Investing in social media management is non-negotiable for increasing brand awareness, generating leads and driving engagement. But executives and stakeholders often don’t see the connection between social media management pricing and achieving core business objectives. It’s your job to show them.

With that, you’re responsible for equipping your team with the resources to succeed. This social media management pricing guide gives you the framework to get executive buy-in, build your budget and justify your social strategy.

We’ll walk you through what is included in the cost of social media management, how the cost of agencies compares to freelancers and the average amount a business should spend.

What you need to know about social media management pricing

Social media costs depend on the size of your business and the complexity of your strategy. Understanding these factors will help you plan your social media budget effectively and align your investments with your goals.

Prices vary depending on your social sophistication

When you align your budget with your social sophistication and needs, you invest wisely and achieve measurable outcomes. Here’s some food for thought.

  1. Small and medium businesses (SMBs): Social media costs are often lower for SMBs because they focus on foundational strategies. These include regular content posting, engaging with followers and running modest ad campaigns. Costs typically cover social media management tools, basic reporting and a limited ad spend.
  2. Mid-sized businesses: Mid-sized companies operate at a higher level of sophistication and require more robust tools for scheduling, team collaboration and advanced analytics. AI-driven tools for content recommendations and sentiment analysis deliver deeper insights into brand health and the customer experience. While this means a higher investment in social media management pricing, it also drives a stronger ROI.
  3. Enterprise businesses: Enterprise-level companies have highly sophisticated strategies that involve multiple platforms, large-scale campaigns and dedicated social customer care teams. Their costs are higher, reflecting the need for advanced tools. This includes AI-powered automation, custom integrations, advanced analytics and social listening.

Cost savings of social compared to other marketing channels

With lower entry costs, precise audience targeting and the ability to support every buyer stage, social media delivers higher ROI than traditional marketing channels. Features like AI-driven automation and real-time analytics further improve your efficiency so your budget is spent wisely while maximizing impact.

To get executive buy-in and budget, you need to justify the social cost to decision-makers. According to our 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 65% of marketing leaders say demonstrating how social media campaigns tie to business goals is crucial for securing social investment.

Another 52% say quantifying the cost savings of using social compared to other channels is equally important.

Stats from the 2025 Sprout Social Index that shows 65% of marketing leaders say demonstrating how social media campaigns are tied to business goals is crucial for securing social investment. Another 52% say quantifying the cost savings of using social compared to other channels is equally important.

How to build an effective social media budget

Building an effective social media budget is a foundational step. Start by defining clear goals and considering your organization’s unique needs. Factor in aspects like audience size, platform priorities and your social media expertise to determine whether you need basic content management or advanced analytics and social media customer service tools. Align these needs with your overall marketing budget so resources are allocated effectively and support measurable outcomes.

Social media management costs overall

There’s no one-size-fits-all social media management pricing. Brands will spend differently depending on their goals and objectives.

While a basic social media management program can cost anywhere between $500–$5,000 per month, a comprehensive program is roughly $5,000 per month. Additional social media marketing costs related to content creation, advertising campaigns and social media management software may include:

  • Content creation: $8,000 per month (Nano-influencers charge between $40 to $150 per post; micro-influencers charge anywhere from $80 to $350; while mid-tier influencer rates are around $350)
  • Social advertising: $6,000 per month
  • Platform management: $5,000 per month

Bringing your total to $19,000 per month.

Here’s a breakdown of how we calculated this figure.

Cost of launching on a new social channel and creating content

Although launching on a social channel is technically free, running the profile and creating a content calendar costs a brand anywhere from $500 to $10,000 per month.

The estimated social media management pricing depends on factors like talent sourcing (in-house talent vs. outsourced) and third-party tools. For example, at Sprout, our content and social management is driven by our internal team members, but we contract content creation too.

Here are the average rates for both:

  • Social Media Specialist salary: $4,700 per month
  • Social Media Manager freelance rate: $20–150 per hour, based on experience
  • Creator compensation: $25–$500 per post or video, based on the platform and influencer type.

Cost of social media ad campaigns

To run a successful network-specific advertising campaign, you should plan to invest at least $2,500 per month in each network you’re targeting. Often the cost can be much higher based on your goals, so it’s wise to consider that.

It’s important to factor in your goals, campaign duration, audience and networks that’ll work best for your campaign, to determine your social ad campaign budget. As you integrate more platforms and run longer campaigns, expect the overall expense to increase.

Sprout Social's Paid Performance Report. The report illustrates key performance indicators of an example ad campaign, including impressions, engagements, clicks and conversions.

Your campaign metrics will reveal ways you may need to optimize your strategy to reach your desired goals, so leave room in your ad budget for flexibility.

Costs of influencer marketing

Adding influencer spend into your strategy is critical because according to Sprout’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, almost half (49%) of consumers surveyed, make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts. Interestingly, 62% of frequent buyers often share product feedback with influencers, rather than with brands directly. This means you can get better reach and conversions with influencers plus access to product and brand feedback you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Average influencer pricing varies per network but in general, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok cost $10 per 1000 posts, while Facebook and YouTube are $20 per 1000 subscribers/followers.

Platform management costs

Whether you manage multiple platforms through a social media management tool, an agency partner or both, you’ll pay around $500–$5,000 per month.

The price is influenced by the number of profiles you manage, the volume of inbound messages and mentions you receive, the size of your community and the features you use.

