How do I take over my Google Ads account from an agency?

The first step is figuring out where your Google Ads account actually lives. Many agencies build campaigns inside their own Google Ads manager account, sometimes called an MCC. If that is how yours was set up, the agency technically controls it, and you are a client inside their structure rather than the direct owner.

You can check this yourself. Sign in to Google Ads, open the tools icon, and look under Setup for Access and security. If you see the agency's manager account listed above yours in the account hierarchy, that confirms they linked it rather than handing you a standalone account. If your account was created under your own email from day one, you already own it, and the handover is simpler: you just need to remove the agency's access.

Either way, ask the agency directly which structure applies. A cooperative agency will tell you plainly and walk you through the account hierarchy screen with you on a call.

Once you know the structure, request Admin access under an email address you control, not a shared agency inbox. Admin is the only access level that lets you manage users, so it is the one you need before you can remove anyone else from the account.

If the account sits inside the agency's manager account, ask them to either unlink it and hand you direct ownership, or grant your email Admin rights on the underlying account so you can manage it independently while it stays linked. Most agencies will unlink cleanly once a contract ends, since keeping a former client's account attached to their manager account offers them no benefit and clutters their own dashboard.

Do this before you settle anything else with the agency. Access problems are far easier to fix while the relationship is still active and someone there is still answering emails.

Your campaign history, Quality Score signals, conversion data, and audience lists stay attached to the account itself, not to the agency managing it. As long as the underlying account does not change, all of that history moves with you the moment you take over access.

What does not automatically transfer is the agency's work product that lives outside Google's systems: tracking spreadsheets, ad copy drafts, internal notes, and any automated rules or scripts they wrote and stored on their own machines. Ask for those in writing before the relationship ends.

Billing is worth checking too. If the agency's payment method is attached to the account, swap it for your own card or bank details as soon as you have Admin access, so a canceled agency card does not pause your campaigns mid month.

Once you have Admin access under your own login and billing moved to your own payment method, remove every user tied to the agency, including any shared team email addresses. Check the access screen again a week later; agencies sometimes leave a read only user in place out of habit rather than bad intent, and it is easy to miss on the first pass.

If you are hiring a new agency to manage the account going forward, add their email as a Standard or Admin user rather than handing over your own login. That way you can remove them cleanly the next time you switch, without ever resetting your Google account password.

A proposal from a new agency should include a plan for a handover exactly like this one, done inside a few days of you asking for it, with no gap in campaign management.