The creators your budget can actually afford
Big creators price themselves out of a startup budget, and most agencies will not take a campaign under five figures. So the brands that need proof the most cannot buy it. We match small and mid-sized creators with the companies that fit them, and we do the contracting, rights and reporting so it holds up.
- A shortlist with real names, real rates and recent work, at no cost
- Creators who set their own rates, so nobody is squeezed into a bad deal
- A contract every time: deliverables, deadline, usage rights, disclosure, payment terms
- Honest arithmetic on what your budget buys before you spend it
Small brands and small creators have the same problem
They are each other's best customer and they almost never find each other.
If you are a startup or an SME
- The creators you have heard of quote four and five figures per post.
- Agencies quote a retainer before they will talk about a campaign.
- Search tools hand you a list and leave the contracts, briefs and chasing to you.
- You have been burned once by an account with bought followers and no real audience.
If you are a creator under 250k
- Brands ask for free work and call it exposure.
- Enquiries go quiet after you send a rate.
- Agencies will not represent you until you are already big.
- When a deal does happen there is no contract, and the invoice is paid late or not at all.
We sit in the middle of those two lists. Creators tell us their rates and what they will and will not do. Brands tell us their budget and their category. When the two fit, we put them together on paper properly.
What a budget actually buys
Benchmark ranges, not our rate card. If a number here does not match a quote you have been given, ask the other side to explain the difference.
Under $1,000
Small, but not nothing — as long as you spend it on content rather than reach.
What it buys
- 4–7 UGC videos from nano and micro creators, made for your ad account rather than posted to their audience
- or 3–5 posts from nano creators (1,000–10,000) who genuinely use the product
- or a seeding round with 8–12 creators where the product is the fee and posting is not guaranteed
What it does not
- A mid-tier creator
- Paid usage rights beyond a short window
- Guaranteed reach or guaranteed sales
$1,000 – $2,500
The first budget that reliably produces something you can run, measure and learn from.
What it buys
- 8–15 UGC videos for paid social — enough to test four or five different hooks properly
- or 6–10 posts across micro creators (10,000–100,000) in one niche
- or 4–6 micro creators posting, plus the rights to run the best performer as an ad for 90 days
What it does not
- A mid-tier creator with category exclusivity
- A six-month drip — spend this in one focused push
$2,500 – $5,000
Enough for a real campaign with a second round for whatever actually worked.
What it buys
- 12–20 micro creators posting, with paid usage bought on the top performers
- or one mid-tier creator (100,000–500,000) plus a supporting cluster of micro creators
- or a monthly UGC pipeline: 8–12 fresh videos a month for your ad account
What it does not
- A macro creator
- Category exclusivity across a whole quarter
$5,000 – $10,000
A quarter of activity rather than one burst, with budget held back to double down.
What it buys
- A three-month program: a steady cadence of micro creators, monthly UGC, and whitelisting budget
- or a launch week: one mid-tier anchor creator, 10–15 micro creators, all posting in the same seven days
What it does not
- Broad macro reach
- A performance guarantee — nobody honest sells one
Ranges come from commonly cited per-post benchmarks for each follower tier. Niche moves them more than follower count does: finance, B2B and health cost more than lifestyle for the same audience size.
Published rate cards and real transactions are different numbers
Analyses of completed campaigns put typical per-deliverable rates well below the figures brands are usually quoted. We publish them because knowing the median is most of the negotiation.
| Tier | Followers | Median per deliverable | What the spread looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | Under 10,000 | ~$134 | Often product-only. Cash rates cluster tightly and rise fast once a creator has done a few paid deals. |
| Micro | 10,000 – 100,000 | ~$150 – $195 | Two independent transaction datasets land at roughly $150 and roughly $193. The wider observed range runs from about $114 to about $679, driven mostly by niche. |
| Mid-tier | 100,000 – 500,000 | ~$417 | The step up is real but smaller than most brands expect. Exclusivity and usage rights move this more than follower count does. |
Three things that move the number more than followers
- Niche. Finance, B2B, legal and health cost considerably more than lifestyle for the same audience size, because the audience is worth more and there are fewer creators.
- Usage rights. The base fee covers the creator posting to their own audience. Running that content in your ads is a separate licence.
