Every number on this page comes from a named public or commercial source with its period stated. We do not publish conversion rate, cost per lead or ROAS benchmarks, and the FAQ explains why.
Book a 15-Min Chat →Sorted by cost per click, highest first. CPC is the average top-of-page bid for a basket of two or three head terms per segment (for example "plumber near me" and "emergency plumber"). Searches are the 12-month mean of monthly US search volume for that basket. Competition is Google's advertiser density index, which counts how many advertisers bid, not how much. Click a segment for the full market page.
| Industry | Segment | Avg CPC | Monthly searches (US) | Competition | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Law | Car accident | $219 | 239K | Low | Sep |
| Law | Personal injury | $142 | 118K | Low | Jan |
| Insurance | Home | $151 | 321K | Low | May |
| Insurance | Auto | $141 | 1.0M | Medium | May |
| Insurance | Insurtech | $118 | 7.1K | Medium | Nov |
| Insurance | All insurance | $95 | 1.3M | Low | Oct |
| Insurance | Commercial | $89 | 79K | Medium | Sep |
| Law | DUI defense | $89 | 253K | Low | May |
| SaaS | Vertical software | $61 | 18K | Low | Mar |
| Law | Criminal defense | $56 | 184K | Low | Mar |
| SaaS | All saas | $49 | 346K | Low | May |
| Insurance | Life | $42 | 692K | Low | May |
| Home Services | Plumbing | $42 | 954K | Medium | Sep |
| SaaS | B2B software | $37 | 203K | Low | Sep |
| Home Services | HVAC | $37 | 452K | Low | Jan |
| Home Services | Pest control | $32 | 296K | High | Sep |
| Home Services | Roofing | $30 | 274K | Medium | Sep |
| Law | Employment | $30 | 121K | Medium | Mar |
| Law | Family | $29 | 275K | Low | Feb |
| Private Equity | Portfolio growth | $50 | 4.1K | Low | Feb |
| Law | All law | $22 | 105K | Medium | Sep |
| Insurance | Final expense | $19 | 23K | Medium | Jan |
| Insurance | Medicare | $13 | 404K | Low | Oct |
| Professional Services | All professional services | $20 | 123K | Medium | Mar |
| Insurance | Health | $18 | 649K | Medium | Oct |
| Professional Services | Consulting | $18 | 20K | Low | Feb |
| Private Equity | All private equity | $19 | 23K | Medium | Mar |
| Professional Services | Financial advisors | $17 | 255K | Low | Sep |
| Professional Services | Law firms | $18 | 140K | Low | Sep |
| Law | Immigration | $13 | 51K | Medium | Jan |
| Healthcare | Dental | $15 | 2.1M | Medium | Jan |
| Private Equity | Investor relations | $12 | 11K | Medium | Sep |
| Law | Estate planning | $12 | 82K | Medium | Sep |
| E-commerce | DTC brands | $22 | 2.0K | Low | Apr |
| Professional Services | Accounting | $11 | 198K | Low | Mar |
| SaaS | Developer tools | $37 | 10K | Low | Feb |
| Healthcare | Chiropractic | $9.95 | 747K | Medium | Feb |
| Home Services | All home services | $10 | 255K | Medium | Jun |
| Healthcare | Plastic surgery | $12 | 124K | Low | Aug |
| Healthcare | Ophthalmology | $10 | 550K | Medium | Jan |
| Healthcare | Med spa | $9.37 | 385K | Low | Sep |
| Home Services | Landscaping | $8.37 | 198K | Medium | Mar |
| Healthcare | Functional medicine | $6.00 | 75K | Medium | Jan |
| Healthcare | Dermatology | $5.70 | 1.1M | Medium | Jun |
| E-commerce | Subscription | $4.37 | 28K | High | Dec |
| Healthcare | Interventional radiology | $3.61 | 157K | Low | Sep |
| Healthcare | All healthcare | $3.83 | 4.3M | Medium | Dec |
| E-commerce | All e-commerce | $3.52 | 46K | Medium | Jan |
| Private Equity | Deal sourcing | $3.74 | 96K | Medium | Mar |
| E-commerce | Amazon sellers | $0.71 | 57K | Low | Jun |
Source: Google Ads Keyword Planner data via DataForSEO, United States, pulled Sep 2026.
A high CPC is a signal that clicks in that segment close into high-value work, not a warning to stay away. Divide what one closed customer is worth to you by the CPC and by a realistic conversion rate from your own account, and you have the number of clicks you can afford to buy per sale. The ad spend calculator does that arithmetic.
A Low competition index next to a $150 CPC is not a contradiction. Fewer advertisers are bidding, but the ones who are bid hard. Use the peak month column to decide when to raise budgets: legal and home services demand moves with the calendar and the account should move with it.
How big each market is, from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns program, reference year 2022 (the most recent release). Payroll is annual and in billions of dollars. These figures answer a different question from the table above: not what a click costs, but how many businesses are competing for the same customers.
