To calculate influencer rates, build each price from your own inputs in layers: a cost floor (the hours a deliverable takes multiplied by the hourly rate your business needs, plus production costs), an audience-value check based on the views or reach your platform's analytics report for comparable posts, and modifiers for usage, exclusivity and rush that you set yourself. Quote whichever of the floor and the audience value is higher, then add the modifiers. This page gives you the worksheet and a worked example with placeholder inputs, and deliberately no table of market rates.
Why there is no rate table here
Rate tables organised by follower count assume that a follower means the same thing everywhere. The platforms' own documentation says otherwise. Meta's About Instagram insights page defines views as the number of times content was played or displayed and viewers as the unique accounts that saw it, and labels some of these metrics as estimated and in development. TikTok's Creator Academy article on using analytics to improve video performance says follower count and previous high-performing videos are not direct factors in its recommendation system. YouTube's page on how engagement metrics are counted says that from August 24, 2026 views are counted the moment a video starts to play, across Shorts, long-form videos and live streams.
With definitions that different, a borrowed number tells you little about what your post is worth. The same method answers every version of the question, whether it is framed as rates per post, TikTok rates or prices for small accounts: plug in your own hours, costs and analytics, and the arithmetic does the rest.
Layer 1: your hourly cost floor
The floor is the least an hour of your time can cost a brand without your business losing money. Work it out once a year and whenever your costs change.
| Input | What to enter | Your figure |
|---|---|---|
| A. Income target | What you need the business to pay you over a year, before income tax | ________ |
| B. Annual business costs | Software, equipment replacement, insurance, accounting, subscriptions and the share of your phone and internet used for work | ________ |
| C. Billable hours per year | Hours you can sell to brands after unpaid posting, pitching, admin, learning and time off are taken out | ________ |
| D. Hourly floor | (A + B) divided by C | ________ |
Be conservative with C. Pitching, admin, editing your own unpaid posts and learning new tools all take time no brand pays for directly, and overstating C is the quickest way to a floor that looks fine on paper and leaves you short. An accountant can help you decide how much of A to set aside for tax and retirement savings where you live, and our creator business setup guide lists the structure questions worth asking at the same time.
Layer 2: the production floor for this deliverable
Estimate every hour the specific deliverable will take: reading the brief, concept, any script approval, set-up and filming, editing, the revision rounds you include, posting and the results report the brand will ask for. Multiply those hours by D, then add direct costs such as props, travel, location fees, licensed music or a paid assistant, and finish with a buffer you choose for overruns. The total is your production floor, E. For a fuller task-by-task estimate, the production section of our UGC pricing worksheet lists what each stage usually involves.
Complexity belongs in this layer, not in a vague premium. A brief with a location shoot, a second person on camera or several approval stages simply takes more hours, and pricing those hours explicitly is easier to defend than a mark-up nobody can see the reason for.
Layer 3: audience value from your own analytics
The floor protects you; audience value checks whether the brand is getting more than your time. Use the metric your platform reports for the format being bought, taken from recent posts in the same format and on similar topics.
| Platform | Metric to use | Where it lives and for how long | Caveat | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Views, with viewers as the unique-account check | Post and account insights, for a preset or custom timeframe within the past 90 days | Meta labels viewers and some related metrics as estimated and in development | About Instagram insights | |
| TikTok | Post views, with unique viewers for audience size | TikTok Studio analytics, with ranges of 7, 28, 60 or 365 days or a custom report | Viewer demographics come from predictive models rather than confirmed user data | TikTok analytics introduction |
| YouTube | Views on videos of the same format, with unique viewers for audience size | YouTube Studio analytics; unique viewers sit in Advanced mode and cover periods of up to 90 days | Unique viewers are estimates, and the August 2026 change to view counting affects comparisons with older videos | Understand your unique viewers data |
Take the median of those comparable posts rather than your best one, because a brand is buying a typical result, not your outlier. Then apply one number that is entirely yours: P, the value you put on a thousand views of a sponsored post in your niche. Audience value F equals the median views divided by 1,000, multiplied by P. Set P from the deals you have closed, adjust it as brands accept or push back, and never copy it from someone else's rate list. If you need a refresher on where these metrics sit, our explainers on Instagram insights and TikTok analytics walk through each screen.
