Short answer: you choose the budget, and Meta charges you for the impressions your ads get. In WordStream's 2026 benchmarks, a lead from a Facebook lead campaign costs $27.39 at the median and a click $1.80. Dentists pay the most per lead, $61.56, and real estate one of the least, $13.74.
Online stores tracked by Triple Whale paid a median of $15.06 for every 1,000 impressions. Instagram ads are bought in the same place and the same auction, so the same figures guide both.
What Facebook and Instagram ads cost in 2026
Meta sells its ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp through the same auction. Every time someone could see an ad, the auction picks one. You set a daily or total budget, and Meta's page on how it charges for ads says: "Usually, you're charged based on the number of impressions your ad receives." The cost per click and the cost per lead are what those impressions turn into.
Ads Manager shows the price in these terms:
- CPM, the cost of 1,000 impressions. $15.06 at the median for the online stores in Triple Whale's data, from August 2025 to July 2026, 13.24% more than the year before.
- CPC, the cost of a click. $0.60 in campaigns built to bring visits and $1.80 in campaigns built to bring leads, in WordStream's data.
- CPL, the cost of a lead. $27.39 at the median in lead campaigns, almost the same as the year before ($27.66).
A lead here is a form sent, a message, a call or a conversion, depending on how each campaign was set up. It isn't a customer yet. To know what a customer costs, you count how many of those leads buy.
Cost per lead by industry
WordStream publishes the cost per click and per lead for 14 industries in lead campaigns. Several local services you find on every corner in Miami, such as dentists, beauty businesses and contractors, are at the expensive end.
| Industry | Cost per click | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|
| Dentists | $5.70 | $61.56 |
| Beauty and personal care | $2.97 | $50.91 |
| Home improvement | $2.18 | $42.95 |
| Furniture | $2.18 | $39.25 |
| Personal services | $1.62 | $38.09 |
| Industrial and commercial | $1.55 | $35.87 |
| Car dealers | $2.01 | $35.52 |
| Physicians and surgeons | $1.68 | $32.14 |
| Health and fitness | $1.84 | $27.11 |
| Education | $1.72 | $26.31 |
| Sports and recreation | $1.08 | $15.49 |
| Arts and entertainment | $0.88 | $14.59 |
| Real estate | $1.27 | $13.74 |
| Careers and employment | $0.73 | $12.30 |
| All industries | $1.80 | $27.39 |
Source: WordStream, Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2026, updated September 15, 2026: 452 US campaigns with the leads objective, run between April 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026. The figures are medians, in US dollars. Some industries rest on as few as 4 campaigns, so read them as a guide, not a quote.
Those are national figures, and none is for Miami or for Spanish-language ads. Treat them as the range you're likely to start in, then replace them with your own after the first month.
What moves the price
Your ad
The highest bid doesn't always win. Meta's page on ad auctions says the winner is the ad with the highest total value: your bid, how likely the person is to respond, and the quality of the ad. In Meta's words, "an ad that's more relevant to a person could win an auction against ads with higher bids".
Meta adds, on its page about costs that are too high, that "we subsidize relevant ads in the ad auction". After 500 impressions, Ads Manager ranks each ad's quality against ads competing for the same people.
The cheapest way to lower your cost per lead is a better ad: a clear offer, a real photo or video of your business, and a next step people want to take. In Miami that usually means one ad written in English and another written in Spanish, not one translated from the other.
Who you target
The same person can be in the audience of many advertisers, and they all compete for that person's attention. A narrow audience leaves the system fewer people to choose from. Meta's advice when costs run high is to widen the audience and add placements, because "the delivery system seeks the lowest cost opportunities first". Narrow it only where you can't serve people, such as outside your area.
What you ask Meta to find
Meta looks for whatever result you choose: visits, leads, messages or sales. A click is cheaper in a visits campaign ($0.60 against $1.80), but that campaign looks for people who click, not for people who get in touch. Meta warns that a campaign optimized for conversions may pay a higher CPM, "if that's how we can achieve lower conversion prices". Judge each campaign by the result you asked for.
The time of year
Prices rise when more advertisers want the same people. Over the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend of 2025, from November 28 to December 1, Triple Whale's online stores paid a CPM of $22.26. Their yearly median was $15.06. Those figures come from online stores. A clinic or a contractor competes with them for the same people in the same feeds. If your business doesn't depend on the holidays, you don't need to fight hardest for attention in late November.
