How Much Does a PPC Agency Cost in the UK?

Key Takeaways

• Of 30 UK PPC providers we checked on 22 September 2026, 25 published a monthly starting price for PPC management, from £145 to £1,500 a month.
• The median published entry price was £650 a month, and the middle half sat between about £380 and £850. These are our calculations, not an industry benchmark.
• Management fees and ad spend are separate bills: £5,000 of Google Ads spend managed for £750 costs £5,750 a month before any extras.
• Flat fees and spend tiers dominate published pricing, and on illustrative rates a 15% fee only beats a £750 flat fee below £5,000 of monthly spend.
• Setup fees, minimum spend and contract terms vary as much as the fee, from free setup and rolling months to £750 setup packages and six month minimums.
• Ecommerce stores should compare what each fee covers across Merchant Center, feeds, Shopping, Performance Max, tracking and profit reporting, and should own their Google Ads account.

Quick Answer

A UK PPC agency usually publishes a starting fee of a few hundred pounds a month. In our check of 25 UK providers' own pricing pages on 22 September 2026, entry prices ran from £145 to £1,500 a month, with a median of £650. That fee covers management only, since your advertising budget goes to Google separately, and quotes usually rise above the entry price for several channels or countries, a large catalogue, complex tracking or a bigger budget.

Table of Contents

• Why PPC Agency Pricing Is Hard to Compare
• How We Collected the Prices
• What UK PPC Agencies Publish
• The Three Pricing Models
• Setup Fees, Minimum Spend and Contract Terms
• What the Fee Should Cover for an Ecommerce Store
• What Moves the Price
• Agency, Freelancer or In House on Cost
• How to Compare Two Quotes Properly
• Where Why Matters Sits
• The Limitations of This Data
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Ask three agencies what it costs to manage Google Ads and you can get three prices that measure different things: a flat fee, a percentage of spend, or a base fee that rises past a threshold, each with its own extras and terms. So rather than repeat an industry average, we checked what UK providers publish on their own websites and linked every price so you can check it yourself.

Why PPC Agency Pricing Is Hard to Compare

Your advertising budget goes to Google and your management fee goes to the agency, so £10,000 a month of ad spend managed for £1,000 a month is an £11,000 monthly cost, of which £1,000 paid for the work. Proposals do not always separate the two clearly, and a percentage fee blurs them further because the charge moves with the budget.

Two similar fees can also buy very different work. One package covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, tracking, feed work and reporting, while another covers Search campaigns and a monthly optimisation pass, and both are honestly called Google Ads management. For ecommerce the gap is wider still, because Google says Shopping ads use your Merchant Center product data, not keywords, to decide where ads appear, and Performance Max uses the same feed across YouTube, Display, Search, Demand Gen, Gmail and Maps. If the feed is weak, changing bids will not fix it, so judge an ecommerce fee against the feed, tracking and landing page work it actually includes.

How We Collected the Prices

We built a candidate list from our Top 10 PPC agencies list, Clutch's UK PPC agency listings and current Google results for PPC management pricing, following the same approach as our research into what UK Shopify agencies publish about their pricing. Clutch helped with discovery only, because its provider supplied minimum project sizes and hourly bands are not monthly retainers. We then applied four rules:

1. The price came from the provider. We recorded only figures published on the provider's own website, never another agency's quote, a market average, a directory estimate, a forum post or an unnamed survey.
2. We recorded the entry price. Where several tiers were published, we took the lowest ongoing monthly price that appeared to apply to a normal PPC client, so the table shows entry points, not typical invoices.
3. Ad spend stayed separate. Every figure is a management fee, excluding money paid to Google, Microsoft, Meta or any other platform.
4. We checked 30 providers on 22 September 2026. Twenty five had a numerical monthly starting fee we could verify on their own site.

The other five, Bind Media, ThoughtShift, Hallam, Impression and Herdl, describe PPC services publicly, but the pages we checked point to a proposal or a conversation rather than a standalone price. Leaving them out does not mean they cost more; it means they did not meet our rule for a published price.

