How Meta charges for ads

When you advertise on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram or Meta Audience Network, you set a budget for each ad you run. We try to spend your budget evenly throughout the time your ads run unless you've selected the Accelerated option as the delivery type. You aren't charged more than the budget you set. Remember, you're in control of how much you spend.

• Budget: The amount that you want to or are willing to spend on running your ad.
• Amount spent: The amount that's been spent towards your total or lifetime budget.

The budget you set for Meta ads (i.e. ads on Facebook, Instagram or other Meta technologies) isn't necessarily the actual amount of money you spend. Your budget is spent over a given time period based on the budgeting option that you've selected. The actual amount you spend may be different from your budget. For example, you set a maximum budget of USD 100 to be spent over a month. However, only USD 70 is spent during that month based on the performance of the ad. Your bill is USD 70.

There are two types of budgets that you can set to control how much you spend on an ad:

• Daily budgets: The average amount you're willing to spend every day over the entire runtime of your ad.
• Lifetime or total budgets: The amount that you're willing to spend over the entire runtime of your ad.

The pricing of Meta ads is based on an auction system where ads compete for impressions based on bid and performance. When you run your ad, you'll only be charged for the number of clicks or the number of impressions that your ad received.

When you pay for your ad depends on how you pay for it. When you create your first ad, you add a payment method to your ad account, and that payment method determines your payment setting. There are two main payment settings for Meta ads:

• Automatic billing: We automatically charge you whenever you spend a certain amount known as your payment threshold. We charge you again on your monthly bill date for any leftover costs. This is how you pay for your ads if you use PayPal or most credit and debit cards.
• Prepaid funds: You add money to your account first, and then we deduct from that amount up to once a day as you run ads. This is how you pay if you use a prepaid funds method (such as PayTM or Boleto Bancário) to purchase ads. With prepaid funds, you don't have a payment threshold.

When you want to see how much you're spending on your ads, you can see an estimated daily spending limit in Meta Ads Manager. In the Billing section of Ads Manager, you can find all of your final charges, including the specific ads that you paid for and exactly what you paid for, such as running an ad for awareness or getting people to click your ad.

Bear in mind that your final bill may be more than your budget for a particular ad. That's because your account is charged for all of the ads that you're running on that specific ad account. We always stay within the budget you set for each ad.

The total number of clicks and impressions that your ad receives is shown in Ads Manager. The actual number of clicks and impressions that you're charged for is shown in the receipt. The number of clicks in the receipt may be different from the number in Ads Manager.

If you've read through and still have any questions about ad billing across Meta technologies, please let us know.

• About daily budgets
• About lifetime budgets
• When you pay for Meta ads