How Much Should You Charge for a Sponsored Post? A Rate Card Guide

"How much should I charge?" is the question every creator asks before their first real brand deal, and it's the question every manager gets asked by every new creator on their roster. There's no universal answer — but there is a real framework, and most people pricing sponsorships are missing half of it.

Why there's no universal rate card

Anyone who tells you "charge $10 per 1,000 followers, no exceptions" is oversimplifying. Two creators with identical follower counts can reasonably charge wildly different rates because pricing a sponsored post depends on several things at once:

• Platform. A 60-second TikTok, a static Instagram post, an Instagram Reel, and a 10-minute YouTube integration are different products with different production effort and different shelf life.
• Engagement quality, not just reach. A creator with 50k highly engaged niche followers regularly outperforms one with 300k passive followers.
• Niche. Finance, tech, and B2B audiences typically command higher rates than general lifestyle content, because the buyer's customer value is higher.
• Usage rights. Is the brand only running this organically on the creator's own page, or do they want to repost it, run it as a paid ad, or use it in a TV spot?
• Exclusivity. Is the creator free to work with a competitor next week, or is the brand asking for a 3-month category exclusivity?

Ignore any of these and you'll either underprice a deal that should've paid double, or lose a deal by quoting a rate that doesn't match what you're actually offering.

Baseline formulas people actually use

None of these are exact — think of them as a starting anchor to adjust from, not a final number.

Cost-per-thousand-followers (a rough anchor, not a rule)

A commonly cited starting range for a single in-feed post:

• Instagram: roughly $10–$20 per 1,000 followers for a single feed post, lower for Stories, higher for Reels given better reach.
• TikTok: typically $10–$25 per 1,000 followers for a single video, with strong variance based on watch-through rate.
• YouTube: often priced per integration rather than per subscriber — a 60–90 second mid-roll integration on a mid-size channel commonly runs into four figures even at sub-100k subscriber counts, because production value and retention are higher.

These ranges shift constantly and vary by region and niche — use them as a sanity check on a quote, not gospel.

Deliverable-based pricing

Most experienced creators and managers price by the deliverable package, not a flat per-follower number:

• Single post vs. a bundle (e.g., 1 feed post + 3 Stories) — bundles should be priced with a discount off the sum of individual rates, not at full price, since it's a fair trade for a bigger commitment from the brand.
• One-off vs. ongoing ambassadorship — a multi-month retainer should be priced lower per post than a one-off, but with a minimum total commitment that makes the lower per-post rate worth it for the creator.
• Production complexity — a scripted, edited, brand-briefed video costs more to make than a casual unboxing, and the quote should reflect actual production hours.

Usage rights and exclusivity add-ons

This is the part most new creators forget to price at all, and it's often worth 20–100%+ on top of the base organic rate:

• Whitelisting / paid social usage (the brand runs the content as an ad from the creator's handle): commonly adds 50–100% on top of the organic rate, since the brand is effectively buying media, not just content.
• Broader usage rights (website, email, out-of-home, TV): priced closer to a buyout, and usually scoped to a specific time window (6 or 12 months) rather than in perpetuity.
• Category exclusivity: if a brand wants you to not work with competitors for a period, that's lost future revenue — price it as a real cost, not a favor.

Adjusting for niche and engagement, not just follower count

Two practical checks before quoting a number:

1. Look at your last 10–15 posts' actual engagement rate, not your follower count. If it's meaningfully above your niche's typical range, you have room to price above the generic baseline.
2. Check whether your niche has above-average customer value. A single new customer in finance, software, or home services is worth far more to a brand than a single new customer in general lifestyle — and rates in those niches tend to reflect it.

How to actually build your rate card

A rate card doesn't need to be complicated. At minimum, have a number ready for:

• Single Instagram feed post
• Single Instagram Reel
• Instagram Stories (3-frame set)
• Single TikTok video
• YouTube integration (60–90 sec) and dedicated video, priced separately
• A "bundle" rate for combined deliverables across platforms
• Add-on pricing for usage rights and exclusivity, as a percentage on top

Review it every quarter. Rates should trend upward as your engagement and results track record grows — don't let a rate you quoted a year ago become the ceiling for a deal today.

Negotiating without underselling

A few things that consistently work:

• Quote the package, not just a number. "This is $X for a feed post plus 3 Stories with 6-month usage rights" reads as more considered than a bare figure, and gives the brand something concrete to negotiate around instead of just pushing the number down.
• Never be the first to lowball yourself. If a brand asks "what's your rate," give your actual number. Anchoring low to seem easy to work with almost always costs more than it gains.
• Let results do the negotiating on renewals. If a past campaign performed well, that's leverage for the next quote — reference it directly.
• Know your walk-away number before the call, so a lowball counteroffer doesn't catch you improvising a discount on the spot.

Tracking rates once you're past one or two deals

The framework above works fine for pricing a single deal. It gets harder the moment you (or a manager) are juggling several creators, each with a different rate, a different commission structure, and deals sitting in different stages of negotiation, production, and payment.

That's the point where a shared rate card in someone's notes app stops being enough — you need a single place where a creator's default commission rate is set once, deal values roll up automatically, and it's obvious at a glance who's owed what. That's exactly what a commission tracker is for, and it's worth setting up before your roster outgrows a spreadsheet, not after.

If you're managing more than one creator, a proper creator CRM that stores each person's rate history, niche, and platform mix alongside their deals will save you from re-deriving the same pricing logic from scratch every time a new inbound offer lands.

Antymo tracks per-creator commission rates, deal values, and payment status in one place — see how it works or start a free trial.