The short answer: Published UK rate cards run from roughly £8 to £76 per Instagram post for nano creators, £76 to £380 for micro, £380 to £3,800 for mid-tier, £3,800 to £7,600 for macro and £7,600 upwards for mega creators. Those are opening prices, not settled prices. On a recent UK mid-tier campaign Augmentum Media negotiated an average 30 to 40 percent discount against the creators' opening fees. The number that should govern your budget is not the fee, it is the cost per thousand impressions it implies: that campaign landed at a £16.34 CPM, against £2.49 and £3.27 on seeded programmes.
How much do influencers charge in the UK?
Published UK rate cards for a single Instagram post, by tier, as compiled by Awin:
Tier | Followers | Published rate, per Instagram post |
|---|---|---|
Nano | 1,000 to 10,000 | £8 to £76 |
Micro | 10,000 to 100,000 | £76 to £380 |
Mid-tier | 100,000 to 500,000 | £380 to £3,800 |
Macro | 500,000 to 1,000,000 | £3,800 to £7,600 |
Mega | 1,000,000+ | £7,600+ |
Two things about that table before you budget from it.
It is an opening price. Rate cards are the number a creator or their agent says first, and on mid-tier deals Augmentum Media routinely settles well below them.
And the ranges are enormous. Micro spans a fivefold spread. A table that tells you a creator costs somewhere between £76 and £380 has not answered the question, which is why the rest of this piece is about the number underneath the fee.
Why is a rate card the wrong number to budget from?
Because a fee is a price, and what you actually need is a rate.
Two creators both charge £300. One reaches 8,000 people, the other reaches 45,000. You did not pay the same price for the same thing, and no rate card in the search results will tell you that, because none of them know your audience overlap, your format, or your market.
The unit that makes creator spend comparable to every other line in your marketing budget is cost per thousand impressions. Convert every quote into a CPM before you accept it:
CPM = (fee ÷ expected impressions) × 1,000
Ask the creator for median views or impressions on their last ten posts in the format you are buying. Not follower count, not best-ever post. If they will not share it, that is information too. This is the single question Augmentum Media puts to a creator before any fee is agreed, because it converts an opinion about worth into a number you can compare.
For reference, Modash's pricing guide quotes Marit Tiesema, Senior KOL and Ambassador Specialist at Loop Earplugs, recommending brands aim for a maximum $20 CPM on TikTok creator deals. That is a sensible ceiling published by a practitioner, and it is a useful sanity check on any quote you receive.
What do brands actually pay after negotiation?
Less than the rate card, if someone is negotiating properly.
On a recent UK mid-tier paid campaign using six creators averaging 235,000 followers, Augmentum Media negotiated an average 30 to 40 percent discount against the creators' opening fees, with a 4 to 5 day content turnaround in Q4, which is the most expensive and most congested period of the year to be commissioning creator content.
That campaign delivered a £16.34 CPM, 18 percent stronger than the campaign target, at a 5.3 percent average engagement rate against a 1.5 to 2 percent benchmark, reaching a 77 percent female audience.
What creates the discount is not haggling. It is volume, clarity and speed: a clear brief, a defined deliverable set, a known usage window, and a decision made quickly. Creators discount certainty. As of August 2026 that has not changed.
What does a rate card cost per thousand impressions?
This is where the comparison gets uncomfortable for the rate card.
Model | What you pay for | Verified CPM |
|---|---|---|
Seeded, micro and nano | Product and fulfilment, no fees | £2.49 (Lululemon, 7.1M+ impressions) |
Seeding into affiliate | Product, fulfilment, commission on sales | £3.27 (Fussy, 19M+ impressions) |
Seeding into affiliate, EU | Product, fulfilment, commission | EUR 4.46 (Mother's Earth, 7M+ impressions) |
Mid-tier paid, negotiated | Fees, usage rights, production | £16.34 (UK activewear brand) |
The paid campaign is a good campaign. It beat its target and it beat the engagement benchmark. It also costs roughly five times per thousand impressions what the product-led programmes cost.
A rate card tells you what a post costs. A CPM tells you what an audience costs. On verified Augmentum Media programmes the same brand pound has bought impressions at £2.49 and at £16.34, and the difference is the model, not the negotiation.
The content economics move the same way. One UK wellness brand's programme produced VIP creative at under £90 average cost per video, at 15 or more creatives a month, and cut creative testing costs by 55 percent. Another generated 11,000 or more creatives for the ad account over the life of the programme. At mid-tier rate-card prices, a single video can cost more than a month of that.
What is included in an influencer's fee, and what costs extra?
This is where UK brands most often overpay, because the quote and the scope are agreed at different times.
A standard fee usually covers the creator making and posting the content on their own channel, for as long as they choose to leave it up. Everything below is typically extra, and each one is negotiable:
Usage rights. Permission to use the content in your own paid ads. Priced by duration and channel. Awin notes that rights expansion, such as repurposing a Reel into paid social, email and website, adds to the fee while increasing the content's working value.
Whitelisting or partnership ads. Running paid spend through the creator's own handle. Distinct from usage rights and priced separately.
