Why is Google Ads spending more than my daily budget?
Google Ads calls the field an average daily budget, and the average is taken over the month. According to Google Ads Help (About spending limits, About overdelivery):
- For most campaigns, the daily spending limit is 2× the average daily budget. A campaign may spend up to that on a given day to catch traffic swings. Pay for Conversions campaigns have no daily limit and still keep the monthly one.
- The monthly spending limit is 30.4× the average daily budget, 30.4 being 365 divided by 12. A campaign that starts mid-month only counts the days it ran.
- If served cost goes past either limit, you are billed the limit and Google covers the difference. The Billed cost report in Report editor shows served and billed cost per campaign.
- On a day you change the budget, the daily limit is 2× the highest budget you set that day. For the rest of the month the limit becomes spend so far plus the new daily budget times the remaining calendar days, counting the day of the change (How budget changes take effect).
Worked example. Search-DE has an average daily budget of €500 in October (31 days), so its daily limit is €1,000 and its monthly limit €15,200 (€500 × 30.4). A Tuesday at €940 is 1.88× the budget and entirely normal. Note that €15,200 is €300 less than 31 × €500. Google's advice for a monthly budget is to divide it by 30.4 (Google Ads Help), so to spend €15,500 in October, set about €510 a day. If you raise the budget to €700 on 20 October with €9,600 spent, the October limit becomes €9,600 + €700 × 12 days (20 to 31 October) = €18,000, and that day's limit is €1,400.
What changed for ad schedules in June
Since 1 June 2026, Google paces campaigns whose ad schedule switches off whole days towards the full 30.4× monthly limit, where it used to pace to the daily budget times the active days (Google Ads Help). A campaign at €100 a day that runs on 20 days used to aim for €2,000 and now aims for €3,040. To keep it at €2,000, set the daily budget to about €66 (€66 × 30.4 = €2,006); schedules that only switch off hours within a day are unaffected.
Campaign total budgets and shared budgets
A campaign total budget covers a flight of 3 to 90 days on Search, Shopping and Performance Max, or up to a year on Demand Gen and YouTube, and Google says you will never be charged more than the total. It has no daily spending limit, so a single day can run far past total ÷ days without anything being wrong. A shared budget is one average daily budget shared by several Search, Shopping, Display or Video campaigns; judge overspend on the shared budget as a whole.
Why is Meta spending more than my daily budget?
Meta treats a daily budget as a daily target averaged over a Sunday-to-Saturday week. From Meta's Business Help Center (About daily budgets):
- On days with better opportunities, Meta may spend up to 75% over the daily budget. Spend per day ending at midnight won't exceed 175% of the daily budget.
- Spend per week ending Saturday at midnight won't exceed 7× the daily budget.
- With ad set budget sharing on, up to 20% more can flow between ad sets: up to 210% of the daily budget on a day and 8.4× in a week.
- If an ad set starts mid-week or you change the budget mid-week, the rest of the week gets the new daily budget times the days left, plus up to 25% of one day's budget.
- Spend up to 175% of the highest daily budget in place that day is billable. Meta says it will consider refunds, case by case, for spend above 1.75× the daily budget on a day or 7× in a week; the amount can differ when ad set budget sharing is on.
- A week that is behind gets caught up: if spend is short of the daily budget times the days left in the week, Meta spends above the daily budget, up to 175%, until it is back on track.
The same rules apply to a daily budget set at campaign level with Advantage+ campaign budget, formerly campaign budget optimisation (About daily budgets). That budget can go mostly to one ad set, and Meta says to judge it at campaign level. A lifetime budget can spend more on some days and less on others (About lifetime budgets), and Meta's billing page calls it a hard cap for the whole run, where "daily budgets are not a hard cap" (budgets and spending limits). For a budget gone within hours, Meta names accelerated delivery, the learning phase and a daily budget set close to the bid.
Worked example. Prospecting-FR runs on a €400 daily budget without budget sharing, so Saturday may reach €700 and the whole week €2,800. If Sunday to Friday has already spent €2,560, Saturday can only spend €240, whatever the daily limit says. Cut the budget to €200 at midnight on Wednesday and Meta's limit for Wednesday to Saturday becomes €200 × 4 + €50 = €850.