What UK PPC Agencies Publish

The table shows the lowest ongoing monthly PPC management price on each provider's own website on 22 September 2026, and each name links to the page we used. VAT is shown where the provider states it, and we have not converted prices to a common VAT basis, so treat the median as a description of headline prices rather than a tax adjusted benchmark.

The lowest entry price was £145 a month and the highest £1,500, with a median of £650, which is our calculation from the table rather than an official figure. Eleven providers start at £500 or less, ten between £501 and £999 and four at £1,000 or more, so the middle half of entry prices sits between roughly £380 and £850. Spend bands matter as much as the fee: £750 covers up to £1,500 of monthly spend at HC Media Group, while PPC Vibe's £1,200 tier covers up to about £10,000.

Almost every entry point is a fixed monthly price or a tier linked to ad spend. Visionary Marketing, publishing £850 a month or 10% of spend, is the clearest exception, and PPC Vibe moves to spend linked charges at larger budgets. That does not prove percentage pricing is rare, but flat, productised fees are far easier to publish.

The Three Pricing Models

Most PPC management is priced in one of three ways, and each rewards something different. The table applies two of them to the same monthly budgets using illustrative rates, 15% of spend and a £500 base fee plus 10%, while a £750 flat fee would stay at £750 on every row.

Percentage of Ad Spend

Percentage pricing grows the agency's income automatically as your budget grows. That can be fair when more spend genuinely means more campaigns, products, markets and testing, but ask whether the work really rises at the same rate. On these rates, 15% is cheaper than a £750 flat fee below £5,000 of monthly spend and dearer above it, because 15% of £5,000 is exactly £750.

Flat Monthly Fee

A flat fee stays the same unless the scope changes, which makes costs predictable and removes any incentive to push spend for its own sake. Its weakness shows when an account grows and the fee, and the time it buys, does not, which is why most flat fee providers publish spend tiers.

Hybrid Pricing

A hybrid combines a base retainer with a smaller percentage. At £500 plus 10%, it overtakes the £750 flat fee at £2,500 of spend and matches 15% at £10,000, where both charge £1,500; above that it is cheaper, at £3,500 against £4,500 on £30,000. No model is best everywhere, so ask what the fee buys at your spend and what happens when spend changes.

Setup Fees, Minimum Spend and Contract Terms

The retainer is only one part of a proposal. For setup, Digital Squad charges £600 plus VAT, Maley Digital publishes onboarding from £349 and HC Media Group sells a £750 plus VAT package, while PPC Chief credits its £400 strategy session if you sign, PPC Ads charges no setup fee for standard accounts and BW Digital Marketing includes setup in its monthly fee. The useful question is what happens before launch and where it is charged.

Minimum spend varies just as much. DPOM states no hard minimum, RIOT suggests at least £500 a month, Built Digitally recommends £1,500 for Google Search, Precisionly requires £2,000 on its entry tier and Happy PPC works with businesses spending from around £3,000. Our first 90 days marketing plan starts new Shopify stores on Google Shopping at £10 to £20 a day, about £300 to £600 over a 30 day month, which is plenty of data in some niches and far too little in others.

Terms differ too: PPC Ads, Digital Squad, Happy PPC and Social Surge publish rolling monthly terms, Built Digitally asks for 30 days notice, Maley Digital and BW Digital Marketing set three month minimums and McHugh Marketing a six month minimum. A £500 fee on a six month minimum commits you to £3,000 before you can leave, so compare first year exposure, not just the monthly number.

What the Fee Should Cover for an Ecommerce Store

Ecommerce PPC differs from generic PPC, because the ad account must understand products, prices, stock, conversion values and margins. Feed work is performance work, so ask who owns Merchant Center setup, disapprovals, product titles and types, custom labels, promotions, supplemental data and any feed app. Performance Max can advertise your whole catalogue across Google's channels, so a good proposal explains how products are segmented, how weak products are reduced, how margin and stock affect decisions, and how Search and Performance Max share demand. Search still needs search term reviews, negatives and ad copy too; automation did not remove that work.

