Real CPM, cost per click and cost per sale or lead from Meta ad accounts by business category, November 2025 to October 2026. This is what these accounts paid, not an India-wide average.
By Piyush SachdevaIn one e-commerce business, traffic campaigns bought clicks about 6 times cheaper than sales campaigns, but each sale cost about 8 times more. A second ad account for the same business showed the same pattern, at about 10 times and 8 times.
One online education business ran sales campaigns in both places. Attention cost about twice as much in the Middle East, and each sale cost about 3 times as much. Foreign benchmarks tell you little about an Indian budget.
Both were buying sales from people in India on the same platform. This compares different businesses, so it shows the size of the gap, not its cause: price, audience and offer all differ.
November 2025 to October 2026, or the part of it each account was active. All rows are in rupees as billed.
| Category | Campaigns | Period | CPM | Cost per click | Cost per result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale e-commerce | Sales | 12 months | ₹66 | ₹1.25 | ₹86 per sale |
| Wholesale e-commerce | Traffic | 12 months | ₹15 | ₹0.22 | ₹702 per sale |
| Online education | Sales, India | 12 months | ₹125 | ₹15.10 | ₹857 per sale |
| Online education | Sales, Middle East | 12 months | ₹259 | ₹30.73 | ₹2,624 per sale |
| Online education | Leads, online batch | 12 months | ₹78 | ₹6.70 | ₹52 per lead |
| Online education | Leads, offline batch | 12 months | ₹38 | ₹8.47 | ₹398 per lead |
| Marketing course | Sales | 2 months | ₹145 | ₹11.34 | ₹1,233 per sale |
| Coaching and consulting | Sales | 4 active months | ₹288 | ₹13.27 | ₹3,081 per sale |
| Education admissions | Leads, instant form | 3 months | ₹54 | ₹6.82 | ₹101 per lead |
| Non-profit | Clicks and reach | 3 active months | ₹22 | ₹2.31 | n/a |
Put your own price and costs into the free calculator, with GST counted in.
No. It is what a small group of real accounts paid over this period, not a survey of the market. Use it to understand the range and what drives it, then test in your own account.
What is being sold, who it is sold to and the campaign goal all change it. In the data above, the same business paid ₹0.22 per click on traffic campaigns and ₹1.25 on sales campaigns.
One that leaves you a profit, which depends on your price and costs, not on a benchmark. The ad profit calculator works out the most you can pay per sale for your own product.
They use spend as reported in Meta Ads Manager. If you can't claim GST on your ad spend, add it to your own budget planning.
Yes, please do, with credit and a link to this page. There is a ready-made citation and a CSV download on this page.
You're welcome to. Please credit them like this, with a link:
Piyush Sachdeva, "India Meta Ads Cost Report", Social Masla, November 2026. https://socialmasla.com/india-meta-ads-costs/