How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost in Malaysia? 2026 Creator Rates & Agency Fees

SushiVid charges a campaign budget, not a per-post price list: you agree a total, we allocate most of it to creators and keep a management fee for running the campaign. This page explains how that total is built and what creators typically cost.

Everything below is indicative. A written quotation is the only binding figure.

What creators cost in Malaysia (2026)

These are creator fees: what the creator is paid for the content. They are not what a campaign costs you, because they exclude the management fee and SST. Use them to sanity-check a budget, not to price a campaign.

Average creator fee per creator, for one round of content. A dash means we do not yet have enough responses in that combination to publish an average rather than a guess. Where a deliverable spans platforms, the follower band is read from Instagram. Platform guides: TikTok influencer marketing and Xiaohongshu KOL marketing. These are averages across the creators in our network: models, Miss Malaysia titleholders, professional athletes and celebrities sit outside this range and are quoted individually.

Where these numbers come from

They are quoted prices from creators who responded to SushiVid's own campaign requests over the last two years. Not list prices, not estimates, not scraped from anywhere: figures real creators gave us when asked to quote for real work. Three things follow from that.

The table is live. It reflects what creators are asking now. If a thousand creators revised their rates tomorrow, every figure here would move. Treat it as a reading taken on a date, not a price list with a shelf life.

Outliers are excluded on purpose. We fit the responses to a normal distribution and drop what falls outside it, so a single creator quoting far above or below the pack does not drag the average. These figures describe the ordinary case well and the exceptional case not at all.

It is an average of people who said yes to a brief. Creators who never responded, or who do not work with agencies, are not represented. The sample is the market that is reachable, which is the market you can actually book.

Stand-out names are outside the bell curve. This is an average of the influencers we work with. If a creator is also a model, a Miss Malaysia, a professional athlete or a celebrity, their price will not be in this table: they sit outside the bell curve, and we quote them case by case.

A worked example: the same RM20,000, twice

Two campaigns, identical budget, identical deliverable: one Instagram Reel synced to TikTok per creator, line-up weighted 70% Malay and 30% Chinese. The only difference is the size of creator we book.

Same money, and the fee differs by two thirds. The nano campaign is thirty-two negotiations, thirty-two briefings, thirty-two rounds of review and chasing, with creators who need more guidance along the way. The macro campaign is five of each. The work is not comparable, so the fee is not either.

It is worth seeing what that does to your money. The nano line-up puts 67% of the budget into creator fees; the macro line-up puts 80%. If you chose nano for spread, local credibility or engagement rate, that gap is what those things cost to coordinate, and it is a fair price. If what you actually wanted was reach, the macro line-up delivers far more of it per ringgit: roughly 625,000 followers against about 175,000, on band midpoints.

Neither is the right answer in general. They are different campaigns, and the quotation should make clear which one you are buying.

What's the minimum budget to see results?

We recommend at least RM10,000 a month for six months. A single round of posts can create a spike, but results build when your audience sees your brand from several creators over several months. That is also how long it takes to learn which creators, formats and messages actually move your numbers, and to put more budget behind them.

Could you do it for less in-house? If someone on your team can reach out to creators, negotiate, brief, chase drafts and report, the campaign itself can cost less. But you are still paying that person's salary, and once that is counted it usually works out about the same as an agency fee. The difference is that we come with 11 years of creator relationships, rate data and campaign experience already in place.

How an influencer agency fee works

One campaign budget, split two ways: the money that goes out to creators, and our fee for running the campaign.

We are an agency, not a marketplace. You buy an outcome for a budget, so the number of creators and the exact deliverable mix can shift as we build the line-up, as long as the campaign delivers what was agreed. A quotation that says eleven creators may run with ten at higher reach, or twelve at lower, without the price changing.

Our management fee is typically 15% to 30% of the campaign budget, set by two things: how much of the work we are carrying, and how much work the campaign takes relative to the money in it. The 15% floor is firm. The upper end is not a ceiling: some campaigns sit above 30%, for the reasons below.

