Neither channel is cheaper across the board. Whether LinkedIn or Google Ads delivers the lower-cost B2B lead for you depends on your target audience and your own conversion rates, not just your industry.According to WordStream/LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmarks, Google search ads cost an average of $66.69 per lead (around €58), ranging from about $27 to $132 depending on the industry. Direct outreach on LinkedIn with Sales Navigator and CompLeadly, by contrast, costs a fixed monthly amount of around €151 (list prices). At roughly two to three leads per month, that fixed cost per lead falls below the Google average. Only your own test can show whether you’ll reach that number.
In this article, we compare both channels by pricing model, effort and use case. You’ll get a transparent calculation with a formula you can fill in with your own numbers.As of 23 September 2026.All prices and benchmarks come from the linked sources.
Outreach, not LinkedIn Ads: what this comparison covers
In this article, “LinkedIn” refers to thedirect outreachThis means you find the right people, for example in Sales Navigator, send a connection request, and write a personal message once they accept. CompLeadly can handle the recurring steps if you choose. You pay for fixed licences, not per click.
This does not includeLinkedIn Ads, meaning paid ads on LinkedIn. Like Google Ads, they use an advertising budget and are charged per click or impression. You can find out how that works in ourGuide to LinkedIn Ads.
The Google page is aboutsearch adsYour ad appears when someone searches for a relevant term. You pay per click, and a lead is generated when that person calls, fills out a form, or contacts you another way.
LinkedIn Outreach and Google Ads at a Glance
Criterion | LinkedIn outreach (Sales Navigator + CompLeadly) | Google Ads (search ads) |
|---|---|---|
Pricing model | Fixed licences per month or year | Pay per click, with a budget you choose. |
Fixed or variable | Mostly fixed, regardless of how many leads you generate | Variable; increases with clicks and competition for the search terms. |
Alignment | For people: job title, industry, company size, region, and other filters in Sales Navigator | by search terms, plus region, language, and other settings |
Contacts’ intent | You reach out, but the person isn’t necessarily looking right now. | The person is actively looking and reaches out to you. |
Quantity | grows with your target audience and the number of profiles your team uses | scales with your budget and search volume |
Time to first lead | Days: Accept the request, then wait for a reply | From the moment the ads are approved, as soon as someone searches and clicks. |
Ongoing work | Refine your target audience, test messages, and handle replies yourself | Continuously optimise search terms, bids and ads, and respond to leads. |
What to watch for | Regularly expand your target audience and create new searches | Rising cost per click, clicks that don’t lead to enquiries, and a budget that’s spent as soon as someone clicks. |
Google Ads: Cost per Lead by Industry
According to the authors, WordStream and LocaliQ’s annual benchmarks are based on more than 13,000 search campaigns in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads across 23 industries, running from April 2025 to March 2026. The figures are given in US dollars. The authors do not specify a country. We converted the euro figures using the ECB reference rate from 23 September 2026 (€1 = US$1.1411).
Industry (label as given in the source) | Cost per lead | approx. in euros | Cost per click (CPC) | Conversion rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Average across all industries | $66.69 | €58 | $5.42 | 8.18% |
Business Services | $93.69 | €82 | $5.87 | 4.85% |
Industrial & Commercial | $75.19 | €66 | $5.87 | 8.20% |
Finance & Insurance | $74.44 | €65 | $3.39 | 2.64% |
Career & Employment | $67.36 | €59 | $5.81 | 3.05% |
Real Estate | $102.51 | €90 | $3.22 | 3.70% |
Attorneys & Legal Services | $131.63 | €115 | $9.87 | 5.55% |
Sources: WordStream: Google Ads Benchmarks 2026(as of May 19, 2026) andLocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks(as of 1 June 2026), accessed on 23 September 2026.
Two things to keep in mind when reading these figures: They are averages across many accounts, and most of the data comes from outside German-speaking markets. A “lead” here means any contact made after a click, whether by phone, chat, form or email. Your own costs could be significantly higher or lower. If you already have a Google Ads campaign, use your actual figures.
LinkedIn outreach: How to calculate the cost of doing it yourself
There’s no public benchmark we’d trust here. So we show the calculations: first the fixed costs, then the volume, then the rates. The rates areAssumptionsand no metrics. Replace them with your own.
Fixed costs
- Sales Navigator Core:From EUR 120.99 per month per licence or EUR 1,088.88 per year. LinkedIn says these prices are estimates and may exclude VAT (LinkedIn: Sales Navigator plans).
