Marketing Agency Rate Calculator
Small agencies typically sell monthly retainers, but the retainer should still be built from a real hourly rate, team overhead and realistic monthly billable hours.
Recommended monthly retainer
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Recommended hourly rate
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Billable hours/year
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Max clients at this scope
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Agency-specific cost considerations
- "Hours/week" here represents combined team billable capacity, not one person — adjust for however many billable staff you have.
- Software/tool stack costs (ads platforms, analytics, project management) scale with client count and should be reflected in overhead.
- Scope creep on "a few extra hours" per client is the most common way agency retainers become unprofitable — track actual hours per client regularly.
"Max clients at this scope" is billable hours ÷ hours-per-client per month — a capacity ceiling, not a growth target.
Worked example
$180,000 target compensation, $60,000 overhead, 48 weeks, 40 combined hrs/week, 65% utilization, 10% reserve, 15% margin, 15 hrs/month/client:
- Billable hours: 48 × 40 × 0.65 = 1,248 hours/year (104/month)
- Recommended rate: $240,000 ÷ (1 − 0.25) ÷ 1,248 ≈ $256.41/hour
- Monthly retainer: 15 × $256.41 ≈ $3,846
- Max clients: 104 ÷ 15 ≈ 6.9 clients at this scope
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Frequently asked questions
How do I price a retainer if scope varies month to month?
Price for an average expected monthly hour commitment, and define an explicit overage rate for hours beyond that in the contract.
What is a healthy utilization rate for an agency?
Small agencies with dedicated account/admin roles often run 55-70% billable utilization for delivery staff.