Boosting is priced separately and simply: 10% of the advertising spend. On RM10,000 of boosting that is RM1,000, plus RM80 SST.

What sets 15% against 30%

The difference is who does the thinking.

At 15% you are buying execution: we find the right creators, negotiate, contract, brief, chase, check and report. The campaign idea is yours.

At 30% you are buying the campaign. We shape the creative, work through the concept with each creator before anything is shot, curate what comes back, and edit it ourselves where that lifts the result. It suits launches, regulated categories and anything where off-brief content is expensive to fix.

Why the percentage moves

The bands above describe scope. The rest of the answer is the amount of work a campaign takes against the money in it, and that is driven mainly by how many creators we are managing, not by the budget. Two campaigns of the same value can differ several times over in effort.

One large creator, high budget: the percentage comes down. If a single creator's fee is RM60,000, that is one negotiation, one contract, one brief and one approval. It is not six times the work of booking a RM10,000 creator, so charging 30% would mean billing RM18,000 for effort that does not scale with the fee. Our largest campaigns are priced at or near the 15% floor for exactly this reason.

Many small creators, low budget: the percentage goes up. Fifty nano creators at RM100 each is a RM5,000 campaign and fifty of everything: fifty negotiations, fifty briefings, fifty rounds of chasing, checking and approving. Creators at that level are also earlier in their careers and need materially more guidance on interpreting a brief, on content standards and on disclosure than an established creator who has done a hundred campaigns. On a campaign like that, 30% is RM1,500 for several weeks of coordination, and 40% can still be fair.

So the honest version is this: the fee tracks the work, and headcount drives the work while creator fees drive the budget. When those pull apart, the percentage moves with the work rather than the money. We tell you which situation your campaign is in while we are quoting, and show you the headcount it assumes. If the brief changes enough to move a campaign from one band to the other, you hear that before the work starts, not on the invoice.

What the budget covers

The management fee covers running the campaign end to end: creator sourcing and vetting, negotiation and contracting, briefing, content review and approvals, posting coordination, and a performance report at the end.

Some work sits outside that and is quoted separately, because it only applies to some campaigns. We will always tell you before any of it is incurred:

• Attending your event or shoot, including travel
• Shipping products to creators
• Buying or collecting products on your behalf
• PR kit design and build
• Changes to deliverables after the line-up is confirmed
• More than two rounds of revisions on a piece of content
• Editing creator photos or video ourselves
• Extra or urgent reporting beyond the standard campaign report
• Extending a campaign beyond its agreed window
• Stamping legal documents for IP or usage rights
• Creator exclusivity
• Paying creators upfront on your behalf, ahead of your payment to us

If a creator search runs unusually long, or your campaign needs something not on this list, it is quoted before we start it.

SST on influencer marketing

Malaysian service tax of 8% applies to our service fee, not to money that passes through us to someone else. On a campaign, SST is charged on the management fee and not on the creator fees. On boosting, it is charged on our 10% and not on the advertising spend. Every quotation and invoice shows the two separately, so you can see exactly what is being taxed.

Live streaming works differently: production, crew, on-site management and travel are all our own service rather than pass-through, so SST applies to the whole amount.

Payment terms

Malaysia-registered companies: 50% on confirmation, 50% within 30 days of the campaign ending. Companies registered outside Malaysia: 100% upfront. That is the standard for a new client, and it is what a quotation assumes unless we have agreed something else with you in writing.

The deposit is what lets us contract creators. We pay them on your behalf, so the campaign cannot be locked in before it clears.

Agency and long-standing clients sometimes work to different terms, including longer windows tied to the delivery of the campaign report. If your procurement process needs something specific, raise it while we are quoting rather than after.

Estimates, and what happens to leftover budget

A quotation gives an estimated creator cost, because the final line-up is not signed when you are deciding. The budget total is the commitment; the split inside it settles once creators are confirmed.

If the line-up comes in under budget, we do not hand money back as a rule. We put it to work instead, usually as additional Instagram Stories or extra content from creators already in the campaign, so you get more output for the same spend. If you would rather have a refund, say so before the campaign starts and we will note it on the quotation.

