Social Media Manager Pricing: How to Price a Retainer by the Hour
To work out how much to charge for social media management, price the hours, not the posts: add up the fixed monthly work every client needs (strategy, calendar and approvals, community management, reporting), add the hours each deliverable takes, and multiply by your floor rate. In the illustrative example below, “ten posts a month” comes out at $1,136.28 if every post is a static graphic and $3,173.76 if every post is a short-form video - the same number on the proposal, and 2.8 times the work. That is why a retainer priced per post is a bet on the mix, and the rest of this page shows the arithmetic.
The social media retainer formula
monthly hours = fixed monthly hours + sum(count of each format x hours each)
monthly retainer = monthly hours x your floor rate
floor rate = (take-home target / (1 - tax rate) + overhead) / billable hours a year
Two inputs do the work. The fixed monthly hours exist whether you post twice or twenty times. The hours per format differ enough that a post count alone tells you very little about the month.
Step 1: your floor rate
The floor rate is the hourly figure below which your year does not work. The inputs here are illustrative, chosen to show the method; they are not typical figures for social media managers anywhere.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Take-home income target, after tax | $62,000 |
| Annual overhead (scheduling tools, design software, phone and lighting, training, accountant) | $4,600 |
| Tax rate on profit (placeholder) | 25% |
| Weeks off a year | 4 |
| Hours at the desk per working week | 40 |
| Share of desk hours that are billable | 58% |
That gives 1,114 billable hours a year and a revenue need of $87,267, so the floor is $78.36 an hour. The billable share is deliberately well under 100%: selling, onboarding and admin are working hours too. If you want the floor-rate method in full, it is worked step by step in the freelance hourly rate calculator post. Use your own figures; the 25% is a placeholder, not a real rate for anyone.
Step 2: hours per deliverable
These are the product’s working estimates, including the thinking and writing, not only the production. They are illustrative assumptions - time your own for a month and replace them.
| Deliverable | Hours each | At the floor rate |
|---|---|---|
| Static graphic | 0.6 | $47.02 |
| Carousel, 5-8 slides | 1.6 | $125.38 |
| Short-form video / reel | 3.2 | $250.77 |
| Story set | 0.5 | $39.18 |
| Long caption / thread | 0.8 | $62.69 |
On these estimates a reel is 5.3 times the hours of a static graphic. Once the hours differ by that much, “a post” stops being a unit you can put a price on.
Step 3: the work that does not scale with posts
| Fixed monthly work | Hours |
|---|---|
| Strategy and planning call | 1.0 |
| Content calendar and approvals | 2.0 |
| Community management | 4.0 |
| Reporting | 1.5 |
| Total, whatever the post count | 8.5 |
8.5 hours a month - $666.10 at the floor rate - exist before a single post is made. Community management alone is 4.0 hours here, and approval rounds sit inside the calendar line. None of it shrinks when the client asks for fewer posts.
The same ten posts, three ways
| Ten posts as… | Monthly hours | Retainer |
|---|---|---|
| All static | 14.5 | $1,136.28 |
| Half static, half carousel | 19.5 | $1,528.11 |
| All short-form video | 40.5 | $3,173.76 |
Moving from all static to all video adds $2,037.48 a month without changing the post count at all. In the all-static month, the fixed work is 59% of the hours: the posts are the smaller part of the job.
Why per-post pricing underprices the retainer
There are two ways a per-post price goes wrong, and both come straight out of the tables above.
Pricing a post from its production time. A static graphic is 0.6 hours, or $47.02 at the floor rate. Ten of them invoiced at that price is $470.19. The month is actually 14.5 hours, so the effective rate is $32.43 an hour, and the $666.10 gap is exactly the fixed work - strategy, approvals, community and reporting done for free.
Spreading the fixed work into a per-post price. Suppose you fold the fixed hours in by working out a price from a 12-post month: $102.53 a post. That price is right at 12 posts and wrong everywhere else:
| Static posts a month | Hours | Retainer at the floor rate | Charged at the per-post price | Effective hourly rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 9.7 | $760.14 | $205.05 | $21.14 |
| 4 | 10.9 | $854.17 | $410.11 | $37.62 |
| 8 | 13.3 | $1,042.25 | $820.21 | $61.67 |
| 12 | 15.7 | $1,230.32 | $1,230.32 | $78.36 |
| 20 | 20.5 | $1,606.47 | $2,050.54 | $100.03 |
A small client taking 4 posts is charged $410.11 for a month that costs $854.17 - an effective $37.62 an hour and $444.07 short. At 20 posts the same price overshoots to $100.03 an hour, which is the kind of number that loses a pitch. And if the client on the $102.53 price switches to ten reels, you invoice $1,025.27 for 40.5 hours: $25.32 an hour, under half the floor.
The fix is to quote hours and deliver posts. A per-post figure is fine as a way of describing a package to a client, as long as it is derived from the hours of that specific mix rather than reused across mixes.
Social media management packages, built from the mix
Packages work when each tier is a mix, not a count. Here are three built from the same hours and floor rate:
| Package | Monthly mix | Posts | Hours | Monthly retainer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 8 static, 2 carousel | 10 | 16.5 | $1,293.01 |
| Standard | 6 static, 4 carousel, 2 reels | 12 | 24.9 | $1,951.28 |
| Video-led | 4 static, 8 reels | 12 | 36.5 | $2,860.30 |
Standard and Video-led have the same post count. Video-led costs $909.03 a month more because eight of those posts are reels. A package page that listed only “12 posts” would price them the same.
When a client asks to change the mix mid-contract, the re-price is a lookup rather than a negotiation:
| Change | Hours | Price change |
|---|---|---|
| One static becomes a carousel | +1.0 | +$78.36 |
| One static becomes a reel | +2.6 | +$203.75 |
| One carousel becomes a reel | +1.6 | +$125.38 |
| Add a story set | +0.5 | +$39.18 |
A run of small swaps, each reasonable on its own and none repriced, is how a retainer drifts below the floor without anyone deciding it should.
How to price your own retainer
- Work out your floor rate from your own take-home target, overhead, tax rate from an accountant, weeks off and billable share.
- Time each format you make for a month, including writing and approvals.
- Total the fixed monthly hours per client: calls, calendar, community, reporting.
- For each prospective client, write the mix, not the count, and run the formula.
- If the number is above what that client will pay, change the mix or the fixed work (fewer platforms, lighter reporting) before you change the rate.
None of this tells you what your market will pay. If the retainer the arithmetic gives is far above what clients in your area accept, that is real information: the target, the overhead, the billable share, the scope or the market has to move.
How these were calculated
The floor rate is (take-home target / (1 - tax rate) + overhead) divided by billable hours, where billable hours are (52 - weeks off) x hours a week x billable share. Monthly hours are the fixed monthly hours plus each format’s count times its hours; the retainer is monthly hours times the floor rate. Every figure was computed twice: once by the code behind the product below, and once by an independent program with its own copy of the hour estimates that runs the year forward at a trial rate and searches for the rate that leaves exactly the target. The two agree to the cent. All inputs and hour estimates are illustrative, the tax rate is a placeholder, and none of this is financial, legal or tax advice.
If you would rather plug in your own mix than redo the sums, the kit below has the hours table, the three tiers, the swap table and a live workbook where changing one static to one reel moves the retainer.