An influencer rate card is one page: what you charge for each deliverable, what the price includes, and the four terms brands negotiate hardest on, which are usage, exclusivity, revisions and payment. Below is a six-line template and the numbers to fill it with, taken from what 546 Indian creators actually ask on Qolab in October 2026.
The reason to build your own instead of copying one is that the rate cards on most blogs would price you out. The guides that rank for this query quote agency bands whose low ends alone are roughly double the live asking medians, and a creator who sends those numbers to a brand with 20,000 followers behind them hears nothing back.
What should an influencer rate card include?
Six lines. Prices alone are the first line; the other five are what stops the back-and-forth.
- **Deliverables and a price for each.** Reel, story, static post, and a bundle. One number per line, in rupees, no ranges. A range on a rate card reads as "I will take the lower one".
- **What the price includes.** Concept, shoot, one edit, posting on your account, and the standard disclosure label. Travel, products and anything the brand supplies are theirs.
- **Usage window.** What the brand may do with the content after it posts, for how long, and where. This is the line most cards skip and most brands assume in their favour.
- **Exclusivity.** Whether you will stay off competing brands, in which category, and for how long. If the card is silent, assume none, and say so.
- **Revisions and turnaround.** How many edits the price covers, how many days from brief to draft, and what a rush costs.
- **Payment terms and GST status.** When you are paid, how much upfront, and whether the prices are inclusive or exclusive of GST.
Our guide to the media kit Indian creators actually need covers where the card sits inside the kit. Here we are only building the page itself.
What are the actual numbers in 2026?
Here is what creators ask. On 12 October 2026, 546 Indian Instagram creators with at least 1,000 followers, synced in the previous 30 days, had a reel, story and post rate on their public Qolab profile. The medians by follower band:
These are asking prices creators set themselves, most of them starting from the rate Qolab suggests from their real reach and adjusting. They are not what brands paid after negotiation, and the macro band rests on 17 creators, so read it as a direction.
Now the published guides. Ticktime Media's rate card for India, dated 11 May 2026, puts a nano reel at ₹2,000 to ₹10,000 and a micro reel (which it defines as 10,000 to 100,000 followers) at ₹8,000 to ₹75,000. upGrowth's influencer pricing guide, updated 16 September 2026, gives ₹2,000 to ₹8,000 per deliverable for nano and ₹8,000 to ₹80,000 for micro. Neither page states where its ranges come from.
The gap is not a contradiction, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Agency bands describe the finished deal: a negotiated rate, often for a creator the agency picked for strong reach, with the agency's margin inside the number. The Qolab medians are the opening ask of an ordinary creator. If you are a 20,000-follower creator and your card says ₹25,000 per reel because a blog said micro starts at ₹8,000 and you rounded up, you are quoting five times what creators your size ask, and the brand's silence is the answer.
How do you fill in stories and posts from one reel number?
Take your reel rate, then price the story at about 40 percent of it and the static post at about 70 percent. That is not a rule from a blog; it is what Qolab creators do, and they do it the same way in every band. The story median sits at 42 percent of the reel median for nano creators, 39 percent for micro, 36 percent for mid and 40 percent for macro. The post median sits at 70, 69, 82 and 65 percent. The 25 to 40 percent story band in our reel pricing guide holds, at the top of its range, on this larger sample.
For the bundle, a reel plus a story plus a post, 1.6 to 1.8 times the reel rate is the band we see brands accept, and upGrowth quotes the same combo at 1.6 to 2 times a single reel. Brands expect a multi-deliverable discount, so a bundle priced at the plain sum of the three lines reads as a card that was never tested on a real deal.
What should the usage line say?
Say what the base price includes and that everything else is priced separately. A sentence like "price includes reshares on the brand's own social channels, with credit, in India, for 12 months from approval" covers the common case. Then: "paid ads, whitelisting, website or packaging use, other countries or a longer period are quoted separately."
The surcharges are large enough to justify the line. upGrowth's September 2026 guide puts brand repost rights at 25 to 40 percent on top of the base rate, whitelisting at 60 to 120 percent, perpetual usage at 80 to 150 percent, 30-day category exclusivity at 30 to 50 percent and 90-day exclusivity at 80 to 150 percent. A card without a usage line hands all of that over for nothing, because a brand reading "₹5,000 per reel" takes it to mean the reel and whatever it wants to do with it. Our guide to usage rights and whitelisting sets out how to price each kind of use when a brand asks.
On Qolab every rate is read the same way by default: all-inclusive, with usage for one year, and the brand covers travel, food and stay. The booking agreement spells it out as reshares with credit, in India, for 12 months from approval, with paid ads, whitelisting, website, packaging, other countries or a longer period needing the creator's separate written consent on the platform. You do not have to write that line yourself; it is already attached to the number.
What about GST and payment terms?
One line each, and no figures on the card. For payment, state what you expect upfront and when the rest is due. Bosswallah suggests around 50 percent upfront from new or smaller brands, and we would not argue with it for a deal done over DM. On a Qolab booking the brand pays the full amount before you start and it is held until the content is live, so the upfront question goes away.
For GST, write whether your prices are inclusive or exclusive and whether you are registered. That is all a brand's finance team needs to see on the card. Whether you have to register, and what you charge once you do, depends on your income and your state, and this is general information, not tax advice; confirm it with a chartered accountant. Our post on GST for influencers in India covers the official thresholds and how registered creators invoice.
A filled-in template
Here is the card for a 25,000-follower lifestyle creator in Pune who sits at the micro medians. Replace the numbers with your own; keep the lines.
“Rate card, @yourhandle. Lifestyle, Pune, Hindi and English. 25,000 followers, 18,000 median reel views, 2.1 percent engagement. Reel ₹4,600. Story ₹1,800. Static post ₹3,200. Reel plus story plus post ₹7,800. Price includes concept, shoot, one round of edits, posting with the paid partnership label, and reshares on your own channels with credit, in India, for 12 months. Paid ads, whitelisting, website use or longer periods quoted separately. No category exclusivity unless agreed in writing; 30 days available at an added fee. Draft in 7 working days from brief; one revision included; rush delivery under 3 days at an added fee. 50 percent on confirmation, balance before posting, or full payment held on the platform. Prices exclusive of GST; registered.”
Four things to notice. Every price is a single number. The median views sit next to the follower count, because a brand pricing a reel is buying views, not followers. The usage line is longer than the price lines. And the exclusivity line says "none unless agreed", which stops a brand assuming it.
The five mistakes that cost deals
- **Copying a blog's bands.** The bands describe agency deals. Price from your own reach and the medians above, then move up as your views do.
- **A range instead of a number.** The brand hears the lower figure and negotiates from there.
- **No usage line.** This is the single largest sum a card silently gives away, 25 to 120 percent of the rate by upGrowth's figures.
- **A PDF that is six months old.** Followers and views move every week. A card with last year's numbers under this year's rates is the first thing a brand's team checks against your profile.
- **Pricing by followers only.** Two creators with 25,000 followers can have reach four times apart. The one with the views can charge for them, and the card should show them.
If you would rather not maintain the page by hand, a creator account on Qolab gives you a public rate card at qolab.in/c/yourhandle with all four formats, a suggested Qolab Price computed from your real reach every time Instagram syncs, the usage and payment terms already attached, and the choice between a fixed rate and letting brands counter.
