Facebook / Meta Ads Budget Calculator with iOS 14 reality
Pick your campaign objective to load realistic CPM, CTR, and conversion-rate defaults for Instant Lead Forms, Conversions, Traffic, e-commerce, or app installs. Set a goal to back-solve the budget, or set a budget to forecast results — with an iOS 14 attribution sanity check on every projection.
The Meta auction math chain
CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 10)
CPL = CPC ÷ CVR
Monthly budget = Target leads × CPL
Example: CPM €12, CTR 1.4%, CVR 35% → CPC €0.86 → CPL €2.45 → 200 leads = €489 / month on lead forms.
Plan your Facebook / Meta spend
Pick your campaign objective to load realistic CPM, CTR, and CVR defaults — then back-solve budget or forecast leads.
Defaults are blended Meta benchmarks — override below with your account's real numbers.
Cost per 1,000 impressions.
Click-through rate.
Click → form submit.
How many conversions you need from Meta each month.
Unlock CAC + ROAS (optional)Add close rate + deal size →
% of conversions that become paying customers.
Revenue per closed customer.
All math runs in your browser. We never store your numbers.
Daily forecast
Daily spend
16 €
Impr./day
1,361
Clicks/day
19
Leads/day
6.7
What-if scenarios
Meta's auction punishes scaling beyond ~30% week-over-week. Scale aggressive scenarios across multiple weeks, not all at once.
Meta budgets break for two reasons — never just one
Most Meta campaigns miss budget for a media reason and a measurement reason at the same time. Media — your CPM is up because creative is fatigued or audiences are saturated. Measurement — Meta lost the conversion signal because Conversions API isn't set up, and the algorithm is now optimizing on a sample where most winners look like losers. The forecast you make here is right; the dashboard you grade it against is wrong.
That's why a budget calculator on Meta is double-edged. The math projects what the campaign should do. Ads Manager shows what Meta could see. The gap between those two — typically 30–50% post-iOS 14 — is the difference between a campaign you trust and one you defund prematurely. Run the calculator first, then set up Conversions API before you grade anything against it.
The secondary trap is objective drift. Lead Form CPL looks great because the form is one tap inside Meta. Then you measure close rate on those leads and find out 70% of them never wanted what you sold. Always close the loop with a close-rate input — CPL × close rate = CAC, and CAC is the only number the business actually feels.
Meta defaults by objective
- Instant lead form€12 CPM · 35% CVR
- Conversions (LP form)€14 CPM · 8% CVR
- Traffic / awareness€8 CPM · 5% CVR
- E-commerce purchase€13 CPM · 2.5% CVR
- App installs€9 CPM · 12% CVR
Numbers are blended European medians. CTR sits between 1.0% and 1.5% across all five — placements (Feed / Reels / Stories) shift it ±20%.
Get accurate Meta trackingFrequently asked questions
How do I calculate a Facebook / Meta Ads budget?
Meta auctions on impressions, so the math chain is: CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 10), CPL = CPC ÷ Conversion rate, Monthly budget = Target leads × CPL. Reverse it to forecast: Expected leads = Budget × CTR × Conversion rate ÷ (CPM ÷ 1,000). Both directions are wrapped into this calculator — pick a mode, the formula runs in the right direction.
How much should I spend on Facebook / Meta Ads?
Spend up to your maximum acceptable CAC, not a fixed number. Calculate it: take your customer LTV (or first-purchase profit if you can't measure LTV yet), decide the % you'll allocate to growth, and that's your max CAC. Back-solve max CPL, max CPC, and required spend. A typical B2B account with 200 lead-form fills per month at €15 CPL = €3,000/mo; that's the floor. Above the floor you scale until CAC hits its ceiling — usually around 2–3× spend before efficiency degrades.
What's a typical Facebook / Meta CPM, CTR, and CVR?
CPM €6–€18, CTR 0.9–1.5%, conversion rates depend heavily on objective: Instant Lead Forms convert at 30–50% (users never leave Meta), Conversions-to-LP at 5–10%, e-commerce 2–4%, traffic objective 3–5%. Lead forms feel cheap on CPL but the leads are usually 2–3× lower quality than LP leads — pair the budget calculator with a close-rate input to see the real CAC.
Should I use Lead Forms or send traffic to a landing page?
Lead Forms have higher CVR (low friction, mobile-native, autofill from Meta profile) but lower lead quality (frictionless = unqualified). Landing pages have lower CVR but higher quality (people who fill in the form actually want what you're selling). Run this calculator twice: once with Lead Form defaults, once with Conversions defaults. Compare CPL × close rate = CAC. The higher-CAC channel by lead quality usually wins, even when the CPL looks worse.
What's the daily vs monthly budget on Meta?
Meta runs on daily budgets — divide your monthly figure by 30. Meta can spend up to 25% above a daily budget on a high-traffic day but evens out over time. For lifetime budgets (campaigns with a fixed end date), Meta optimizes more aggressively for early performance, which can backfire if your creative needs a few days to find its audience. Daily budgets are usually safer for steady-state campaigns; lifetime is better for promotions with deadlines.
Why does my actual CPL look much higher than this estimate?
Two reasons stack: (1) the calculator's CPM/CTR/CVR defaults are blended medians — your account's real numbers depend on creative quality, audience, and offer-market fit. New accounts often see CPM 30–50% higher in the first 60 days while the algorithm calibrates. (2) Tracking gaps. Meta misses 30–50% of conversions post-iOS 14, so reported CPL looks 50–100% higher than reality. The leads happened — Meta just didn't see them. Without Conversions API, both your reporting and your auto-bidder are blind.
Does this calculator work for Instagram Ads too?
Yes — Instagram is a placement inside Meta Ads Manager, not a separate platform. CPM and CTR shift slightly between Feed, Reels, and Stories (Reels usually has cheapest CPM but lowest CVR; Feed has highest CVR but priciest CPM), but the overall math is identical. If you're running placement-specific campaigns, run the calculator once per placement with that placement's CPM and CTR.
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