The short answer: tech creators on X typically charge $250 to $5,000 per sponsored post at 10K to 50K followers, $500 to $5,000 and up at 50K to 250K, and $2,000 to $10,000 or more above 250K. Measured per thousand views, founders, engineers and technical creators usually price at a $40 to $50 CPM.
| Followers on X | Typical rate per post |
|---|---|
| 10K to 50K | $250 to $5,000 |
| 50K to 250K | $500 to $5,000+ |
| 250K and up | $2,000 to $10,000+ |
| Per thousand views | $40 to $50 CPM |
Those are the ranges we see across the network, and every deal inside them is negotiated. A CPM is one way to read a rate, and well above a paid social CPM, because the reader chose to follow the person posting. For a launch, who sees the post matters more than how many.
Why no single rate card works
Sponsorship on X is negotiated individually. There is no clearing price, no settled market rate, and no equivalent of the settled economics that exist on YouTube. Two brands will offer very different amounts for the same post in the same week and neither of them is being dishonest.
The reason is that your audience is worth different amounts to different buyers. An account whose readers are mostly platform engineers is worth a great deal to an infrastructure company and very little to a consumer app, at identical reach. The variable is overlap, and it changes per deal.
So the useful skill is not memorising a number. It is understanding the model the buyer is using, so you can tell when an offer is low and say so in terms they recognise.
How a buyer builds the number
When we price a creator, four things go into it, in this order of weight.
- Median reach. The middle of your recent posts, never the mean and never your best one. Every account has an outlier, and averaging lets that outlier misprice you in both directions. We look at roughly the last twenty organic posts.
- Audience overlap with the buyer. How much of your readership is the person this company needs to reach. This is the largest multiplier and the one you can argue about most effectively.
- Engagement authenticity. Verified rather than assumed, because bought engagement shows in the ratios. An inflated account is worth less than a smaller honest one, since nothing measured from it can be trusted.
- Reliability. Whether you post on the agreed day, in the agreed window, and turn up in the replies. Unglamorous, and it decides who gets asked again.
Notice what is absent. Follower count enters only as a weak proxy for the first item, and a 40k account with a live audience routinely prices above a 400k account with a flat one.
The full selection criteria are here. If you want to be priced against this model rather than guessing at it, email creator@doomers.ai and we will tell you what we would pay.
Calculating your own floor
Buyers model spend as a cost per thousand people reached. You can run the same calculation in reverse, and it gives you a defensible floor rather than a number you invented.
Take your median views across the last twenty organic posts. Decide the rate per thousand you are willing to work for.
Multiply. That is your floor for a single post with no extras attached.
Two notes on choosing the rate per thousand. It should be higher than a platform advertising CPM, because you are selling something an ad cannot buy: a reader who chose to follow you and will treat your opinion as an opinion.
And it should rise as your audience gets more specialised, because a narrow technical audience is far harder for a buyer to reach any other way.
Put the working in the email. A number with a method behind it survives a negotiation. A number on its own gets treated as an opening bid.
What moves you above it
- Category fit. If the product is squarely what your audience follows you for, say so and price it. This is the single strongest argument available to you.
- Scarcity in the category. If there are eleven credible accounts covering your niche, you are worth more than if there are four hundred.
- Being able to write it well. A creator who turns a technical brief into something that reads like them, at speed, is rare and gets paid for it.
- Track record with launches. Having carried drops that performed, and being able to show the numbers, moves you into a different conversation.
What you are giving away free
The most common way creators lose money is pricing the post correctly and handing over everything around it free.
| Term | Why it costs you |
|---|---|
| Usage rights | A brand that can run your post as a paid advertisement is buying a media asset, not a post. Worth a multiple of the original fee, and routinely given away in one sentence. |
| Category exclusivity | Agreeing not to work with competitors for three months removes future income. Price it or decline it. |
| Whitelisting your handle | Letting a brand run ads from your account is a bigger ask than a post and should never be bundled into a post fee. |
| Permanence | Leaving a post up indefinitely has a value. So does the right to take it down if the product turns out badly. |
| Reply time | The hours you spend defending it on the day are the most valuable thing you do for the campaign, and the least often paid for. |
What to agree before you post covers each of these as a term rather than a price.
Five pricing mistakes
- One flat rate for everyone. It undercharges the buyers who need you most and overcharges the ones who do not. Price the fit.
- Quoting on followers. You are inviting a comparison you will lose to a larger, worse account.
- Discounting for early-stage companies. Reasonable occasionally and corrosive as a policy, because your rate becomes the discounted one and it is the number they repeat to other founders.
- Free posts for exposure. The exposure is yours already. That is what they are buying.
- Never raising it. If your median has doubled since you set your rate, your rate is now a discount you are giving without being asked.
When to decline
Pricing is easier once you are willing to say no, and there are four cases where the money is never enough.
A product you cannot defend. You will be in the replies, and the cost of carrying something you do not believe is paid by your audience rather than the brand. That trade is bad at any fee.
Supplied copy you cannot change. Handing your account to somebody else's paragraph produces a post that reads as a campaign, and audiences punish it immediately.
No disclosure. A brand asking you to skip the label is asking you to take the regulatory exposure on their behalf. What the label does and who is liable.
Guaranteed performance clauses. Nobody controls the algorithm. Agreeing to deliver a view count means agreeing to buy engagement when it falls short, which ends your account eventually.
Questions we get asked
How much do tech creators on X charge for a sponsored post?
Tech creators on X typically charge $250 to $5,000 per sponsored post at 10K to 50K followers, $500 to $5,000 and up at 50K to 250K, and $2,000 to $10,000 or more above 250K. Measured per thousand views, founders, engineers and technical creators usually price at a $40 to $50 CPM, well above a paid social CPM, because the reader chose to follow the person posting.
How do I work out what to charge for a sponsored post on X?
Start from your median views over the last twenty organic posts, not your followers and not your best post. Buyers model spend as a cost per thousand people reached, so your median is the number they are pricing. Multiply it by the rate per thousand you are willing to work for, then adjust upward for how closely your audience matches that specific buyer.
Why do two brands offer very different amounts for the same post?
Because your audience is worth different amounts to different buyers. An account whose readers are mostly platform engineers is worth far more to an infrastructure company than to a consumer app, for the same reach. This is why a single rate card fails and why quoting one flat number leaves money on the table with the buyers who need you most.
What do creators most often forget to charge for?
Usage rights, above everything. A brand that can run your post as a paid advertisement is buying a media asset rather than a post, and that is worth a multiple of the original fee. After that: category exclusivity, how long the post has to stay up, and the hours you spend in the replies on the day.