Influencer fee calculator: what one post is actually worth.

How much should you charge for a sponsored post in India?

Every creator's first rate is a guess. Someone in a WhatsApp group says "charge ₹5,000 per reel", so you charge ₹5,000 per reel, and you keep charging ₹5,000 per reel for two years while your audience triples. Meanwhile a brand somewhere is paying eleven times that to an account with worse engagement than yours, because that account knew what to ask for.

This influencer rate calculator replaces the guess with arithmetic. It's free, needs no login, and covers Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat and ShareChat/Moj.

The rule that changes your income: price on views, not followers

Follower count is the worst widely-used pricing input in this industry. It measures how many people once tapped a button, not how many people see your work.

Since the reels and Shorts algorithms took over, the two have come completely apart. A 5,000-follower account that reliably pulls 200,000 views on a reel is delivering more value than a 300,000-follower account averaging 9,000. On follower-based pricing the second one charges ten times more. On view-based pricing — the way an actual media buyer thinks — the first one wins, and correctly.

So if you know your average views, enter them. The calculator will throw away the follower estimate entirely and price on the real number. For a lot of small creators this is the difference between ₹3,000 and ₹30,000, and it is the single most valuable thing on this page.

Instagram reel rates in India, by follower tier

These are baseline figures for a creator with typical engagement for their size, no usage rights, one deliverable. Your real number moves up or down from here based on engagement, niche and what you're licensing.

For reference on other platforms: a YouTube dedicated video sits near ₹56,000 at 100,000 subscribers and ₹3.2 lakh at a million. A LinkedIn post at 20,000 followers is worth around ₹26,000 — LinkedIn pays far more per view than any other platform in India, and almost nobody who could be charging it is.

Usage rights: the line most Indian creators never bill

This is the one to read twice.

When a brand pays for a reel, they are paying for one post, on your account, to your audience. That's it. If they then want to run it as a paid ad, put it on their product page, use it in a retail display, or push it as a Meta ad against a lookalike audience — that is a separate licence, and it is worth real money because it delivers them reach that has nothing to do with you.

Standard ranges: about 20% of the fee for one month of paid usage, 40% for three months, 65% for six, and 100% for a full year. Whitelisting — running ads from your handle rather than theirs — is worth about 25% on top, because it borrows your credibility, not just your footage.

If a brand won't put a usage term in writing, assume they intend to use it in perpetuity and price accordingly. The polite version of this question is: "Happy to include paid usage — is that for three months or twelve?"

GST and TDS for Indian creators

Two things that surprise people the first time an invoice comes back short.

GST. If your annual turnover from services crosses ₹20 lakh, registration is generally required and influencer services are typically taxed at 18%. That 18% is added on top of your fee, collected from the brand, and passed to the government — it is not your income, and it is not a discount you can offer. Below the threshold most creators invoice without it.

TDS. Brands commonly deduct 10% TDS under section 194J for professional services before paying you. That money isn't gone — it's deposited against your PAN and adjusts against your tax at filing. But it does mean a ₹50,000 invoice lands as ₹45,000, and you should expect that rather than be surprised by it.

The calculator shows both so the number you quote and the number that arrives in your account are never a shock. This is general information, not tax advice — talk to a CA about your own position.

How to actually use the number

1. Quote the top of the range, not the middle. The calculator gives you an opening figure about 20% above the fair rate. Open there. If you open at the number you'd accept, you'll close below it — that's just how negotiation works.
2. Send it as a rate card, not a number in a chat. "₹18,000" invites haggling. A breakdown showing base fee, usage, exclusivity and GST invites a conversation about scope.
3. Know your walk-away floor. It's the bottom of the range. Below it you're working at a loss once you count shooting, editing and the collab you turned down.
4. Charge for the second deliverable, just less. The bundle discount is built in — three reels shouldn't cost three times one reel, but they should cost more than two.
5. Treat barter as partial payment, never full. Value the product at about 60% of retail and cap it at roughly 40% of the fee. A hamper doesn't pay rent.

If you're a brand reading this

The same arithmetic works in reverse, and it's why this calculator isn't a creator-vs-brand tool. A quote is defensible when it maps to expected views at a sane cost-per-view; it isn't when it maps to a follower count. If a creator quotes ₹1 lakh and the view maths says ₹30,000, you now have a specific question to ask rather than a vague feeling.

Before paying anyone, it's also worth running an audience audit — a fair rate on an audience that isn't real is still a waste of money. For splitting a whole campaign budget across several creators, production and paid amplification, use the campaign budget calculator instead.

Where these numbers come from, and what they aren't

The engine prices from cost-per-view rates observed in the Indian market, adjusted by a tier-efficiency curve, your engagement against benchmarks for accounts your size, a niche multiplier and a geographic multiplier. Finance and B2B pay well above average; comedy and gaming below, not because the work is worth less but because the audience converts differently.

These are market priors, not your closed deals. Nobody's rate card is the truth — the truth is what someone actually paid. Rates vary by category, season, agency margin and how badly a brand needs a slot in the next two weeks. Use this as a defensible starting position, then adjust with what you learn from every deal you close.

Questions people actually ask