Google publishes no typical cost for Local Services Ads: you pay per valid lead, the price depends on what similar local businesses bid for that lead, and the number that matters is your own cost per charged lead.
Facts on this page were checked against Google's pages on 2026-09-30.
You'll find plenty of "average LSA cost" figures online. We won't print one. None of Google's pages we read gives a typical price, and a number without a dated, named source is how bad budgets get set. What we can give you is the method to get your own, which is worth more than anyone's average.
What do you pay for?
Only valid leads. Google's pay-per-lead page says you're "charged only when a potential customer contacts your business directly through your ad, rather than when they click on your ad." For phone leads, you're charged for "valid, qualified phone leads that meet minimum call duration requirements." Google doesn't state that minimum on the pages we read.
The same model carries into Performance Max with pay-per-lead goals. Clicks and impressions don't get billed.
What sets the price of a lead?
Google's Local Services Help says: "When similar local businesses bid on the same lead, those bids determine how much the lead is worth." So price depends on who is bidding on that lead, and Google doesn't publish what those bids typically come to.
Before migration, Local Services Ads offered three bidding modes: maximize leads, target cost per lead, and a manual maximum per lead. After migration, Google says manual bidding such as a maximum cost per lead is no longer supported, and the campaign "defaults to MaximizeConversions", an automated strategy that sets bids within your daily budget. Our bidding guide covers what that means for you.
How do you work out your cost per charged lead?
Use the trailing 90 days, by category. Fewer days gives you noise, and one blended figure hides the category that costs most.
COST PER CHARGED LEAD (by category, last 90 days)
lead spend for the category
--------------------------- = cost per charged lead
charged leads in the category
Example, with made-up numbers to show the arithmetic:
Category A: $3,200 spend / 80 charged leads = $40.00
Category B: $2,600 spend / 40 charged leads = $65.00
Those example figures are invented. They aren't benchmarks for any trade. Put your own in.
If you haven't saved your reports, do that first: Google says past performance reports won't transfer, and our guide to saving them has a fill-in table. After migration, Google Ads gives you the same measure under its own names: "Cost" is your total ad spend, "Conversions" is the number of leads you're charged for, and "Cost / conv." is your average cost per lead.
What can you afford to pay per lead?
A cost per lead only means something beside what a lead is worth. Three numbers get you there:
BREAK-EVEN COST PER LEAD
gross profit per job
x share of charged leads that become paid jobs
= most you can pay per lead and still break even
Example, made-up numbers:
$600 gross profit per job x 25% of leads become jobs = $150
Then: cost per job won = lead spend / jobs won
Gross profit per job means revenue minus the direct costs of doing the work, before overhead. The share of leads that become jobs is the hardest number to get, and it moves the answer most. A $40 lead that never books is worse than a $90 lead that does.
Track it for a month: log each charged lead, whether you reached the customer, and whether it became a job. A spreadsheet is enough. If your CRM already receives your leads, it may already hold it.
How does the budget work after migration?
Google divides your historical average weekly budget by 7 to set your daily average budget. Monthly spend is capped at the daily budget multiplied by 30.4, the average number of days in a month. Google says daily spend may fluctuate on high-demand days, but monthly billing won't exceed that cap.
Claims that spend can reach double your daily budget on a given day circulate in trade coverage. We couldn't find them on Google's pages, so we don't repeat them.
Is it worth keeping?
That depends on whether your cost per job won sits below your gross profit per job with room left for overhead. I'd rather you keep Local Services Ads if that holds, and drop them if it doesn't. The migration is a natural moment to run the numbers, because your history is about to reset and you'll want a baseline either way. Our nine checks for Google Ads and the free viability gate work through the same logic for click-based ads.
Who shouldn't spend time on this? A business getting only a handful of leads a month. The numbers are too thin to read, and a quick look at total spend against jobs won tells you what you need.
What if your cost per lead goes up after migration?
Google's transition page announces no price change, and says nothing that rules one out. What it changes is how bids are set. So a rise in cost per lead is worth investigating and not worth assuming. Compare against your saved baseline, leave out the first two weeks Google says performance can take to stabilize, and look at cost per job won as well as cost per lead.
For the full list of what changes at migration, see our overview. One more move that costs nothing: your Business Profile decides what shows you in the map pack when you aren't paying for a lead, and we cover that work in our local SEO practice.