Finding
Whito priced seventeen things a UK business buys onto one table on 9 September 2026, from its own cost reports: nine have a published starting price under £100, and eleven run past £5,000 at the top of the published range.
Source: Whito, whito.co.uk/research/uk-marketing-prices-compared. Free to quote with a link to this page.
Last Updated on September 10, 2026
Every cost guide prices one thing. What SEO costs. What a logo costs. What a van wrap costs. Read fifty of them and you still cannot answer the question in front of you, which is whether the quote on your desk is dear or cheap for what it buys.
This page puts seventeen of those purchases in one table, priced from 20 Whito cost reports, every figure re-read from the live report on 9 September 2026.
The mistake is comparing a price to your budget instead of to the market. A quote of £2,000 a month feels the same whoever sent it. Against the published ranges it is nothing of the sort. For social media management, £2,000 sits near the top. For PR, it is the bottom rung.
Key takeaways
- Seventeen marketing purchases, priced from 20 Whito cost reports published between February and September 2026, all re-read on 9 September 2026.
- Nine of the seventeen have a published starting price under £100. Eleven run past £5,000 at the top of the published range.
- The rare UK agencies that publish a day rate charge £895 to £1,125 a day, so a £1,000 a month retainer buys roughly one day of agency time.
- The average UK freelance marketer day rate is £418, which makes that same £1,000 about two and a half days.
- Prices exclude VAT unless a row says otherwise. Ad spend, platform fees and print production are separate from management fees.
What seventeen marketing purchases cost in the UK
Read the row, not the number. The cheapest column is a real published route, not a bargain: it usually buys something narrower than the middle column. The verdict says what changes between them.
| What you are buying | Cheapest published route | What most UK businesses pay | Top of the published range | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Junior freelancer, £300 to £800 a month | £500 to £2,000 a month across the market, £1,000 to £3,500 with an agency | £7,000 to £20,000+ a month | At the published agency day rate, £1,000 a month is about one day. Below £500 nobody can do enough to move anything. |
| Google Ads management | Freelancer, £200 to £800 a month | £500 to £1,500 a month | £1,500 to £5,000 a month, or 5 to 20% of ad spend | The fee sits on top of your ad spend. Under about £1,000 a month of spend, the fee is the campaign. |
| Social media management | Virtual assistant, £150 to £400 a month | £600 to £1,200 a month for the mid-tier most businesses buy, £800 to £2,500 with an agency | £3,000 to £10,000+ a month | The bottom of this range buys posting, not strategy. Ask which one the quote is before you compare two of them. |
| Content and copywriting | £150 to £500 a blog post | £1,000 to £3,000 a month | £3,000 to £10,000 a month | Mid-level freelancers are £300 to £550 a day, so a £1,000 retainer is two or three days of writing a month. |
| Email marketing | Platform from about £7 a month | £500 to £1,500 a month for a managed service | £1,500 a month at the top of the benchmark | A platform licence and a managed service are different purchases. Work out which of the two you are short of before you price either. |
| PR | Entry consultant, £2,000 to £3,500 a month | £2,000 to £8,000 a month | £15,000 to £30,000+ a month | A freelance PR specialist is £422 a day, so £2,000 a month is under five days. PR is bought by the day, never by the result. |
| Link building | £60 a placement on a published per-link menu | £2,995 to £13,995 a month managed | Digital PR from £2,500 a month or £4,950 a campaign | A monthly package that will not state a placement count is selling you effort, not links. |
| Website, first build | DIY builder, £10 to £50 a month | £3,000 to £6,000 for a professional build, £1,500 to £3,000 for a freelance five-page site | £5,000 to £15,000 custom, £20,000+ for e-commerce | Same brief, two routes, ten times the price. What the money buys is strategy and support, not more pages. |
| Website, running costs | Hosting and domain from about £60 a year | £500 to £2,000 a year all in | £1,200 a year for maintenance alone | Year two is the bill people forget. Price it before you sign for year one. |
| Logo and branding | Marketplace logo, £30 to £150 | Freelance logo £500 to £1,000, starter pack £1,500 to £5,000 | £5,000 to £20,000 identity, £10,000 to £50,000+ rebrand | Under £150 buys a file. Guidelines are the part that stops the brand drifting six months later. |
