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2025-12-15

What is Creator Rates — and why does it exist?

Most creators are flying blind on pricing. Creator Rates was built to fix that with real market data, not industry averages.

Brands have always known what creators charge. Agencies have that data. Platforms have it. The creators themselves — the people doing the work — usually don't.

The result is a persistent information asymmetry. A brand comes to you with a budget in mind. You name a price based on instinct, a forum post, or what a friend charges. You don't know whether you're in the right range, leaving money on the table, or pricing yourself out of deals.

Creator Rates exists to close that gap.

What it does

Creator Rates is a market data tool for independent creators. You submit your sponsorship rates — your audience size, your fees, your recent performance metrics — and we benchmark them against a peer band of similar creators.

Not all creators. Creators like you.

That distinction matters. If you're a newsletter with 8,000 subscribers, your benchmark is other newsletters in that size range — not the full distribution including Morning Brew and The Hustle. Averaging across all sizes produces numbers that don't reflect your market.

What you get

After submitting, you unlock a personalised dashboard:

  • A pricing verdict — underpriced, in-range, or premium, based on where your effective CPM sits in your peer band
  • A fair-price range — the p25–p75 CPM range for your band, translated into an implied fee based on your actual audience
  • Annual upside — if your rate is below the median, how much more you'd earn per year at your current sponsorship volume if you raised to it
  • A performance score — your engagement (opens, clicks, conversions) benchmarked against peers, so you can see whether your audience performs well relative to your size band

What it costs

Nothing. Creator Rates is free to use, and will stay free for creators.

The service runs on submitted data — the more creators who submit, the better the benchmarks get. That's the model: everyone who submits makes the data better for everyone else.

Who should use it

Creator Rates is for independent creators who sell direct sponsorships — primarily newsletter writers, podcast hosts, YouTubers, and website publishers.

If you've ever felt uncertain going into a sponsorship conversation, or wondered whether you could ask for more, this is built for you.


Submit your rates and see your full benchmark report in under two minutes.

Know what you're worth.

Submit your rates and unlock your personalised benchmark report — free.

Compare your rates →
What is Creator Rates — and why does it exist? — Creator Rates