How the UGC Rate Index is calculated

At a glance

What the index measures

Each figure is built from starting rates. A starting rate is the price a creator asks for one video with a standard edit. Creators set it on their own profile, in their own currency, and can change it at any time.

A starting rate covers the video itself. Usage rights for paid ads, raw footage, extra hooks, voiceovers and rush delivery are usually priced on top, so a full quote for an ad campaign is often higher than the starting rate.

The index shows what creators ask, not what brands end up paying. Brands and creators agree the price between themselves and UGCStars isn’t part of the payment, so we don’t see final deal prices.

Which profiles count

A starting rate counts when it’s on a listed profile on the day an edition is calculated. Listed means a person on our team reviewed and approved the profile and the creator hasn’t hidden it. How we review creators describes that review.

What’s left out

• Applications waiting for review, and profiles we’ve asked the creator to update.
• Profiles the creator has hidden, and profiles we’ve suspended or archived.
• Listed profiles without a starting rate. That’s why an edition has fewer rates than there are listed creators.
• Bundle discounts. If a creator offers 10% off three or more videos, the index still uses their price for one video.
• Budgets in briefs and casting calls. Those are what brands offer, not what creators ask.

Each creator has one profile and one starting rate, so a creator counts once in each group they belong to. When we find a duplicate profile, we merge it.

We remind creators to update their profile at least every six months. Profiles that stay out of date are archived and drop out of the index.

We don’t remove unusually high or low rates. A few extreme rates hardly move a median, as the example below shows.

How the figures are calculated

For each group, we sort the starting rates from lowest to highest and take the one in the middle. That’s the median: half the creators in the group ask less and half ask more. When a group has an even number of rates, the median is halfway between the two middle ones.

Two ranges sit next to each median. The middle half runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile, so a quarter of creators ask less and a quarter ask more. Most creators runs from the 10th to the 90th percentile, leaving out the lowest and highest tenth.

Percentiles use linear interpolation, the method behind PERCENTILE.INC in Excel and Google Sheets, so you can reproduce any figure in a spreadsheet. Each figure is rounded to the nearest $5 after it’s calculated.

A worked example

Take 11 hypothetical starting rates in one group: $75, $90, $110, $120, $140, $150, $175, $200, $240, $300 and $600. Sorted, the sixth rate is in the middle, so the median is $150. The middle half runs from $115 to $220, and most creators from $90 to $300.

The average of the same 11 rates is $200, because the single $600 rate pulls it up. If that rate were $6,000, the average would jump to $691 and the median would stay at $150. That’s why every figure in the index is a median.

Currency

Creators set their rate in their own currency. We convert each rate to US dollars at the exchange rate on the first day of the month, from the European Central Bank’s reference rates, and then calculate the figures. For example, a starting rate of £120 at an example rate of $1.27 to the pound counts as $152.40.

How creators are grouped

The index breaks the median down by niche, country, platform, follower count and content type. A creator who lists more than one niche, platform or content type counts in each of them, so the groups overlap.

Groups with fewer than 20 rates

We don’t show a median for any group or combination with fewer than 20 starting rates. A few rates can swing a long way from one month to the next, and in a very small group one creator’s rate could be easy to work out.

When a group is too small, the rate checker says so, and niche pages show the median for the whole niche instead. Every table on the Rate Index lists the number of rates behind each figure.

Editions and corrections

Each edition uses the listed profiles as they are on the first day of the month and is published the same day. It’s named for that month, so the November 2026 edition uses profiles as they were on 1 November 2026.

Past editions stay online at their own address, so a figure you quoted keeps its source. We don’t recalculate an edition when creators change their rates later.

If we find a mistake in a published edition, we correct it, note the correction on that edition and list it under changes and corrections.

Limits to keep in mind

• Starting rates are asking prices. A creator may quote more or less for a particular brief, and the final price is agreed with the brand.
• Creators set their own rates. We review the rest of each profile before it’s listed, but we can’t check a rate against what a creator has been paid.
• The index only covers creators listed on UGCStars. Countries and niches with more creators give steadier figures, and Database stats shows how many creators are in each.
• One starting rate covers every platform, so the platform figures compare creators who have an account there. They aren’t prices for a TikTok video versus a YouTube video.
• Medians don’t add up. The median for all creators isn’t the average of the niche medians.

Using and citing the index

The index is free to use in articles, reports and client decks. Put the citation line under any figure you use, so readers can find the source and this method. The figures are published under CC BY 4.0.

To link to the method itself, use https://ugcstars.com/rates/methodology.

Changes and corrections

When we change how the index is calculated or correct a published edition, we list it here with the editions it affects.