Facebook ads do not have a price. You set a budget, and an auction decides what each impression costs you. What you can look up is what other advertisers ended up paying. In October 2026, campaigns aimed at the United States paid about $21.47 per 1,000 impressions and $1.32 per click in Birch's tracker. In WordStream's 2026 benchmarks, the median click cost $0.60 in traffic campaigns and the median lead cost $27.39.
Every outside figure in this post was read from the source's own page on November 14, 2026, and each one comes with the group it describes, because that is what explains most of the gap between them. Facebook and Instagram are sold through the same system, so the same logic applies to both.
The short answer
| What you pay for | Typical figure | Who it describes |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 impressions (CPM) | $21.47 | Campaigns targeting the US, October 2026 (Birch) |
| A click, any objective | $1.32 | Campaigns targeting the US, October 2026 (Birch) |
| A click, traffic campaign | $0.60 | Median of 1,377 US campaigns (WordStream) |
| A click, leads campaign | $1.80 | Median of 452 US campaigns (WordStream) |
| A lead | $27.39 | Median of 452 US campaigns (WordStream) |
| A purchase, online store | $37.94 to $76.56 | Median store in eight categories (Triple Whale) |
At those October figures, $1,000 buys about 46,600 impressions or about 760 clicks. In a traffic campaign at the WordStream median it buys about 1,670 clicks, and in a leads campaign about 36 leads. None of these is a quote for your account. They tell you which order of magnitude to expect before you have your own numbers.
How Meta decides what you pay
Meta's help center puts it this way: when you advertise, you decide how much you want to spend. There is no rate card. Each time an ad could be shown to someone, an auction runs among the ads targeting that person, and the winner is the ad with the highest total value. Meta builds that value from three things: your bid, the estimated chance that this person takes the action you asked for, and the quality of the ad.
Two consequences follow. First, a more relevant ad can beat a higher bid, which is why two advertisers in the same industry pay very different prices. Second, you are usually charged for impressions. A cost per click or cost per lead is your spend divided by what those impressions produced.
Billing works on a threshold. Meta charges your card when your ad costs reach your payment threshold and again on your monthly bill date for whatever is left. On any single day it may spend up to 75% over your daily budget, and it keeps the week at no more than seven times the daily budget.
What 1,000 impressions and a click cost, month by month
Birch, the ad automation tool formerly called Revealbot, publishes the average cost across its customers' campaigns aimed at the United States. In that series the Facebook CPM fell from $16.43 in December 2025 to $14.80 in January 2026, then climbed through the year to $22.30 in September and $21.47 in October. October was 31% above November 2025. The cost per click moved from $0.94 to $1.32 over the same twelve months.
The January dip is the familiar one: prices ease once holiday campaigns end. Gupta Media's table, which covers its own clients' Facebook and Instagram buys, shows the same shape a year earlier, with $10.83 in December 2024 and $8.27 in January 2025. Gupta's levels sit far below Birch's because the two describe different groups of advertisers, and neither is the whole market. For the seasonal pattern and how to budget around it, see the Q4 Meta CPM curve. For what pushes CPM up and how to bring yours down, see the four levers.
Cost per click by industry
WordStream and LocaliQ report medians from 1,377 US campaigns that ran between April 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 with the traffic objective. The median click cost $0.60 and the median click-through rate was 1.93%. By industry the click ran from $0.34 in arts and entertainment to $0.86 in finance and insurance, with most industries between $0.50 and $0.74.
Traffic clicks are cheap because a traffic campaign asks Meta to find people who click, and it finds them. Whether those people buy is a separate question, covered in the next two sections.
Cost per lead by industry
In the same report, 452 US campaigns ran with the leads objective. The median click cost $1.80, three times the traffic figure, and 8.54% of clicks became leads, which put the median lead at $27.39. The spread by industry is wide: $12.30 for career and employment and $13.74 for real estate at one end, $50.91 for beauty and personal care and $61.56 for dentists at the other.
If you sell a service, this is the table to plan from. Take your industry's cost per lead, multiply by the number of leads you need to close one customer, and compare the result with what a customer is worth to you.
What online stores pay per purchase
Triple Whale publishes medians from the online stores that use its software. For stores with $1 million to $10 million in revenue, the median Meta CPM across the eight categories we read ran from $14.09 in sports and outdoors to $19.97 in health and beauty. The median cost per purchase ran from $37.94 in food and beverage to $76.56 in consumer electronics, and the median return on ad spend from 1.47 to 2.13.
