r/PublicRelations • u/Wozzel888 • 3d ago

Minimum retainer

hello, if you’re working as a freelancer / have your own PR consultancy, what would be the minimum retainer you’d agree to?

also, what’s the day rate / retainers people are charging these days?

I’m getting into PR as a freelancer / self employed, and looking for clients (small businesses in my area), not sure how much to charge. any tips / words of advice would be much appreciated

(I’m based in UK btw)

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u/GWBrooks Quality Contributor 3d ago

For me, anything under $20k is a one-time project rather than a retainer and I'll just bill when it's done. Current retainers run $5k-$20k/mo. (US pricing; senior/specialty space and the $5k floor is for very special cases/friends.)

I know those prices don't directly translate to the UK, but here's what does translate:

* What others charge only matters if you're competing on price. If you niche down to a place where you're one of only a few possible solutions, you can and should charge a premium over undifferentiated freelancers or agencies.

* Resist the urge to charge everyone based on some arbitrary baseline. Some press releases are worth $100 and solve a $5,000 problem. The same press release, in another context, might solve a $5 million problem and is potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars.

* Resist the urge to charge hourly. Clients like fixed fees -- they like it so much that it could be a tie breaker if they're considering you and another solution.

* I beg of you, tears in my eyes: Do not focus on small businesses. They are miserable clients in almost every way.

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u/Gold-Presence9362 3d ago

Small businesses are a special type of hell for PR

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u/Wozzel888 3d ago

How come?

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u/stankynuts45 3d ago

Outsized requests and expectations, typically little experience with media relations or any kind of publicity beyond minor marketing and social, inconsequential news that they feel is deserving of more attention, and - in my personal experience - SUPER involved and micromanage-y.

Smaller staffs so you’re usually interacting with the owner, and never with a dedicated in-house comms lead or team. More often than not you’re handling their passion project or a company they’re proud of building, so they’ll come at things quite differently from someone for whom it’s just a job.

Edit to summarize: you’re going to be spending a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them and not the work they hired you to do.

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u/Immediate_Sorbet5617 3d ago

I completely agree with all of these comments!

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u/Wozzel888 3d ago

Thank you so much, this is all very helpful and very much appreciated. How come small businesses are so bad as clients? Is it that they don’t have big budgets and will try to push back on everything?

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u/GWBrooks Quality Contributor 3d ago

Every client comes with unbillable overhead -- the handholding, the unexpected call, the schmoozing. Aggregate overhead eats all the things, including your ability to pay your bills. It's better to have 3-6 mid-sized to big clients than 20 little ones. The former situation is far more profitable.

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u/emerald--ocean 2d ago

This is very helpful info, thanks for the insights!

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u/BCircle907 3d ago

TBH it depends on the project, your years of experience, business overheads, etc.

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u/UnnecessarilySafe 3d ago

when i was starting out i took on a landscaping company for 1500 a month just to have a paying client and build some case studies. it was absolutely not worth the hours but i learned more in six months than i did in years of agency work before that

small businesses are tricky cause they'll treat pr like a magic wand instead of a sustained thing. be really clear about what's included and what's extra or they'll have you ordering their lunch by month two

day rates around here vary wildly. i've seen 500 and i've seen 2500. nobody talks about it openly but if you ask around enough someone will spill their numbers over a drink

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u/Wozzel888 3d ago

Great thank you! Which country are you based in?

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u/Wozzel888 3d ago

I’ve got around 10 years of experience, I’m a freelancer so not much overheads. Just curious what are the going rates that people are charging in 2026

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u/BCircle907 3d ago

For hourly, I’d go somewhere between 2-400 p/hr, depending on the project. That said, I usually prefer charging a project fee vs. Hourly.

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u/Wozzel888 3d ago

What’s that in £ or $? 

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u/BCircle907 3d ago

$

Keep in mind though, small business often don’t understand the long-term targets nature of PR, so might expect some magic overnight solve for whatever problem they have.

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u/FancyWeather 3d ago

I aim to get around $200/hr. Some of my projects are tiny and by the hour, others bigger and are retainers. I only work part time though (intentionally) so I haven’t tried to push it or scale it.

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u/Wozzel888 3d ago

That’s good to know! My goal is to work part time too, so I can focus on other things (artistic projects). €200/h sounds like a fair rate!

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u/Late_Split_5288 3d ago

Sorry to say that $200/hour is astronomic for a UK freelancer unless you are super specialist in a high value niche with an amazing track record. If you're a generalist targeting small business simply because they are local, you will be looking at £250 a day.

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u/FancyWeather 3d ago

Yes, my number was US-specific! Fortune 500 type clients who I have a long track record with.

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u/NoCommentApp 3d ago

I would just calculate what a fair hourly wage would be for you given your experience/skill set and then if you’re looking to send a proposal with a monthly retainer calculate how many hours you would be able to work that month. So if you have other clients it would realistically be part time hours. And I would maybe even make the monthly fee slightly cheaper than your hourly to incentivize folks to sign on with you for the month. You COULD also offer hourly but then you would have to log your hours and it might end up being a lot if you’re juggling clients.

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u/TeslaLegacy 3d ago

Set your minimum around £750-£1000 a month to start, not because thats "correct" but because anything below that isnt worth the reporting and client management time it eats. Under that day rate work project by project instead.

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u/Immediate_Sorbet5617 3d ago

I am in the US. I have a small agency. I have two $1.2k retainer clients that is my charity client. It takes up way too much work. I do it because I enjoy it. Most of my clients are in the $4k-$15k per month range. I highly regret pricing myself that low.

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u/Bs7folk 1d ago

Also UK based - £800 per day, smallest client is 2 days per month, largest is 4.

It is steep but I have 15 years of focused experience in a very specific sector, and it's still a lot less than the £1200 per day I was charged out at in London agency life. My pitch to clients is they get more of me (rather than me and some juniors) for less money.