CTR Calculator (Click-Through Rate)

The formula, three ways round

One equation links clicks, impressions and CTR. If you know two of them you can find the third. Each row below can be checked on a phone calculator.

Google's own CTR definition uses the same arithmetic, with 5 clicks on 100 impressions giving a 5% CTR. Two more numbers come out of the same division. Clicks per 1,000 impressions is the ratio times 1,000: 0.03 × 1,000 = 30. Impressions per click is the ratio flipped: 4,000 ÷ 120 = 33.3, so roughly one impression in 33 produced a click.

When you solve for clicks, round up rather than to the nearest whole number. At 1,234 impressions, a 3.3% target works out to 40.72 clicks. Forty clicks would land at 3.24%, which misses, so the calculator says 41.

How sure is a 3% CTR?

The same CTR means more on a big sample than on a small one. Every row below is a 3% CTR; only the number of impressions changes. The 95% range is the Wilson interval the calculator shows as its likely range.

At 3 clicks on 100 impressions the range runs from 1.03% to 8.45%. At 3,000 clicks on 100,000 impressions it narrows to 2.90% to 3.11%, and each tenfold rise in impressions makes the range roughly a third as wide.

Google and Meta count the click differently

Both platforms divide by impressions, each counted by its own rules. Google counts an impression each time your ad is shown on a results page or another site in the Google Network. The numerator is where they split, and Meta reports two different CTRs.

Because clicks (all) includes link clicks, CTR (all) is normally the higher of Meta's two numbers, sometimes by a lot on a post that draws comments. They are different metrics. Don't compare one with the other, and don't compare either with a Google Search CTR. If your question is how many people headed for your site, put link clicks into the calculator, not clicks (all). Our CTR vs link clicks page compares the rate with the raw count, and CTR vs outbound clicks covers the narrower count of clicks that actually leave Meta.

What is a good CTR?

It depends on the placement and on how much the viewer wanted what you sell. Google's help page puts it plainly: “a good CTR is relative to what you're advertising and on which networks.” A searcher typed a query that your ad answered. A feed viewer was scrolling past. Their click rates aren't comparable.

The most recent dated figures we could check cover search ads only. WordStream's 2026 benchmarks (updated May 19, 2026) and the LocaliQ copy of the same data (updated June 1, 2026) give 6.64% across industries. Selected rows, last verified 2026-10-05:

Search ads (Google Ads and Microsoft Ads), median CTR by industry, April 2025 to March 2026.

Read the table with four caveats. The first three come from WordStream's own report:

• “Average” here means median. WordStream says its averages are technically medians, used to dampen outliers. Don't compare them with a mean from another report.
• The sample is 13,474 US search campaigns that ran from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026, with at least 52 campaigns in each category.
• The campaigns belong to WordStream and LocaliQ customers, and Google Ads and Microsoft Ads are pooled. The report credits its own platform for stable CTRs, so the sample may run above the wider market.
• It covers search ads only, so it tells you nothing about display ads or social feed ads such as Meta's.

There is no Meta benchmark on this page. We didn't find a Meta CTR figure with a published method and date that we could check, so we won't print one. Some calculator pages still give about 1.9% as the average search-ad CTR without naming a source. WordStream's first report, in 2016, put search CTR at 1.91%. We can't confirm that is where the 1.9% comes from, but a ten-year-old number is a poor yardstick either way. The best benchmark is your own CTR on the same placement over time.

Seven ways CTR gets misread

1. Averaging CTRs across campaigns. Campaign A gets 10 clicks on 100 impressions (10%). Campaign B gets 100 clicks on 10,000 impressions (1%). The average of the two rates is 5.50%. The real combined CTR is 110 ÷ 10,100 = 1.09%. Add up clicks and impressions first, then divide once.
2. Trusting a rate built on a handful of impressions. 2 clicks on 40 impressions reads as 5%, but the calculator's likely range for it is 1.38% to 16.50%, which tells you almost nothing. At 120 clicks on 4,000 impressions the same method gives 2.51% to 3.58%, and the sample-size table shows how the range tightens as impressions grow. The range is a Wilson score interval, which assumes every impression is an independent chance to click. The same person often sees an ad several times, so the real uncertainty is wider still. To check whether one ad's CTR really beats another's, enter impressions as visitors and clicks as conversions in the A/B test significance calculator.
3. Comparing across placements. Search, feed and display CTRs measure different situations. Compare a campaign with its own past and with similar campaigns on the same placement.
4. Mixing Meta's two CTRs. A drop from a CTR (all) figure to a link CTR figure is not a drop in performance. It is a different metric.
5. Calling engagement traffic. Reactions and shares count toward clicks (all), and none of them reach your site. See CTR vs engagement rate for where the two metrics split, and the engagement rate calculator to measure reactions on their own terms.
6. Pulling clicks and impressions from different reports. A different date range, campaign filter or click type on one side skews the rate. A CTR over 100% is the giveaway; Google has also acknowledged a rare reporting issue that caused it.
7. Chasing CTR as the goal. A curiosity headline lifts CTR and sends people who don't buy. Judge CTR next to the rate from the conversion rate calculator; the conversion rate vs CTR page explains why they can move in opposite directions.

You don't need software to track CTR

A spreadsheet cell with clicks divided by impressions does the job, and this page is free. That includes AdFlint: a higher CTR after switching tools, ours included, is not proof the tool is working. Judge any change by what it does to cost per conversion and revenue, using the CPA calculator or the ROAS calculator.

On Google Search, CTR does reach your costs indirectly. Google says CTR contributes to your keyword's expected CTR, one of the quality signals in Ad Rank alongside your bid, landing page experience and auction context, and that higher-quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs. “Often” is not a promise, and expected CTR is Google's prediction, not the number this calculator gives you. For how CTR and click cost interact, see CPC vs CTR or the CPM calculator's CPC formula, or put spend, impressions and clicks into the CPC, CPM and CTR calculator to see all three at once. The CTR glossary entry and CTR vs impressions cover the definitions in more depth.

Sources

Each source was opened and read on 2026-10-05.

1. Google Ads Help, Clickthrough rate (CTR): Definition. The formula, the 5-in-100 example, and the line on what a good CTR is relative to.
2. Google Ads Help, Impressions: Definition. When an impression is counted.
3. Google Ads Help, About Ad Rank. Expected CTR as an Ad Rank input, and quality and CPC.
4. Meta Business Help Center, CTR (link click-through rate), CTR (all) and Clicks (all). How each Meta metric is calculated and what clicks (all) includes.
5. WordStream, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026 (updated May 19, 2026). The CTR table, the 6.64% figure, the 2016 figure and the methodology note.
6. LocaliQ, 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks (updated June 1, 2026). The same CTR table, sourced from Google Ads and Microsoft Ads customer campaigns.
7. Search Engine Roundtable, Rare Google Ads reporting bug led to over-reported click-through rates (May 12, 2025). Google's Ads Liaison on CTRs above 100%.
8. Wikipedia, Binomial proportion confidence interval. The Wilson score interval used for the likely range.

What we could not confirm

• Whether the WordStream figures hold for advertisers outside its own customer base. The report doesn't say, and it doesn't split Google Ads from Microsoft Ads.
• The Travel row. WordStream's table shows 9.32% while its text says 9.82%, so we left Travel out.
• The LocaliQ copy of the benchmarks doesn't state its sample size. The 13,474-campaign figure comes from WordStream's methodology note.
• A Meta CTR benchmark with a published method and date. We found none we could check.
• Google's and Meta's help pages carry no publish date, so we can only say what they said on 2026-10-05.