"What do you charge?" is usually the first question I get from potential clients. Fair enough. But the more useful question is: what am I actually getting for that money? PPC management fees vary wildly across the UK, and the cheapest option is almost never the best value. I've seen businesses waste thousands on agencies that charge very little per month but deliver even less.
This post breaks down the main pricing models, what a good management fee should include, and what my own pricing looks like. If you're comparing agencies or freelancers, this should save you some painful trial and error.
What is a PPC management fee?
A PPC management fee is what you pay someone to run your Google Ads account. It's separate from your ad spend, which goes directly to Google. The management fee covers the human work: building campaigns, writing ads, choosing keywords, monitoring performance, adjusting bids, adding negative keywords, testing landing pages, and reporting back to you.
Some businesses confuse the two. Your ad spend is the budget Google charges you for clicks. Your management fee is what you pay the person making sure those clicks are worth something. Both matter, but they're completely separate costs.
The three main pricing models
Most agencies and freelancers in the UK use one of three models: percentage of ad spend, flat monthly fee, or a hybrid of both.
Percentage of ad spend is the most common agency model. You pay 10-20% of whatever you spend on ads. If your monthly ad spend is £5,000 and the fee is 15%, you pay £750 in management fees. The problem with this model is the incentive structure. The agency earns more when you spend more. That doesn't automatically mean they'll push unnecessary spend, but the incentive is baked in. I've audited accounts where agencies were recommending budget increases that had no strategic basis, just revenue motivation.
Flat monthly fees are simpler. You pay a fixed amount regardless of ad spend. This is the model I use. It removes the conflict of interest around spend recommendations. If I tell a client to increase budget, it's because the data supports it, not because my fee goes up. Flat fees in the UK typically range from £300 to £2,000 per month depending on the complexity of the account and the experience of the person managing it.
Hybrid models combine a smaller flat fee with a lower percentage of spend. These sit somewhere in between. They're less common but can work well for accounts with highly variable budgets.
What should be included in a management fee
This is where the real differences show up. Two agencies quoting £500 per month can deliver wildly different levels of service. At minimum, a management fee should cover campaign setup and structure, keyword research and selection, ad copywriting and testing, bid management, negative keyword management, conversion tracking setup and maintenance, regular performance reporting, and strategic recommendations.
If your current agency isn't doing all of those things, you're paying for partial management. And partial management is how money gets wasted. An account without proper conversion tracking is flying blind. An account without negative keyword work is haemorrhaging budget on irrelevant clicks. These aren't optional extras. They're the basics.
Some agencies also charge separately for landing page work, conversion rate optimisation, or Google Analytics setup. That's reasonable as long as it's transparent. What's not reasonable is being told your fee covers "full management" and then discovering half the work isn't being done.
Typical UK management fee ranges
For context, here's what I typically see in the market. Solo freelancers with genuine Google Ads experience usually charge £300-800 per month. Small specialist agencies tend to fall in the £500-1,500 range. Larger agencies with account managers, strategists, and overhead often charge £1,000-3,000 or more. Enterprise-level agencies working with six-figure monthly budgets can charge £5,000-10,000 per month or higher.
The sweet spot for most small to mid-sized businesses in the UK is £400-1,000 per month. Below £300, it's hard for anyone to dedicate enough time to manage an account properly. Above £1,500, you should be getting a genuinely senior person with a track record, not a junior account manager reading from a playbook.
Red flags in agency pricing
I've seen a lot of bad deals over the years. Here are the patterns that should make you cautious.
Ad spend markups are the first one. Some agencies add a margin on top of your Google Ads spend. You think you're spending £3,000 on ads, but £500 of that is going to the agency as a hidden markup. This is separate from the management fee. Always ask directly: does my full ad spend go to Google, or do you take a cut?
Long lock-in contracts are the second. If an agency wants you to sign up for 12 months with no exit clause, ask yourself why. Good work retains clients without contractual handcuffs. A reasonable notice period of 30-60 days is normal. Being locked in for a year with no performance guarantees is not.
Ownership of the account is another issue. Your Google Ads account should belong to you. If the agency sets it up under their own MCC and won't give you admin access, you lose all your data and campaign history if you leave. This happens more often than you'd think.
Vague reporting is a problem too. If your monthly report is a single page with impressions and clicks but no conversion data, cost-per-acquisition figures, or strategic commentary, you're not getting management. You're getting monitoring. There's a big difference.
Finally, watch out for anyone who guarantees specific results. No one can guarantee a number-one position or a specific number of leads. Google Ads doesn't work that way. Anyone promising guaranteed outcomes is either lying or doesn't understand the platform. I wrote about this in more detail when looking at what makes a good PPC management company.
What I charge and why
I charge a flat monthly fee starting from £400 per month. No percentage of ad spend. No markup on your Google budget. Every penny of your ad spend goes to Google.
The flat fee means my advice is always based on what's right for the account, not what increases my revenue. If a client's budget would be better reduced and concentrated on fewer, higher-performing campaigns, I'll say so. That recommendation is easier to trust when it doesn't cost me money to make it.
My fee includes everything: campaign builds, keyword research, ad copy, bid management, negative keywords, conversion tracking, landing page recommendations, monthly reporting, and direct access to me when you have questions. No junior account managers, no ticket systems, no waiting three days for a response.
For clients who want to understand what budget level makes sense before committing, I've written a detailed guide on determining your Google Ads budget that walks through the maths.
The uncomfortable truth about cheap management fees
The standard advice is to shop around and compare quotes. That's sensible. But there's a version of price-shopping that consistently produces bad outcomes: treating Google Ads management as a commodity where the deliverable is the same at £200/month as at £600/month. It isn't. At £200/month, the person managing your account can realistically spend about three or four hours on it per month. That's enough to check performance has not fallen off a cliff, not enough to identify marginal improvements, run copy tests, review search terms properly, or make meaningful bid adjustments. You're paying for monitoring, not management. I've taken over accounts from managers charging £200/month and found no search term reviews in six months, auto-apply recommendations turned on, and bidding strategies switched mid-campaign with no record of why. The cost of that neglect always exceeds the saving on the management fee.
How to compare quotes properly
When you're comparing management fees, look beyond the headline number. Ask what's included. Ask who will actually work on your account. Ask whether you own the account. Ask how they report and how often. Ask what happens if you want to leave.
The cheapest quote usually comes with the least attention. In Google Ads, inattention costs money. If you're spending £1,500 per month on ads and your manager's fee is £400, they only need to improve performance by 27% to pay for themselves entirely. Moving from a poorly managed account to a well-managed one usually produces improvements far larger than that.
If you want to understand more about how ad costs work in general, are Google Ads really expensive? covers the cost side in detail.
