How much do influencers charge per post? The 2026 numbers
2026 influencer rates by tier (nano to mega), plus a free way to turn any quote into a CPM before you reply. Ranges from Hootsuite and Shopify.
A posted video of about 30 seconds on Instagram or TikTok, with six months of usage rights and a typical niche.
| Audience | Estimated range |
|---|---|
| United States, <1k | $210–$400 |
| United States, 1k-5k | $270–$480 |
| United States, 5k-15k | $330–$550 |
| United States, 15k-35k | $380–$710 |
| United States, 35k-60k | $420–$830 |
| United States, 60k-100k | $830–$1,500 |
| United States, 100k-250k | $1,500–$3,000 |
| United States, 250k-1M | $3,000–$14,000 |
| United States, 1M+ | $14,000–$59,000+ |
| United Kingdom, 5k-15k | $290–$470 |
How much do influencers charge per post? In 2026, published rate cards put nano creators (1K to 10K followers) at roughly $20 to $200 a post, micro creators (10K to 50K) at $200 to $5,000, and mid-tier creators (50K to 500K) at $1,600 to $10,000. Macro creators (500K to 1M) run $5,000 to $25,000, and mega accounts start around $10,000 and go past $50,000. Those bands are too wide to price a deal on. A creator with 30,000 followers can quote $250 or $2,500 for the same deliverable and have a case for either. What decides whether a quote is fair is the views it will actually buy, so below you'll find the ranges from two sources and then the one sum we'd run on every quote before replying.
The per-follower rule of thumb overprices most creators
The shortcut you'll hear most is a flat rate per thousand followers. The common version is $100 per 1,000 followers, which puts a 100,000-follower creator at around $10,000 per post. Hootsuite's band for that tier (50,000 to 500,000 followers) is $2,000 to $5,000 per Instagram post. So the rule lands at double the top of the published range and five times the bottom of it.
Small creators come out even worse. Run the rule on a 5,000-follower nano creator and you get $500. Shopify's 2026 breakdown has nano rates at $25 to $150 per post, so you'd be paying about 3.3 times the top of the range, in the tier that's supposed to be the cheap one.
If someone quotes you off a per-follower formula, they're pricing the number that's easiest to inflate and says the least about whether anyone watches the video.
What influencers charge per post in 2026, by tier
Here are two current sources side by side. Where they overlap is a reasonable opening range. Where they disagree is your room to negotiate.
| Tier | Followers | Per post (Hootsuite) | Per post (Shopify) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | 1K to 10K | $20 to $200 | $25 to $150 |
| Micro | 10K to 50K | $200 to $2,000 | $250 to $5,000 |
| Mid-tier | 50K to 500K | $2,000 to $5,000 | $1,600 to $10,000 |
| Macro | 500K to 1M | $5,000 to $15,000 | $5,000 to $25,000 |
| Mega | 1M+ | $15,000 to $50,000+ | $10,000 to $50,000+ |
Bands from Hootsuite and Shopify. Shopify says plainly that its ranges pool estimates from several agencies and vary a lot, which is more honest than most rate cards. Look at the micro row: $250 and $5,000 both sit inside the same published tier, and follower count can't tell you which end a given creator belongs at.
Tier boundaries aren't standard either. Hootsuite ends the micro tier at 50,000 followers, while other published cards stretch it to 100,000. Check which definition a rate card uses before you compare two of them.
What influencers charge per post on TikTok and YouTube
The table above is mostly Instagram. Other platforms price differently, and Shopify's platform breakdown has separate bands for each. On TikTok it puts nano creators at $5 to $200 per post, micro at $200 to $1,200, mid-tier at $1,200 to $5,000, macro at $5,000 to $15,000 and mega at $7,000 to more than $20,000. YouTube is the expensive one: $200 to $1,000 for nano creators, $1,000 to $10,000 for micro and $10,000 to $50,000 for macro, because a long-form integration holds the viewer for minutes rather than seconds.
TikTok creators often price off their average views rather than their follower count. That makes TikTok quotes the easiest to check with the CPM method below.
Convert every quote to a CPM before you reply
Say a creator with 30,000 followers quotes $400, and her recent Reels get around 12,000 views each.
