Influencer Campaign Budget Calculator

Estimate exactly what your pay-per-interaction influencer campaign will cost on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or YouTube long-form. Built for brands, agencies, and in-house marketing teams planning 2026 creator budgets — enter your creator count, follower tier, posts per creator, and niche, and this free calculator returns a total budget range that already includes PostPaid's platform fee plus a full breakdown of creator payouts, fees, and expected interactions delivered.

How the budget is calculated

Total budget = interactions × cost-per-engagement × niche multiplier × (1 + platform fee). Interactions = creators × posts per creator × (audience × engagement rate). CPE bands are pulled from our 2026 CPE benchmark report; engagement-rate defaults come from the same dataset and vary by platform and follower tier. PostPaid charges a flat 20% platform fee on top of creator payouts, discounted to 10% on a brand's first campaign. For a plain-English walkthrough of why pay-per-interaction pricing is fairer than flat-fee sponsorships, read our pay-per-interaction guide.

What drives campaign cost on PostPaid?

• Creator count × posts per creator sets total activation volume.
• Follower tier and platform determine the baseline CPE — nano creators on TikTok cost far less per interaction than macro creators on Instagram.
• Niche multiplier ranges from 0.8× (beauty / lifestyle) to 3.5× (B2B SaaS) because specialist audiences command higher CPEs.
• Engagement rate controls how many paid interactions each post actually produces — higher ER means more volume at the same CPE.
• Platform fee is flat 20%, or 10% on your first PostPaid campaign, and is the only fee — no retainers, no minimums, no separate agency markup.

Frequently asked questions

What platform fee should I plan for on PostPaid?

A flat 20% on creator payouts, discounted to 10% on your first PostPaid campaign. The fee is the only cost beyond the creator payouts — no agency retainers, no per-creator minimums, no per-post surcharges. The tool already factors the fee into the total budget range.

How many creators should a first campaign include?

For a typical €2,000–€5,000 budget, 10–25 micro-influencers generates enough creative variation to identify top performers without over-concentrating spend. Below 5 creators you're running a test, not a campaign. Above 30 you hit diminishing returns on targeting.

Why does the niche multiplier affect the budget?

CPE benchmarks by platform assume a baseline niche (beauty, lifestyle). Specialist niches with higher commercial intent — finance (1.5×–2.5×), B2B (2.0×–3.5×), health (1.8×–3.0×) — command higher per-interaction prices, so the total campaign budget scales accordingly.

Should I include shares and views in my interaction targets?

Usually yes for Instagram and TikTok reels (shares are cheap signal for algorithmic amplification) and always for YouTube long-form (views are the primary valuable interaction). For feed posts, likes + comments alone often give the cleanest signal.