What Is a Good CPC for Facebook Ads? (2026 Benchmarks)
In LocaliQ / WordStream’s 2025 benchmarks, Facebook ads averaged $0.70 per click for traffic campaigns and $1.92 for lead campaigns across all industries, with industry averages spanning $0.34 (shopping, traffic campaigns) to $9.78 (dental, lead campaigns). Your CPC is good only if the click is worth more than you paid for it.
The table below lists average Facebook cost per click by industry from LocaliQ / WordStream’s 2025 benchmark study. The spread is wide for a reason: a dental practice bidding for high-intent patients competes in a different auction than a gift shop buying traffic.
Before comparing yourself to any row, work out what a click is worth: roughly, what you can afford to pay for a customer multiplied by how often a click becomes one. An expensive click that produces patients can be a bargain; a cheap click that produces nobody is waste.
CPC benchmarks by industry
Calculate your Facebook CPC
Use spend and clicks from the same reporting window, then read the result beside the industry rows above.
CPC calculator
Calculate cost per click from spend and clicks, then read it beside the cited Facebook ads cost and CPC tables.
Cost per click
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CPC = spend / clicks
Use this as a directional read against the dated CPC benchmark page, then look at the angle, the offer, and conversion quality before touching anything structural.
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Need the raw numbers? Download the full benchmark dataset (CSV) with the source attached to every row.
When this number is misleading
Cheap clicks are not cheap customers
CPC tells you what traffic costs, not what results cost. On conversion campaigns, judge cost per result and ROAS instead. Chasing the cheapest click usually means buying the people least likely to ever purchase. A $2 click can be cheap if it funds the next round; a $0.30 click is expensive if it never creates revenue.
Retargeting and prospecting CPCs are not comparable
Warm audiences who already know you click far more readily than cold prospects, so an account-wide average blends two different markets into one misleading number. Compare each campaign type against its own history, not against a single blended figure.
Placement and audience mix move CPC on their own
Shifting budget between Feed, Stories, Reels, and Audience Network changes your average CPC without your ad or offer getting better. If CPC drops after a placement change, check whether results improved before celebrating.
Are expensive clicks still worth buying?
A high CPC is usually a delivery problem before it is a creative problem: narrow or overlapping audiences, ad sets stuck re-entering learning, and low quality rankings all force Meta to charge more for the same click. The delivery troubleshooting guide walks the same checklist I use when auditing accounts.
Fix a high CPC: troubleshoot deliveryMethodology
We compile every figure from the public benchmark reports listed below. Data years vary by source (2024-2025), and every table row links to the report that published the number. If we can’t check a figure against a live public source, it stays out.
These tables do not use Meta delivery estimates or Kelpi first-party campaign data yet. They describe published industry averages, not a prediction for your account.
- LocaliQ / WordStream Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2025 (2025)
- Triple Whale Facebook Ad Benchmarks (ecommerce) (2025)
- Gupta Media social ads cost tracker (2025)
Compiled and last reviewed: June 13, 2026. We re-check every citation once a quarter.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a good CPC for Facebook ads in 2026?
- Against LocaliQ / WordStream’s cited 2025 averages, $0.70 per click for traffic campaigns and $1.92 for lead campaigns, a CPC below your industry row is a useful signal, but it is only doing well if the click can become profitable pipeline or revenue. A good CPC produces leads or sales for less than you can afford to pay for them.
- Why is my Facebook CPC so high?
- The usual suspects are narrow or overlapping audiences, creative that has stopped earning engagement, and campaigns repeatedly knocked back into the learning phase, all of which raise what Meta charges you per click. Work through the delivery fix guide.
- Is a $1 CPC good for Facebook ads?
- It depends on the campaign type and industry. A $1 click sits above LocaliQ / WordStream’s $0.70 all-industries traffic-campaign average but well below the $1.92 lead-campaign average. In dental, where the cited lead-campaign average is $9.78, it would be exceptional. Judge it against your industry row and what a click is worth to you.