Statistics · Lorenne Calder · 11 November 2026
What influencers ask, and what brands pay, on each platform
On one marketplace the ask and the payment are not the same number. A tiered rate card from another company is not that average.
People search for influencer rates by platform because they want one number per logo. Collabstr’s 2025 report, from its own marketplace, prints two. The asking prices they list are YouTube $675.23, Instagram $363.64, TikTok $350.06, and user-generated content $198.06. The amounts brands actually spent, on the same page, are YouTube $418.09, Instagram $212.21, TikTok $200.22, and user-generated content $177.68. They say the paid figures come from the same kind of book as the $202 average collaboration: 15,000-plus deals, with the report’s marketplace window running 1 January 2024 through 15 December 2024. The asks are what creators put on the table. The payments are what brands parted with. If you only remember one of those columns, you will misquote the deal.
Read the gap before you moralise it. On user-generated content the ask and the payment are close: they print a dollar difference of $20.38. On YouTube the ask sits at $675.23 and the payment at $418.09. That is not a scandal and not a formula. It is a negotiation that already happened, on that marketplace, in that mix of creators. A brand that offers the paid column and calls it “the market” is ignoring the ask. A creator who invoices the ask and calls the paid column theft is ignoring that buyers on this book did not meet the ask. A fair deal says both numbers out loud and then talks about the work. I would rather you do that than split the difference and pretend the midpoint was measured. I did not measure a midpoint. I will not print one.
The same report says an Instagram Reel went for $288 on average and a TikTok video for $217, and that Reels were 32% more expensive. Those are format prices, not the platform averages above. Do not stuff the Reel into the Instagram line and call it confirmation. They are different cuts of the same company’s data. Use the one that matches the file you are actually buying.
Now the disagreement, because it is the useful part. The Cirqle, writing on 3 February 2025 about 2024 rate cards, says 502,000 creators entered rates on its platform, up from 350,000 in 2023. Their average Instagram rate per post is $504 for a nano account (1,000 to 9,999), $1,245 for micro (10,000 to 49,999), $2,100 for mid-tier (50,000 to 499,999), $3,820 for macro (500,000 to 999,999), and $7,400 for a celebrity account at a million and up. Collabstr’s Instagram ask is $363.64 and its payment is $212.21. Those cannot be averaged into “the Instagram rate.” One figure is a marketplace mean that will be pulled down by a lot of small jobs. The other is a set of tier means from creators typing a rate into a campaign. A nano fee of $504 and a marketplace payment of $212 are both allowed to be true. They are not the same purchase, and they are not a range I am willing to collapse.
If you are a brand, pick the column that matches the question. “What did buyers pay on an open marketplace for a mixed bag of jobs?” is the paid column. “What did creators in this tier type as a rate?” is The Cirqle’s table. If you are a creator, do not let a $212 average scold you out of a tier rate, and do not let a $7,400 celebrity mean talk you into invoicing it with 4,000 followers. The directory on this site can show you the follower count, the views, and the engagement figure on the card. It cannot show you which of these price books the buyer has in their head. Ask. The number you need is the one for this piece of work, with the rights named. I do not have that number, and I am not going to invent it so the page looks finished.