Most Australian agencies charge $800 to $5,000 a month, or 10% to 20% of whatever you spend on ads, and another $750 to $2,000 to set it up. We charge $750 a month and $650 once to set it up, both plus GST. This page shows you where that sits, and how we know.
Collected July 2026 from five published Australian sources, three of them agency pricing guides. Australian dollars. Our prices are plus GST, and the market figures are as each source stated them. Next review March 2027.
Try finding out what an agency charges without booking a call. Most of the time you cannot, which is the whole reason this page exists. A handful of Australian agencies do write their numbers down, so we read those and put them in one place.
Everything in the table came from five published Australian sources collected in July 2026, three of them agency pricing guides. We keep a record of which number came from where.
We have not named them. This is our page, not theirs. If you want the list so you can go and check us, ask and we will send it over.
| What | The going rate in Australia |
|---|---|
| Flat monthly management, agency | $800 to $5,000+ a month |
| By tier | Basic monitoring $400 to $600. Standard small business $800 to $1,500. Professional $1,500 to $2,500. Enterprise $3,000 to $5,000+ |
| Flat monthly, freelancer | $800 to $2,500 |
| Percentage of ad spend | 10% to 20%, often tiered: 20% on small budgets falling toward 10% as spend grows |
| A worked example | At a published 20% plus GST: $2,500 of spend is a $500 fee, $5,000 is $1,000, $10,000 is $2,000 |
| Setup, once | $750 to $2,000 agency, $500 to $1,500 freelancer |
| Contracts | The market has "shifted strongly toward no lock-in contracts", but some agencies still ask for three months to start |
| Minimum ad spend | $1,000 to $2,000 a month for most small businesses. Below $500 the data accumulates too slowly to optimise against |
| Click prices | Up 31% January to May 2026, the steepest on record, and up 21% year on year while search demand fell 23% |
Two of those rows are worth sitting with. Clicks cost 21% more than they did a year ago while fewer people are searching, which means the same budget buys less and the gap between a campaign that is run properly and one that is left alone gets wider every month. And the $400 to $600 band is what the guides call basic monitoring, not management. That is the floor, and it is not the same product.
Our number is on the page because you should be able to work out whether you can afford us without giving anyone your phone number first. Here it is, against the ranges above.
| What you are comparing | Hartwell Digital | The market |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly management | $750 + GST, flat | $800 to $5,000, or 10% to 20% of spend |
| Setup, once | $650 + GST | $750 to $2,000 |
| When your spend grows | The fee stays where it is | On a 20% fee, $5,000 of spend costs $1,000 a month to manage |
| Contract | None, month to month | Often three months to start |
| Who owns the ad account | You do, and you keep it | Sometimes the agency, and you can be locked out |
| Who your ad spend goes to | Google, on your own card | Often paid through the agency |
The honest reading: we are cheap for an agency, and priced about where a good freelancer sits. The difference is that a freelancer is one person who is good at one thing, and when they are on holiday your ads are on holiday. We are not the cheapest in Australia and we are not trying to be. What the flat fee actually buys you is knowing the number. At $5,000 of monthly spend a 20% fee is $1,000 a month against our $750. At $10,000 it is $2,000 against $750.
To be fair to everyone else: charging a percentage is a normal model, not a rort. At bigger spends it often does pay for more people on the account. It just means your agency earns more when you spend more, and you ought to know that is how it works before you sign anything.
None of which matters if the campaign does not work, and a cheap fee on a bad campaign is still money gone. The last account we rebuilt went from $27.17 an enquiry to $16.61 across two months. That is the number to judge us on, not this page.
The numbers behind that are on the work page, and what the management actually involves is on the Google Ads page.
Australian agencies generally charge $800 to $5,000 a month as a flat management fee, or 10% to 20% of your ad spend. By tier: basic monitoring runs $400 to $600 a month, standard small business management $800 to $1,500, professional $1,500 to $2,500, and enterprise $3,000 to $5,000 or more. Freelancers sit at $800 to $2,500. We charge a flat $750 a month plus GST, with a one-off $650 setup.
A flat fee costs you less as your spend grows and a percentage fee costs you more. On a 20% fee, $2,500 of monthly ad spend costs $500 to manage, $5,000 costs $1,000 and $10,000 costs $2,000. A flat $750 is still $750 at all three. Percentage pricing is a normal model and at bigger spends it often does pay for more work, but it does mean the agency earns more when you spend more. A flat fee does not have that pull in it.
The published guidance for Australian small businesses is $1,000 to $2,000 a month in ad spend as a working minimum, and below about $500 a month the data comes in too slowly to learn anything from. Our own suggestion is $1,500 to $3,000 if you can manage it. Australian click prices rose about 31% between January and May 2026 and about 21% year on year, so a budget that worked in 2024 does not go as far now.
Australian agencies typically charge $750 to $2,000 as a one-off setup or onboarding fee, and freelancers $500 to $1,500. We charge $650 plus GST, once. That fee covers keyword research, campaign structure, writing the ads and getting conversion tracking working, which all has to happen before a single ad runs.
You do not have to. The Australian market has shifted strongly toward no lock-in contracts, though some agencies still ask for three months to start. A minimum term is fair enough for the first 60 to 90 days, because that is genuinely how long a new campaign takes to gather data, but it should be explained to you rather than buried in a PDF. We work month to month with no minimum.
You should. The Google Ads, Analytics, Tag Manager and call tracking accounts should all be in your business name, with the agency holding access rather than owning them. An agency that owns the account can lock you out of it, and you lose the campaign history and audience data that make advertising cheaper over time. Ask before you sign, not after.
Not necessarily, but the number does buy something. The published tiers call $400 to $600 a month basic monitoring rather than active management, and $3,000 and up is what the guides label enterprise. The question worth asking is not the fee on its own but what it buys, and how much of your total budget it eats. A $750 fee on top of $1,500 of ad spend is a third of your total monthly cost, which is worth thinking about.
Send us your website and roughly what you spend. Within two working days you get an email naming the three things costing you the most. No call, no pitch, no cost.
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