Is it 25% or 75% over the daily budget?
It is 75% today, as Meta's help page states. The flexibility used to be 25%, and the 75% figure was rolling out to ad accounts by November 2023 (Jon Loomer, 1 November 2023). The 25% still appears in Meta's current rules as the margin added when a budget starts or changes mid-week. Older articles quote the old figure, and some current ones confuse the two.
Does TikTok spend more than the daily budget?
It can, through the features below. TikTok's own pages describe the daily budget two ways, as "the maximum amount you are willing to spend" per day (About daily budgets) and as "the average amount you're willing to spend" per day (About budget).
- With Dynamic Daily Budget, available for objectives such as Traffic, Lead Generation, App Promotion, Web Conversions and Product Sales, TikTok may allocate up to 25% more on stronger days and less on slower ones, with the Sunday-to-Saturday week capped at 7× the daily budget. A €300 daily budget can spend €375 on a day and €2,100 in a week.
- Smart+ campaigns with goal-based budget increase raise the budget itself in steps of 20% of the original, up to 10 times a day, so a €300 budget can reach €900 in one day. The toggle is on by default for new and copied campaigns, and the budget resets to your figure the next day.
- GMV Max with auto budget increase raises the daily budget by 50% up to 10 times on the same day when ROI and budget use are strong, and resets it the next day.
- Lifetime budgets "won't exceed the total lifetime budget by the end of the campaign", though the days can be uneven (About budget).
How do the overdelivery limits compare?
| Platform and budget | Max on one day | Max per week or month | Above the limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads, average daily budget | 2× | 30.4× per calendar month | Google covers served cost above the limit |
| Google Ads, campaign total budget | No daily limit | The total budget, as a hard cap | Not billed above the total |
| Meta, daily budget | 175% | 7× per Sunday-to-Saturday week | Meta considers refunds above 1.75× a day or 7× a week |
| Meta, with ad set budget sharing | 210% | 8.4× per week | Refund amounts can differ with budget sharing |
| TikTok, Dynamic Daily Budget | 125% | 7× per Sunday-to-Saturday week | Not stated |
| TikTok, Smart+ goal-based budget increase | Up to 3× in a day (+20% of the original budget, up to 10 times) | Budget resets the next day | Not stated |
| TikTok, GMV Max auto budget increase | Up to 6× in a day (+50% of the daily budget, up to 10 times) | Budget resets the next day | Not stated |
Sources linked in each section above, from Google Ads Help, Meta Business Help Center and TikTok Business Help Center, checked October 2026.
Is it normal overdelivery or a problem?
| What you see | Normal when | Act when | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google day at 1.5× to 2× budget | Month-to-date spend stays within 10% of plan | It repeats most days, or month-to-date runs more than 10% ahead | Lower the daily budget; the rest of the month re-paces from the new figure |
| Meta day at 150% to 175% | The Sunday-to-Saturday week stays within 7× | It comes early in a month that is already ahead | Lower the daily budget or set a campaign spending limit |
| Google served cost above 2× the daily budget | Google bills the limit and covers the rest | Billed cost in the Billed cost report goes above the limit | Raise it with Google Ads support |
| Meta above 175% on a day or 7× in a week | Never | Any time it happens | Ask Meta support to review the excess for a refund |
| Most of the budget gone by mid-morning | After a launch, while learning | One keyword or ad set holds most of the spend | Check accelerated delivery on Meta and broad-match terms on Google |
| Every day inside platform limits, month heading over plan | Never, if the plan matters | Projected month-end spend is more than 5% over budget | Pace against the monthly plan with the budget pacing calculator |
No platform alert catches the last row, since nothing in it breaks a platform rule. It is also the row that decides whether the month lands on budget.
How do you set overspend alerts that ignore normal 2× days?
- Put the hard-limit alert at the platform's own limit. On Google, alert on served cost (the Cost column) above 2× the highest daily budget set that day. You won't be billed for the excess, since Google covers it, but it tells you delivery ran past the limit. On Meta, alert above 175% a day (210% with budget sharing) or 7× a week, the lines above which Meta says it will consider a refund. On TikTok with Dynamic Daily Budget, alert above 125%, and check first whether Smart+ or GMV Max raised the budget that day.
