Influencer Rate Calculator

How to read this number

This is a floor, not a rate card. It is the least a deal can pay you and still leave the hours whole and the margin intact. The arithmetic is deliberately plain, and every part of it is one of your inputs: labour is your hours multiplied by your own minimum rate, production is whatever you actually spend on the shoot, and the two rights terms are charged against the same total cost.

The assumptions the tool makes, stated so you can disagree with them:

• Your hourly rate applies evenly across the whole package, including the planning, the reshoots and the replies in the comments.
• Exclusivity is valued conservatively. The tool charges your full cost against the months blocked, so a 3 month block is counted as three twelfths of the whole job. This overstates the value in months you would have been idle anyway, and that is deliberate. A floor should not be built on your best months.
• Usage rights are valued the same way. A 6 month term is half your cost again, because the brand is renting your image and your words for longer.
• Your target margin is a true gross margin on revenue, not a cost markup. A 40% target margin means your full cost represents 60% of the final rate (Rate = Full Cost ÷ 0.60).
• Nothing is assumed about reach, impressions, or what the brand gets for the money. This tool has no opinion on that, and neither should the conversation.

The number moves most with two inputs: your hours, which is the one people guess lowest, and the rights terms, which is the one nobody negotiates hard enough. If the floor feels absurd, the honest fix is to correct the inputs, not to lower the margin until the brand's number falls out.

A worked example using the default inputs

Take the defaults: 3 deliverables, 12 hours of work, a $60 minimum hourly rate, $250 of production costs, 3 months of exclusivity, 6 months of usage rights, a 40% target margin and a $900 rate on the table.

Labour is 12 hours at $60, so $720. Add $250 of production and the job costs you $970 to make. The 3 month exclusivity block is three twelfths of $970, so $242.50. The 6 month usage term is six twelfths, so $485. Add those together and the full cost is $1,697.50. Put a 40% margin on that (dividing $1,697.50 by 0.60) and your minimum viable rate is $2,829.17 for the package, which works out to $943.06 per deliverable and $235.76 an hour once you divide by your 12 hours. The $900 on the table sits $1,929.17 below the floor, which is 68.2% under. On these terms, that deal costs you money and time at the same time.

That is the whole point of running the number before you reply. A brand offering $900 for a package that consumes three months of a category lock is not offering you a deal, it is renting your calendar for the price of a lunch.

Why exclusivity and usage rights cost real money

Most creators price a post as a post. The post is never the deal. The deal is the post plus the permission that came attached to it.

Exclusivity blocks a category of work. Three months of blocking a skincare brand means three months in which a competing skincare offer is not a yes. Your audience still arrives, the content still costs you a slot, and the next bill still lands. The tool charges your full cost against that block, which is a deliberately conservative way to value it. A better negotiator could argue the block is worth less in your quiet months and more in your busy ones. That is a conversation worth having, but only once you know what the block is costing you at the pessimistic end.

Usage rights do not block new work, they extend the old work. A 6 month paid usage term means your image is still running in that brand's ads while you are pitching a competitor, and the content keeps working for them after you have moved on. The tool values a 6 month term at half your cost again, which is a straight line rather than a decay curve. Paid usage usually is worth more in the first month and less in the sixth, so treat this as a fair default and price the first three months properly if you want to be exact.

If both terms are set to 0, the tool says so and shows you the pure cost-plus floor: your hours, your production costs, and your margin, with no rights value added. That number is the cleanest version of the question, and if a brand wants the content for free, forever, with no lock, that is the number you are arguing against.

The four terms worth negotiating

1. Deliverable count. Brands ask for "one package" and mean a reel, three stories, a static, a usage cut and a comment reply. Name every asset in the invoice, with a quantity, before the shoot. More deliverables at the same rate is always a lower hourly rate, and the tool shows you exactly that gap.
2. Revision rounds. One round is a tweak. Unlimited rounds is a second job with no second fee. Cap it in writing, and count the revision hours you already baked into your hours input.
3. Usage term. Six months, twelve months, perpetual. Each step up is rent on your own image, and the price of that step is the difference between a posting fee and a partnership. If they want a long term, ask what else moves: fee, deliverable count, or exclusivity.
4. Exclusivity scope. "Exclusive for six months" is usually a demand to be the only creator in an entire category, which is a far bigger ask than it sounds. Counter with the category actually in conflict, and a defined end date. A brand that only needs to protect a product launch needs a window around the launch, not your whole quarter.

What this tool does not tell you

It does not tell you what a post is worth to a brand. It deliberately contains no published CPM figure, no engagement benchmark and no average rate for your follower count, because those numbers describe a market in aggregate and not your specific offer to a specific brand, and quoting them as a rate is how creators end up billing marketplace prices for bespoke work.

What the reach is worth is a separate judgement, and it is one only you can make. A deal that clears your floor by a lot might be worth taking at half your floor if the audience overlap is exactly right, if the product genuinely fits what you already post, and if the brand pays on time, because those things are worth money to your business in ways a calculator cannot see. What the floor does is make sure that decision is a decision rather than an accident. It tells you the least you can accept without losing money or losing your time, and it tells you plainly when the number on the table is below that.

One more thing it cannot see: a brand that treats creators well, pays in 14 days rather than 90, sends briefs that are already half-written, and comes back, is worth accepting a smaller fee for. Relationships are a real asset. Just price that asset deliberately, with your eyes open, rather than discovering afterwards that the rate was never the problem.

What to do next

Run your own numbers before you reply, then run the brand's numbers against the counter-offer you want to make. Set the hours from an honest log of what the last three deals actually took, not the number you remember. Read the exclusivity and usage terms as written, not as intended, and if the brief does not say how many deliverables, how many revisions, and how many months, ask before you agree to anything.

Then send one message with a specific counter: the rate, the deliverable list, the revision cap and the rights term, all on one line. Brands move faster when the alternative is a clearly stated number than when it is a vague negotiation. If they cannot meet the floor, the tool has already done its job and you know the deal is a no, which is worth more than a maybe that costs you a quarter of your calendar.

Deals are also the part of a creator business that quietly eats the time you were trying to protect. The shoot is the small part. The contract review, the invoice, the payment chase, the usage expiry date you forget about, that is the part that turns one paid post into six hours of admin. If that is where your week is going, theAI Automation ROI Calculator puts a number on the reclaimable hours, and theEffective Hourly Rate Calculatorshows you what your time is actually returning once every unpaid task is counted.