🤝 Agency Retainer Calculator
Retainers are the best revenue an agency or consultancy can have, and the easiest to underprice, because the quote happens once and the work happens forever. Price it from what the hours truly cost you, loaded, plus the margin the business needs to grow.
What an hour truly costs you: wages or contractor rates plus taxes, tools, and benefits. Usually 1.3 to 1.4 times the raw wage.
This client's share of rent, software, admin, and sales time.
Recommended monthly retainer
$5,000
Minimum viable retainer (break-even)
$3,000
Hourly equivalent at the recommended price
$125
Those 40 hours cost you $3,000 a month fully loaded, so anything below that is paying to work. At a 40 percent margin, quote $5,000 a month ($125 an hour equivalent). If the client balks, shrink the scope, not the margin; a retainer priced at break-even fails slowly and painfully.
Estimates for planning, not financial advice. Your real numbers will vary; that is exactly why you track them.
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Scan competing agencies free →Good questions about this math
What is a loaded hourly cost?
The true cost of one delivery hour, not just the wage. Add employer taxes, benefits, tools, and paid non-billable time, and a $40 an hour employee typically costs $52 to $60 an hour to deploy. Pricing from raw wages is the most common way agencies lose money on paper-profitable clients.
What margin should an agency target?
Healthy agencies run 20 to 40 percent net margin at the client level, because scope creep, revisions, and account management always eat part of it. Price at 40 and slippage still leaves a business; price at 15 and slippage leaves a job.
Retainer or project pricing?
Retainers for ongoing, predictable work (content, maintenance, management); projects for defined outcomes with an end date. The strongest model is often a project first (proves value, scopes cleanly), converting into a retainer for the ongoing phase.