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Agency pricing calculator

What should you charge to manage ad spend? Set the spend, pick a pricing model, and see the market-rate fee range plus what it means for your effective hourly rate.

What agencies charge at this spend
$1,500–$2,250 /month
Market rate for this tier10–15% of spend
Common minimum fee$500–$1,000
Your effective hourly at this fee$125–$188 /h
vs. your target rate ($120/h × 12h)$1,440
This fee covers your target rate with room to spare. The margin is yours to keep, or to spend on better service.

How agencies actually price ads management

An ad management fee is the price an agency charges to plan, run and report on a client's ad spend, usually set as a percentage of that spend on a sliding scale. Industry surveys and published agency pricing put the typical range at 15–20% of monthly spend under $10k, 10–15% between $10k and $50k, and 8–10% above $50k, usually with a $500–$1,000 minimum so small accounts don't lose money. The percentage drops as spend grows because the work doesn't scale linearly: managing $100k of spend is not ten times the work of managing $10k.

The calculator's effective-hourly readout is the number to watch. A fee that sounds healthy can hide a bad hourly rate once you count reporting, client calls, QA and creative coordination. If the math comes out below your target rate, you have three levers: quote the top of the market range, reduce the hours (this is where automation changes your unit economics), or walk away from the account size.

For the operational side of keeping margins intact as you add clients, read our playbook on scaling from 5 to 50 ad clients.

Agency pricing questions, answered

The market clusters around a percentage of monthly ad spend that shrinks as spend grows: roughly 15–20% under $10k/month, 10–15% from $10k to $50k, and 8–10% above $50k. Most agencies also set a minimum monthly fee of $500–$1,000 so small accounts stay viable.

Percentage of spend scales with the work and aligns you with budget growth, but it punishes you on small accounts and can look like an incentive to overspend. Flat retainers are predictable for the client and protect you on low-spend accounts. Hybrid (a lower base fee plus a smaller percentage) is what many agencies land on, because it covers fixed costs while keeping upside. Use the calculator to compare all three at your spend level.

Most agencies refuse to go below $500–$1,000/month regardless of spend, because the fixed work of managing any account (reporting, calls, QA, strategy) doesn't shrink with the budget. If your effective hourly rate at the proposed fee is below your target, raise the floor or cut the hours with automation.

No. Keep media spend and management fees separate: the client pays platforms directly for media, and pays you for management. Bundling them blurs the line between your revenue and pass-through costs, complicates taxes, and makes margins hard to read.

Tie the increase to scope or results, give 60–90 days notice, and anchor it against the market range for their spend tier. If you've been under-charging at the bottom of the range, moving to the middle is usually accepted without drama, especially when reporting shows the results.

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Charge the same. Do it in a tenth of the time.

Adside runs the repetitive ad-ops work across every client (reporting, rotation, monitoring) so the hours behind your fee shrink and the margin stays.