Influencer CPM and Cost Benchmarks by Niche 2026 (From Named Public Studies)

TL;DR. Influencer CPM (cost per mille) is the cost to reach a thousand people, and public per-niche CPM data is genuinely scarce, so this reference sticks to named, dated studies and tells you exactly where the data runs out. The two clearest public CPM anchors: Shopify’s influencer pricing guide (updated 22 June 2026) says beauty content on TikTok might command a $10 to $20 CPM, and Influencer Marketing Hub’s Influencer Rates page (updated 6 July 2026) puts YouTube sponsorships at $50 to $100 per 1,000 views. Everything else in this guide is per-post pricing by tier and platform, cited to the same sources, plus an honest account of how niche drives cost even where no per-niche number exists.

I run Collabios, a creator marketplace, and I want to be straight about why this article is built the way it is. There was an incident in our own content history where influencer benchmark numbers got fabricated and had to be pulled, so on this page every figure is attributed inline to a named public study with a date, and where the public data does not exist, I say so rather than inventing a tidy table. If you have read influencer CPM articles that hand you a confident per-niche grid, treat them with suspicion: almost nobody publishes influencer CPM at the niche level, and a grid that specific is usually made up.

What follows: what CPM means and how to compute it, the handful of real public CPM figures, per-post cost benchmarks by tier and platform from named sources, why niche affects cost even without per-niche data, and how brands and creators should actually use these numbers. If you are a creator, the closing section is for you, because these same benchmarks are what a brand is checking your rate against.

CPM (cost per mille) is the cost to reach one thousand people. The formula is simple: campaign cost divided by total impressions, multiplied by 1,000. If you pay a creator $500 for a post that reaches 50,000 people, your CPM is ($500 / 50,000) x 1,000 = $10. That is it. CPM is not a price a creator charges; creators charge per post or per deliverable. CPM is what you calculate afterwards to compare the cost of influencer reach against the cost of reach from paid social, display or other channels.

This distinction matters because it changes how you should read every number in this article. The per-post rates below are what creators actually charge. The CPM figures are derived comparison metrics. You cannot turn a per-post rate into a CPM without knowing the impressions, and impressions vary so much by creator, format and platform that converting a rate into a CPM without real reach data would be exactly the kind of fabrication this guide avoids. So I present the per-post rates as per-post rates, and I present only the CPM numbers that a named study actually measured.

The practical upshot, and the single most useful habit in the whole topic: compute your own CPM from your own campaigns. Take what you paid, divide by the impressions the creator actually delivered, multiply by 1,000, and compare that to your paid-social CPM for the same audience. That number, from your own data, is worth more than any benchmark, because it reflects your creators, your niche and your market. The influencer ROI guide covers CPM alongside CPE, CPA and ROAS, and the earned media value calculator helps size the reach side.

Here are the named, dated public CPM data points I could verify. There are not many, which is the honest state of the field.

Two things to read carefully. First, the Shopify beauty-on-TikTok figure is described by Shopify itself as an example of what such content might command, not a measured average across all beauty campaigns, so treat it as an illustrative anchor rather than a fixed rate. Second, the Influencer Marketing Hub YouTube figure is a cost per 1,000 views, which is close to a CPM but not identical, because a view and an impression are counted differently on YouTube. Both are useful anchors precisely because they are real published figures; neither is a universal number you can apply to your own campaign without checking it against your own reach.

What you should take from the thinness of this table: if you need a CPM for your planning, you will mostly have to build it yourself from per-post rates and expected reach, or better, from a small first campaign’s actual results. That is not a gap in this article; it is the actual state of public influencer-CPM data as of mid-2026.

Because CPM data is thin, the more reliable public benchmarks are per-post rates by follower tier and platform. The fullest public breakdown I could verify is Shopify’s influencer pricing guide (updated 22 June 2026). Here are its Instagram and TikTok figures, quoted directly. These are cost per post, not CPM.

Source: Shopify, "How Much Do Influencers Cost?" (updated 22 June 2026). Shopify also lists higher YouTube per-post rates (nano $200 to $1,000 rising to mega $20,000 to $50,000+) and notes X pricing starting around "$2 per every 1,000 followers" for nano creators.

