· 4 minutes read
What a brand guide costs, and exactly what you get
The published figure runs from $1,000 to over $100,000, which helps nobody. Here is a firm price, the itemised contents, and the three things that move it.
$997. That is the price, it is published rather than quoted, and you can pay it today.
Below: what is in it, what is not, and why the figure everyone else publishes is a hundred times wider than it needs to be.
Why the published numbers are so wide
The most visible page on this question puts a branding package at “from around $1,000 for a basic freelance package to more than $100,000” for a comprehensive agency-led system, and attributes that range to a third party rather than to its own work. The only firm number on that page is its own subscription, which “starts at roughly $15,000/month.”
Two structural reasons for the width, both worth knowing:
It is pricing a package, not a guide. Strategy, naming, logo design, the guide and a rollout are bundled together, so the number includes work you may already have done. A guide for a logo you already own is a different, much smaller job.
The publisher sells the expensive end. An agency pricing “brand guidelines” has no commercial reason to name a number a freelancer could beat. The page is an advertisement, and it is priced like one.
Worth noting for anyone researching this: two of the articles that used to rank for this question have gone. Column Five’s brand-guidelines guide now returns 404 and the site has pivoted away from the topic entirely, and HubSpot’s website-cost page has also been dropped. Much of the advice still circulating on this subject links to pages that no longer exist.
What $997 buys
Ten items, each priced, summing to exactly $997. From the configurator:
| Handover pack: every file, named and structured | $97 |
| Three brand directions to choose from | $200 |
| One finished logo, as vector and PNG | $125 |
| Logo variations: mono, reversed, one-colour, app icon | $100 |
| Clear space and construction rules | $50 |
| Colour palette, with accessible pairings | $75 |
| Type scale and pairing | $75 |
| Tokens as CSS and JSON | $50 |
| Written usage rules: the guide itself | $75 |
| Three branded web page examples | $150 |
Untick anything you already have and the price comes down. That is the whole mechanism. There is no package tier to argue about.
Tokens are the item to notice. A colour named in a PDF has to be retyped by everyone who uses it, and retyping is where brands drift. The same colour as a token is one file the website reads directly.
What is not in it
Said plainly, because the omissions are where quotes usually hide:
- Naming and strategy. This prices a visual identity for a business that already knows what it is.
- Print production. A CMYK and Pantone pack is a separate item.
- A website. Also separate, from $2,997, and it reads the same tokens.
- Photography. Nobody can sell you that in a configurator.
What moves the number
Whether your logo exists and is correct. This is the big one, and it is usually invisible until someone checks.
On one engagement the supplied logo was read as source rather than looked at. Three faults turned up that no eye would catch: the three bars of the monogram were centred on y=240 while the arc beside them was centred on y=256, so the mark had been sixteen units out of alignment in every application ever made of it; the file declared a radius of 170, which cannot close a 372-unit chord, so every browser and every print RIP had silently inflated it to 186; and the two supplied files disagreed with each other about whether the bars had square or round ends.
Correcting that is a different job from documenting it, and a guide written around uncorrected artwork documents the fault permanently.
How many directions you want to see. Three is the default here. One is cheaper and worse, because you cannot judge a direction without something to judge it against.
Whether anyone else has to apply it. Rules exist so that four people reach for the same blue without asking. One person needs fewer of them and should buy less.
A real price for a real project
Bonatar, a machinery safety practice in Belgium: brand system, logo correction, custom WordPress theme and a trilingual website. $3,997, fixed. Three days.
That number is useful in a way a range is not, because you can see what it bought and decide whether your job is bigger or smaller.
Who should not buy one
- Your logo is still moving. Wait. A guide documents decisions; if the mark changes, you pay twice.
- You are the only person applying it. Spend it on something a customer sees.
- You want a design system. That contains components and code and is a different product. The difference.
Price your brand kit. Itemised, firm, payable now.
Next: What belongs in a brand guide · Brand guide vs style guide vs design system · What a website costs
Updated
The prices are on the site
A brand guide, a website, or both.
One person does the design and writes the code that ships it. You will not need a call to find out what anything costs.