The short version: nano-influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers) charge £50 to £250 per post, micro-influencers (10,000 to 50,000) charge £150 to £800, mid-tier (50,000 to 500,000) charge £800 to £5,000, and anything above that runs £5,000 into six figures. But the number on the invoice is only half the price. If you’re not paying separately for usage rights, you’re about to get a very unpleasant email from a lawyer six months from now.
Next step on this topic: How Much Do Email Marketing Agencies Typically Charge?.
Before you price anything, run the numbers with this Instagram money calculator.
What influencers charge, by tier and platform
I’ve been on both sides of this. I was ranked among the top social media influencers by Forbes back when I had 300,000-plus followers across Twitter and LinkedIn, and I now sit on the brand side as a consultant, negotiating these deals for clients. The rates below are what I see quoted and paid in the UK and US markets right now, not what some agency rate card says should happen.
- Nano (1,000 to 10,000 followers): £50 to £250 per Instagram post, often just product plus a small fee. TikTok nano rates run lower, £30 to £150, because volume matters more than polish on that platform.
- Micro (10,000 to 50,000): £150 to £800 per post. This is where the best value sits for most small and mid-size brands, and it’s the tier I push most of my clients toward.
- Mid-tier (50,000 to 500,000): £800 to £5,000 per post, and this is where rates stop being predictable because it depends heavily on niche. A finance creator with 80,000 followers can charge more than a lifestyle creator with 300,000.
- Macro (500,000 to 1 million): £5,000 to £20,000 per post.
- Celebrity or mega (1 million-plus): £20,000 to £500,000-plus, and at this level you’re really buying reach and press coverage, not conversions.
- YouTube dedicated integration (60 to 90 seconds inside an existing video, 100,000-subscriber channel): £1,500 to £8,000. A full dedicated video costs two to four times more.
A rough rule that agencies love to quote is £100 for every 10,000 followers. Ignore it. It’s a lazy formula built to make bigger accounts look proportionally reasonable, and it completely ignores engagement rate, niche relevance and whether the audience is even real.
The uncomfortable bit nobody puts in the pricing guide
Here’s the part most articles on this topic skip past: a big chunk of the influencer market is built on inflated numbers, and the pricing structure rewards the inflation. Bought followers, engagement pods where groups of accounts like and comment on each other’s posts on a schedule, and comment farms are common enough that I now insist every client run a fake follower check before agreeing a fee. I’ve seen a “50,000 follower” lifestyle account with a genuine reach of about 4,000 people, because roughly 90 percent of the audience was bought in a single batch back in 2021. The brand had already agreed £600 for a post before anyone checked. Agencies representing bigger creators have very little incentive to flag this, because their commission is usually a percentage of the deal value, so a bigger quoted fee means more money for them regardless of whether it converts. This is exactly why engagement rate matters more than follower count when you’re deciding what something is worth to you. A creator with 12,000 followers and a genuine 6 percent engagement rate will usually outperform one with 120,000 followers and a 0.8 percent rate, and they’ll cost you a tenth of the price.
What you’re paying for (and the bit brands keep forgetting)
The post fee is rarely the whole cost. Four things get bundled into that number badly, or worse, left out entirely:
- Usage rights. The fee for a single organic post does not automatically let you repost that content on your own channels, put it in an email, or run it as a paid ad. That’s a separate right, and creators know it. Expect to pay another 50 to 100 percent of the post fee for three to six months of usage rights.
- Whitelisting or paid amplification. Running the ad through the creator’s account (so it shows up as “sponsored” from their handle, not yours) gets you their audience trust plus your targeting. This is typically an extra fee on top of the content fee, and I usually budget a 1:1 match, meaning if the content costs £1,000, plan for another £1,000 in ad spend behind it.
- Exclusivity. If you want the creator to not promote a competitor for a set period, that costs extra, often 25 to 50 percent on top of the base fee.
- Revisions and usage of raw footage. If you want the raw video files to repurpose for other content, ask upfront. Some creators charge for this, some don’t, but almost none of them offer it for free by default.
A real budget, broken down
A UK stationery and planner brand I worked with had £15,000 for a Q1 campaign and, based on the previous year’s experience, wanted nothing to do with a single macro deal again. The year before, they’d paid a fashion blogger with roughly 400,000 followers £8,000 for one Instagram post. It generated 40 sales. Cost per acquisition worked out to £200 on a £22 product. It was, frankly, a bad deal, and the brand knew it going in but did it anyway because the follower count felt impressive to the board.
The second time round, we split the £15,000 like this:
- 12 micro-influencers (12,000 to 40,000 followers, planner and productivity niche), averaging £600 per post: £7,200
- Usage rights on the four best-performing posts, to run as paid ads: £3,000
- Product gifting across all 12 plus a further 15 nano accounts for organic reach: £2,000
- A freelance producer to brief creators and manage the calendar: £2,800
The campaign delivered a 4.2 percent average engagement rate, well above the 1 to 2 percent that’s typical for lifestyle content at that follower range, and a cost per acquisition of £18. That’s not a coincidence. Twelve creators with engaged, relevant audiences beat one creator with a huge but generic one, and it cost less to prove it.
