What a postis actually worth.
There's no official rate card for sponsored content, which is exactly why creators undercharge and brands overpay. This estimator gives you a defensible starting range for a post, reel, story, or video, built from the two things that actually drive price: how many people you reach and how engaged they are. A number to open the negotiation, not end it.
Your audience
Follower or subscriber count on the platform.
Your average engagement rate. Don't know it? Use the engagement rate calculator first.
Estimated rates
- Feed post$438 – $788
- Reel$613 – $1,103
- Story (per frame)$219 – $394
Engagement multiplier
Your 3.5% engagement applies a 2.3× factor to the baseline. This is a starting range — adjust up for niche, usage rights, and proven sales.
Sensitivity · rate by audience size
Feed post range by follower tier
| Followers | Feed post rate |
|---|---|
| 5,000 | $88 – $158 |
| 25,000 | $438 – $788 |
| 100,000 | $1,750 – $3,150 |
| 500,000 | $8,750 – $15,750 |
| 1,000,000 | $17,500 – $31,500 |
Rates scale with reach, but engagement bends the curve: a smaller, hotter audience at your engagement rate can out-earn a bigger, colder one. Hold the line on price when your engagement is above benchmark.
Your move
Knowing your rate is one thing. Building a brand worth paying is another.
Instagram feed post: $438–$788 (engagement factor 2.3×).
Whether you're a creator who wants to charge more or a brand deciding where to spend, the real lever is the same: positioning and proof. That's what I build. Book the call and I'll show you, free, how I'd make you the obvious one to pay, and what I'd do with the budget either way.
Plain English
A market with no price tags, until now.
Influencer pricing has no fixed standard, but it does have a working logic. The industry baseline starts from a cost per follower, a rough rate per thousand followers that varies by platform, and then adjusts hard for engagement. A creator with a small, rabidly engaged audience can be worth more to a brand than one with ten times the followers and a dead feed, because engagement is the real proxy for whether anyone will act on the post.
Platform matters because reach and production effort differ. A TikTok video can travel far beyond a creator's followers, so it commands more per follower than a Facebook post. A YouTube integration takes hours to script and shoot, so it's priced richly. Stories are cheap and ephemeral; reels and dedicated videos are premium. This tool bakes those relativities in, giving a different range for each content type on the platform you choose.
Treat the output as an opening range, not a quote. Real rates also swing on niche (finance and B2B pay more than lifestyle), usage rights (can the brand run it as a paid ad?), exclusivity, deliverable count, and your track record of driving actual sales. Use the estimate to anchor the conversation with confidence, then adjust up for everything that makes you more valuable than a raw follower count suggests.
The formula
Estimate ≈ followers × per follower base × content multiplier × engagement factor
A 25,000 follower Instagram creator at a 3.5% engagement rate (above average, so a ~2.3× engagement factor on a 1.5% baseline) lands around $575 for a feed post, roughly $430, $775 as a range. A reel is priced higher; a story frame lower. Strong engagement is doing real work here: at an average 1.5% rate the same account would estimate far less.
Rough rates by audience size
Common per post ranges by creator tier (Instagram, average engagement). Niche, usage rights, and engagement move these a lot. They're a reality check on the estimate, not a fixed scale:
| Creator tier | Followers | Typical / post |
|---|---|---|
| Nano | 1k to 10k | $10 to 100 |
| Micro | 10k to 50k | $100 to 500 |
| Mid | 50k to 500k | $500 to 5k |
| Macro | 500k to 1M | $5k to 10k |
| Mega / celebrity | 1M+ | $10k+ |
Source: Influencer rate benchmarks (per-follower industry standards) · 2025
Read your estimate
Your engagement is well above average.
Price at the top of the range or above it. Engaged audiences convert, and that's what brands actually pay for, lead with your engagement rate, not your follower count.
Big following, mediocre engagement.
Don't price on followers alone, brands increasingly see through it. Be ready to justify your rate with reach, saves, and any sales you've driven.
You're in a high value niche.
Finance, B2B, tech, and luxury pay multiples of lifestyle rates because the audience is worth more per head. Adjust the estimate upward for your vertical.
The brand wants usage / ad rights.
Running your content as a paid ad is worth far more than an organic post. Charge a usage fee or a multiple, never hand over ad rights at the organic rate.
It's a multi deliverable package.
Bundle pricing should give a small discount but reflect the total work. Price each asset, then package, don't let 'a few stories' get thrown in free.
How to price and pitch yourself
01Lead with engagement and results
If you've driven sales, sign ups, or sell outs, that's your strongest card. Proof of conversion beats follower count every time in a negotiation.
02Charge separately for usage rights
Organic post and ad usage are two different products. License your content for paid use at a premium or a time boxed fee. It's where real money is left on the table.
03Build a simple media kit
Followers, engagement rate, reach, audience demographics, and past results on one page. It justifies your rate and makes you look like a pro, not a hobbyist.
04Price the package, not just the post
Brands want bundles, posts, stories, a reel, rights. Quote a package with a clear value for each piece so nothing gets given away.
05Hold your floor
The estimate is a starting point; don't negotiate below the value of your time and audience. Brands expect to pay, undercutting trains them (and the market) to pay creators less.
06Factor exclusivity and timelines
Not promoting a competitor for months has real cost, as do rush turnarounds. Build both into the rate rather than absorbing them.
The vocabulary
- Cost per follower
- The per follower baseline used to anchor influencer rates, varying by platform. The starting point before adjustments.
- Engagement factor
- A multiplier that raises or lowers the rate based on how engaged the audience is versus the platform average.
- Usage rights
- Permission for a brand to use your content in paid ads or other channels, priced separately from an organic post.
- Media kit
- A one page summary of your reach, engagement, audience, and results, used to justify your rates to brands.
- Nano / micro / macro
- Creator tiers by audience size, nano (1k, 10k), micro (10k, 50k), macro (500k+), each with different typical rates.
Influencer pricing questions, straight answers
A common starting point is around $10 per 1,000 followers for an Instagram feed post at average engagement, adjusted up for strong engagement, premium formats (reels, videos), high value niches, and usage rights. This calculator builds that estimate for your platform and engagement and gives a range per content type, treat it as the floor to open negotiations, not a fixed price.
Keep going
A calculator tells you what. A call tells you what to do about it.
Send me the account behind these numbers. I'll tell you straight where the money's leaking and what I'd fix first — free, and you keep it whether you hire me or not.