How we model UGC rates

The two models

The production model is the one behind our UGC rate calculator. It prices a finished asset by creator tier: nano under 5,000 followers, micro 5,000 to 25,000, mid 25,000 to 100,000 and established above that, each with a low, typical and high figure, plus add-ons and rights as shares of the video fee. It has no niche, platform or country input, and the pages say so wherever that matters.

The influencer engine is the one behind our influencer rate calculator. It prices a post on the creator's own account from followers, a per-thousand base for the platform, a scale factor that falls as accounts grow, the format, the rights, exclusivity, a niche category and a market tier, with a platform floor. The data pages run it at platform-typical engagement, organic use and no exclusivity unless a column says otherwise.

scripts/check-rates-model.mjs re-reads both live calculators every time the rate pages are regenerated and fails if either model has drifted from the copy this site uses, or if any dollar figure on a rate page cannot be recomputed from them. On the data pages every figure carries the exact inputs that produced it, and the check recomputes each one.

From the index to a quote

Each page takes a segment of the index, a niche, a platform within a niche, or a country, and reads its bottom quarter, median and top quarter follower counts. Each count goes through both models: the production model by the tier it falls in, the influencer engine directly. The result is what a creator at that point of the distribution would be priced at, not a survey of what they actually charged.

Segments come from the 7 October 2026 snapshot of our creator index: 26,791 creators who passed UGC qualification, 24,942 on Instagram and 1,849 on TikTok. A niche gets a page at 40 creators and a country at 100, the same thresholds the creator directory uses. When the index is refreshed, the pages are regenerated from the new snapshot.

Niche and market factors

The influencer engine has 7 niche categories and 3 market tiers. Index niches are mapped to a category only where the engine's own label names them; niches it does not name use the lifestyle baseline, and their pages say so. Countries are mapped by the engine's own market labels, and a country those labels do not clearly place gets no rate page rather than a guessed factor.

The mappings, in full

Niches

Countries

When a segment gets its own page

A platform within a niche gets its own page only when it holds at least 100 creators and differs from the niche as a whole: a median at least 10% away, or a share at 5,000 followers or more at least 3 points away. 7 TikTok segments pass and 1 Instagram segments do. Instagram holds between 85% and 95% of every niche, so its distribution is the niche's distribution: among Instagram segments large enough to qualify, medians sit no more than 6.4% from their niche, and the rest are under 100 creators. A separate Instagram page would restate the niche page.

What the pages do not claim: that any creator will quote these figures, that the index is a census of the market, or that the production figures reflect local prices outside the United States. Where a model has no input for something, the page says so rather than inventing a multiplier.