Free tool

Social media cost calculator

What your social media actually costs each month, and what that works out at per post — whether an agency, a freelancer or your own team is doing the work. Enter your own rates in your own currency.

Excluding advertising budget.
—
per month, all in
—Per post
—Per platform-post
—Per year
—Hours / month

Figures are in whatever currency you entered — nothing is converted, and no market rate is assumed. Advertising budget is deliberately excluded: it buys reach, not work, and mixing the two hides what production costs.

The number most businesses never work out

Ask a small business what its social media costs and the answer is usually the invoice — or, if it is done internally, nothing. Both answers are wrong in the same way: they leave out the work.

Publishing sixteen posts a month across three platforms is not sixteen tasks. It is deciding what to say, writing it, making or finding a picture, cropping that picture three ways, scheduling it, answering the comments and messages it brings in, and telling someone at the end of the month whether any of it worked. Priced at a real hourly rate, a "free" in-house arrangement routinely costs more than the agency quote that was turned down.

What a complete cost includes

  • Strategy and planning — deciding what the month is about, not just filling slots.
  • Copywriting — the caption, and the first line that decides whether it is read.
  • Design, photography or video — the most commonly forgotten line, and often the largest.
  • Scheduling and publishing — including the re-crops, the failed uploads and the re-tries.
  • Community management — comments, direct messages and reviews. This is the line that grows fastest as an account does.
  • Reporting — pulling the numbers and turning them into a decision.

Kept out on purpose: advertising spend. It is a media budget, not a cost of production, and folding it in makes every per-post figure meaningless.

Typical ranges

Very broad rules of thumb, for sanity-checking a quote rather than pricing one. Rates vary enormously by country, by industry and by how much video is involved.

ArrangementTypically coversWhere the cost hides
Freelancer, part-time1–2 platforms, posting and basic repliesDesign is often extra; holidays and illness have no cover.
Small agency retainer2–4 platforms, content plus reportingPost volume caps, and extra fees for video or ads.
Full-service agencyStrategy, production, paid media, reportingMinimum contract terms and a separate media budget.
In-house, part of a roleWhatever the person has time forThe hours themselves — and the other work that stops.
In-house, dedicated hireEverything, consistentlyFull employment cost, plus tools, plus recruitment.

Three ways to cut the number honestly

  1. Post less, better. Cutting from sixteen posts to ten and putting the saved effort into the remaining ten almost always beats the reverse. Volume is the easiest cost to add and the least effective.
  2. Reuse deliberately. One idea, properly adapted to three platforms, costs a fraction of three ideas — and adaptation is not the same as cross-posting the identical file everywhere.
  3. Automate the repetitive half. Scheduling, re-cropping per platform, first-line replies to the same five questions: none of that needs a person, and it is usually most of the hours.

That last point is what ReachXpand is for — and you can see the current plans to put a real figure next to the one above.

Questions

How much does social media management cost per month?
It depends far more on who does it than on how much gets posted. A freelancer handling a couple of platforms is usually the cheapest route, a small agency retainer sits well above that, and a full agency relationship higher again. Doing it in-house looks free until you price the hours — which is the number this calculator exists to make visible.
Is in-house really cheaper than an agency?
Often not, once the hours are costed honestly. Content work absorbs far more time than people estimate: the writing is the small part, and the planning, designing, scheduling, replying and reporting are the rest. Multiply the real hours by a loaded hourly rate — salary plus employer costs, not take-home pay — before concluding it is free.
What should be included in the cost?
Everything needed to get a post live and answered: strategy and planning, writing, design or photography, scheduling, replying to comments and messages, and reporting. Paid advertising budget is a separate line — it buys reach, not work — so keep it out of this number or you will never know what production actually costs.
What is a reasonable cost per post?
Divide your total by the number of posts and the answer is usually higher than expected, because the fixed work — strategy, brand setup, reporting — is spread over whatever you publish. That is also why cost per post falls sharply as volume rises, and why comparing two providers on their headline fee alone tells you very little.
Does posting to more platforms cost more?
Less than proportionally. The thinking is done once; the extra cost is adapting the copy and re-cropping the image for each placement. That is why the cost per platform-post in the result below drops as you add platforms — and why cross-posting the identical asset everywhere, which is the cheapest option of all, also performs the worst.
Are these numbers specific to my country?
No. The calculator uses whatever rates you enter, in whatever currency you work in — it never assumes a market. The typical ranges further down the page are broad rules of thumb and will be wrong for any specific city.

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Put your number next to ours

ReachXpand plans, writes, designs, schedules and replies — across every platform, for one monthly fee.

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