Pricing, explained
How much does PPC management cost?
Published US rates run from $445 to $25,000 a month, which is a useless range until you know what separates the ends of it. Every figure below comes from an agency's own public pricing page.
- Published range
- $445 – $25,000 / mo
- Common % model
- 10–20% of spend
- Our own rate
- from $2,500 / mo
- Checked
- September 2026
The short answer
Most agencies serving growing businesses charge between $2,500 and $8,000 a month. Below about $1,000 the work is necessarily templated. Above about $25,000 of monthly ad spend, pricing usually converts to a percentage of spend, typically 10–20%.
The number itself matters less than which of four models it comes from, because the model determines what happens as your account grows.
The four pricing models
| Model | Typical shape | Suits | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat retainer | $500–$8,000/mo, fixed | Stable accounts, predictable scope | Does not scale with work; attention quietly drops as you grow |
| Percentage of spend | 10–20% of monthly spend | Large accounts where work tracks budget | Pays the agency more to spend more |
| Flat, then percentage | Fixed to a threshold, then a share | Most accounts, most of the time | Only fair if the threshold is set honestly |
| Retainer plus performance bonus | Lower base, bonus on KPI | Accounts with clean attribution | Needs measurement both sides trust, or it becomes an argument |
What the market actually publishes
Four of the six comparable agencies we checked do not publish anything at all. These are the ones that do:
| Agency | Published rate | Model | Minimum spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| InvisiblePPC | $445/mo flat | White-label flat | not stated |
| E2M Solutions | $499–$1,999/mo, then 7–10% | Tiered, white label | not stated |
| Logical Position | from $749/mo, then 10–12% | Tiered by spend | not stated |
| Aclick | from $2,500/mo, then 10–15% above $25k | Flat, then percentage | None |
| Admiral Media | $3,000–$25,000/mo, or 10–20% | Retainer or percentage | $10,000–$30,000/mo |
Source: Each agency's own pricing page, checked September 2026. Verify before quoting – rates change.
Why the cheap end is not the same product
Sub-$500 monthly management is templated by arithmetic, not by choice. At that fee an account manager has to carry twenty or thirty clients to make the economics work, which leaves roughly an hour per account per month. That buys a standard campaign structure, an automated report, and a response when something breaks badly.
For a local business spending $2,000 a month, that is a fair trade. It stops being one when the right answer depends on something specific to you – your margin by product, your trial-to-paid rate, which markets are actually profitable.
The question that reveals more than the price
Who works on the account, and how many others do they have?
Twenty accounts per manager is a different product from six, at the same headline fee. It determines whether anyone looks at your campaigns on a Tuesday or only when a monthly report is due. Almost nobody asks it, and the answer is rarely refused.
What is normally excluded
Creative production, landing page development, and the ad spend itself. A good agency writes the ad copy and the creative briefs, and specifies what a landing page needs – producing the video and building the page is separate work.
Worth checking specifically, because "full service" means different things to different agencies and the gap usually appears in month two.
Questions people actually ask
- How much does PPC management cost per month?
- Published rates in the US run from about $445 a month at the white-label end to $25,000 a month at the enterprise end, with most agencies serving growing businesses landing between $2,500 and $8,000. Above roughly $25,000 of monthly ad spend, percentage-of-spend pricing at 10–20% usually takes over.
- Is percentage of ad spend a fair model?
- It is defensible above a certain account size, where more spend genuinely means more work. Below that it is mostly a way to avoid quoting a number. The structural problem is that it pays the agency more for spending more, which is not always your interest – particularly in a downturn.
- Why do so few agencies publish prices?
- Because a quote given after a discovery call can be shaped to what the prospect seems able to pay. That is not automatically dishonest – scope really does vary – but it does mean the first call exists partly to price you rather than to help you.
- Is cheap PPC management ever worth it?
- For a small local account spending $2,000 a month, yes. Sub-$500 management is templated by necessity – a shared account manager, a standard campaign skeleton, a tool-generated report – and that is a reasonable product at that price. It stops working when the answer depends on anything specific to your funnel.
- Should the management fee come out of the ad budget?
- No. Keep them as separate lines. When the fee is drawn from the media budget, cutting spend cuts the agency's income, which puts an incentive in the room that nobody should want there when times are tight.
- What should be included at any price?
- Campaign management, conversion tracking maintenance, reporting, and a person who answers when something breaks. Creative production, landing page development and the ad spend itself are normally separate. If a proposal is vague about which side of that line creative sits on, ask before signing.
Compare the models against your own spend.
The fee calculator prices flat retainers, percentage-of-spend, tiered models and hiring in-house at whatever you spend per month.