- CompLeadly Basic:€29.99 per month, cancel monthly, or €24.99 per month on the annual plan (Pricing page). We’re using Basic for this calculation because it includes everything we need: target audiences from Sales Navigator searches, sequences covering profile visits, connection requests, initial messages and follow-ups, plus export to Excel.
Together, that’s€150.98 per monthwith monthly payments or around€115.73 per monthwith annual billing. This does not include your own time, just as the Google figures above do not. Both channels need someone to respond to the leads.
Volume: Requests per week
LinkedIn limits the number of invitations all members can send, including Premium members. If you reach the limit, you generally can’t send any more invitations for a week. LinkedIn does not specify an exact number (LinkedIn Help: Invitation limit reached). From our support experience, we typically see around 200 requests per week. This is a guideline, not a guaranteed limit for every account. Learn more in the knowledge base articleUnderstanding connection request limits, and the free ... gives you an assessment of your accountLinkedIn Limits Calculator.
CompLeadly itself does not limit connection requests or messages on its paid plans. LinkedIn sets the limit. That’s why we use a cautious estimate of 100 to 150 requests per week.
The formula
Cost per lead = fixed monthly costs ÷ (requests per month × acceptance rate × lead rate)
Requests per month = requests per week × 4.33. The lead rate is the share of new connections who reply to your message with genuine interest, such as a request for a call. That makes a LinkedIn lead roughly comparable to an enquiry through Google Ads.
Example calculation using two sets of assumptions
Metric | conservative (assumption) | realistic (assumption) |
|---|---|---|
Connection requests per week | 100 | 150 |
Requests per month (× 4.33) | 433 | 650 |
Acceptance rate | 20% | 35% |
New connections per month | 87 | 228 |
Lead rate (reply expressing interest) | 3% | 8% |
Leads per month | 2.6 | 18.2 |
Cost per lead, monthly payment (€150.98) | approx. €58 | approx. €8 |
Cost per lead, annual plans (€115.73) | approx. €45 | approx. €6 |
The range is wide. In the conservative case, LinkedIn outreach costs about as much as the Google average. With a well-chosen target audience and a message that resonates, it can cost much less. With the wrong target audience, it costs more. These rates are assumptions for this example, not averages.
The threshold by industry
Because LinkedIn costs are fixed, you can easily calculate how many leads per month you need to come in below the Google benchmark for your industry: Threshold = €150.98 ÷ Google cost per lead.
Industry | Google Ads: cost per lead (approx.) | LinkedIn: leads needed per month | Google budget for 10 leads (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
Business Services | €82 | 2 or more | €821 |
Industrial & Commercial | €66 | 3 or more | €659 |
Finance & Insurance | €65 | 3 or more | €652 |
Attorneys & Legal Services | €115 | 2 or more | €1,154 |
The table only shows where the costs would be equal. Whether you can generate the required leads depends on whether your target audience is active on LinkedIn and responds to requests. If your customers are consumers or are hard to find on LinkedIn, you won’t reach these numbers through outreach.
Setup: the steps each channel requires
Google Ads (search campaign), according to Google Ads Help:
- Create a Google Ads account and add a payment method.
- Set up conversion tracking. Google requires at least one conversion goal for a search campaign.
- Set up a landing page for the ad to link to. Alternatively, or in addition, you can use lead forms directly in the ad.
- Research search terms, for example with Keyword Planner.
- Create ad groups and search ads.
- Set a budget and bidding strategy.
- Maintain a list of negative keywords and optimise the campaign on an ongoing basis.
LinkedIn outreach with CompLeadly, according to our knowledge base:
- Download and install the CompLeadly desktop app. It runs as installed software, not in your browser.
- Add your LinkedIn login details to CompLeadly.
- Create a target audience: filter a search in Sales Navigator or LinkedIn’s people search, copy the link and paste it into CompLeadly.
- Set up a sequence: profile visit, connection request, first message after acceptance and a follow-up if there’s no reply. You write the messages yourself.
The difference lies in what you need to get started: LinkedIn outreach requires no landing page, conversion tracking or bidding strategy. Instead, your LinkedIn profile serves as the landing page and should be kept up to date. The automation also runs on your computer, which needs to stay on. A CompLeadly cloud computer is available as a paid add-on.
As for support: CompLeadly includes VIP support via WhatsApp and email from Basic Plus (€49.99 per month), and a daily live Q&A call in Premium Plus (€99.99 per month). The Basic plan used in the calculation above includes neither, and the calculation does not depend on them. Google also offers advertisers support through Google Ads Help.
When LinkedIn outreach is usually cheaper
- You can clearly define your target audience, for example by job title, industry, company size and region, and they are active on LinkedIn.
