What Pinterest ads cost: budgets, bids and billing

This guide is built from Pinterest Business Help: Select a campaign objective, Set up a campaign budget, Set and edit your bid, Manage your spend, How billing works, Accepted payments, prepaid billing, billing history and receipts and declined payments. Who your ads reach is covered in our Pinterest ads targeting guide. Checked on 12 November 2026. Pinterest changes amounts and menus from time to time, so check its pages before you rely on a detail.

Is there a set price?

No. Pinterest ads are sold in an auction. Your campaign objective decides "how you bid in the ad auction", your budget caps how much you spend, and competition decides the price on a given day. Pinterest's own bid page says that with automatic bidding, "if auction competition decreases, costs may go down. If auction competition increases, costs may go up." Any average cost per click you read elsewhere is someone else's account, not a Pinterest rule, so this guide sticks to the rules.

How you bid for each objective

For each objective, Pinterest lets you choose Performance+ (Pinterest manages the bid) or a custom bid in a set unit:

• Brand awareness: custom bids are a maximum cost per one thousand impressions (CPM).
• Video completion: Performance+ only; "Custom bidding is not available". It counts completed views at the 95% mark.
• Consideration: custom bids are a maximum cost per click (CPC) for clicks on your ad in the feed. If you optimise for outbound clicks, you must use Performance+.
• Leads: custom bids are a target average cost per action (CPA).
• Sales: custom bids are a target average CPA. Outbound click optimisation again needs Performance+.

Campaign budgets optimise toward a matching result: impressions for awareness, Pin clicks or outbound clicks for consideration, conversions for leads, and for sales whichever of these you choose under Optimization and delivery.

Performance+ bids and custom bids

Performance+ bids are the default for consideration, leads, sales and brand awareness campaigns. Pinterest updates them "automatically several times a day" and aims "to get you the most Pin clicks at the lowest possible cost per result while also spending your entire budget." Expect costs to move most at the start of a campaign, while delivery learns. Ad group budgets are still required.

Custom bids are the maximum you set yourself, changed by hand as often as you like, in Ads Manager or in bulk with the Bulk editor spreadsheet (Bid Strategy CUSTOM, plus a Max bid).

Performance+ ROAS bidding predicts the value of a checkout and bids to maximise conversion value. It needs a sales or leads campaign, Checkout events and valid checkout values from your tag or Conversions API. Pinterest recommends it for "campaigns with high checkout volume and varying prices across the products". Our Pinterest shopping ads guide covers it for catalog campaigns.

Bid floors and what you actually pay

Every campaign has a minimum bid, which depends on the campaign type and the countries you target. Pinterest converts each country's floor to US dollars and uses the highest. Its example: a CPC campaign targeting the US, UK and Canada has floors of $0.10, £0.07 and $0.10, so the minimum is $0.10. With several formats, the highest format floor applies.

A bid is a ceiling, not a price. Pinterest says "you will only pay the minimum amount required at any given time no matter what you set your bid to": bid $3 where $0.50 wins the auction, and $0.50 is what's used.

Campaign budgets: lifetime and daily

A campaign budget lets Pinterest move spend between ad groups, so the ad groups delivering more results get more of it. You choose one of three types:

• Lifetime: one total for the campaign, spent flexibly day to day.
• Performance+ daily: an average daily amount that can vary by day.
• Fixed daily: the same amount each day.

How Performance+ daily budgets can go over

With Performance+ daily, your daily budget "transitions from a strict cap to an average". Pinterest tries "to spend no more than 125% of your daily budget in a single day", and averages spend to no more than the daily budget over a fixed Sunday-to-Saturday week. Its own example: with a $100 daily budget, one day may spend $125 and another $75. A few rules from the same page:

• If you edit the budget or unpause midweek, the average restarts from that moment to Saturday; earlier spend that week is not counted.
• A campaign that starts or ends midweek is averaged over the shorter week.
• A narrow audience or a low bid can keep average spend below the budget.

If a client needs a hard daily stop, Fixed daily or a spend limit (below) is the safer choice.