Influencer Marketing Hub’s Influencer Rates page (updated 6 July 2026) gives a broadly consistent picture with different framing: top TikTok influencers upwards of $10,000 per post, Instagram mid-tier creators up to around $5,000 per post, YouTube mid-tier up to around $10,000 for a single video, and Facebook micro-influencers as high as $1,250 per post. One caveat worth stating: the two sources define the micro tier differently, Influencer Marketing Hub uses 10K to 50K followers while Shopify uses roughly 10K to 100K, so their micro numbers are not directly comparable. I cite them separately rather than averaging them, because averaging figures built on different definitions is how misleading benchmarks get made.

For context on how deals cluster, Influencer Marketing Hub’s Benchmark Report 2026 (published 4 May 2026) found that roughly 45.5% of the deals brands reported fall under $500, which lines up with a market where nano and micro creators do most of the volume. For the rate-card view of these tiers from the buying side, see the influencer pricing guide, and for the budget-allocation view, the budget guide.

The honest position: I could not find a credible public study that publishes influencer CPM broken out cleanly across a full set of niches. The one named niche-level CPM figure in this whole article is Shopify’s beauty-on-TikTok $10 to $20 example. So instead of inventing a per-niche grid, here is the mechanism that actually makes niche affect cost, which lets you reason about your own niche without fake numbers.

Influencer CPM tends to track the paid-advertising auction that the same audience sits in. When a niche has high commercial intent and lots of advertisers competing for the same buyers, the underlying ad costs are higher, and creator rates and CPMs drift up with them. When a niche is broad, entertainment-led and less directly commercial, the underlying ad costs are lower, and creator CPMs tend to be lower too. That mechanism, rather than any single published table, is why you would expect the pattern below. Treat it as directional reasoning, not measured data:

• Higher-CPM tendency: finance and fintech, B2B and software, legal and insurance, high-ticket wellness. These niches carry high advertiser competition and high customer value, so both creator rates and the ad auction behind them run expensive.
• Mid-CPM tendency: beauty, fashion, fitness, food, tech gadgets, travel. Strong commercial intent and heavy brand demand, but a deep supply of creators. Shopify’s single niche data point (beauty on TikTok, $10 to $20 CPM) sits here.
• Lower-CPM tendency: broad entertainment, comedy, general lifestyle, gaming reach plays. Big audiences and lower direct commercial intent per view, so CPMs tend to be lower even when absolute per-post fees are high because the reach is large.

The reason this matters for your budget: a €15 CPM in a high-value B2B niche can be a better deal than a €5 CPM in a broad-entertainment niche, if the B2B audience converts at ten times the rate. CPM alone never tells you whether a niche is expensive; it only tells you the cost of reach, which is why you always read it next to conversion. That is the founder point I would leave you with: do not shop for the lowest-CPM niche, shop for the niche where your CPM and your conversion rate together produce a profitable customer.

Benchmarks are a sanity check, not a price list. Here is how to use the numbers above without being misled by them.

If you are a brand: use the per-post tables to sanity-check a quote (a nano Instagram creator asking $2,000 is out of band per Shopify’s June 2026 figures; a mid-tier creator asking $2,000 is well within band). Use the CPM anchors only to compare against your paid-social CPM, and always compute your own CPM from a first campaign’s real reach before you scale. The single biggest mistake is importing a headline CPM as if it were your CPM; your creators, niche and market will move it. Once you have a real number, the is it worth the money guide covers how to judge whether that CPM and conversion combination actually pays.

If you are a creator: these are the numbers a brand is checking your rate against, so knowing them protects you at both ends. If your rate sits far below the Shopify (22 June 2026) band for your tier and platform, you are likely underpricing; if it sits far above, be ready to justify it with engagement, audience quality or niche value. And because a brand may frame a lowball as a CPM argument ("your CPM is too high"), remember that CPM is reach only, price your value on engagement and conversion, not just impressions. The rate card guide walks through building a rate you can defend.

To put these benchmarks to work on real creators, filtering by tier, niche, country and engagement and paying per collaboration, browse the Collabios marketplace. Creators can create a free profile to be discoverable to brands pricing against exactly these numbers, and the free rate calculator turns a tier and engagement rate into a fair-rate band.