Brand deal rate benchmarks, explained

Why engaged followers, not raw follower count

A brand is paying for a person who actually sees and reacts to the post, not for a row in a follower list. A 100,000-follower account with 1% engagement produces about 1,000 engaged followers per post. A 10,000-follower account with 8% engagement produces about 800 — nearly the same number of real, active viewers, from an account ten times smaller. Pricing against raw follower count alone rewards a large, passive audience over a small, attentive one; pricing against engaged followers does not.

Why the ranges are wide

This calculator's benchmark ranges are deliberately wide — often a 2x spread between the low and high end of the same deliverable and platform. That is not imprecision; it reflects the real spread in what brands actually pay, driven by factors a follower-count-and-engagement-rate calculator cannot see:

Past brand-deal results. A creator with a proven track record of driving clicks, saves, or sales for past brands can charge toward the top of the range; a first-time seller usually starts lower.
Niche demand. A niche with active brands competing for creators (say, beauty, tech, or personal finance) supports higher prices than a niche with few brands chasing it.
Audience specificity. An audience read almost entirely by, say, new parents is worth more per follower to a baby-product brand than a general audience of the same size is worth to anyone.
Relationship and timing. A brand that already has a good relationship with you, or that needs content for a specific launch window, will often pay above the general range.

Use the low end of the range as a floor you should rarely go below, and the high end as a target to work toward as you build a track record — not as two arbitrary numbers to average.

How to move your ask up from the floor

Lever	What it does
Share past brand-deal results	Click-through rate, saves, or sales from a prior brand deal (with permission) is the single strongest evidence a new brand can act on.
Sell out slots before dropping price	A consistently full brand-deal calendar is itself a pricing signal; discounting an open slot trains brands to wait you out.
Bundle rather than discount	Adding a second deliverable (say, a Story mention alongside a feed post) usually protects the per-post rate better than lowering it.
Re-check engagement rate by measurement window	Some platforms report engagement over the last 30 days, others per-post — compare like for like before quoting a number to a brand.

Back to the brand deal rate calculator.