# What is a normal hourly rate for an agency?

**Short answer.** The hourly rate is the least meaningful number in a proposal: it says nothing about how many hours are in it. Two agencies at the same rate can differ eightfold on the same line.

The hourly rate is the number a selection spends the most time discussing and which predicts the least. Two agencies with exactly the same rate can differ eightfold on the same proposal line, simply because one charges four hours for it and the other thirty-two.

## Why a rate says so little

A rate is a price per unit. The question you are really asking is what the whole thing costs, which is rate times quantity. Agencies differ far more in that quantity than in that rate.

IKAg measures this with its own unit, PAR, where one PAR is roughly two agency days of work. The scope of an assignment is expressed in PAR, with the fee beside it. Those measurements produce two numbers that together tell the whole story:

- Up to **eightfold** differences between agencies on a single proposal line.
- Only **1.1 times** difference across the full scope.

So agencies land at roughly the same total, but distribute the work completely differently. Where one puts its hours into strategy, another puts them into production. That difference decides what you get, and a day rate shows you none of it.

## The second problem: a rate is not a price

Agencies work with blended rates, with profiles, with minimum volumes and with estimates that get revised later. A low rate with generous hours costs more than a high rate with tight hours, and you only find that out at the third invoice.

## What to ask instead

Ask two things per proposal line: how much work is in it, and which profile does it. Then you see whether you are getting a senior strategist with a junior executor, or the other way round. Put those two columns side by side for three agencies and the comparison suddenly becomes fair.

And ask how additional work is handled. That is where the bill actually runs away, not at the rate. See [how to keep costs from running away](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/kosten-onder-controle-houden) and [paying by the hour or by the project](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/per-uur-of-per-project).

## Related questions

- [What does an advertising agency cost in Belgium?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/wat-kost-een-reclamebureau): There is no price tag, but there is a public floor: in financial year 2024 the median Belgian agency made a gross margin of about 76,000 euro per full-time equivalent. That is what an agency person-year costs.
- [Do I pay by the hour or by the project?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/per-uur-of-per-project): By project as soon as you can describe the scope: then the agency carries the risk of surprises and you get certainty on the amount. By the hour, you pay for uncertainty you created yourself.
- [Fee, commission or hourly rate: which do I choose?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/fee-commissie-of-uurtarief): A fixed fee when the work returns every month, a project price when it is bounded, an hourly rate only for what you cannot bound. Commission on media spend rewards volume, not effect.
- [How do I keep the costs from running away?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/kosten-onder-controle-houden): Almost every overrun comes from scope that grew without anyone writing it down. Agree that every extension gets a written estimate before work starts, and the argument disappears.

---

IKAg is the business consultant for marketing and agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Market figures come from the Agency Barometer, calculated on the annual accounts agencies filed with the National Bank themselves. Figures on pitches and satisfaction come from IKAg-guided processes, and are always presented as such.

- All questions: https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq
- Last updated: 2026-08-19