- $400 divided by 12,000 views, times 1,000, is a $33.33 CPM.
- Counter at $150 and those same 12,000 views come out at $12.50.
- If her median is actually 40,000 views, $400 is a $10 CPM. Take it before she reprices.
That one division tells you more than any tier chart, and it gives you a reply that isn't just haggling. Compare "can you do $200?" with "your last nine Reels had a median of 12,000 views, so $400 works out to a $33 CPM, and our ceiling is $15." The second one gives her a reason. Most creators will either come down or send view data that backs up the price, and you learn something either way.
Take the view figure from her last nine posts and use the median, not the average. One viral outlier wrecks an average, and that outlier is exactly the post a creator will point to when quoting.
It also helps to know how the creator got to her number. Shopify describes the two formulas most creators and agencies use. The first is followers times engagement rate times a rate per engagement: 50,000 followers at 3 percent engagement and 10 cents per engagement gives a $150 base, and add-ons for usage rights, exclusivity and a rush timeline take it to $325. The second is views in thousands times a CPM: 100,000 typical views at a $15 CPM is $1,500. If the quote came from the first formula, push back on the engagement rate. If it came from the second, push back on the view count.
When CPM gives you the wrong answer
First, Instagram. Most tools show Instagram views as modelled estimates, so a CPM built on them is a ballpark. Don't hand it to finance as a measured number. TikTok and YouTube report real view counts you can hold a creator to.
Second, CPM measures reach, and sometimes you're buying sales. A nano creator selling $180 supplements to 4,000 people who trust her can out-earn a macro creator with a $6 CPM, and a CPM comparison would still pick the macro creator. If the campaign is judged on sales, price against expected conversions and use CPM as a check that you aren't overpaying for reach. The roster math for that trade-off is in the micro versus macro breakdown.
How much influencers charge per post changes with what else you are buying
Very few quotes cover a single post and nothing else. The format, the usage rights and any exclusivity clause all change the number.
Format moves it least. Published pricing breakdowns say reels cost two to three times more than static posts, so a creator who asks $300 for a static post will want $600 to $900 for a Reel. Exclusivity costs the most, and it often ends up in a contract by default when nobody actually needed it. Usage rights sit in between, and that's where budgets tend to double. We work through what a 90-day window costs in the usage rights pricing post.
Stories cost the least. Published rate cards put them at $15 to $75 per frame for nano creators, usually sold in sets of three to five, and says many nano creators will post for product alone if the brand fits their niche.
Deal structure matters too. Brands typically pair a flat fee with a 10 to 20 percent commission on sales. At $400 flat plus 15 percent, a creator who drives $3,000 in tracked revenue earns $850, and you can point at what you paid for. Creators who trust their audience will often take a lower base in exchange for more commission. That's the cheapest signal you'll get on whether she believes her own view numbers.
If the creator has a manager, ask whether the quote includes the manager's cut. Agency fees often run 10 to 20 percent on top of creator fees, and markups of 20 to 80 percent are often invisible on the invoice.
One flat rate across a mixed roster is where money leaks. A nano creator and a macro creator on the same brief shouldn't draw the same fee, but a single spreadsheet line makes that easy to miss. On UGCBloom, rates are set per tier for each campaign, so the nano, micro and macro creators on one brief each get their own agreed number, with bonuses and per-conversion payouts added where the campaign uses them.
Set a ceiling before the first message goes out
Brands rarely overpay because someone negotiated badly. They overpay because nobody wrote down a maximum before talks started, so whoever quoted first set the ceiling. Pick a CPM ceiling for each tier, turn it into a dollar figure using each creator's median views, and don't go above it without sign-off from someone senior.
That discipline slips when you're running forty of these conversations by hand across time zones. On UGCBloom, rate conversations go through the Deal-Maker agent. It replies to each creator in their own language, negotiates inside the price bands the brand set, and hands anything unusual to a person.
Next time a rate card lands in your inbox, divide the ask by that creator's median views on their last nine posts and multiply by 1,000. If it comes out above a $30 CPM, you're paying for followers, not viewers.
