How much do Facebook ads cost? Work out your budget from your margin

There is no fixed price for a Facebook or Instagram ad. Every chance to show your ad is an auction, and Meta usually charges you for impressions, not for orders. So the honest answer to “how much do Facebook ads cost?” is a number you work out from your own price and margin.

This guide is for store and service owners in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, and for marketers planning ads for a client. You will leave with five numbers: break-even ROAS, maximum cost per order and per visit, a 7-day test budget and the invoice with VAT.

The common mistake

Many owners start with “how much should I spend a day?”. They boost a post for EGP 100 and decide after two days that Facebook does not sell.

The second mistake is borrowing an average CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) from a video or a report about another market. That figure moves with the audience, the season and the ad itself, and it says nothing about profit.

The big picture: four numbers before the budget

1. Margin: what is left from an order after product, packaging, shipping and payment fees, before ads.
2. Maximum cost per order: that margin. Pay more than this for the ad and you lose on every order.
3. Conversion rate: how many ad visits it takes to get one order, from your own data.
4. Orders in the test: what Meta’s system needs to learn. The daily budget comes out of it.

We come back to each one in its step.

A comparison from a car auction

At a used car auction, a dealer who knows the resale price and the repair bill knows his last bid before he raises his hand. Whoever walks in without a number overpays or leaves with nothing. Meta’s auction works the same way, and your last bid is your maximum cost per order.

The rule: work out your maximum cost per order before you choose a budget.

Try it: the budget calculator

Enter your price, margin and conversion rate, or load the Egypt or Saudi example. The second tab is for smaller budgets, and the third reads your test week.

How much do Facebook ads cost? The short answer

An ad costs the budget you set, and Meta publishes no fixed price per impression or per click. What you pay per result comes out of the auction, and the sensible ceiling comes out of your margin. Instagram ads are bought in the same Ads Manager with the same auction and billing, so one calculation covers both.

How Meta charges you

The auction: three factors pick the winner

Each chance to show an ad to someone runs an auction among the ads whose audience includes that person. The ad with the highest total value wins, and total value combines:

• Bid: what you are willing to pay for the result.
• Estimated action rate: how likely Meta thinks this person is to engage with your ad or buy.
• Ad quality: people’s feedback, plus signals such as withheld information or sensational headlines.

That is why an ad that suits the person can beat an ad with a higher bid. Meta also says its auction adjustments never charge you more than your bid.

What you pay for

You usually pay for impressions, unless you choose another event and the objective allows it. A new ad account pays for impressions until it has spent at least USD 10. After that it can switch to paying per click, for example.

The minimum budget

Meta does not publish one minimum. It varies by country, currency, objective and bid strategy, and Ads Manager warns you if your budget is below it.

A daily budget is a weekly average

A daily budget is a spending target over a week that runs from Sunday to Saturday. On a good day Meta may spend up to 75% more than it. The week never goes above 7 times the daily budget.

VAT on the invoice in Egypt and Saudi Arabia

In Egypt, Meta has added VAT since July 2023, and the rate on advertising services is 14%. It applies when your account’s “Sold to” country is Egypt and you have not added your Tax Registration Number and Unique Identification Number (UIN). Add both and Meta stops adding VAT; you then pay it yourself under the reverse charge, as your accountant will explain.

In Saudi Arabia, Meta has added VAT at 15% since September 2019, unless you add your tax ID. In both countries VAT sits on top of your ad costs, so a charge can be higher than your payment threshold.

Currency and how you pay

Meta accepts both the Egyptian pound and the Saudi riyal. An Egyptian account in EGP can prepay with Fawry or a Meeza card. You must choose that when you create the account.

Meta charges no currency conversion fee, but your bank may if your card’s currency differs from the account’s. Changing currency later creates a new ad account, once every 60 days and only with no balance due.

Work your budget backwards in 6 steps

1. Work out the margin on one order

Take the order price and subtract product cost, packaging, any shipping you pay and payment fees. An EGP 650 order with EGP 390 of costs leaves EGP 260, a 40% margin.

2. Turn the margin into break-even ROAS and a maximum cost per order

ROAS is the sales you get back for every pound of ads. Break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your margin rate. A 40% margin means a break-even ROAS of 2.5X and a maximum cost per order of EGP 260.

Break-even is the ceiling, and your target sits below it. To keep 10% of the price as profit after ads, aim for EGP 195 per order, a ROAS of 3.33X.

If you use Meta’s “cost per result goal” at EGP 195, set a daily budget of at least EGP 975. That is 5 times the goal, as Meta recommends. To compare with past campaign results, try the ROAS calculator on the services page.

3. Take the conversion rate from your own data

Divide the last 30 days of orders from ads by landing page visits from ads. 36 orders from 3,000 visits is a 1.2% conversion rate.

Multiply your maximum cost per order by that rate to get the most you can pay per visit: 260 × 1.2% = EGP 3.12. If a visit from your ad costs more, you lose money before anyone orders.

If some cash on delivery orders are refused at the door, count only the orders that were delivered.