Tracking comes next, because optimisation on bad data is guesswork. Google calls the Google tag the most essential part of its measurement stack, says consent mode adjusts how tags behave based on each visitor's consent, and advises advertisers in the UK and EEA to build a strong consent framework. A quote should say whether it covers conversion tracking, GA4, enhanced conversions, consent mode, duplicate conversion checks and conversion values.

Reporting should also go beyond ROAS. Take £50,000 of revenue at a 5x ROAS, which means £10,000 of ad spend: if £30,000 comes from products with a 20% contribution margin and £20,000 from products at 45%, the campaign leaves £5,000 after ad spend, but flip the mix and the same ROAS leaves £7,500 (illustrative margins). Finally, ask what is extra, because video, photography, landing pages, feed software, server side tracking and CRO testing are often charged separately, and landing pages decide how much paid traffic becomes orders, as our guide to measuring your Shopify conversion rate explains.

What Moves the Price

Five factors explain most of the difference between two sensible quotes for the same store:

1. Ad spend. More budget means more responsibility and more to optimise, and percentage pricing rises with it automatically.
2. Catalogue size. 20,000 SKUs across 50 categories need far more feed work, segmentation and stock monitoring than 40 products.
3. Channels. Search alone is narrower than Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Microsoft Ads, Meta, YouTube and TikTok together.
4. Countries. A Shopify Markets store selling abroad adds currencies, languages, feeds and shipping economics.
5. Reporting and creative. Live dashboards, product level profit reports and regular creative cost more to produce than a monthly summary.

Agency, Freelancer or In House on Cost

Freelancers offer lower overheads and direct access to the person doing the work, and published examples include BerryBunch Digital and Beyond Goat from £400 a month, Harrison Mann from £500 and Chris Winn at £750 for Google Ads management. The trade off is capacity: one person cannot also be a feed specialist, analyst, creative team and CRO developer, and there is no cover when they are away.

An agency brings several disciplines under one relationship, but check who will actually work on your account and how senior they are. An in house PPC manager gives you dedicated time and direct access to stock and margin data, but the cost goes well beyond salary once employer National Insurance, pension, recruitment, software, training and holiday cover are added, so compare total annual capability rather than a salary against an agency invoice.

How to Compare Two Quotes Properly

Before comparing prices, make the scopes comparable. The sketch marks six areas to check on any proposal, and the questions below turn them into things to ask.

1. Channels: which of Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Microsoft, Meta and YouTube are included?
2. People: who does the work, how senior are they, and how much of their time does the fee buy?
3. Feed: is Merchant Center and feed management included, or only checked?
4. Tracking: who owns conversion tracking, and is consent mode implemented or just reviewed?
5. Reporting: does the report show profit and new customers, or revenue only?
6. Fee and term: what are the setup fee, minimum term and notice, and does the fee rise with spend?
7. Exit: who owns the Google Ads account, and what happens when you leave?

Account Ownership Matters More Than It Sounds

Several providers, including AsOne, RIOT and PPC Ads, state that the client owns the advertising account, and that should be the norm. If your campaigns live in an account you cannot take with you, leaving can cost years of conversion history, search data and structure, so agree in writing that your business owns the account and the agency uses manager access.

What Google Partner Status Tells You

Google Partner status has three requirements: an optimisation score of at least 70%, US$10,000 of ad spend across managed accounts over 90 days, and at least half of account strategists certified in Google Ads. Premier Partners must also rank in the top 3% of participating companies in their country each year, judged on factors including client growth, retention, product diversification and ad spend. The badge shows participation and scale, but says nothing about the fee, who manages your account or whether the agency understands Shopify and your margins.

Where Why Matters Sits

We should meet the standard we apply to everyone else, so here is our own number. Why Matters PPC management starts at £650 a month, scoped to the account and what it needs. That lands exactly on the median of the table above: twelve of the 25 providers publish a lower entry price, twelve publish a higher one, and one matches it.

