As brands move faster and spend more on creator marketing, creators are gaining both the confidence and the opportunity to raise their rates significantly — sometimes by 100 percent.
Seven influencer marketers told Digiday that creators’ rates had risen noticeably across all platforms, although they provided a range of figures regarding the specific amount. Three of the marketers said that creators had in some cases doubled their fees from 2024, causing brands to respond with confusion or even outrage over the precipitous increase.
Daniella Corredor, an associate account director for the creator marketing company Open Influence, said that she had recently led a presentation for clients specifically about the causes behind creators’ rising rates and how to navigate the changing landscape.
“They’re trying to learn from us how to navigate those asks, when someone was asking for $20,000 yesterday, and then, in two months, they want $40,000,” she said.
Steph Ross, vp of social and influencer for the social media agency Born Social, said that influencer rates had “doubled” from 2024, but that her clients were largely unconcerned about the increases because they have also ramped up their influencer marketing spend. She said that influencers’ increased rates were simply a result of that growing demand.
“I have seen that especially now, because it is more typical to work on a long-term basis, or in long-term partnerships with creators, rather than on a one-off basis,” Ross said. “We’ll be working with creators on a three-month or six-month contract, and then the same people that we’ve already worked with will then be planning for the next year — and we are seeing that creator’s follower count getting bigger and them becoming more successful, so as a result, their fees are then increasing.”
A significant contributor to influencers’ growing fees is that brands are moving more quickly with their influencer marketing as they step up their spending in the area, according to Ross and Tiah Slattery, head of influencer for the U.K. at the agency Dept. Slattery estimated that overall influencer marketing spend had risen by 30 to 40 percent in 2025, citing Unilever’s recent announcement that it would spend half of its marketing budget on social channels as one motivator for other advertisers to step up their creator marketing spend this year.
Slattery said that marketers are increasingly understanding that creators are at their best when reacting quickly to viral trends, rather than scheduling campaigns months in advance, prompting them to request quicker turnarounds on their sponsored posts — and higher rates as a result.
“If we only have two weeks to get something live, we are paying 50 to 100 percent more than what we would pay if we had a typical six-to-eight week lead time,” she said. “What that then can mean is clients are paying through the roof, because they’re not organized and they’re coming to us too late.”
Creators are also charging higher sponsorship rates because they understand that they are taking on an increasingly central role in brands’ marketing plans. Creators who were previously willing to negotiate lower fees to secure business are more confident sticking to their higher rates, per Slattery. It’s also becoming more common for creators to charge extra fees for exclusivity or the rights to use their content on other channels, which they previously might have signed away as a cheap or free add-on to help close a deal.
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