What to chargea brand.
How creator rates are actually built, and why followers are the least useful number you have.
Almost every guide to creator pricing gives you the same thing: a number per thousand followers. It is the wrong tool, and it is why so many creators are underpaid.
Followers are the least useful number you have. Here is how rates are actually built.
Start from reach, not followers
A brand is buying the number of people who will see the post. Your follower count stopped predicting that years ago.
So the base of every rate is your average views or reach for that format, over your last ten posts or so. Not your best post. Not your follower count. The average, recent.
A creator with 8,000 followers averaging 30,000 views per reel is worth more than one with 50,000 followers averaging 4,000. Every time. Price from the number that reflects that.
Then adjust for the four things that move the price
1. Engagement quality. Saves and shares matter more than likes now, because they are what the platform rewards and what signals real interest. Strong engagement justifies a real premium over a comparable creator with a flat audience.
2. Audience fit. A skincare brand pitching a creator whose audience is exactly their buyer pays more than for a bigger but vaguer audience. If your audience is tightly matched, say so and charge for it.
3. Production load. A talking-head story takes twenty minutes. A scripted, shot, edited, multi-location reel takes two days. Price the work, not just the posting.
4. What they get to do with it. This is the biggest one creators miss, and it is the next section.
Usage rights are a separate line, always
If a brand wants to run your content as a paid ad, that is not part of the post fee. It is its own charge, and it should be.
The three to price separately:
- Organic post only. It lives on your feed. Base rate.
- Paid usage and whitelisting. They run it as an ad from their account or yours. Priced as a percentage on top of the base, and scaled by how long they want it.
- Full buyout or exclusivity. They own the content outright, or you cannot work with their competitors for a set period. The largest premium of the three, and it should be time-limited. Never agree to indefinite exclusivity.
A usage clause with no end date and no extra fee is the single most expensive thing a creator can sign.
Bundles, and why they help you
Price individual deliverables, then offer a package at a modest discount. Three reels and four stories as one number is easier for a brand to approve than seven line items, and it moves your average deal size up rather than down.
Discount for volume. Never discount for "exposure", a long-term relationship that has not happened yet, or a brand's promise to feature you.
What the industry pays
Typical rates for a single sponsored reel, in Canadian dollars. These are industry figures, not our own pricing. Published surveys disagree with each other, sometimes widely, so treat each row as the range most sources land in.
| Followers | Typical rate per reel |
|---|---|
| Under 10,000 | $70 - $420. Plenty of offers at this size are product only, with no fee. |
| 10,000 to 100,000 | $420 - $2,100 |
| 100,000 to 500,000 | $2,100 - $7,000 |
| Above 500,000 | Quoted individually |
These surveys group creators by followers, because that is what they can count. The rest of this guide says to price from reach, and the two fit together: if your views run well above your follower count, price toward the top of your row.
Paid usage is not in these numbers. If a brand wants to run your reel as an ad, charge for that on top, as above.
Sources: 2026 rate guides from Later, Influencer Marketing Hub, Influee and Stan, mostly reported in US dollars and converted at 1.40, September 2026.
These are starting points for a negotiation, not a guarantee that any brand will pay them. Rates move with the four factors above, and with your category. Nothing here is a promise about what you will be offered.
Three rules for the conversation
Never name the first number if you can avoid it. "What is the budget for this?" costs you nothing and frequently comes back higher than you would have asked.
Gifted is not payment. A product covers the product. It does not cover your time, your audience, or their usage rights. Turning a gifted offer into a paid one is a normal, expected conversation, not a rude one.
Your rate is allowed to go up. It should, as your reach does. Creators get stuck quoting the number they set eighteen months ago because it is written down somewhere and updating it feels like a whole task.
Two things that make this easier
Two free rate cards. One for UGC, one for content creators, both built on the same formula as the rate cards in our media kits. They work your own numbers through the logic above and give you something defensible rather than a guess. Free, and we email you the link so you can find it again.
THE LIVE RATE CARD goes further. It is a password-protected rate card built into the bottom of your live media kit, priced from your live numbers across the three categories you are actually pitching. It recalculates as you grow, and a figure a brand has already been quoted is never quoted lower, so nothing moves underneath you mid-negotiation. $37 CAD a month, media kit and rate card together.
Try the free rate calculator · Get a free rate card · See the media kit options