4. Decide how many orders the test needs

Meta explains that an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. So I suggest building a purchase test around 50 orders in 7 days.

5. Work out the daily budget

Multiply the orders by the maximum cost per order, then divide by 7. In the example, 50 × 260 = EGP 13,000 for the week, or about EGP 1,857 a day. At that budget 50 orders exactly cover their ads, and a lower real cost per order buys you more orders.

6. Add VAT and read the invoice

Without a tax number in Egypt, the week’s invoice becomes 13,000 × 1.14 = EGP 14,820. Expect a day that may reach EGP 3,250, which is 175% of the daily budget.

After the week: compare the result with break-even

Divide sales by spend. Spend EGP 13,000 and get 41 orders worth EGP 26,650, and your real ROAS is 2.05X at EGP 317 an order. Both are worse than break-even, so do not raise the budget: change the ad, the offer or the page, then test again.

A worked example: one store in Egypt, one in Saudi Arabia

The stores and figures are made up for the example. Both run a one-week purchase test aiming for 50 orders, with no tax number in payment settings:

Item	Store in Egypt (EGP)	Store in Saudi Arabia (SAR)
Order price	650	200
Costs before ads	390	110
Margin and rate	260 (40%)	90 (45%)
Break-even ROAS	2.50X	2.22X
Maximum cost per order	260	90
Conversion rate	1.2% (36 of 3,000)	1.6% (40 of 2,500)
Maximum cost per visit	3.12	1.44
Visits the test needs	4,167	3,125
Weekly budget	13,000	4,500
Daily budget	about 1,857	about 643
VAT	1,820 (14%)	675 (15%)
Week’s invoice	14,820	5,175

The per-visit ceiling moves with margin and conversion rate together. If the Egyptian store reaches a 1.8% conversion rate with a clearer page, its ceiling rises from EGP 3.12 to EGP 4.68.

What pushes your ad cost up or down

• Audience: one person sits in many advertisers’ audiences, and all of them compete for that impression. When the cheaper opportunities in your audience run out, the system moves to pricier ones.
• The ad itself: estimated action rate and quality are part of the auction, so a clear ad can win with a lower bid.
• Season: when more advertisers target the same people, as in Ramadan and White Friday, more of them compete in each auction. Plan the season’s budget before it starts, and do not judge it by an ordinary month.
• Landing page: it sets your conversion rate, which sets what you can afford per visit. If your ad opens a WhatsApp chat, its message costs are in my WhatsApp Business API guide.

Is your budget smaller than the result?

If you cannot fund 50 orders a week, Meta suggests optimizing for an event that is easier and cheaper than a purchase. Pick the deepest event you can reach about 50 times a week.

At EGP 500 a day, the Egyptian example affords only 13 orders a week at break-even. If 20% of people who add to cart go on to buy, an add to cart is worth at most EGP 52. The same budget then covers 67 of them, so optimize for add to cart and judge purchases over a longer period.

Worth knowing

Meta adds a location fee on top of your budget when your ad reaches people in countries that tax digital services. On 4 November 2026 the list was Austria and Türkiye at 5%, France, Italy and Spain at 3%, and the United Kingdom at 2%. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not on it, and the fee follows your audience’s location, not your business.

Source: location fees in the Meta Business Help Center

Checklist before you launch

• I worked out my margin after product, packaging, shipping and payment fees.
• I know my break-even ROAS and maximum cost per order, and wrote a target below them.
• I took the conversion rate from my own store data, not from a published average.
• I built the test around 50 results in 7 days, or picked an easier event that reaches them.
• I added my tax number in payment settings, or counted VAT in the invoice.
• I chose the account currency and payment method before the first ad.
• I decided not to edit the campaign before the week ends unless there is a clear reason.

Your task

Write down the price and costs of your best-selling product, plus ad visits and orders for the last 30 days. Put them into the calculator or the free sheet, and note the daily budget before you open Ads Manager.

Questions people ask

How much do Facebook ads cost per day?

Meta sets no fixed amount, and Ads Manager shows the minimum for your currency and objective. A sensible budget is test orders × maximum cost per order ÷ 7.

How much do Instagram ads cost?

They are bought in the same Ads Manager with the same auction and billing. Work them out the same way, from your margin and conversion rate.

Is there VAT on Facebook ads in Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

Yes. Egypt adds 14% for accounts without a Tax Registration Number and UIN, and Saudi Arabia adds 15% for accounts without a tax ID. Both come on top of ad costs.

Can I pay for Facebook ads with Fawry?

Yes, if the account’s country is Egypt, its currency is EGP, and you chose a manual payment method when you created it. You prepay with Fawry or Meeza, and ads draw from that balance.

What is break-even ROAS?

It is the return at which sales cover the ad cost with no profit and no loss. It equals 1 divided by your margin rate, so a 40% margin means 2.5X.

Free resource

An Excel sheet where you enter your price, costs, visits and orders, and it works out the five numbers and the invoice with VAT. It has one page for smaller budgets and one for reading the test week.

Next step

If you want me to check these numbers against your ad account, my team can run the test with you. See my performance marketing service.