The rest of our terms are just as plain. We bill a month in arrears, never tie clients into long contracts, and start with a free Google Ads account review so you can see our thinking first. As a Shopify Select partner working across development, CRO and SEO as well as paid media, we can also fix what often sits behind poor PPC results, such as a weak feed, broken tracking or a slow landing page, rather than only adjusting bids.

The Limitations of This Data

This is original research, not a market census. Providers that publish prices are overrepresented by definition, which tilts the sample towards smaller agencies and flat fees, and a published "from £500" means £500 buys some qualifying scope, not that the average client pays it. VAT treatment and spend bands vary between providers, every price was checked on 22 September 2026 and can change, and some publish prices in PDFs, proposals or gated calculators that search never finds. The model table is an illustration, not a market statistic.

Why Matters Perspective

The most useful finding is not the £650 median but the spread around it: £145 buys a professional entry tier at one provider while £1,500 is the starting point at another, and both can be genuine services. PPC management is also unusual because the invoice is only one of the costs it controls. A £750 agency managing £15,000 of media is steering twenty times its own fee, so saving £250 on the retainer is no bargain if it lets £2,000 of spend go to waste.

For ecommerce, we would rather a merchant paid a little more for a team that understands Merchant Center, feeds, margins, stock, consent and tracking than saved £200 a month and sent thousands of pounds of media into an account built on poor data. The better buying question is what work happens every month, who does it, and how it protects the profit your media budget generates. That is the question we answer in every free account review, and the reason we publish our own starting price beside everyone else's.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does PPC management cost per month in the UK?

Among 25 UK PPC providers that publish their own prices, monthly starting fees on 22 September 2026 ranged from £145 to £1,500, with a median of £650. These are entry prices, not average client fees, and your ad budget is paid to Google separately.

Is a percentage of ad spend or a flat fee better for PPC management?

Neither is automatically better. A flat fee is predictable, while a percentage lets agency resource grow with the account; on illustrative rates, 15% of spend costs less than a £750 flat fee below £5,000 of monthly spend and more above it.

What is the usual minimum ad spend for a PPC agency?

There is no universal minimum. In our sample, one provider states no hard minimum while others recommend or require from £500 to around £3,000 a month, and the practical minimum depends on your click costs and conversion rate.

Do PPC agencies charge a setup fee?

Some do and some do not. Published examples in our sample range from £349 to £750, while other providers include setup in the monthly fee or charge nothing for standard accounts, so compare what is built during onboarding.

What should a PPC management fee include for an ecommerce store?

Check whether it covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Merchant Center and feed work, conversion tracking and consent mode, and whether reporting covers profit as well as revenue. Ask whether creative, landing pages and feed software cost extra.

Is PPC management worth it for a small online shop?

It can be, if your budget, margin and conversion rate leave room for both ad spend and management. A store spending £500 a month on ads will struggle to justify a £1,000 fee, so base the decision on expected profit, not traffic.

Who owns the Google Ads account if I leave a PPC agency?

Your business should. The agency should work through manager access to an account you own, so campaign history and conversion data stay with you if the relationship ends. Confirm this in writing before work starts.

Final Thoughts

The published market gives a clear starting range, £145 to £1,500 a month with a £650 median among providers that publish, but that is the beginning of the comparison rather than the answer. For an ecommerce store, the real questions sit around the ads: who manages the feed, who fixes tracking, who understands margin and who owns the account.

A transparent £900 proposal that covers the work your store needs can cost far less than a £500 one that leaves the hard parts to you. If you would like a second opinion, ask for a free Google Ads account review.

Related Articles

• What UK Shopify Agencies Publish About Their Pricing
• Top 10 PPC Marketing Agencies in the UK
• How to Get More Traffic to Your Shopify Store: A Practical Guide
• Your First 90 Days: A Marketing Plan for New Shopify Stores
• How Much Does It Cost to Build a Shopify Store? A Transparent Guide
• How to Choose the Best Shopify Development Company for Your Business
• Why Your Shopify Conversion Rate Matters and How to Measure It