| Industry | NAICS | Establishments | Employees | Annual payroll |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physician Offices | 6211 | 210,756 | 2.64M | $268.5B |
| Dental Offices | 6212 | 136,140 | 1.03M | $59.6B |
| Chiropractic Offices | 62131 | 40,179 | 150K | $5.8B |
| Optometry Offices | 62132 | 22,781 | 149K | $6.9B |
| Outpatient Care Centers | 6214 | 59,802 | 1.30M | $92.6B |
| Medical & Diagnostic Labs | 6215 | 19,810 | 341K | $24.2B |
| Home Health Care | 6216 | 39,117 | 1.57M | $56.1B |
| Other Ambulatory Services | 6219 | 16,715 | 371K | $20.6B |
| Plumbing, HVAC, AC Contractors | 23822 | 109,601 | 1.18M | $82.2B |
| Electrical Contractors | 23821 | 81,842 | 952K | $68.4B |
| Roofing Contractors | 23816 | 24,532 | 205K | $13.3B |
| Painting & Wall Covering | 23832 | 37,963 | 198K | $10.5B |
| Landscaping Services | 56173 | 117,109 | 774K | $38.5B |
| Pest Control Services | 56171 | 16,080 | 140K | $7.0B |
| Law Offices | 54111 | 166,972 | 1.08M | $130.7B |
| Accounting & Tax Prep | 54121 | 135,960 | 1.23M | $93.1B |
| Management Consulting | 54161 | 178,359 | 1.37M | $145.8B |
| Investment Advice (Financial Advisors) | 52393 | 24,303 | 111K | $18.8B |
| Insurance Agencies & Brokerages | 52421 | 135,100 | 808K | $68.0B |
| Insurance Carriers | 5241 | 30,589 | 1.54M | $167.2B |
| Life & Health Insurance Carriers | 52411 | 12,634 | 856K | $95.0B |
| Property & Casualty Insurance | 52412 | 17,306 | 674K | $69.6B |
| Claims Adjusting & Related | 52429 | 15,282 | 515K | $39.6B |
| Advertising Agencies | 54181 | 14,962 | 195K | $20.5B |
| Public Relations Agencies | 54182 | 8,635 | 62K | $7.4B |
| Media Buying Agencies | 54183 | 809 | 21K | $2.3B |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2022 reference year.
Seasonally adjusted employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics survey, December 2025 reading, with the change from the same month a year earlier. A sector adding workers is a sector adding customers; the healthcare series has been the steadiest grower, while construction trades and advertising have been flat to down.
| Sector | Employees | Year over year |
|---|---|---|
| Healthcare Total | 23.67M | +2.9% |
| Hospitals | 5.73M | +2.4% |
| Ambulatory Health Care | 9.17M | +1.8% |
| Nursing & Residential Care | 3.47M | +2.5% |
| Outpatient Care Centers | 1.33M | +2.4% |
| Construction Total | 8.20M | -0.1% |
| Specialty Trade Contractors | 5.19M | -0.4% |
| Plumbing, HVAC & Electrical | 2.61M | +1.1% |
| Legal Services | 1.24M | +1.8% |
| Accounting & Tax Prep | 1.12M | +0.7% |
| Management Consulting | 1.89M | -0.3% |
| Data Processing & Hosting | 474K | -1.8% |
| Insurance Carriers | 3.00M | -0.7% |
| Insurance Agencies & Brokerages | 1.61M | -0.9% |
| Advertising, PR & Related | 486K | -1.3% |
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, December 2025.
From each company's most recent annual report on SEC EDGAR: sales and marketing expense and research and development expense as a share of revenue. This is the only true benchmark for marketing spend we know of, because the numbers are audited. Private companies at $2M to $50M in revenue typically run a lower marketing share than these figures because they lack the gross margin to fund it.
| Company | Revenue | Sales and marketing | R&D | Period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | $3.13B | 44.1% | 28.9% | FY ending 2025-12-31 |
| Datadog | $3.43B | 27.9% | 45.2% | FY ending 2025-12-31 |
| Cloudflare | $2.17B | 42.5% | 23.6% | FY ending 2025-12-31 |
| Atlassian | $6.57B | 23.4% | 49.7% | FY ending 2026-06-30 |
| Twilio | $5.07B | 17.2% | 20.1% | FY ending 2025-12-31 |
| ZoomInfo | $1.25B | 33.2% | 14.6% | FY ending 2025-12-31 |
Source: SEC EDGAR, Form 10-K filings.
The economy-wide readings that move ad costs and budgets, from the St. Louis Fed's FRED database. Inflation feeds directly into CPC because advertisers price bids off margins; rates set what growth capital costs; housing starts drive HVAC, plumbing and roofing demand; the e-commerce share of retail is the ceiling every online store is competing inside.
| Indicator | Latest | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer Price Index, year over year | 3.3% | 2026-07 |
| Federal funds rate | 3.75% | 2026-07 |
| Bank prime loan rate | 6.75% | 2026-08 |
| Unemployment rate | 4.1% | 2026-07 |
| Housing starts (annual rate) | 1,221K | 2026-07 |
| E-commerce share of retail sales | 17.1% | 2026-04 |
There is no single good CPC. Across the 50 segments on this page the top-of-page average runs from $0.53 (amazon sellers) to $208 (car accident). A CPC is only good relative to what a converted click is worth to you: a $200 click is cheap for a firm that earns $15,000 per signed case and ruinous for a $60 service call.
Because a single signed case can be worth tens of thousands of dollars in fees, firms can profitably bid very high, and many of them do. Google's competition index for those terms still reads Low because the index measures how many advertisers bid, not how much they bid.
The Google Ads table is pulled on the first of each month and this run is from Sep 2026. Census County Business Patterns is an annual release and the current figures are for the 2022 reference year. BLS employment is the December 2025 reading. SEC figures are from each company's most recent annual report.
Google Ads Keyword Planner data via the DataForSEO API, the U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns program, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics survey, SEC EDGAR 10-K filings, and the St. Louis Fed FRED database. Every table names its source and period, and the links are at the bottom of the page.
Because we do not run a dataset large enough to state them honestly. Agency benchmark tables for those metrics are usually averages across unrelated accounts, offers and tracking setups, which makes them useless for judging your own campaign. We publish only numbers we can pull from a named source.
Yes. The compiled tables are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Cite Anar Agency and link to this page. The underlying government data is public domain.
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