You choose your own bid and budget. Here is what OpenAI suggests, what the minimums are, and what your card gets charged.
You set a bid and a budget, and you pay for views or clicks. OpenAI suggests starting bids of $3 to $5 a click. The lowest daily budget is $25 in US dollars, €15 or £15. You are never billed per sale.
When you create a campaign in Ads Manager you pick an objective. The objective decides what you pay for.
| Objective | You pay for | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | Every 1,000 times your ad is shown | Being seen |
| Clicks | Every valid click | Visits to your page |
| Conversions | Clicks or views, your choice | Sales, leads or signups |
A Conversions campaign steers your ads toward people likely to buy or sign up. You still pay for the clicks or the views. OpenAI's help pages are clear that you never pay per conversion.
OpenAI's own starting recommendation is a bid of $3 to $5 a click. Ads Manager shows a bid strength meter next to the bid field, so you can see if your bid is likely to compete before you launch.
When we tested the meter in a euro account in September 2026, every bid of €2.00 and above was rated "Strong Delivery". Every bid below that was rated "May not deliver". Your country and your category will give you a different number, so read the meter in your own account.
Advertisers who posted their numbers on Reddit and X in 2026 report paying from under $0.25 a click to about $5 a click. One public 15-day test averaged $1.72 a click. The spread is wide because the price comes from an auction, and the auction looks at how relevant your ad is as well as your bid.
| Currency | Minimum per day |
|---|---|
| US dollar | $25 |
| Euro | €15 |
| British pound | £15 |
| Canadian dollar | $25 |
| Australian dollar | $25 |
A daily budget in ChatGPT ads is an average. On a busy day OpenAI can spend up to 2 times your daily budget. Across a Sunday to Saturday week it will not spend more than 7 times your daily budget.
With a $25 daily budget, one day can cost you up to $50, and one week can cost you up to $175.
If you need a hard ceiling, choose a campaign total budget when you build the campaign. Pick carefully, because a campaign total budget that you switch to a daily budget cannot be switched back.
At $3 to $5 a click, $500 buys you between 100 and 166 clicks. That is enough to see if people who click also buy, sign up or call you.
The price of a click tells you little by itself. Judge the test on what a sale or a lead cost you. In OpenAI's published customer story, Jotform reports a cost per signup about 30% below paid search and about 60% below paid social. Other advertisers have posted publicly that they got cheap clicks and no sales. Your own number is the one that counts, and a small, well set up test is the cheapest way to get it.
Based on OpenAI's own help pages, policies and customer stories as we read them in late September 2026. The platform changes most weeks, so check the current rules before you spend.
Sources: OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Ads collection (campaigns, budgets, billing, bid strategy). OpenAI customer stories at ads.openai.com/customers. Public advertiser posts on Reddit and X, 2026. Our own test of the Ads Manager bid meter, September 22, 2026.
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