The number
$350 to $1,400 for a feed post.
The short answer
A micro influencer with 10K to 50K followers should charge $350 to $1,400 for one Instagram feed post, the cross-category band for 2026, in US dollars.
Multiply for the format: a Reel is 1.35 times that, a carousel 1.2, a three-frame Story set 0.4. Usage is quoted on top, from 25% for a month of paid ads to 150% and up for perpetual rights.
It’s a factor of four wide. It’s the actual spread.
I ran a talent agency for six years. My job was the middle. I found the creator, wrote the pitch, agreed the fee, papered the contract and chased the invoice when it went late.
The spread is wider than any table admits
From my own records: a 120K creator was paid $2,000 for the same kind of brief a 410K creator was paid $1,000 for.
Follower count sets the band and almost nothing else. Engagement, category and negotiation decide where inside it you land, and all three are things you can move.
The five real fees on the work page are the long version of that argument. Three of the five are the same number, and those three creators are 120K, 333K and 552K.
What actually moves it
Three things, and none of them is your follower count.
Your views, measured against your size
The note against the Micro band on the rate bands reads: views well above follower count, and a media kit with audience data in it. That is the entry requirement for the top half of the band.
It has to be sayable. “My last ten Reels averaged 90K views against 30K followers” is a reason. “That’s my rate” is not, and that is where most negotiations start going backwards.
The category the brand sits in
Tech and electronics and finance and apps pay at the top of the band. Premium beauty sits in the upper half and reuses content heavily. Mid and premium fashion is the middle, and most published rate tables are quietly written from it.
Travel and hospitality is middle as well, often part-paid in stay or experience, so agree the cash portion separately. Food and drink sits in the lower half. Fast fashion sits at or below the bottom of every published band.
A 552K creator I booked was paid $2,000 for a fast fashion campaign, against a published band of $7,000 to $20,000. She wasn’t being cheated. That is what the category pays.
The negotiation
Quote the top of the range first. You can come down. You cannot go back up.
And don’t ask what their budget is. Asking hands the number back to the person who has already decided what it is.
Then the deliverable
The band is for a feed post. Multiply it.
Take your figure out of the band, then multiply by what they’ve actually asked for.
Feed post
The baseline everything else is priced against
Reel or short video
Production time, and it is what brands want most right now
Carousel
More assets to shoot, more time on screen
Story set, 3 frames
Twenty-four hours of life, unless they want it as a Highlight
TikTok
Reach is less predictable, which brands pay a premium for
YouTube integration
Longest production time and the longest tail
UGC, no posting
$75 to $350 per asset. Priced on production, not audience
Bundle
A Reel plus three Stories. A small discount wins you the whole brief
Two things the grid doesn’t show
Multipliers stack with usage. They don’t stack with each other. A Reel plus three Stories is one bundle, quoted once, not a Reel price with a Story price bolted on the end.
And UGC is the exception that catches micro creators out. Your following barely matters there. Turnaround, quality and how many variants they get do.
And then what happens to it
Usage is a second thing you’re selling.
Posting is one product. Permission to use that content somewhere other than your own grid is a second one, and it is quoted on top of your posting fee, never instead of it.
Organic only is the default, and it should be written down as the default. If the brief doesn’t say what happens to the content after you post it, that is the question to send back before you answer anything else.
It is the single largest sum of money creators hand over without noticing, which is why it has a piece of its own.
What each level adds
- Exclusivity, 30 days. Plus 20% to 30%. You cannot work with a competitor for a month, and that is lost income.
- Paid ads, 1 month. Plus 25% to 50%.
- Whitelisting. Plus 40% to 100%. They run ads from your handle, so your account carries the association.
- Paid ads, 3 months. Plus 50% to 100%.
- Paid ads, 6 to 12 months. Plus 100% to 200%. This is a media buy. Price it like one.
- Perpetual, all media. Plus 150% to 300%.
One worked example, end to end
45,000 followers, mid-market fashion, average engagement, one Reel with three months of paid usage. Her feed-post rate interpolates to about $895 to $1,800.
The Reel multiplier of 1.35 takes it to $1,200 to $2,400. Three months of paid ads adds 75%, so the quote is $2,100 to $4,250 and her floor is $2,100. The rate calculator runs that arithmetic for you, and the offer check runs it backwards if a number has already landed in your inbox.
Saying it out loud
Put the number where they can see it.
“Rates on request” costs you an email and signals that you’re working it out on the spot.
Put a starting-from figure by deliverable in your media kit, with one line underneath saying rates vary with usage and exclusivity.
What else gets a kit forwarded instead of closed is on the media kit page, and it is four things, none of them design.
Then the habit nobody has. Recalculate after every third campaign. Most creators are quoting a number they set eighteen months and forty thousand followers ago.
Where these numbers come from
The bands are published market ranges for 2026. The multipliers, the usage percentages and the order the categories fall in come out of my own records, from six years agreeing these fees between the brand and the creator.
They’re ranges, not a guarantee. Where I quote one deal it is one deal out of my files, not a benchmark.
What to do with it
Three things, in this order.
Check it: the calculator runs the whole chain, usage included, and it doesn’t ask for your email. Keep the tables: this page and the full bands are free and behind nothing.
Then, if you want a figure instead of a range, the Rate & Pitch Audit works from your real reach and your last three fees and gives you your own number.
The list
What brands are actually paying.
Rate breakdowns, pitch teardowns, and when a brand comes to me looking for creators, that goes out here first. The free guide arrives the moment you sign up.
One email a week. Unsubscribe from any of them.