Spend limits and pausing

In Campaign manager you can set a daily spend limit or a lifetime spend limit on a campaign "to guard against overspending". You can pause a campaign, ad group or ad at any time to stop costs; pausing a campaign pauses all its ad groups, while pausing one ad group leaves the others running. To see spend by campaign, ad group or ad, switch the date filter from Last 7 days to Last 30 days. Our Pinterest ads reporting guide covers the reporting side.

When Pinterest charges you

Pinterest charges "for accumulated spend for your active ads on the first day of the following month, or when you reach your billing threshold, whichever comes first."

• Billing threshold: a spend amount that triggers a charge at the end of that day. Pinterest gives $50 as the example first threshold; after successful payments it rises until it reaches a final amount.
• You may be charged more than the threshold: the charge covers all spend up to the end of that day.
• Custom Billing Threshold: a lower amount that triggers charges sooner. The options are $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or System Default, limited to amounts at or below your current threshold, and only for ad accounts billed in USD. Set it under Billing, Summary, Bill threshold; changes apply within 24 hours.

In a month you may hit the threshold once, several times or never; if you never do, you are charged on the 1st of the next month.

Payment methods and currencies

Pinterest accepts major credit and debit cards, with country limits on several of them (for example Discover and Diners Club in the US only), Pay by Bank direct debit in EUR for France and Germany, and PayPal for customers with a US PayPal account. It does "not accept prepaid cards". Cards must be issued in one of the countries Pinterest lists.

Billing currencies include USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, AUD and others, varying by country. Choose carefully: to change the currency you "will need to create a new account in the correct country and/or currency."

Prepaid billing and monthly invoicing

Prepaid billing, where available, lets you pay in advance; when the prepaid amount is used up, campaigns pause automatically. It is set up on a new ad account, and once chosen the billing method can't be switched; a different method needs another ad account. You top up under Billing, Payment information, Make prepayment.

Monthly invoicing is for eligible advertisers, who get a credit limit across all their ad accounts and an invoice each month. Failed card charges must be cleared first; then you ask your Pinterest account manager to switch.

Receipts and billing history

After each charge Pinterest emails a receipt to the billing email address. Under Manage business, Billing, Billing history you can see invoices and card charges and download receipts; each receipt links to the campaign's spend in reporting.

Failed payments

If a charge fails, Pinterest emails you a Retry payment link that opens Billing history, where you retry. Pinterest says "the most common reason for a failed transaction is a problem with the credit card limit or balance". Check the card details and billing address, confirm the card type is accepted, or add a different card. Until a payment goes through, "your ad campaign(s) may be paused".

How we set budgets for a new account

This is our own practice, not Pinterest's guidance:

• We agree a monthly ceiling with the client first and set a lifetime spend limit on each campaign to match, so automatic budgets can't run past it.
• We start with Performance+ bids and give them time before judging costs, since Pinterest says costs move most at the start.
• For clients with tight cash flow on a USD account, we set a Custom Billing Threshold so charges come in smaller, more regular amounts.
• Receipts go to a billing email the client's bookkeeper reads.
• The card on file belongs to the client and has room above the monthly ceiling, so a declined charge doesn't pause their ads.
• We check the billing currency before the first campaign, because changing it means a new ad account.

If you want help planning a Pinterest ads budget, see our services.

Frequently asked questions

How much do Pinterest ads cost?

There is no fixed price. You set a budget and a bid or let Pinterest bid for you, and the auction sets what you pay. You only pay the minimum needed to win, up to your bid.

What is the minimum bid on Pinterest?

It depends on the campaign type, format and target countries. Pinterest's example CPC floor for the US and Canada is $0.10 and for the UK £0.07; the highest floor among your countries applies.

When does Pinterest charge my card?

When your spend reaches your billing threshold (charged at the end of that day) or on the 1st of the next month, whichever comes first.

Can Pinterest spend more than my daily budget?

With a Performance+ daily budget, yes on a given day: Pinterest tries to keep it under 125% of the daily budget and averages to no more than the budget from Sunday to Saturday. A fixed daily budget spends the same amount each day.

Can I pay for Pinterest ads with a prepaid card?

No. Pinterest does not accept prepaid cards. Prepaid billing, where available, is a separate option where you pay Pinterest in advance.

For other platforms' rules, see our guides to Reddit ads cost, TikTok ads billing, the Meta ads payment threshold, Google Ads payment methods and Google Ads budgets and bidding.