CTR calculator and click through rate formula

What is the CTR formula?

The CTR formula is clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100. Click-through rate is the share of the times a link, ad, search result or email was shown that ended in a click. With 420 clicks from 12,000 impressions, CTR is 420 / 12,000 × 100 = 3.50%, or 35 clicks for every 1,000 impressions.

CTR (%) = clicks / impressions * 100

The same formula runs backwards. To reach 4.1% on 12,000 impressions you need 492 clicks, 72 more than now. To get 500 clicks at 3.50% you need 500 / 0.035 = 14,285.71, rounded up to 14,286 impressions. The numbers on this page are the default values in the calculators, made up to show the arithmetic. None of them is a benchmark.

How to use the CTR calculator

1. Choose what to calculate. CTR, the clicks needed for a target CTR, or the impressions needed for a number of clicks.
2. Enter impressions and clicks from one report. The same platform, placement and date range for both. For email, enter emails delivered and unique clicks.
3. Read the rate with its confidence interval. With whole-number counts, the result shows the range the true CTR is likely to be in.
4. Compare two CTRs in the second calculator before you call one ad, subject line or month the winner.
5. Follow the click through in the third. Add cost per click and conversion rate to see cost, conversions and cost per acquisition.

By Kurt Philip, Founder

What counts as a click and an impression on each platform?

Every platform uses the same formula, clicks divided by impressions, but each decides for itself what a click and an impression are. An ad CTR, an organic search CTR, an email click rate and a YouTube thumbnail CTR are therefore four different measurements. Compare a CTR only with other CTRs from the same platform and placement.

Sources, each platform's own documentation: Google Ads Help on clickthrough rate, clicks and impressions; Search Console Help on impressions, position and clicks; Meta Business Help Center on link click-through rate, Clicks (all) and link clicks and impressions; Microsoft Advertising's report column definitions; Mailchimp's email report definitions; and YouTube Help on thumbnail impressions.

One more consequence: the click a platform counts is not a visit. Google Ads counts a click even when the person never reaches the site, so clicks in the ad account and sessions in analytics will not match.

Email click rate vs click-to-open rate

Email has two rates that are easy to confuse. Click rate divides the people who clicked by the emails delivered. Click-to-open rate divides them by the people who opened. Mailchimp calls the second one "clicks per unique opens". HubSpot calls the first "click rate" and the second "click-through rate", so check which one a report means before you compare it with anything.

With 5,000 emails delivered, 1,500 unique opens and 150 unique clicks, the click rate is 150 / 5,000 = 3.00% and the click-to-open rate is 150 / 1,500 = 10.00%. The two are tied together by the open rate (30.00%): click rate = open rate × click-to-open rate. Enter opens in the calculator to get all three. Mailchimp's help on open and click rates warns that bot activity, such as Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, can inflate both, and a click-to-open rate inherits whatever is wrong with the open count.

How to calculate organic CTR in Google Search Console

1. Open the Performance report for search results. By default it covers the past three months.
2. Turn on total clicks, total impressions, average CTR and average position by toggling the headings above the chart.
3. Pick the Pages or Queries tab above the table, and filter to the page or query you care about.
4. Read the CTR column, or divide clicks by impressions yourself. Search Console defines CTR as the click count divided by the impression count.
5. Compare only at a similar average position. Position moves CTR on its own, so a rate at position 3 says nothing about a rate at position 8.

Two details from Google's documentation matter here. The chart totals count by property, so two of your results shown for one search are a single impression, while the Pages tab counts by page; the same clicks can therefore give two different CTRs. And an AI Overview occupies a single position: a click on a link inside it that leads to your page counts as a click like any other.

CTR vs conversion rate: how the two multiply

CTR measures the step before the click and conversion rate the step after it. Multiplied together they give conversions per impression: of everyone who saw the link, the share who went on to buy or sign up. At a 3.50% CTR and a 5% conversion rate, 0.175% of impressions convert, or 1.75 in every 1,000.

conversions per impression = CTR * conversion rate
CPA                        = cost per click / conversion rate

The table below takes the default example (12,000 impressions at 1.50 a click) and raises each rate by a fifth, alone and together.

Either rate a fifth higher brings the same 25.2 conversions from the same impressions. The difference is the bill. At a fixed cost per click, more clicks cost more, so CPA stays at 30.00. A higher conversion rate gets the extra conversions from clicks already paid for, and CPA falls to 25.00. In a live auction the cost per click is not fixed: Google Ads says CTR contributes to a keyword's expected CTR, which is a component of Ad Rank, so a better CTR can also change where and how often an ad shows.

What is a good CTR?

A good CTR is one that beats your own baseline for the same platform, placement and audience by a statistically significant margin, while the clicks cost less than your break-even cost per click. There is no universal good CTR, because platforms count differently and a click is worth a different amount to every business.

That is why this page publishes no average CTR by industry or channel. A figure averaged across advertisers with different placements, audiences, counting rules and margins cannot tell you whether your ad is working. Three checks of your own can.

1. Your baseline. Compare the CTR with your own earlier results for the same placement, audience and, in search, the same position.
2. The significance check. A CTR above baseline counts only if the gap is bigger than chance. That is the second calculator.
3. Your break-even cost per click. A click is worth what it converts into: break-even CPA times conversion rate. If a conversion is worth 150 at a 40% gross margin, break-even CPA is 60.00, and at a 5% conversion rate a click can cost up to 3.00.

break-even CPC = break-even CPA * conversion rate
effective CPC  = CPM / (1000 * CTR)
break-even CTR = CPM / (1000 * break-even CPC)

On media bought per 1,000 impressions, CTR decides what a click costs. At a CPM of 12.00, a 0.25% CTR makes each click cost 4.80, above the 3.00 break-even in this example. The CTR needed is 12.00 / (1,000 × 3.00) = 0.40%, or 4 clicks per 1,000 impressions. That figure is this example's break-even, not a target for anyone else. Work out yours with the CPC calculator and the CPM calculator.

So "is a 2% CTR good?" has no answer without the placement, the cost of the click and the conversion rate behind it. The same 2% can lose money in one campaign and be the best ad in the account in another.

To raise a CTR that falls short, the guide on how to increase click-through rate covers search, ads, email and on-page links. The headline or subject line usually does most of the work; the headline analyzer checks one before you spend impressions on it.

Related calculators

CTR is the first rate in the chain from impression to sale. These tools cover the links on either side of it.