How to price your own influencer deal, step by step
- Decide the deliverable first. One feed post, three Stories, a Reel, a dedicated YouTube video: each has a separate price, and creators should quote them separately.
- Ask for the media kit and past campaign numbers. A serious creator has this ready. If they don’t, or the numbers are vague, that’s information in itself.
- Check engagement rate, not follower count. Divide average likes plus comments by follower count. Under 1 percent on an account over 50,000 followers is a warning sign.
- Run a fake follower check. There are free tools for this. Do it before you agree a number, not after.
- Work out cost per thousand impressions (CPM) equivalent. If a creator wants £500 for a post that reaches 20,000 people, that’s a £25 CPM, which is high compared to most paid social CPMs of £5 to £15. Use that comparison to negotiate.
- Add usage rights and whitelisting as separate line items, not folded into the base fee, so you know exactly what each part costs.
- Negotiate down for volume. Booking three posts over three months should get you a lower per-post rate than booking one, and most creators will offer 10 to 20 percent off for a multi-post commitment.
- Put payment terms and content approval in writing before anything goes live. Fifty percent up front, fifty percent on posting, is standard and protects both sides.
Beyond the flat fee: other payment models
Flat fee per post is the most common structure, but it’s not the only one, and for some brands it’s not even the best one.
Gifting only works fine at the nano tier, under 10,000 followers, if the product fits the creator’s content. Above that, gifting alone is a hard ask and most creators will (correctly) turn it down.
Performance or affiliate-based payment means paying a commission per sale rather than a flat fee, often 10 to 30 percent depending on margin. This shifts risk onto the creator, which is why the ones with real audiences prefer flat fees, but it can work well with creators who already run affiliate-style promotions as part of how they operate. A discount code with their name on it also gives you a clean way to track exactly what a specific creator’s audience bought, which a flat-fee post rarely gives you.
Retainer deals, where you pay a monthly fee for ongoing content over three to twelve months, tend to land 15 to 25 percent cheaper per post than one-off bookings, and they also produce more consistent content because the creator has time to understand your product rather than shooting one rushed post.
Where this sits in your wider marketing budget
Influencer content doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and comparing it to other spend helps you judge whether it’s earning its place. A well-run webinar might cost £500 to £3,000 to run and can generate leads that are far cheaper to convert than a one-off influencer post, simply because the audience has already opted in. On the other hand, good influencer video content often has a longer shelf life than a webinar recording, and it can be repurposed as ad creative for months, which is worth factoring into your cost-per-use calculation, not just cost-per-post. It’s also worth remembering that a lot of what influencers do overlaps heavily with paid video production roles, and comparing a creator’s quote against what it would cost to brief and pay a freelance videographer for the same output is a useful sanity check. Sometimes the influencer fee is cheaper once you account for the built-in audience. There’s also a secondary benefit that rarely makes it into the invoice conversation: strong influencer content, especially long-form YouTube or blog collaborations, can generate backlinks and referral traffic that keep paying off long after the post has stopped showing in feeds. If a creator has a blog alongside their social channels, ask whether a written piece can be part of the deal. It’s often only a small extra cost and it’s the part of the campaign still working for you a year later.
The number I’d budget
If you want one figure to plan against: for a small or mid-size brand running its first serious influencer campaign, £3,000 to £10,000 buys a proper test across six to fifteen micro-influencers with usage rights included, and that’s enough volume to see real patterns in what converts before you commit bigger money to any single creator. Spending your entire first budget on one macro name because the follower count looks impressive on a slide is the single most common mistake I see, and it’s the one that gets budgets cut the following year.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a small business pay for one Instagram post?
For a micro-influencer with 10,000 to 50,000 followers and a genuine engagement rate above 2 percent, expect £150 to £800 for a single feed post, with Stories or a Reel priced separately on top.
Is it cheaper to work with several small influencers or one big one?
Almost always cheaper, and usually more effective. Twelve micro-influencers at £600 each (£7,200 total) will typically beat one macro-influencer at £8,000 on both engagement rate and cost per sale, because smaller audiences trust the recommendation more.
Do I need to pay extra for usage rights on influencer content?
Yes. A post fee usually only covers the creator publishing it on their own channel. If you want to repost it, run it as an ad, or use it in email marketing, that’s a separate right and typically costs 50 to 100 percent more on top of the base fee.
What’s a reasonable engagement rate to look for before paying an influencer?
Above 3 percent is strong for accounts under 100,000 followers, and 1 to 2 percent is typical for larger accounts. Anything below 1 percent on a mid-size or larger account is worth questioning, and worth running through a fake follower checker before you agree a price.
