How much do ChatGPT ads cost? Pricing, bids and minimum budgets

Published 21 September 2026 · Updated 21 September 2026 · Based on the OpenAI Ads documentation and live API checks

ChatGPT ads have no fixed price. You pay per click or per impression, at a price set in an auction each time an ad can show, capped by the budget you choose and, with a fixed bid, by your bid. What you control exactly is the floor and the ceiling: the minimum daily budget, how far a day can overshoot it, and the most you will pay. This guide explains each one, with the arithmetic to work out a bid you can afford and no benchmark numbers OpenAI has not published.

Is there a price list for ChatGPT ads?

No. OpenAI does not publish a rate card or typical costs. Each time an ad can show, an auction decides which ad appears and what it costs; your bid, or OpenAI's when you choose a maximise strategy, is what you offer. OpenAI's own documentation says that the auction determines the actual cost per click.

That is why the figures quoted for ChatGPT ads vary so widely: they come from other advertisers' auctions, in other markets, categories and months. The price you meet depends on the competition for the same conversations and on the bid you set. Treat any published figure as an anecdote until your own account confirms it, and plan your first weeks as a paid test rather than a known cost.

What do you pay for: clicks, impressions or conversions?

Clicks or impressions. Every campaign has a billing event, click or impression, and you are charged each time it happens. You never pay per conversion: even when a campaign optimises for conversions, the charge is a click or an impression, and a CPA figure you enter is a steering input, not a price.

Since 16 September 2026, conversion optimisation billed per impression is generally available, and OpenAI calls it its recommended model for performance: delivery aims at conversions from both ad clicks and ad views, while you pay for impressions. It needs a standard conversion event, such as order_created or lead_created, measured by the pixel or the Conversions API. Without one, a clicks objective is the simpler start. Bidding on impressions is also among the capabilities OpenAI enables per account.

What is the minimum budget for ChatGPT ads?

It depends on the account currency. On a EUR account, the daily campaign minimum is EUR 15.00, written in the API as 15,000,000 micros, and a lower budget is refused with an error that names the minimum. Other currencies have their own minimum, which OpenAI does not list, so that error message is the reliable source.

The form and the rule can disagree. When we checked in September 2026, Ads Manager showed only a low-budget warning at EUR 5.00, while the API refused anything under EUR 15.00, so a form that lets a budget through is not proof that it will be accepted. Bids have limits of their own: OpenAI says bid limits and permitted precision depend on the account currency and the campaign objective, but does not publish the figures. Separately, the platform can flag a bid as likely too low for reliable delivery; that flag is guidance, not a block, so an ad with a low bid can still serve, only less.

How much can a ChatGPT ads campaign spend in one day?

Up to twice its daily budget. Ads Manager treats a daily budget as the average daily amount: the most it spends on any single day is 2x the daily budget, and the most over seven days is 7x. A campaign with a EUR 50 daily budget can spend EUR 100 on one day and EUR 350 across a week.

The practical consequence: plan cash flow and any account-wide cap against the 2x day and the 7x week, not the daily figure. If several campaigns share an account, add up their daily budgets and double the total to find a realistic worst day.

How do bids work in ChatGPT ads?

Either you set a maximum bid, or OpenAI bids for you. A fixed bid, shown as Manual: Max CPC in Ads Manager, is the most you will pay per click or per impression and works with daily or lifetime budgets. Maximise clicks and maximise conversions, shown as Maximize results, let OpenAI set bids within a daily budget, with no bid cap.

Bids are entered in the account currency and stored in micros, a millionth of the currency unit, so EUR 0.80 is 800,000 micros. One trap for anyone used to other platforms: an impression bid is per impression, not per thousand. If you think in CPM, divide by 1,000 first, so a EUR 5.00 CPM becomes a bid of EUR 0.005, or 5,000 micros. With a manual bid, Ads Manager shows an indicator of how competitive the bid is for the ad group; it has no equivalent in the API and says nothing about profitability.

The maximise strategies are simpler, but they give up two controls: nothing caps what a single click or impression may cost, and they only run on daily budgets. The platform has no target CPA or target ROAS setting either, so if you need to hold a cost per acquisition, you do it yourself, with a fixed bid you adjust or with rules that watch the numbers. Audience bid multipliers exist only for fixed-bid ad groups. The strategies in depth: budgets, pacing and bidding.

How do you cap total spend on ChatGPT ads?

At two levels. Each campaign has a daily or a lifetime budget, never both. Above that, an account can have spend limit windows, up to 60 non-overlapping periods, each with its own limit across every campaign, and postpaid invoice accounts can set a daily account-wide limit. OpenAI enables spend limit windows per account.

Choose by what you need to guarantee. A lifetime budget with a fixed bid and an end date gives one campaign a spending ceiling, which suits a test with a fixed amount. A spend limit window gives the whole account a ceiling for a period, such as a calendar month, whatever the individual campaigns do. An account limit does not divide money between campaigns: a campaign can still have budget left when the account limit is exhausted, and then it simply stops serving. There is no monthly budget field on a campaign.

How do you work out what you can afford to pay per click?

Start from what a conversion is worth to you. Your break-even cost per acquisition is the margin you keep on one conversion. Multiply it by the conversion rate of the page the ad sends people to, and you have the most you can pay per click and still break even. For impression billing, multiply that by your click-through rate and by 1,000 to get a break-even CPM.

As an illustration only, with made-up round numbers for a fictional shop: an average order of EUR 60 at a 40% gross margin leaves EUR 24, so EUR 24 is the break-even cost per acquisition. If 2% of visitors from the ad buy, the break-even cost per click is EUR 24 × 0.02 = EUR 0.48. If 1% of people who see the ad click, the break-even CPM is EUR 0.48 × 0.01 × 1,000 = EUR 4.80, a bid of EUR 0.0048 per impression.

Bid below break-even while you learn, and replace the illustration with your own figures as soon as you have them, since visitors from a new channel may convert differently from your average. For a service business, use the value of a lead instead of an order margin: the share of leads that become customers, multiplied by what a customer is worth to you.

How much should you budget for a first test?

Size it from the result you need, not from a round number. Multiply the number of conversions you want to see by the cost per conversion you are willing to accept while learning, then check the daily amount against the minimum and the 2x daily swing. Run it for at least a full week, so weekdays and weekends both count.

As an illustration only: 20 conversions at up to EUR 40 each needs roughly EUR 800. Spread over four weeks, that is about EUR 29 a day, above the EUR 15.00 minimum, with single days of up to about EUR 57 possible under the 2x rule. The full method, with holdouts and decision rules, is in how to test ChatGPT ads.

What else does running ChatGPT ads cost?

Mostly time. OpenAI charges for the clicks or impressions you buy; the rest of the cost is the work around them: conversion tracking, creative, a product feed if you sell products, and someone checking the account every day, since the platform sends no notifications.

If you use a management tool, add its fee. Adsonomy is free until 15 October 2026, then plans start at EUR 49 a month. In its Control edition you run the account with rules; in Autopilot, Nomy, its AI manager, makes changes within the guardrails and policy you set. With Adsonomy, the media spend is billed by OpenAI to the payment method on your own ad account. The whole process, from account to optimisation, is in how to run ads on ChatGPT.

Sources

OpenAI's own documentation, checked on the date this guide was last updated. The EUR minimum and the Ads Manager warning come from our own live checks in September 2026:

• OpenAI Ads: bidding and budgets
• OpenAI Ads: conversion-optimized campaigns
• OpenAI Ads: troubleshooting (bid too low)
• OpenAI Ads API quickstart

Frequently asked questions