Rate card

What a rate card is

A rate card is the structured price list for a creator's services: what an Instagram Reel, a TikTok video, a YouTube integration, a Story frame or a UGC package costs, and which surcharges apply for extended usage rights, exclusivity or rush delivery. Agencies keep rate cards per creator on the roster; larger agencies also keep internal cards that include margin logic, separate from the external cards shared with brands.

What belongs on it

How prices are built

There is no official formula, but practice converges on a few inputs: audience size and expected impressions (often sanity-checked as an implied CPM against paid-social benchmarks), engagement quality, niche and audience fit, production effort, and the creator's track record. The card is an anchor, not a menu — real deals move with campaign scope, bundle size and how much the brand wants that specific creator.

In agency practice

A maintained rate card does three jobs. It keeps quoting consistent when several managers sell the same talent — without one, the same Reel goes out at three different prices in one week. It speeds up proposals, because campaign pricing becomes assembly instead of invention. And it protects creators from systematic underpricing, since usage rights and exclusivity are priced explicitly instead of being given away silently in negotiation. Cards age quickly — audience numbers move, formats rise and fall — so a quarterly review against recently closed deals is a reasonable rhythm. The rate card also needs to stay consistent with what contracts actually license: a card that sells "organic only" while the standard contract grants broad paid usage undercuts itself.