How Much Do PPC Agencies Charge in the UK? Fee Models, Typical Ranges and What You Should Get for the Money

Most UK PPC agencies charge in one of three ways: a flat monthly retainer, a percentage of your ad spend, or a mix of the two. For a small or mid-sized ecommerce account, the published market estimates put the retainer at roughly £500 to £1,500 a month at the boutique end and £1,500 to £4,000 a month for mid-market accounts, with percentage models usually landing between 10% and 20% of spend. Those ranges come from a neutral UK pricing tool and a US industry survey, both linked below, and both carry caveats we spell out. The fee is only half the question, though. The other half is what the fee buys, and that is where most proposals fall apart.

What are the four PPC fee models?

Every agency quote fits one of these four shapes, or a combination. Knowing which one you are being offered tells you whose incentives it serves.

Model	How it works	Good for	Watch for
Flat retainer	Fixed monthly fee regardless of spend	Predictable budgets, accounts under about £10k a month	The fee can stay the same while the work shrinks
Percentage of spend	A cut of what you pay Google or Meta, often 10% to 20%	Large, growing accounts where work scales with spend	The agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not it converts
Hybrid	Flat fee up to a spend threshold, then a percentage above it	Accounts that expect to scale	Check where the threshold sits and what the percentage becomes
Performance or hourly	Paid per lead, per sale, or per hour of work	Short projects, audits, rebuilds	Performance deals need tracking you both trust before they can be fair

The hybrid is the most common structure in practice. Credo’s industry survey describes the typical setup as a flat monthly fee up to a certain spend level, then a percentage of spend above it, and reports that most firms bill on a flat-fee basis rather than a pure percentage.

What do the published figures say?

Two sources are worth reading, and neither is perfect.

Agency Cost Calculator (UK, reviewed 9 October 2026). A neutral pricing tool rather than an agency. Its typical-market estimates for UK PPC management are £500 to £1,500 a month for boutique accounts, £1,500 to £4,000 for mid-market, and £4,000 to £10,000 or more for enterprise, with percentage-of-spend models at 10% to 20% for SMEs and 5% to 10% at enterprise scale. It also states that most UK agencies need £2,000 to £5,000 a month of ad spend before management is economic. The caveat: it describes its figures as estimates based on typical UK retainer data and does not publish a sample size.

Credo Digital Marketing Pricing Survey (US-weighted, last updated June 2022). A survey of PPC providers, in dollars. 85% of firms charge between $50 and $200 an hour, and 60% between $100 and $200. Just over half have a monthly retainer minimum of $1,000 to $3,000, and a quarter sit under $1,000. Around 30% ask for a six to twelve month minimum term, while 26% have no minimum contract length. Credo’s typical structure is $1,000 to $2,000 a month for one channel, $500 to $750 for each extra channel, a setup fee of $1,000 to $2,500, and 15% of spend above $10,000 a month. The caveats: it is three years old and the respondents skew American, so treat it as a shape, not a UK price list.

Put together, a UK ecommerce brand spending £5,000 to £20,000 a month on ads should expect quotes somewhere between about £1,000 and £4,000 a month in management, and should be suspicious of anything far outside that range in either direction.

Why does the fee need a minimum ad spend?

Because the work does not shrink with the budget. Reading search terms, testing conversion actions, writing ad copy against the terms that survive and rebuilding structure take the same hours on a £2,000 account as on a £20,000 one. Below a few thousand pounds of monthly spend, a sensible management fee becomes a large share of the total, and most agencies would rather decline than charge it. If your spend is under £2,000 a month, a one-off audit or a training session usually returns more than a retainer.

Google itself sets no minimum. Its own guidance is that spend should be based on the cost of getting enough daily clicks for its systems to learn, and on your cost per acquisition goals, rather than a fixed figure.

What should the fee actually buy you?

This is the question to put to every agency, and the answer should be specific tasks, not “optimisation”. In our own first ninety days on an account the work is fixed and in writing:

• Tracking tested on a real order. Every conversion action checked against what the site actually does, with duplicate and zero-value events stripped out. The account often looks worse for a fortnight afterwards, and that is the truth arriving.
• Every search term read line by line. Negative keyword lists built by hand, and yours to keep.
• Brand and generic split. Brand traffic converts at a multiple of generic. Averaged together, a weak account looks fine.
• Restructure. New structure, new copy written against the terms that survived, then the first optimisation worth the name.

What are the warning signs in a PPC proposal?

1. A fee with no task list. If the proposal says “ongoing optimisation” and nothing else, you are buying hours you cannot see.
2. Percentage of spend with no cap. The agency is paid to grow your budget, not your profit. Ask for a ceiling or a hybrid.
3. Reported results that come from the ad platform’s own dashboard. Google, Meta and Amazon will each claim the same sale. Ask what the number looks like against your Shopify or WooCommerce orders.
4. A twelve month lock-in before any audit. Credo’s survey found a quarter of providers ask for no minimum term at all. A long contract before the agency has seen your account is a sales target, not a plan.
5. The account is in the agency’s name. Your ad account, your data, your negative lists. Always.

How do you compare two quotes?

Convert both to pounds per month at your actual spend, then to pounds per task. Say you spend £6,000 a month.

• Agency A: 15% of spend. That is £900 a month today and £1,500 if you scale to £10,000.
• Agency B: £1,200 flat. The same at both spend levels.

At today’s spend A is cheaper; if you scale, B is. Then ask each what the first ninety days contain. If one is rebuilding tracking and reading every search term and the other is “monitoring bids,” the cheaper one may be the expensive one.

What does Yomp Media charge?

We quote a fixed monthly fee after a call, because a £3,000 Shopping account and a £40,000 multi-channel account are not the same job. The one published price is the £999 Audit+: one-off, no contract, and if you hand us the ads afterwards the £999 comes off your first three months. If we find nothing worth fixing, we will say so in writing.

Frequently asked questions

How much do PPC agencies charge in the UK?

Published UK estimates put boutique retainers at £500 to £1,500 a month, mid-market at £1,500 to £4,000, and enterprise at £4,000 to £10,000 or more. Percentage models usually sit between 10% and 20% of spend for SMEs. Always confirm what the fee includes.

What is a PPC agency?

A company that plans, builds and manages paid search and paid social campaigns (Google Ads, Google Shopping, Meta, Amazon) on your behalf, usually for a monthly fee on top of what you pay the platforms.

Do I need a PPC agency?

Not always. Under about £2,000 a month of spend, an audit and some training often beat a retainer. Above that, the question is whether anyone in-house has the hours to read search terms and test tracking every week. If not, a good agency pays for itself; a bad one is a second budget leak.

How do I choose a good PPC agency?

Ask for the first ninety days as a task list, ask how they verify conversions against real orders, ask who owns the account and the negative keyword lists, and ask for a client you can call. Then compare the fee per task, not the headline number.

Sources

1. Agency Cost Calculator, PPC agency costs UK, pricing data reviewed 9 October 2026, checked 12 October 2026.
2. Credo, Digital Marketing Pricing Survey: PPC pricing, last updated 28 June 2022, checked 12 October 2026.
3. Google, Google Ads bidding and budgets, checked 12 October 2026.
4. Yomp Media, Ecommerce PPC agency and QC Beauty case study, checked 12 October 2026.