Median Google Ads cost per click across 6 service industries in the United States, paired with search volume, organic difficulty and search intent. Pulled from live keyword data, not from a survey and not from memory.
Two things this table is for. If you are buying clicks, it tells you whether the price you are paying is normal for your industry or a symptom of something broken. If you are deciding where to put budget, it tells you what a lead has to be worth before paid search makes sense at all.
The legal figures are the ones people misread. A truck accident attorney paying $396.15 per click is not being overcharged. A single case can be worth six figures, so the maths still works. The same click price in a business with a $400 average job would be ruinous. Cost per click means nothing without the value of what it buys.
Source. Live keyword data for the United States market, English language, pulled on 2026-08-15. Cost per click is the average paid by advertisers, not a bid estimate.
Organic difficulty is a 0 to 100 score of how hard the term is to rank for without paying. It is a separate measure from advertiser competition, which is what most published benchmarks report and which says nothing about ranking.
Intent is classified as commercial, transactional, informational or navigational. It matters more than volume: a high volume term with navigational intent is people looking for a specific brand, not people looking to buy.
Limits. These are national medians. Costs in a dense metro run above them and rural markets below. Keywords with no reported volume were excluded rather than shown as zero.
Reuse. These figures are free to cite or reproduce with attribution to Diwizi and a link to this page.
Median cost per click in this group: $163.25. Highest: truck accident attorney at $396.15.
| Keyword | CPC | Monthly searches | Organic difficulty | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| truck accident attorney | $396.15 | 60,500 | 14 | Commercial |
| car accident lawyer | $228.18 | 201,000 | 37 | Commercial |
| personal injury lawyer | $163.25 | 201,000 | 28 | Commercial |
| workers compensation lawyer | $101.84 | 165,000 | 8 | Informational |
| criminal defense attorney | $51.06 | 74,000 | 57 | Commercial |
| divorce lawyer | $30.25 | 201,000 | 38 | Commercial |
Median cost per click in this group: $49.92. Highest: payroll software at $138.03.
| Keyword | CPC | Monthly searches | Organic difficulty | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| payroll software | $138.03 | 33,100 | 41 | Commercial |
| hr software | $115.39 | 12,100 | 17 | Commercial |
| marketing automation software | $49.92 | 2,400 | 48 | Commercial |
| project management software | $49.70 | 135,000 | 51 | Commercial |
| crm software | $43.98 | 165,000 | 56 | Commercial |
Median cost per click in this group: $32.44. Highest: emergency plumber at $74.51.
| Keyword | CPC | Monthly searches | Organic difficulty | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| emergency plumber | $74.51 | 60,500 | 0 | Transactional |
| air conditioning repair | $43.74 | 368,000 | 0 | Commercial |
| plumber near me | $36.62 | 823,000 | 19 | Commercial |
| hvac repair | $32.44 | 60,500 | 39 | Commercial |
| water heater replacement | $30.57 | 49,500 | 13 | Transactional |
| hvac installation | $23.56 | 22,200 | 14 | Commercial |
| furnace repair | $23.06 | 201,000 | 9 | Commercial |
| drain cleaning | $15.02 | 90,500 | 0 | Commercial |
Median cost per click in this group: $26.16. Highest: garage door repair at $51.67.
| Keyword | CPC | Monthly searches | Organic difficulty | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| garage door repair | $51.67 | 246,000 | 46 | Commercial |
| pest control near me | $31.51 | 201,000 | 40 | Commercial |
| solar panel installation | $26.16 | 90,500 | 20 | Commercial |
| roof replacement | $26.01 | 33,100 | 48 | Commercial |
| roofing contractor | $19.44 | 135,000 | 68 | Commercial |
| house cleaning services | $12.10 | 90,500 | 26 | Commercial |
Median cost per click in this group: $15.17. Highest: all on 4 dental implants at $27.55.
| Keyword | CPC | Monthly searches | Organic difficulty | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| all on 4 dental implants | $27.55 | 27,100 | 3 | Informational |
| dental implants | $23.37 | 165,000 | 44 | Transactional |
| cosmetic dentistry | $15.17 | 90,500 | 44 | Informational |
| dentist near me | $13.35 | 1,830,000 | 49 | Commercial |
| invisalign | $10.53 | 368,000 | 43 | Transactional |
| teeth whitening | $5.42 | 165,000 | 70 | Informational |
Median cost per click in this group: $9.51. Highest: home care services at $13.95.
| Keyword | CPC | Monthly searches | Organic difficulty | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| home care services | $13.95 | 201,000 | 57 | Commercial |
| assisted living near me | $12.91 | 165,000 | 31 | Commercial |
| chiropractor near me | $9.51 | 673,000 | 20 | Commercial |
| medical spa | $6.07 | 135,000 | 35 | Commercial |
| urgent care near me | $3.88 | 4,090,000 | 38 | Commercial |
If your cost per click sits near the median for your industry, the account is priced normally and any problem you have is downstream: which searches you show for, where you show, and whether you can tell a lead from a booked job.
If it sits well above, three causes account for almost all of it. You are bidding on broader terms than you think, you are competing in a metro that carries a premium the national median hides, or your quality signals are weak enough that you pay more than competitors for the same position.
If it sits well below, that is not automatically good news. Cheap clicks in an expensive industry usually mean you are winning the searches nobody else wants.
Two things are worth comparing these figures against, because a cost per click only means something next to what you pay to have the account run.
If you want that read done on your own account rather than estimated from a table, the audit is a fixed scope piece of work and the findings are yours either way.