UGC rates in 2026: what a video costs

ugc rates in 2026 run from $3 to $5 per reaction video when you buy direct from the creator, and into the hundreds once an agency, a usage licence and an exclusivity clause sit in the middle. the first number is the one almost nobody publishes, because almost nobody selling you a rate guide is the one paying it.

this page used to carry a table of prices from $75 to $500 per video. we cut it. not one of those figures had a source behind it, and a rate card nobody can attribute is a guess with a dollar sign in front of it.

the rates we can actually source

dan runs the buying side of dansugc and posts what he pays. these are the numbers on this page with a name attached to them.

on 29 september 2025 he put the two costs next to each other: "veo3 = $10/video" against "real humans = $3/video". that is the post.

on 11 november 2025, on sourcing: "you can find someone to in eastern europe for $4/vid". source.

and on 11 october 2025, when a creator approached him directly, he put a number on what that work would be priced at: "will probably come at $5/vid for easy reactions".

that is the post itself. three figures, three dates, one person who actually moved the money.

notice how narrow the real range is. $3 to $5 for a reaction clip filmed by a real person. that is the whole spread, and it has held for over a year. what $3 to $5 actually buys is broken down clip by clip in ugc video examples.

why every guide you found says a much bigger number

pull up the results for this search and look at what ranks. the pages sitting above this one publish rate ranges without saying where the ranges came from. no sample size, no invoices, no year the survey ran. the highest-ranking one advertises "real numbers" in its title and still does not say whose.

that does not make the bigger figures dishonest. it makes them unverifiable, which is a different problem and a worse one if you are trying to set a budget.

there are real reasons a ugc video costs more than $5:

• the licence, not the filming. a clip used once on organic instagram and a clip running as paid ads across three platforms for 90 days are the same production and a different product. most of the price gap between $5 and $400 is licensing, not labour.
• exclusivity. locking a creator out of your competitors for a quarter is a real cost to them and it gets priced in.
• who is in the middle. an agency, a marketplace and a managed service each take a cut. the creator at the end of that chain is often earning the smaller number anyway.
• geography. a creator in los angeles and a creator in chisinau have different costs of living and quote accordingly.

so when a rate guide tells you $250 per video, the useful question is not whether it is true. it is which of those four things you are actually buying, and whether you need all of them. the same question applies to a retainer: the four structures a ugc agency quotes each hide a different number.

what to check before you agree a rate

whichever side of the invoice you are on, the price is set by these and not much else:

• usage rights: organic only, paid ads, or full buyout, and for how long
• exclusivity: none, category-wide, and over what period
• volume: a single clip or a standing monthly order
• revisions: how many rounds are included before it becomes a new job
• deliverables: edited video only, or raw footage, extra aspect ratios, stills
• turnaround: a normal queue or a rush

get those six written down and the number stops being negotiable in the vague sense. it becomes arithmetic.

exposure is not a rate

the offer that still lands in creator inboxes is product in place of payment, or a promise of visibility. it is worth saying plainly that this is not a discount, it is a different transaction, and the creator is funding it.

if a brand cannot pay $5 for a video, the brand cannot pay.

if you are the creator

you do not need a table you found on the internet. you need a floor and a licence.

work out what an hour of your time is worth including setup, filming, editing and the admin around a brand deal. that is your floor for organic use. then price paid ads usage as a separate line rather than folding it in, because that is where the buyer's value is and where the money quietly goes missing.

put it in writing even if it is one line in an email. organic use, 30 days, one revision round included. that sentence prevents most disputes.

if you want the paid side of this rather than chasing brand deals one at a time, we take applications for the roster at creator applications. the work is reaction footage, filmed to brief.

for what this adds up to over a month rather than per clip, that question has its own page: how much UGC creators make.

if you are buying

decide first whether you need a licensed original or a clip.

if you are testing hooks and need volume, per-video price sets how much you can test, and how much you can test is usually the real constraint on ad performance. that is the case for buying reaction footage in bulk rather than commissioning bespoke shoots. our packages are built for that, current per-video pricing is on the pricing page, and the B-roll library is browsable before you buy anything. the same arithmetic against a managed marketplace is worked through in what $500 of billo actually buys.

if you need a specific product in shot, a specific script and full buyout, you are commissioning a production and the price will look nothing like $5. both are legitimate. they are not the same purchase, and conflating them is how budgets get set wrong.

we keep one customer-measured performance figure for our clips, and it lives on the page comparing AI UGC with real human footage rather than being repeated here.

what we removed from this page, and why

the previous version of this article carried a per-format rate table, package prices and a set of "market rates" presented as fact. none of it was attributable. it has been deleted rather than re-sourced, because a number without a source is not improved by being repeated confidently.

what replaced it is shorter and duller and every figure on it links to the person who published it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a UGC video cost in 2026?

buying direct from a creator, $3 to $5 per reaction clip, which is what dansugc pays and charges and what dan has posted publicly since 2025. commissioned productions with paid ads licensing and exclusivity run considerably higher, and the gap is mostly licence rather than filming.

Why do UGC rate guides disagree with each other so much?

because most of them do not publish a methodology. the ranges vary by what is being licensed, where the creator lives and how many intermediaries take a cut, and a guide that does not state those variables is not describing a market so much as guessing at one.

Do UGC creators charge extra for paid ads usage?

they should, and it should be a separate line on the invoice. a video running as a paid ad is generating revenue for the buyer over a defined window, which is a different product from a single organic post.

What should a UGC rate card include?

the deliverable, the usage rights and their duration, exclusivity terms if any, the number of revision rounds included, and what counts as an add-on. price per unit matters less than which of those five you have pinned down.