How Much Do ChatGPT Ads Cost? Minimum Spend, CPM and CPC in 2026

ChatGPT ads no longer have a minimum spend. Since May 5, 2026, businesses in supported countries can buy them in OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager, and the only floor is a campaign's daily budget: $25 a day in the US, with different minimums in other markets. You bid for impressions or clicks, and OpenAI suggests starting cost-per-click bids at $3–5.

What campaigns actually pay varies far more than those numbers suggest. Advertisers who have published results report average costs per click from under $2 to nearly $10, and CPMs from about $25 to above $65.

ChatGPT ads pricing at a glance

Is there a minimum spend for ChatGPT ads?

Not any more. The price of entry fell in three steps:

• February 9, 2026: ads launched in the US as a managed pilot, reported at a $60 CPM with a $200,000 minimum commitment.
• April: the minimum fell to $50,000, with CPMs reported as low as $25.
• May 5: OpenAI opened a self-serve Ads Manager, added cost-per-click bidding and measurement tools, and the minimum commitment was dropped.

The floor that remains is the campaign budget. OpenAI's budget documentation says "the standard minimum for the US in USD is $25," and that minimums vary by market and currency; PPC Land lists floors from $25 to ₹725 in India. A daily budget is an average over seven days, so a campaign can spend up to twice its daily budget on one day but never more than seven times it in a week.

Larger advertisers can also buy through OpenAI's ads team on invoice terms, or through agency and technology partners, which OpenAI says include Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP, and Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue and StackAdapt.

How ChatGPT ads are priced

You choose an objective when you create a campaign, and the objective sets how you are billed:

• Views are billed per thousand impressions (CPM). You set a maximum CPM bid.
• Clicks are billed per valid click (CPC). OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid of $3–5.
• Conversions optimize delivery toward one standard event, such as a purchase or lead, and are billed per click (oCPC) or per impression (oCPM). OpenAI is explicit that "ads are not billed per conversion." These campaigns need its Conversions API or pixel in place, and OpenAI gives no recommended bid for them yet.

Ads compete in what OpenAI calls a "relevance-weighted, second-price auction." Relevance and bid both decide which ad wins, and a second-price auction usually charges less than your maximum bid, so a bid is a ceiling, not a price. Relevance comes from the conversation, your landing page and copy, and the "context hints" you give each ad group, which OpenAI says are not exact-match keywords.

Billing is postpay. A card-billed account is charged each time its unpaid spend reaches a payment threshold. OpenAI's example starts at $25 and rises to $200 after a run of successful payments, and any balance left at month end is charged then. The threshold decides when you pay, not how much you spend.

What advertisers report paying

OpenAI's own FAQ says ChatGPT ads "does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types." The best public evidence is individual accounts that have published their numbers:

Agencies that compare channels see a premium. Booyah indexes platforms against a cross-platform average of 100 and puts OpenAI's cost per click at 238, against 134 for Performance Max non-brand and 43 for Meta. DAC reported awareness and consideration CPMs about 9.5 and 8.7 times its clients' usual benchmarks.

Country and objective move the price most visibly. Synter's clicks ranged from $5.10 to $22.89 depending on the country, and reach, click and conversion campaigns are priced differently. Search Engine Journal's conclusion six months in: "there is no universal number."

How to budget a ChatGPT ads test

Size the test from the results you need to judge it, not from the minimum:

1. Decide the outcome first. If it is conversions, install the pixel or Conversions API before launch; conversion-optimized campaigns cannot run without it.
2. Work back to clicks. If your site converts 2% of visitors and you want 20 conversions to judge the channel, you need about 1,000 clicks. At $4 a click, that is $4,000.
3. Run whole weeks. Budgets average over seven days, so plan in weeks and give the campaign enough time to settle.
4. Judge against your own numbers. With no published benchmarks, compare cost per result with the channels you already run.

On our platform, most live ad budget sits with advertisers running in three or more countries. If you sell in several markets, test in more than one: costs differ widely by country.

For setup, targeting and creative, see our guide to advertising on ChatGPT; retailers should also read the ChatGPT product feed guide.

Thrad runs ads across AI apps with one budget and one report.