What counts as a macro influencer
Follower tiers are conventions, not rules. Most agencies and platforms put macro influencers somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million followers, with mega or celebrity tiers above that and micro influencers below. The exact cutoffs shift by platform and by who is quoting them, so treat the tier as a shorthand for audience size, not a guarantee of anything.
What actually matters for a brand is what the audience does. A macro account with 400,000 followers and a 0.4% engagement rate can reach fewer real people per post than a mid-tier account with a loyal niche. Check recent view counts and comment quality before you price the deal on follower count alone.
Why brands use macro influencers
The job is distribution. You pay for a sponsored post, story set, or video that puts the product in front of a large audience the creator already owns. Awareness launches, retail drops, and app installs at scale are the typical use cases.
That is different from hiring UGC creators, where you pay for the content itself and run it in your own paid social. Many teams do both: a macro post for reach, and a batch of UGC videos for creative testing. The two budgets should not be compared line for line because they buy different things.
Pricing and terms to expect
Macro rates vary widely and are usually negotiated per deliverable, with separate fees for usage rights, exclusivity, and whitelisting. A typical brief line reads: "One in-feed Reel plus three Stories, 30-day paid usage, no competitor exclusivity." Each of those clauses moves the price.
Ask for a media kit, recent performance screenshots, and audience geography before you commit. If most of the audience sits outside your shipping countries, the follower count is not the number you are buying.
How it's used
"We're splitting launch budget: two macro influencers for reach in week one, then twelve UGC creators for the paid social test."
"She's a macro influencer in home fitness, so expect a usage-rights line item on top of the post fee."