- Your customers are not actively searching for what you offer, as with new solutions that have few relevant search terms.
- Each deal is worth a lot. In that case, a few conversations a month may be enough, and the fixed subscription cost is spread across a small number of high-value leads.
- Click prices in your market are high, because many providers bid on the same search terms.
When Google Ads has the advantage
- High search intent: People are looking for exactly what you offer and want to take action now.
- Local services such as tradespeople, medical practices or repair shops, where customers search for services “near me”.
- Urgent needs, such as emergency services or a solution needed at short notice.
- B2C and products people actively search for. LinkedIn outreach is unlikely to reach many consumers.
- You want to scale quickly: With a larger budget, you get more clicks, as long as there is enough search volume. LinkedIn outreach grows with the number of profiles your team uses.
Combine both: capture demand and create demand
The channels are not mutually exclusive. Google Ads reaches people who are already searching. LinkedIn outreach reaches people who are not searching yet but are a good fit for your offer. One possible approach:
- Use Google Ads to cover search terms with clear purchase intent.
- Use LinkedIn outreach to contact the companies and people in roles that match your best customers.
- Measure each channel separately: cost per lead and, more importantly, cost per deal.
To measure results on the LinkedIn side, you track them yourself in Basic, for example by exporting to Excel. From Premium, CompLeadly shows metrics for each workflow in real time and provides a weekly report. You can also send new connections to your CRM through the webhook engine, for example via Zoho Flow, n8n or Make.
The same calculation for recruiting and job searches
Recruiting raises the same question. Job ads, including those on Google Ads, reach people who are actively looking. The benchmarks above put the cost per lead for the “Career & Employment” industry at US$67.36. Direct outreach, by contrast, reaches professionals who are not actively looking. With CompLeadly, you can build a target audience from LinkedIn people search, Sales Navigator or, if you have LinkedIn Recruiter, Recruiter searches, pipelines and saved searches. Then you can run profile visits, connection requests, initial messages and follow-ups. Learn more on the CompLeadly for Recruiters.
If you’re looking for a job, you don’t have to limit yourself to applications through job boards. You can contact hiring managers and recruiters at companies you’d like to work for directly: search for people by company and job title, send a connection request and a short message, then follow up once. For these small volumes, the free version of CompLeadly is often enough: basic features with daily limits, such as two connection requests per day, with each step started individually. You’ll find tips in LinkedIn Job Search: Avoid Common Mistakes and in the article about “Open to Work”.
Data protection and a fair test
Write each message to fit the recipient’s profile, and include a link to your privacy notice in your first message. CompLeadly manages the pace for you.
Our recommendation: If Google Ads is bringing you profitable enquiries today, keep your campaigns running. Don’t turn them off because of this calculation. Test LinkedIn outreach alongside them with a narrowly defined target audience. Measure acceptance and reply rates over a few weeks, then put your actual figures into the formula. You can start with CompLeadly’s 10-day trial and continue with the free version before buying licences. For an overview of other channels, see Acquisition Channels for Winning Customers.
Frequently asked questions about LinkedIn vs. Google Ads
Is LinkedIn cheaper than Google Ads for B2B leads?
Not necessarily. LinkedIn outreach costs are largely fixed, while with Google Ads you pay per click. With Sales Navigator Core and CompLeadly Basic, your cost per lead falls below the Google average of around €58 once you generate about two to three leads per month. Whether you reach that number depends on your target audience and your messages.
How much does a lead cost with Google Ads?
According to the 2026 WordStream/LocaliQ benchmarks, the average is US$66.69 across all industries, US$93.69 for Business Services and US$131.63 for Attorneys & Legal Services. Your own costs may differ.
Do I need Sales Navigator for LinkedIn outreach?
No. CompLeadly also works with target audiences from standard LinkedIn people search. Sales Navigator offers more filters to define your target audience more precisely. Without it, your fixed costs drop to the CompLeadly plan fee.
Is LinkedIn outreach the same as LinkedIn Ads?
No. LinkedIn Ads are paid advertisements with a budget and cost per click. Outreach means contacting people directly through connection requests and messages, paying for licences rather than clicks.
How many connection requests can I send per week?
LinkedIn does not specify a fixed number, but there is a weekly limit for all members. From our support experience, typical limits are around 200 per week. That is a guide, not a guaranteed limit for your account.
Can I combine both channels?
Yes. Google Ads reaches people who are already searching, while LinkedIn outreach reaches relevant people who are not yet looking. Measure the two channels separately and compare cost per customer at the end, not just cost per lead.
