Your Quality Score ispricing every click.
Google rewards a relevant ad with a cheaper click and taxes an irrelevant one. This calculator takes your current CPC and Quality Score, strips out the discount you're already getting, then shows what each click would cost at a target score — and how much that swing is worth across a month of traffic.
Your numbers
What you pay per click right now. We assume this already reflects your current Quality Score.
Your keyword's 1–10 Quality Score, straight from the Google Ads column.
The score you're aiming for. Each point up is a real discount on every click.
Roughly how many clicks this keyword (or account) buys in a month.
The verdict
CPC at QS 8
$1.89
Monthly saving
$5,550
Saving per click
$1.11
CPC change
-37.0%
Negative means a cheaper click.
CPC at each score
Reverse-solve · price a click at any score
CPC at QS 10
$1.50
vs. now
$-1.50
At a Quality Score of 10, each click would cost $1.50 — $1.50 less than the $3.00 you pay now. The neutral price Google charges at a score of 5 is $3.00.
Sensitivity · the full QS price ladder
Every score, every CPC
| Quality Score | CPC multiplier | CPC per click | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| QS 10 | -50% | $1.50 | $7,500 |
| QS 9 | -44% | $1.68 | $8,400 |
| QS 8 | -37% | $1.89 | $9,450 |
| QS 7 | -29% | $2.13 | $10,650 |
| QS 6 | -17% | $2.49 | $12,450 |
| QS 5 | +0% | $3.00 | $15,000 |
| QS 4 | +25% | $3.75 | $18,750 |
| QS 3 | +67% | $5.01 | $25,050 |
| QS 2 | +150% | $7.50 | $37,500 |
| QS 1 | +400% | $15 | $75,000 |
Multipliers are vs. a neutral Quality Score of 5. Your base CPC at that neutral score is $3.00; everything above it is the discount or surcharge Google applies. Moving from QS 5 to QS 8 reprices 5,000 clicks/month by -37.0%.
Your move
Found the discount you're leaving on the table?
Lifting Quality Score 5 → 8 drops CPC from $3.00 to $1.89 — saving $5,550/mo across 5,000 clicks.
Quality Score money is the easiest spend to win back, because you don't have to pay more — you have to be more relevant. Send me the account and I'll show you which keywords are bleeding on a low score, what's dragging each one down, and the restructure I'd run to claw the CPC back. Free, and the plan is yours either way.
Plain English
Quality Score is a discount, not a vanity metric.
Quality Score is Google's 1–10 rating of how relevant your keyword, ad, and landing page are to a searcher. It looks like a report card, so most advertisers treat it like one: glance at it, feel good or bad, move on. That misreads what it actually is. Quality Score is a price control. It directly sets how much you pay for every single click.
Google runs the auction on Ad Rank, which folds your bid together with your Quality Score. A high score lets you win the same position at a lower bid, so your actual cost-per-click drops. A low score forces you to overbid just to show up. Against a neutral score of 5, a 10 cuts your CPC roughly in half, while a 1 can multiply it fivefold for the identical click.
That's the trap in your CPC report: the number you see already bakes in whatever discount or penalty your current score is handing you. This calculator reverse-engineers the base price Google would charge at a neutral score, then reprices every click at your target — so you see the real money a Quality Score move puts back in your account, not a vague promise that 'relevance helps.'
The formula
CPC at QS = base CPC × (1 + multiplier(QS)) · multiplier vs. a QS of 5
You pay $3.00 at a Quality Score of 5 (the neutral point, multiplier 0), so your base CPC is $3.00. Lift the score to 8 (multiplier −37%) and the same click costs $3.00 × 0.63 = $1.89 — a $1.11 saving. Across 5,000 clicks a month that's $5,550 you stop handing to the auction for nothing.
What each Quality Score costs you
Google prices clicks off a neutral Quality Score of 5. Every point above it discounts your CPC; every point below it adds a surcharge. Here's the published multiplier at each score — the exact tax or rebate baked into your bid:
| Quality Score | CPC vs. a QS of 5 |
|---|---|
| QS 10 | -50% |
| QS 9 | -44% |
| QS 8 | -37% |
| QS 7 | -29% |
| QS 6 | -17% |
| QS 5 | +0% |
| QS 4 | +25% |
| QS 3 | +67% |
| QS 2 | +150% |
| QS 1 | +400% |
Source: Store Growers / WordStream Quality Score CPC impact · 2025
Your Quality Score is low. Here's the lever.
Score stuck at 3–4 across the account.
This is almost always relevance, not bidding. Your ad text doesn't echo the keyword and your landing page doesn't either. Tighten ad groups so one tight theme maps to one ad to one matching page, and the score climbs fast.
Expected CTR is the weak component.
Google thinks your ad won't get clicked. Put the exact search term in the headline, lead with the benefit, and use every extension. CTR is the single heaviest input to Quality Score — fix it first.
Landing page experience is 'below average'.
The click lands somewhere slow, generic, or off-message. Send the ad to a page that matches its promise word for word, speed it up, and make the next step obvious. This component quietly drags the whole score.
Ad relevance is the flag.
Your keyword and your ad copy don't talk to each other. Split broad ad groups apart so each keyword theme gets ad copy written for it specifically, instead of one generic ad covering everything.
How to buy a cheaper click
01One theme per ad group
Tight, single-intent ad groups let your ad and page mirror the keyword exactly. Relevance is the whole game, and tight structure is how you win it.
02Put the keyword in the headline
Mirroring the search term lifts expected CTR, the heaviest Quality Score input. The searcher sees their own words and clicks.
03Match the landing page to the ad
The page should keep the promise the ad made, in the same language. A mismatch tanks landing-page experience and your score with it.
04Speed up the page
Slow pages drag landing-page experience down. Compress images, cut scripts, and get the load under a couple of seconds.
05Mine search terms weekly
Add negatives for irrelevant queries. Stopping wasted impressions on bad searches protects your CTR, which protects your score.
06Use every relevant extension
Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets raise CTR and Ad Rank at no extra cost — free fuel for Quality Score.
07Pause the dead weight
A few QS-1 and QS-2 keywords poison an account's average and drain budget. Cut or rebuild them rather than overbidding to keep them alive.
08Write for the click, not the impression
A specific, benefit-led ad earns clicks; a vague one earns ignored impressions that erode expected CTR over time.
The vocabulary
- Quality Score
- Google's 1–10 estimate of how relevant your keyword, ad, and landing page are to the searcher. It directly discounts or inflates your CPC.
- CPC
- Cost per click: what you actually pay each time someone clicks your ad. Quality Score is one of the biggest levers on it.
- Ad Rank
- The auction score that decides your position: roughly your bid multiplied by your Quality Score. A higher score wins the same spot for a lower bid.
- Expected CTR
- Google's prediction of how likely your ad is to be clicked. The single heaviest component of Quality Score.
- Ad relevance
- How closely your ad text matches the intent of the keyword. A Quality Score component you control through ad-group structure.
- Landing page experience
- Google's read on whether the page is relevant, fast, and transparent. A weak page silently caps your Quality Score.
Quality Score questions, straight answers
A lot. Against a neutral Quality Score of 5, a score of 10 cuts your cost-per-click by about 50%, while a score of 1 can multiply it by 5×. Each point you climb from a low score is a double-digit percentage discount on every click, which is why Quality Score is the cheapest lever in the account.
Keep going
A calculator tells you what. A call tells you what to do about it.
Send me the account behind these numbers. I'll tell you straight where the money's leaking and what I'd fix first — free, and you keep it whether you hire me or not.