaigns and $1.92 for lead campaigns, per WordStream's 2025 benchmark study (data from April 2024 through June 2025). Superads' spend-weighted data puts the global median near $1.05 across July 2025 through July 2026. Objective matters more than industry: the same account can pay close to 3x more per click when optimizing for leads instead of traffic.
CPC is roughly CPM divided by click-through rate, so a high CPC is either an expensive auction or a creative problem. Check CTR first. If CTR sits below your industry benchmark, hooks and formats are the fix. If CTR is fine, look at audience size, restricted category status, and seasonality: the global median CPC peaked at $1.29 in November 2025 and fell to $0.77 by July 2026 in Superads data.
No. Traffic-objective campaigns buy the cheapest clickers Meta can find, which is why their $0.70 average CPC often converts far worse than $1.92 lead-campaign clicks. A cheap click that never becomes a lead or a purchase costs more than an expensive one that does. Judge CPC by what the click turns into: cost per lead, cost per purchase, revenue.
The lead-campaign average is $1.92, with an industry spread from $0.74 for restaurants to $9.78 for dentists (WordStream, 2025 edition). Back into your own ceiling instead of chasing the average: multiply the most you can pay per lead by your landing page conversion rate. A $50 lead ceiling at a 10% conversion rate supports a $5.00 CPC.
An expensive click is a symptom. Run our free tracking audit to see whether Meta is getting clean conversion signal from your site, or book 30 minutes and we will read your account against these numbers with you.