- Alert on cumulative pacing from day 5. Flag month-to-date spend above 110% of plan, or a projected month-end above 105% of budget. Single days stop mattering.
- Watch the hour against the campaign's own baseline. Hourly spend above 3× the 28-day average for that hour, held for two hours, catches a runaway keyword at night when a daily check would only find it the next morning.
- Mute the day of a budget change. The daily limit uses the highest budget set that day, so after a raise and a cut the day can sit above 2× the final budget and still be inside Google's limit.
What does overdelivery mean for month-end pacing?
Google's 30.4× limit ignores month length. A daily budget set to the monthly budget divided by the number of days in the month can bill at most 98% of the budget in a 31-day month (30.4 ÷ 31) and up to 108.6% in February (30.4 ÷ 28). Google's advice, monthly budget ÷ 30.4, avoids both. A cut late in the month takes effect at once, because the limit resets to spend so far plus the new budget times the days left, including the day of the change.
Meta's week ignores months entirely, and a week that is behind gets caught up at up to 175% a day. In 2026, 1 October falls on a Thursday, so Sunday 27 September to Saturday 3 October is one Meta week. Take a €400 daily budget that underdelivered at the end of September, spending €700 from Sunday to Wednesday. The week's €2,800 limit leaves €2,100 for Thursday to Saturday, which is exactly 175% a day. October can open at €2,100 against a straight-line plan of €1,200, 75% ahead on the 3rd, with every euro inside Meta's rules. A campaign spending limit stops every ad set in the campaign once reached, but it counts the campaign's total spend, so a monthly ceiling means raising it by hand each month. The ad account spending limit is also a running total across all campaigns; some advertisers have the option to reset it automatically on the 1st of the month (Meta Business Help Center).
Alerts on what is unusual for each campaign, and the pacing fix drafted.
Nupact runs detection against a per-market baseline on every account and every dimension, around the clock, across Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and Amazon Ads, so a 2× Tuesday that is normal for the campaign stays quiet. In our product demo, Google Ads Search-IT spend paces at 3.4× the 28-day baseline at 02:47. The alert gives the root cause, a broad-match keyword that entered an auction spike after the midnight budget reset, and a drafted correction: pause the keyword and cap campaign pacing, with €2,260 of projected excess by midnight if nobody acts. Google's 2× cap is measured against the average daily budget, and usual spend can sit far below the budget, so a campaign with headroom can run that far above its baseline inside the cap.
Pacing works the same way. In the demo's audit trail, Google Search-FR goes from €300 to €260 a day because it had run 31% ahead of the advertiser's weekly plan. Google paces spend against the calendar month and has no view of that plan, so it won't pull a 31% lead back on its own. The cut applied autonomously under guardrail G-2 with a Revert control on the row, and a monthly spend ceiling across all channels sits among the guardrails you configure. See anomaly detection and budget pacing.
What else do people ask about ad platform overspend?
Will Google Ads charge me more than my monthly budget?
Not beyond 30.4× the average daily budget per campaign per month. If served cost goes over, Google bills the limit and covers the rest. That limit can still be higher than your own plan, for example in a 28-day February.
Does Meta refund overspending?
Meta says it will consider refunds, depending on the case, for spend above 1.75× the daily budget on a day or above 7× the daily budget in a Sunday-to-Saturday week. Spend inside those limits is billable.
How do I stop Meta ads overspending?
Use a lifetime budget, which Meta treats as a hard cap, or set a campaign spending limit or an ad account spending limit; both count total spend until you raise or reset them. Lowering the daily budget mid-week also lowers the limit for the rest of the week.
Does TikTok spend more than the daily budget?
It can. Dynamic Daily Budget allows up to 25% more on a day, with the week kept within 7× the daily budget. Smart+ goal-based budget increase and GMV Max auto budget increase raise the daily budget itself during the day, by 20% or 50% a step, up to 10 times. TikTok's help pages call the daily budget a maximum on one page and an average on another.