Influencer Rate Calculator

How the price above is built

The calculator applies a fixed chain of multipliers to one base number and prints every one in the breakdown table, so you can argue with any single step.

Each deliverable is priced separately with its own contentMult and quantity; the bundle total is the sum of those lines. The ±25% band is negotiating room, not a confidence interval.

Worked example

24,500 followers, 3.4% engagement, general lifestyle, one Reel plus one feed post, no usage rights or exclusivity, one-off. Base is 24,500 × $0.013 = $318.50. That is micro tier, benchmark 2.5%, so the ratio is 3.4 ÷ 2.5 = 1.36 and erMult = 1.18. The Reel is 318.50 × 1.18 × 1.4 = $526, the feed post $376, and the bundle mid-point $902, band $676 to $1,127 — $0.0368 per follower, a $37 CPM. Book the same two every month for six months and the 10% step applies: $812 a month, $4,870 across the contract.

Base rate by niche

These are the exact USD-per-follower figures in the tool, derived from public CPM ranges reported across creator-marketing coverage. They encode a simple truth: advertisers pay more per head where a customer is worth more.

The base is calibrated so an account sitting exactly on its tier benchmark pays out at 1.0 × base for a single feed post — $0.013 per follower in the general niche, a $13 CPM per 1,000 followers, before any uplift.

The engagement multiplier

Your engagement rate is judged against the benchmark for your follower tier, not against everyone. The tiers match the engagement rate calculator: 4.0% nano, 2.5% micro, 1.8% mid, 1.2% macro.

The multiplier is 1 + (ratio − 1) × 0.5, floored at 0.7 and capped at 1.5. Landing exactly on your benchmark gives ×1.00 — the neutral case the base rate is built around. The ×1.5 cap binds at twice your benchmark (8.0% nano, 5.0% micro, 3.6% mid, 2.4% macro); nothing above adds a cent. The ×0.7 floor binds at 0.4× benchmark and below (1.6%, 1.0%, 0.72%, 0.48%).

Deliverables, usage rights and exclusivity

Usage rights are the line most creators forget to charge for, and the one that costs them the most. “Can we use this in our ads?” turns your face into an advertising asset running to audiences who never followed you, on a budget you will never see. Perpetual doubles the fee because perpetual is genuinely forever — no expiry, no takedown clause, no second payment.

Exclusivity is compensation for lost income: if you cannot work with a competing brand for 90 days, you are declining offers you have not received yet. The 15% and 30% uplifts are modest — if you routinely field multiple offers a month in that category, negotiate higher.

Quantities, not tick boxes

Each deliverable takes a number rather than a checkbox, capped at 60 per line. Real briefs are almost never one of anything, and rolling “three reels and a story set” into one line hides the arithmetic from the brand and from you. Set a quantity to zero to leave a format out; quantities must be whole numbers.

The per-deliverable table shows the unit price and the low, mid and high for each line, plus a bundle total. That is the version to paste into an email — itemised quotes get negotiated on line items, lump sums get negotiated on the whole thing.

Retainer mode and the volume discount

Switch the booking type to monthly retainer and your quantities become per-month quantities. Enter a length from 1 to 24 months; a stepped volume discount applies to every unit price, and the monthly figure is multiplied out across the term.

The reasoning is worth knowing, because a brand will ask. A twelve-month commitment is genuinely worth something to you: it removes the pitching, the chasing and the gap months. That certainty is what the discount buys. But it is capped at 20% for an equally solid reason — your cost per deliverable does not fall with volume. Software gets cheaper at scale because copies are free; your time does not.

The results panel prints the monthly mid-point, the contract length, the discount step by name, the total saved against booking month by month, and the contract total. Push past the cap and a bigger discount stops being a volume argument — it is a rate cut, and rate cuts follow you into every future negotiation.

Your walk-away floor

The floor field is the number below which you would rather say no. It changes nothing in the calculation, only what the tool tells you about the result. Three outcomes:

• The whole range clears your floor. Even the low end is above it, so you can concede on price without regretting the deal.
• Your floor sits inside the range. Your floor, not the calculated low, is now the bottom of what you will discuss — and you should not open anywhere near it.
• The mid-point is below your floor. The tool says so plainly and gives the gap. Neither the calculator nor your floor is wrong: this scope cannot pay for itself at your rate.

In that third case there are three honest options and no clever fourth. Add deliverables or usage until the scope justifies the floor; hold the floor and let the brand walk; or accept that your floor is above what this profile currently commands. Quoting it anyway is legitimate — just know you are quoting a preference, not a derived number.

Reverse mode: what does that budget actually buy?

Brands frequently open with a number rather than a brief. Put it in the budget field and the tool inverts the question, reporting the budget as a percentage of your ask, the dollar gap either way, and a verdict from “clears your opening ask” down to “below your walk-away floor — cut scope or decline”.

Underneath, two tables: what the budget buys if it all went on one format, and your existing mix scaled down until it fits, rounded down so you never over-deliver against the money. If it will not cover a single deliverable, it says so rather than inventing a fractional one.

The rate card

Everything above is assembled into a plain-text rate card you can copy or download as a .txt: scope, itemised deliverables with unit, low, mid and high columns, usage and exclusivity terms in words, the quoted price and range, your floor, the discount step if a retainer applies, and a “how the number was built” trace. It is dated and valid for 30 days — an open-ended quote invites a brand to come back in April with a January price.

One section is a bracketed placeholder for payment terms and replacing it is your job: deposit split, kill fee, revision limit, late-payment terms. A rate card with a visible placeholder in it reads as a template, and a template reads as negotiable.

How to read your result

• Open near the high end. Brands expect to negotiate down; opening at the mid-point means closing below it.
• Adjust for what the tool cannot see. Rush turnaround, travel, paid actors, approval rounds, and any brand asking for revisions “until we’re happy” all deserve their own line.
• Local market matters enormously. These figures are USD and reflect largely US and Western European budgets. Rates in many other markets are a fraction of this for the same audience size.
• Your first paid deal is usually below your calculated rate. That is normal — case studies and screenshots of results are worth real money next time.

What this number does not know

• Whether the brand has the budget. No formula creates money on the other side of the table.
• Where your audience is. 50,000 followers in a country the brand does not ship to is worth almost nothing to them.
• Your conversion history. A creator who can show tracked sales from a past campaign charges multiples of any follower-based formula. This is the single biggest thing that beats it.
• Whether your engagement is real. Agencies run audience-quality audits; an inflated rate that collapses under scrutiny ends the conversation.
• Agency fees, taxes and platform cuts, none of which are in the total.

No platform publishes an official rate table and no brand is obliged to pay these figures. They are starting points derived from public CPM ranges, and their real job is to stop you quoting a number you picked out of the air. For how to build the case around the number, see our guide to Instagram creator pricing, and reading your own analytics for where the inputs come from.