If the line-up would come in over budget, you hear about it before anything is contracted. We never spend past an approved figure.

Do influencer rates go up during 11.11, CNY and Raya?

The table is a year-round average. Some creators move their rates with demand, and demand is seasonal, so a quote taken in a peak period can sit above it.

Around 11.11, Chinese New Year and Raya, every brand wants the same creators in the same few weeks. The first thing that tightens is availability, not price. Most creators hold the same rate whatever the season and quote it to you in March as readily as in October.

The ones who do price to demand tend to be the ones most in demand, often precisely the creators you wanted. So a peak-period campaign costs more in two ways: those creators quote higher, and the line-up takes more work to assemble because your first choices are already committed.

Two practical consequences. If your campaign is tied to the occasion, start well before the period rather than inside it: briefing us in September rather than late October usually buys a stronger line-up for the same money. If it is not tied to the occasion, running just outside the peak gives you the pick of the same creators at their ordinary rates.

How to get the best price

Three pieces of advice we give every client, all of which save money.

1. Buy usage rights per creator, after you have seen the content. Usage rights are priced per creator, so applying them across the whole line-up by default means paying for rights on content you may never run. The sequencing matters, though. We ask every creator to quote their usage rate upfront, while they are still competing for the booking; asking after the content is approved hands them the leverage. So we lock the rate early and you decide per creator once you have seen what came back. Some creators still reprice at that point; most do not.

2. Budget for boosting from the start. Content does not go viral on its own. Food and animals sometimes manage it; insurance, finance, construction and most B2B essentially never do, however good the content is. That is how the platforms distribute now. Plan to put money behind the posts that perform: it is usually the single highest-return line in an influencer budget, because you are amplifying content you already know works.

3. Book early: it buys the line-up, and sometimes the price. Most creators quote the same rate whether you ask in a quiet month or a busy one. What changes is whether they are still free. A minority, usually the most in demand, quote to win the work when their calendar is open and quote higher once their slots are full. So a late brief usually costs you the line-up rather than the rate, and this holds year-round, not only in the festive peaks.

Beyond posting: affiliate and customer advocates

A round of posts is where influencer marketing starts, not where it should stop. Two things we increasingly run alongside it:

Affiliate. Creator content that carries tracked links, so the campaign reports revenue rather than reach alone. It also changes the economics: creators who perform keep earning, which tends to make them better partners the second time.

Finding advocates already inside your customer base. We connect your CRM to our platform and look for the people who are already buying from you and already have an audience. They convert differently from creators who meet your brand for the first time in a brief, because the endorsement is real before we ask for it. We handle the vetting and the identification; you keep your data.

How to read these numbers

This page is written for marketing and brand leads putting a budget together, founders deciding whether to run influencer work in-house, and creators who want to see where their own rate sits. None of it is a verdict on what anyone should be charging.

A rate is not a quality score. Two creators with the same follower count can be three times apart on price, and the more expensive one is not necessarily the better buy.

Most of the spread is independence. A creator who develops the idea, shoots, edits, handles revisions and signs off usage rights themselves is selling a finished product. One who needs a script, a shoot day, direction and an editor is selling access to an audience, and somebody else has to do the rest. The same logic explains why rates differ between language markets: the pool in each has a different mix of fully self-producing creators.

Follower count predicts least at the edges. It works reasonably in the middle bands and poorly at the top. A creator with 5,000 followers who won a national competition may cost many multiples of the nano figure above, and be worth it. The table deliberately excludes those cases, so ask instead.

Judge an agency fee by the share of work it carries, not by a percentage. Sourcing and vetting a line-up, negotiating, contracting, chasing drafts, managing revisions, handling usage rights and reporting is substantial work whoever does it; if you take it in-house, you pay for it in your own team's time instead. A fee that looks high or low against a benchmark may be exactly right or quite wrong once you know which of those you are buying.

Frequently asked questions

If you want a figure you can actually commit to, send us the brief and we will quote it. See also our influencer marketing service, sales packages and case studies.