Most comparisons list features. The decision is simpler than that and rests on a single question.
The question
Are people already searching for what you sell?
If yes, start with Google. The intent exists and you only have to appear. If no, Google will show your ads to almost nobody, and Meta is where you belong because it creates demand rather than capturing it.
A dentist, a plumber, a lawyer and a CA all have existing search demand. A new coaching programme, a novel product and most course offers do not. That is the whole decision for most businesses.
How to check rather than guess
Open Google Keyword Planner in a free Ads account and look up the terms a customer would type. If the volumes are negligible in your city, the answer is Meta.
Google autocomplete works as a fast free proxy too. Type the query and see whether Google suggests variations. Rich suggestions mean real volume behind it.
How the budgets behave differently
Google can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a given day, capped at 30.4 times that figure across a month, which is the average number of days in a month. So judge spend monthly, not daily. People see a double-spend day, panic and pause a campaign that was working.
Meta behaves differently. It needs roughly 50 conversion events in 7 days to optimise, which is about 7.14 a day, so your daily ad set budget divided by 7.14 is the most expensive result it can sustain. Underfund it and the campaign never leaves learning.
What each costs you in effort
Google is front-loaded. Keyword research, negative keyword lists, match types and landing pages that match the search. Get it right and it is comparatively stable afterwards.
Meta is ongoing. Creative fatigues, and you will need new hooks and images continuously. Roughly nine out of ten brand new cold audiences do not work, which is the normal outcome rather than a failure, and it means a testing cadence rather than a setup.
The Indian specifics
Two things worth knowing before you pick.
A large share of Indian enquiries arrive as phone calls, so call tracking matters more here than most Google Ads guides suggest. Without it you will undercount the channel and cut it.
And on Meta, Click-to-WhatsApp usually produces a cheaper result than a lead form in India, and a contact arriving that way opens a 72-hour window in which your messages to them are free.
If you can only fund one
Run the one that matches your demand answer, properly, for a month. Do not split a small budget across both.
Two half-funded campaigns produce two sets of inconclusive data, and inconclusive data is the most expensive thing you can buy.
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