Ads that open WhatsApp
An ad that clicks to WhatsApp opens a chat with your business instead of a form. The ad is charged like any other, usually by impressions. The messages are a separate matter: Meta never charges for a message a customer sends you. If you answer through the WhatsApp Business Platform, your reply opens a free window of up to 7 days for your messages too. That's on Meta's pricing page, updated September 30, 2026. For a business that closes sales in conversation, a chat is often worth more than a form, as long as someone answers it quickly.
A minimum budget that teaches you something
Every new campaign goes through a learning phase. An ad set usually leaves it "after about 50 results in the week after the ad set's last significant edit", says Meta's page on the learning phase. Costs are less stable while it lasts. At the median of $27.39 per lead, 50 leads a week cost $1,369.50. Most local businesses won't spend that, and they don't need to: they need enough results to tell which ad works.
A monthly budget is easier to judge when you turn it into leads:
| Industry | Leads a month with $1,000.00 |
|---|---|
| Dentists | 16 |
| Beauty and personal care | 20 |
| Home improvement | 23 |
| Physicians and surgeons | 31 |
| Real estate | 73 |
| All industries | 37 |
Our calculation: $1,000.00 divided by each industry's median cost per lead in WordStream's 2026 benchmarks, rounded. A guide for planning, not a promise.
Our rule of thumb: one campaign, one goal and two or three ads, with a budget that buys at least 20 leads a month at your industry's median. That's about $547.80 a month at the median of all industries (20 × $27.39), $1,231.20 for a dentist and $274.80 for real estate. Leave it a week without big edits, because a significant edit can restart the learning.
Daily budgets are an average. Meta may spend up to 75% more on a good day, but never more than 7 times the daily budget in a calendar week.
How to measure it
Judge the campaign by its cost per customer. Ads Manager can't give you that number alone. You need:
- The Meta pixel and the Conversions API. The pixel reports from the visitor's browser and the API from your website's server, so a blocked browser doesn't hide a lead. Meta lists broken tracking among the causes of a higher cost per result.
- Every lead in one place. Forms, calls and WhatsApp chats, with the ad each one came from.
- What happened next. Whether the lead answered, booked and bought. Divide the spend by the customers and you have the number to compare with Google Ads or anything else.
What our Meta Ads management costs
Our Starter plan costs $1,250.00 a month plus a $500.00 setup, with a 3-month minimum and month to month after that. It covers one platform, up to 2 campaigns at a time and 8 new ads a month, 2 of them video. The fee covers up to $5,000.00 a month in ad spend; above that, 10% of the excess. You pay Meta for the ads directly: we never resell them or add a margin. Our Meta Ads page lists what it includes, in English and Spanish, and the other plans are on our PPC and pricing pages.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Facebook ads cost per month?
As much as you decide. Meta charges for impressions within the budget you set. As a reference, the median cost per lead in WordStream's 2026 benchmarks is $27.39, so $1,000.00 a month would bring about 37 leads at that price. Dentists pay more per lead and real estate less.
How much does a lead from Facebook cost?
$27.39 at the median across industries in WordStream's 2026 benchmarks, from $12.30 for careers and employment to $61.56 for dentists. The data covers 452 US lead campaigns from April 2025 to June 2026.
Are Instagram ads more expensive than Facebook ads?
They're bought in the same Ads Manager and compete in the same auction, and Meta's pricing pages cover both. The benchmarks we read don't publish separate figures for each app, so we can't give you a difference with a source behind it.
How long before Facebook ads start working?
Meta says an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. Until then, costs are less stable and usually higher. Editing during that week restarts the count.
Does Meta charge for WhatsApp messages that come from an ad?
Not for the messages customers send. On the WhatsApp Business Platform, your reply to someone who wrote from an ad opens a window of up to 7 days in which Meta doesn't charge for your messages. The ad itself is charged like any other.
Before you spend
Decide what a customer is worth to you, how many leads you need to win one, and who will answer each chat and call. With those three answers, any of the figures above becomes a budget. If you're also weighing Google, our article on what a Google Ads click costs in Miami covers the other half of the decision.