Exclusivity. Agreeing not to work with your competitors for a period. Expensive, and often unnecessary at micro level.
Guaranteed deliverables and revisions. A fixed number of posts, stories and edits.
Cross-posting. The same content on a second platform.
Agree all five before you agree the fee, because a cheap fee with no usage rights is usually more expensive than a higher fee with twelve months of paid usage included. Augmentum Media negotiates scope and fee in the same conversation for this reason.
How much should a UK health and wellness brand budget?
Start from the number of creators you need in market, not from a rate card.
For a health and wellness brand between roughly £2m and £50m in revenue, the shape that works is a base of seeded micro and nano creators, where the cost is product and fulfilment rather than fees, converting the 15 to 25 percent who genuinely love the product into affiliates on trackable links. Paid fees enter only for creators who have already proven they sell, or for a specific moment that needs simultaneous reach.
The cost case for that order is not theoretical. One long-running UK programme, over 20 or more months, seeded 250 to 300 creators a month, grew to 1,750 or more affiliates, and delivered a customer acquisition cost under £13.96 including all fees, and £5.52 excluding them, producing 11,500 or more new customers at a 5.12x ROAS.
No rate card gets you to that number, because the rate card is pricing a post and the programme is pricing a customer. Augmentum Media builds budgets from the second one.
Is there a cheaper alternative to paying per post?
Yes, and it is the model behind every low CPM in this article.
Seeding, the model Augmentum Media builds every programme on, means sending product to creators with no fee and no obligation to post, then converting the minority who genuinely love it into affiliates paid on performance. You trade guaranteed placements for genuine advocacy and much better economics. It does not replace paid creator work, it changes what you are paying for when you do it: amplifying content that has already proven it performs, rather than commissioning content that has not.
The mechanics, including sourcing, conversion rates and what it costs to run, are in our guide to influencer seeding. If you want to price the earned reach it produces in a way that survives a finance review, our guide to earned media value covers that, and our comparison of micro and macro creators covers which tier to spend on first.
Frequently asked questions
How much do influencers charge in the UK?
Published UK rate cards run from about £8 to £76 per Instagram post for nano creators, £76 to £380
for micro, £380 to £3,800 for mid-tier, £3,800 to £7,600 for macro and £7,600 upwards for mega,
according to Awin's UK cost guide. These are opening prices and are widely negotiable.
How much do micro influencers charge in the UK?
Published rates for micro creators, defined by Awin as 10,000 to 100,000 followers, run from about
£76 to £380 per Instagram post. The spread is wide because niche, format, usage rights and
exclusivity move the price more than follower count does.
Are influencer rate cards negotiable?
Yes. On a recent UK mid-tier campaign, an average 30 to 40 percent discount was negotiated against
the creators' opening fees. Discounts come from clarity and speed rather than haggling: a clear
brief, defined deliverables, a known usage window and a fast decision.
What is a good CPM for influencer marketing?
Modash's pricing guide quotes a practitioner recommendation of a maximum $20 CPM on TikTok creator
deals. Verified seeded programmes have run considerably lower, at £2.49 and £3.27, while a
negotiated mid-tier paid campaign landed at £16.34.
How do you work out an influencer's CPM?
Divide the fee by the expected impressions and multiply by 1,000. Ask for median views or
impressions across the creator's last ten posts in the format you are buying, rather than follower
count or a best-ever post.
Do you pay influencers per post or per month?
Both models exist. Per-post fees are the default for one-off paid work. Retainers and multi-post
packages usually produce better unit economics, and affiliate or ambassador arrangements pay on
performance instead of on posting.
What is not included in an influencer's fee?
Usage rights for your own paid ads, whitelisting or partnership ads through the creator's handle,
category exclusivity, guaranteed revisions and cross-posting to a second platform are all typically
priced separately. Agree scope and fee together.
How much do usage rights cost?
They are priced by duration and channel rather than at a fixed rate. Rights expansion increases the
fee but also increases the working value of the content, because a post you can run as an ad for
twelve months is a different asset from one that lives only on the creator's grid.
Do UK influencers charge more than US influencers?
Published UK figures are usually converted from US benchmarks, so the headline bands track closely.
What differs more is category depth: in a narrow UK niche, the small number of genuinely relevant
creators can command more than their follower count suggests.
How much should a small brand budget for influencer marketing?
Budget for creators in market rather than for posts. A product-led seeding base costs product and
fulfilment rather than fees, and paid budget is best held back for creators who have already proven
they convert.
Is it cheaper to gift products than to pay influencers?
Per piece of content, yes, substantially. Gifting and seeding trade guaranteed placement for
genuine advocacy, which is why seeded programmes report CPMs several times lower than paid campaigns.
You are buying a different thing, so compare on CPM and on what you own afterwards.
What is a typical cost per video for creator content?
It depends entirely on the model. One verified UK programme produced VIP creative at under £90
average cost per video at 15 or more videos a month, and reduced creative testing costs by 55
percent. Mid-tier paid rate cards for a single video frequently exceed that monthly figure.
Sources
Want your creator budget priced on CPM and CAC instead of rate cards? We build and negotiate creator programmes for health and wellness DTC brands. Let's talk.