| Photography | Mini session, £125 to £225 | Half day £200 to £850 by shoot type | Full day £400 to £1,450 | Priced by the day, not the picture. Ask how many edited images the day includes before you compare two quotes. |
| Video | Social clip, £500 to £1,500 | Testimonial or case study, £1,000 to £3,000 | £2,000 to £15,000 brand film, £10,000 to £50,000+ for broadcast quality | Location, crew and graphics move the price far more than length does. |
| Influencer and UGC | Nano creator, £20 to £150 a post | Micro creator, £80 to £1,500 a post | £4,000 to £8,000+ macro, £8,000 to £40,000+ celebrity | Rates rise with follower count, not with sales. Buy the audience that buys from you. |
| Print and signage | 1,000 leaflets from about £30 | Van lettering from £120, name and contact vinyl £200 to £500 | Full vehicle wrap, £1,200 to £4,500 | Bought once rather than monthly. Plain lettering to a full wrap is a tenfold step on the same van, so decide what the van has to do before you price it. |
| Lead platforms and directories | Bark credits at £1.80 + VAT, so roughly £5 to £40 a lead | Checkatrade, from £30 + VAT a month published for a name-search listing | £100 to £300 a month all in, reported by active members, plus £5 to £40 a lead | A lead is not a job. Bark’s own page says one enquiry goes to up to five businesses. |
| Marketing audit | DIY with free tools, £0 | Freelance channel review, £300 to £800 | £3,000 to £5,000+ agency, £5,000 to £30,000 full brand audit | An audit written by the agency that wants the retainer is a sales document with a price on it. |
| Full-service retainer | No route below the band | £3,500 to £16,750 a month | £16,750 a month | £3,500 is about four agency days a month, split across every channel you asked for. Count the days before you count the channels. |
Nine rows have a published starting price under £100. Eleven run past £5,000 at the top. The same word, on the same table, can mean a £30 marketplace logo or a £50,000 rebrand, which is why a quote means nothing until you know which rung it is standing on.
The days-a-month test
The days-a-month test is one sum: divide the monthly fee by a published day rate and see how many days of work that fee can possibly contain. It takes one sum, and it needs no reply from the seller.
Two published day rates make it work. The average UK freelance marketer charges £418 a day. The rare UK agencies that publish a rate card charge £895 to £1,125 a day for standard delivery work, and the government’s own G-Cloud framework, where publishing is compulsory, confirms the same band at £895 blended.
| Monthly fee | Freelance days at £418 | Agency days at £895 | What that has to cover |
|---|---|---|---|
| £500 | About 1.2 days | Half a day | One channel, and only the doing of it |
| £1,000 | About 2.4 days | About 1.1 days | One channel, plus reporting |
| £2,000 | About 4.8 days | About 2.2 days | One channel done properly, or two done thinly |
| £3,500 | About 8.4 days | About 3.9 days | The bottom of the full-service band, across every channel |
| £8,000 | About 19 days | About 8.9 days | Mid-market PR, or a serious multi-channel programme |
A freelance day and an agency day are not the same product. The freelance day is one person doing the work. The agency day is a slice of a team plus account management, tools, office and margin, which is why it costs two to three times more. The days-a-month test does not say an agency is overcharging. It says what the fee can physically hold.
Run it on the quote in front of you. If the answer is under one day a month, the fee is buying attention, not work, and no amount of reporting will change that.
One row on this table is ours
Whito sells an independent marketing audit at £1,280. It sits inside the audit row, between the freelance channel review and the small agency audit, and it is priced on the report that row comes from. The row has not been moved to flatter it, and the DIY route above it is still £0.
How to use this against a quote
- Find the row. If the quote covers three rows, price it as three, because that is how the seller costed it.
- Place the number in the range. Bottom, middle or top tells you what to expect before anyone opens a deck.
- Run the days-a-month test on anything monthly.
- Ask what is excluded. On this table, ad spend, platform fees, print production and VAT are all separate lines by default.
Which of these you should be buying at all
Whito sorts every purchase into three stages, and buying out of order is the expensive part.