Look at the bars as well as the dots. In health and wellness, the middle half of stores paid anywhere from $10.59 to $38.41 per 1,000 impressions. Two stores in the same category can pay prices that far apart, which is the auction at work: the audience you go after and the ads you run move your price more than your category does.
From cost per result to a budget
Start from what one result costs you, or from a benchmark above if you have no history yet. Meta's help pages give two rules that turn that cost into a budget.
- 1.The floor. If you set a cost per result goal, Meta says your daily budget should be at least five times that goal. At $15 a result that is $75 a day.
- 2.The pace that lets an ad set settle. Meta says an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. Fifty results at $15 is $750 a week, about $107 a day.
At $27.39 a lead, the WordStream median, the same two rules give $137 and $196 a day. At $50 a result they give $250 and $357. If those amounts are more than you can spend, the usual fix is to optimize for an action that happens more often and costs less, such as add to cart in place of purchase, or to run fewer ad sets so each one gets enough results. How to split a budget across ad sets is covered in CBO vs ABO.
For a first test with no history, Meta's pricing page suggests starting a promoted post with at least $5 and running it for more than six days. That is enough to see an ad deliver. It is not enough to judge a campaign whose results cost $30 each.
What Instagram ads cost
Instagram ads are bought in the same Ads Manager, with the same budget and in the same auction. With Advantage+ placements a campaign runs on both apps and Meta moves the budget between them. In Birch's tracker for October 2026, campaigns aimed at the United States paid $20.96 per 1,000 impressions on Instagram and $1.75 per click, against $21.47 and $1.32 on Facebook. The impression price was close to equal. The click cost more on Instagram.
Why your number will differ
Six things move the price you pay:
- Objective. A traffic campaign buys clicks at $0.60. A leads campaign pays $1.80 a click because it is looking for a rarer person.
- Audience. Each auction is held among the advertisers targeting the same person, so who else wants your audience sets the competition.
- Season. Prices rise before the holidays and drop in January.
- The ad. Estimated action rate and ad quality are two of the three inputs to the auction, so a better ad lowers your price directly.
- Country. Every figure in this post is for the United States.
- Measurement. A cost per purchase is only as good as the purchase count behind it. Meta's count and your store's count often differ; see how Meta's attribution settings changed.
The costs outside Ads Manager
The media bill is not the whole cost. Ads wear out and have to be replaced, so someone has to make new ones, and someone has to read the results and decide what to change. Count that time or those fees next to the spend, because a campaign that looks profitable on media alone can lose money once production is added.
You can check your own numbers against the figures above with the CPM calculator, the ROI calculator and the benchmark checker. Our industry planning estimates cover 15 industries in more detail. They are modeled estimates for planning, not measured averages, and the page says so.
Where AdRiseLab fits
AdRiseLab is our product, and it works on the two things that decide your price after you have set a budget: the ads and the reading of the results. It connects to your Meta ad account and reports on its results, makes new image, video and creator-style ads from your product page, and creates the campaign in your account when you confirm. Nothing goes live without your approval, and budgets stay under your control.
Revenue puts the sales your payment provider recorded beside the conversions Meta reports, so your cost per purchase rests on money that arrived. AdRiseLab is Meta-only, so it is not the right pick if you advertise mainly on Google or TikTok. Plans start at $39 a month; see pricing.
Method and limits
All outside figures were read on November 14, 2026 from the pages listed below. Birch's figures are averages across its own customers' campaigns targeting the United States; the page gives no account count and does not say whether they are means or medians. Its partial figure for November 2026 is left out. WordStream's figures are medians, and each industry had at least 11 traffic campaigns or 4 leads campaigns. Triple Whale's figures are medians for stores with $1 million to $10 million in revenue in its default view; the page states no date range or country, and we read nine of its categories and charted the eight named ones. Gupta Media's table combines Facebook and Instagram, reports cost per link click, and ends in December 2025. Meta's minimum budget page no longer lists fixed dollar minimums by charge type, so none are quoted here. The budget examples are arithmetic on Meta's two rules, not results from an account.
Sources
Meta: How much it costs to advertise, Meta: About ad auctions, Meta: Best practices for minimum budgets, Meta: About the learning phase, Meta: When Meta charges you for ads, Meta: How Meta charges for ads, Meta ads pricing, Birch: Facebook advertising costs, Birch: Instagram advertising costs, WordStream: Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2026, Triple Whale benchmarks and Gupta Media: Social media ads cost, all read on November 14, 2026.
Related reading
The Q4 Meta CPM curve, why Meta CPMs rise and four ways to lower yours, CBO vs ABO, why ROAS drops and Meta ads planning estimates by industry.