Layer 4: modifiers you set yourself
| Modifier | Question it answers | How to set your figure |
|---|---|---|
| Usage | Where else may the brand use the content, and for how long? | Choose a percentage of the base for each month of paid use, or a flat fee per extra channel, and apply it the same way every time |
| Ads under your handle | Will the brand run ads that carry your name and face? | Price by how broad the permission is and how long it lasts, separately from usage |
| Exclusivity | Which paid work would you have to refuse during the window? | Estimate the deals in that category you would normally expect to be offered in the period, and charge for the ones you would give up |
| Rush | What has to move so this can be delivered early? | A flat charge or percentage that reflects the work you would bump or the evenings you would lose |
Put each modifier on its own row of your influencer rate card, so a brand can see what it is paying for and remove rows instead of haggling over the base.
Worked example: the full rate formula
Here is the whole calculation in order. Replace each placeholder with your own figure; the letters match the worksheets above.
| Step | Formula | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly floor | (A + B) divided by C | D |
| Production floor | Deliverable hours multiplied by D, plus direct costs and your buffer | E |
| Audience value | Median views of comparable posts divided by 1,000, multiplied by P | F |
| Base price | The higher of E and F | G |
| Modifiers | Usage plus ads under your handle plus exclusivity plus rush, where requested | H |
| Quote | G plus H, with tax added on top if you are registered and your card says prices exclude it | Q |
Read the result in both directions. If E is higher than F, your audience is smaller than the work, and the honest quote is still E; if a brand cannot afford it, reduce the scope by dropping a deliverable or the paid usage rather than the floor. If F is higher than E, your audience is the scarce thing and G should reflect it. Either way, Q is a starting point for negotiation, which is a separate skill from pricing.
Pricing bundles and longer partnerships
A campaign with several deliverables is the same calculation repeated. Work out G for each deliverable separately, because a story sequence and a dedicated video have different hours and different audience numbers, then add the modifiers once for the campaign as a whole where they apply to everything, such as a single exclusivity window.
If you offer a discount for volume or for a multi-month commitment, apply it last and show it as a separate line, so the per-deliverable prices on your card stay intact for the next brand. For any partnership that runs across several months, write a review point into the agreement and re-run Layer 3 with fresh analytics before renewing: your audience, the platforms' metric definitions and your costs may all have moved since the first quote.
Checks before the quote goes out
- The base price is at or above your production floor for this exact brief.
- The views behind F come from the same format and a recent period, and none of them pre-date a platform change in how views are counted.
- Each modifier is listed separately with its term written down.
- The quote carries an expiry date and states whether tax is included.
- Disclosure is not priced as an option; every sponsored post is labelled.
- Platform payout estimates, such as those in our Instagram earnings calculator or YouTube money calculator, are kept out of brand pricing, because they estimate what a platform pays you, not what a sponsor should.
- If the brand asks how your audience engages, you have the figure calculated and labelled using our engagement rate formulas.
Limitations of this method
The worksheet produces a price you can defend, not one a brand is bound to accept. It cannot tell you what a particular brand will pay, and P in particular only becomes reliable once you have a record of real deals to calibrate it against. The analytics inputs are platform estimates with their own definitions and time windows, and those definitions change, as YouTube's view-counting update shows.
The method also leaves out factors you may still want to weigh, such as a brand you would work with at a lower price for strategic reasons or one you would decline at any price. Treat it as the starting structure, and get an accountant's help with the income target and tax, and a lawyer's help with usage and exclusivity wording.