Paid clicks stop the day the budget stops. This works out what yours cost over a month, a year and five years, and what that same spend buys as a one-off instead. It will not tell you what you would earn from SEO, because nobody can.
Google Ads → Campaigns → Columns → Avg. CPC. In Meta it is under Cost per link click.
Left blank we use 4.4%, the published cross-industry average, and label it as such. Your own figure is always better.
Starts at zero on purpose. We do not set this and we do not recommend a number — we have not seen your site or your market. Move it and the maths below updates. Whatever you choose is your assumption, not our forecast.
The day you stop paying, this traffic goes to zero. That is not an opinion about advertising, it is how the channel works: the auction only serves you while you are bidding. A page that ranks keeps its position after the work that earned it, which is the whole of the difference and the only claim on this page.
If you picked the benchmark option, the range shown spans two independent published UK sources for 2026, adjusted for where you advertise. Neither is a primary survey — Whito UK PPC cost research states plainly that no UK-wide survey of Google Ads click costs exists, and both aggregate agency and platform data. That is why this shows a band rather than a number, and why your own account beats it every time.
Want your real figure instead of a band? It is free. Open Google Ads, go to Tools → Keyword Planner → Get search volume and forecasts, paste your keywords, and read the top-of-page bid range. You do not have to run a campaign to see it. Put that number into the first option above and everything here becomes exact.
Every one of these is something a calculator could easily fake, and most of them do.
One of two places, and the tool tells you which on screen. If you enter figures from your own Google Ads or Meta account, everything is exact arithmetic on your numbers. If you do not run ads yet, it uses published 2026 UK benchmarks for your sector from two independent sources, shown as a range rather than a single figure because the two disagree. Neither is a primary survey, and the tool says so.
Because the published sources genuinely differ. For legal services one puts the average click at £8.25 and the other at £5.42. Averaging those into a single confident figure would hide the disagreement, and the disagreement is the useful information: it tells you the number is uncertain and that you should get your own.
Open Google Ads, go to Tools, then Keyword Planner, then "Get search volume and forecasts". Paste your keywords and read the top-of-page bid range. You do not need a live campaign to see it. Put that figure into the first option and every number on the page becomes exact.
Because we have not seen your website, your competition or your market, so any starting figure we picked would be a guess presented as a recommendation. You set the share. The tool then shows what that share of your current spend is worth, and labels it as your assumption rather than our forecast.
No, and be careful with anyone who does. Organic performance depends on your starting position, your competitors, your market and how much work gets done. A tool that produces a confident traffic forecast from a sector and a budget is generating a number, not calculating one.
It is unpaid per click, which is not the same as free. It costs either your time, if you do it yourself, or a fee if somebody does it for you. The difference from advertising is that the cost is largely up front rather than charged again on every visit.
Advertising costs are shown as the platforms report them, which is before VAT. Our own prices are shown as totals with no VAT added, because this business is not VAT registered.
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser, nothing is sent to a server, and there is no email gate. That is the same rule as the other free tools on this site.
Yes, through the first option. Take your cost per link click from Meta Ads Manager and enter it the same way. The benchmark option covers Google Search only, because that is what the published sources measure.
Because the day is a fixed, published price we can put a real number against. A retainer varies by scope, and quoting one before an audit would be the guessing this site refuses to do. If you have been quoted a monthly figure, divide it into the annual spend shown and you have the comparison.
Ask me anything about SEO, or about the tools, the training or what we do.
If your problem is one you can fix yourself with the free tools, I will say so.
Where I am not certain, I will say so rather than guess, and Imran will follow it up.
Answers are generated and can be wrong. For anything that matters, call 0161 315 1152.