Sprout Social's Smart Inbox, an inbox within the platform that consolidates all incoming messages and mentions into one place.

Continue reading to learn more about the costs of working with a social media management agency and using a social media management tool.

Social media management agency pricing

Some brands use agencies for social media services to complement their in-house social teams, while others use them to outsource all their social media management tactics. Services offered depend on the agency type, but often include:

  • Platform management
  • Social strategy
  • Content development
  • Social analytics
  • Running paid social campaigns
  • Engagement and community management

The scope of your social media management needs will impact the cost. Prices vary depending on your goals, the service term and the number of tasks the agency performs. Agency fees scale based on your business size and campaign complexity.

Social media management freelancer pricing

An influencer marketing budget is a separate but crucial part of your overall social media management pricing. Freelancer costs shift based on their experience level and the scope of your project. Rates can be hourly, per-project or on a monthly retainer.

Once you determine your goals and budget, you need to find freelancers who have the right skills and fit your price range. Instead of sifting through generic marketplaces, use a dedicated platform to connect with the right partners. Sprout Social Influencer Marketing helps you discover vetted creators, manage relationships and measure the ROI of your campaigns from a single, intuitive dashboard.

  1. Upwork: A freelancing platform and independent talent workforce that helps you scale faster and transform your business. Upwork is a great option for larger projects that require subject-matter expertise.
  2. MarketerHire: This is an online marketplace where you can search and hire social media marketing freelancers that fit your needs and budget. The platform offers marketing roles based on expertise, making it easier for brands to bridge gaps in their social media management team and meet goals more easily.
  3. The Mom Project: A freelancing platform specifically designed to employ mothers and help over 650,000 talented women stay engaged in the workforce. The Mom Project’s Maternityship® program provides companies with coverage for resource gaps created by parental leave.

If your team opts to work with freelancers, we recommend starting with smaller tasks. Make sure their work aligns with your goals and expectations before partnering on large-scale, critical projects.

Social media management software pricing

Publishing, scheduling and reporting natively is cumbersome without social media management software. It’s necessary software to optimize team resources and save time, so they can focus on creative and strategic tasks to build authentic customer connections and elevate your brand.

The investment in a social media management platform varies based on its capabilities. A comprehensive platform designed for end-to-end management will require a larger investment than a simple tool built for a single task, but it will also deliver a greater return.

Sprout's pricing models for small, medium and enterprise customers.

Here’s an overview of our pricing models.

 Standard

  • $199 per seat/month | Billed annually ($249 billed monthly)
  • 5 social profiles
  • All-in-one social inbox
  • Publish, schedule, draft and queue posts
  • Social content calendar
  • Review management
  • Profiles, keywords and locations monitoring
  • Group, profile and post-level reporting
  • Paid promotion tools to boost Facebook posts
  • iOS and Android mobile apps

Professional 

  • $299 per seat/month | Billed annually ($399 billed monthly)
  • All Standard features, plus:
  • Unlimited social profiles
  • Competitive reports for Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter)
  • Message tagging
  • Custom workflows for multiple approvers and steps
  • Scheduling for optimal send times
  • Saved replies
  • Digital asset and content library
  • Brand-level engagement reporting
  • Trend analysis for X keywords and hashtags
  • Suggestions by AI Assist
  • Paid social reporting for Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn

Advanced

  • $399 per seat | Billed annually ($499 billed monthly)
  • All Professional features, plus:
  • Message Spike Alerts for increased message activity
  • Get alerted when message volume is higher than usual with email and push notifications.
  • Enhance by AI Assist
  • Chatbots with automation tools
  • Sentiment in the Smart Inbox and Reviews
  • Rule builder for automated actions
  • Automated link tracking
  • CSAT and NPS surveys
  • Scheduled report delivery
  • Helpdesk and CRM integrations
  • Feature visibility controls
  • External approvals
  • Organize tags

Enterprise

  • Pricing available on request | Custom-built plan to meet your needs
  • All Advanced features, plus:
  • Tailored implementation and onboarding to get teams up and running quickly
  • Professional consulting services
  • 24/5 prioritized customer support
  • Premium add-ons, including:

Cost of other software that can help with social media management

In addition to a social media management platform, you might need other tools to supplement your social media strategy. Here are two examples of platforms that support you in tracking your customers’ journey and generating new content ideas.

  1. HubSpot

HubSpot’s integrated CRM platform helps you monitor social engagement in the context of your customer relationships.

The platform gives you a detailed understanding of your customers’ social interactions and how many marketing-qualified leads you’re generating from specific platforms—which makes it easy for you to prove the return on investment (ROI) of your social campaigns.

Cost: $730/month (Professional)

  1. Post Planner

Post Planner curates articles, images and custom content feeds so you always have something fresh for your followers. The platform identifies your most popular posts and has automated features to repurpose and recreate top-performing content.

Cost: $57/month (Business)

Invest in your social media success

Calculating your social media management pricing is more than a budget exercise. It’s a strategic investment in your brand’s future. The right platform doesn’t just save you time; it unlocks smarter, faster business impact. Sprout Social’s intuitive, AI-powered suite of tools gives you everything you need to centralize your workflow, prove your ROI and command your market.

Stop just managing social and start maximizing its value. See how Sprout Social delivers undeniable results by starting a free 30-day trial today.