- Whitelisting. Running ads from the creator’s own handle typically adds somewhere around 20–50% on top of the base rate, and it is a separate agreement from usage rights. Brands very often assume one covers the other. It does not, and retrofitting it after the content is made means renegotiating at the point where the creator has all the leverage.
Why costs feel like they are rising
In the most recent industry benchmark, rising creator costs were the single most cited challenge among marketers, ahead of authenticity, measurement and attribution. At the same time the number of creators competing for brand money is growing far faster than the money itself, and a large majority of all creator payments go to a small minority of creators.
Both things are true at once. Headline rates at the top are climbing while the middle of the market is crowded and reachable. That gap is the whole opportunity for a company with a small budget, and it is the reason we work in the first three tiers rather than chasing names.
Figures are medians from published analyses of completed creator campaigns and marketplace transactions, current to 2025–2026, rounded. They are benchmarks for sanity-checking a quote, not our rate card and not a promise of what any individual creator will accept. Every creator on our roster sets their own rate.
Brief to live in five steps
You see names and numbers before you commit to anything.
Brief
Category, budget, platforms, what you want made, whether you can ship product. Five minutes.
Shortlist
Creators from the roster who fit, with rates, audience notes and recent work. Free, and yours to reject.
Agree
You pick. We contract: deliverables, dates, usage rights, disclosure, payment terms, revision limits.
Make
Product ships, creators shoot, you approve. One point of contact, not a group chat with eight creators.
Report
What ran, what it cost, what it did, and which creators are worth a second round.
Every creator is checked by a person first
No automated score, no badge you cannot inspect. The checklist is published in full.
Where the roster actually stands: it opened in September 2026, 2 creators have applied and 0 have finished verification so far. We are not going to inflate that number to win a brief. What it means in practice is that some shortlists come from the roster and some are sourced for you from scratch, which costs you the same and takes a few days longer. You still see every name, rate and verification note before you commit. The live count is on the roster page.
Tell us what you are selling and what you can spend
A person reads this. You get a shortlist and a straight answer about whether the budget is enough, including if the answer is no.
Asked by nearly every first-time brand
We have never done this. Is $1,500 a waste of money?
Not if you spend it on content rather than reach. At that level the honest use is UGC: several creators each make a video built for your ad account, you run them as ads, and you find out which hook works. You keep the footage. Buying posts on other people’s audiences at that budget usually buys too little reach to learn anything.
Why would a good creator work with a small brand?
Because most creators under 100,000 followers are ignored by agencies and get ghosted by brands, and a brief that arrives with a real budget, a written contract and payment terms is genuinely rare. The creators on our roster told us their rates themselves, so they are not being asked to work below what they said yes to.
What do you charge?
A shortlist is free. If you run the campaign with us we charge a management fee for the sourcing, contracting, briefing, approvals and reporting, and you see every creator fee in full at the rate the creator set. We do not mark creator rates up quietly and we take nothing out of what the creator is paid. The management fee and the creator costs sit on one page before you commit to anything.
Do you guarantee results?
No, and be careful with anyone who does. We guarantee the process: creators who match the brief, rates agreed in writing, a contract with usage rights and deadlines, disclosure that meets Canadian and US rules, and a report at the end showing what ran and what it did.
Can we just buy the content and run it as ads?
Yes, and for most small brands that is the better first move. It is called UGC: the creator makes the video for you, you own the agreed usage, nothing is posted to their audience. It costs less than a sponsored post and the asset keeps working in your ad account.
How fast can this run?
A shortlist within a few business days of a clear brief. From signed brief to delivered content is usually two to four weeks, mostly depending on shipping product and approval rounds on your side.
Why are your numbers lower than the rate cards we have been sent?
Because published rate cards and actual transactions are two different things. Analyses of real completed campaigns put the median micro-creator deliverable somewhere between roughly $130 and $195, while the rate card a creator or an agency sends you is an opening position. We quote from what creators on our roster actually agreed to, and we tell you when an asking rate is out of line with the tier.
What if the creator takes the money and disappears?
Everything runs on a contract with deliverables, dates and a payment schedule tied to delivery rather than to the signature. If a creator misses a deadline without a good reason they come off the roster, and we tell you while there is still time to replace them. That is the difference between a roster somebody maintains and a search tool that hands you a list.
Send the brief. Get a shortlist.
Free, and a person reads it. If your budget is not enough for what you want, we will say so rather than sell you a campaign that cannot work.