- Start. A website that says what you sell, a logo you are not embarrassed by, prices published, and reviews asked for. Most of the cheap column belongs here.
- Build. One channel done properly, with reporting. SEO or ads or social, not all three, at the middle column.
- Scale. Multi-channel retainers, PR, digital PR and video, at the top column. If the foundations are weak these amplify the weakness at £8,000 a month.
An agency quoting Scale prices to a business with Start problems is not lying. It is answering the question it was asked.
Where each row comes from
Every figure above is lifted from a Whito cost report, not from a quote Whito was given. The reports are below with their publication dates. All were re-read from the live page on 9 September 2026 for this edition.
| Row | Priced from | Report published |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | SEO costs UK and the agency retainer benchmark | May 2026 |
| Google Ads management | Google Ads cost UK and the retainer benchmark | May 2026 |
| Social media management | Social media management costs and the retainer benchmark | May 2026 |
| Content and copywriting | Content and copywriting costs and the retainer benchmark | May 2026 |
| Email marketing | UK business software price index and the retainer benchmark | July 2026 |
| PR | PR and press release costs and the retainer benchmark | June 2026 |
| Link building | Link building costs UK | September 2026 |
| Website, first build | Website costs UK | May 2026 |
| Website, running costs | Website costs UK | May 2026 |
| Logo and branding | Logo and branding costs | June 2026 |
| Photography | Photography costs UK | August 2026 |
| Video | Video marketing costs | May 2026 |
| Influencer and UGC | Influencer and UGC rates | June 2026 |
| Print and signage | Print and signage costs | June 2026 |
| Lead platforms and directories | Trade directory costs and cost per lead UK | February and June 2026 |
| Marketing audit | What a marketing audit costs | May 2026 |
| Full-service retainer | The agency retainer benchmark | May 2026 |
| Day rates behind the test | Freelance marketer vs agency day rates | September 2026 |
| Why so few prices are public | We checked 50 agency websites | July 2026 |
| The long-form version of every row | UK Marketing Cost Index | February 2026 |
Method, and what this page cannot tell you
- Every figure comes from a Whito cost report. Those reports are built from published rate cards, published vendor pricing pages, dated industry surveys and freelancer marketplace data, with the source named beside the figure on each report.
- Prices exclude VAT unless the row says otherwise. Most UK agencies and freelancers are VAT registered, so add 20% for the invoice.
- The retainer bands are the Whito UK Agency Retainer Benchmark, Q3 2026 edition, which is refreshed quarterly with the next refresh due December 2026. Where an agency band and a whole-market figure differ, this column carries both, because they measure different populations. A freelancer and an agency selling the same channel are not the same purchase, and Whito prices them separately.
- Reports carry different check dates, shown on each report. This table restates them without ageing them, so a May 2026 band is a May 2026 band.
- This page prices the market. It cannot tell you whether a particular seller is any good, and a price inside the range is not evidence of competence.
- The day rates behind the test are averages across UK marketing and communications freelancers. Your sector and your city move them.
Questions
What is the days-a-month test?
The days-a-month test is one sum: divide the monthly fee by a published day rate and see how many days of work that fee can possibly contain. At the £418 UK freelance average, a £1,000 a month retainer is about two and a half days. At the £895 published agency day rate it is about one. If a fee cannot hold a day a month, it is buying attention rather than work.
How much does marketing cost for a UK small business?
One channel run properly by an agency costs £500 to £3,500 a month depending on the channel, and a full-service retainer starts at £3,500. The cheap end of every row on this page is real, but it buys something narrower: a virtual assistant posting to social at £150 a month is not a social media strategy.
Is a freelancer cheaper than an agency?
Per day, yes, at £418 against £895 to £1,125. Per outcome, it depends on how many specialisms the job needs. One person cannot be a technical SEO, a copywriter, a designer and an ads buyer in the same week, and an agency day is priced as a slice of all four.
Why are the ranges so wide?
Because the same word covers different products. SEO can mean a monthly report or a rebuilt site architecture, and both are sold as SEO. Whito checked 50 UK agency websites in July 2026 and 47 published no price at all, so the range is the only honest answer until a seller tells you which product they mean.
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