Category Benchmarks: Fitness, Beauty, Fintech and Food Creator Rates Compared

Rate benchmarks don't transfer cleanly across category — a fair rate in beauty and a fair rate in fintech, at the same follower count, can differ by a wide margin, for reasons that have nothing to do with audience size.

A few category patterns worth knowing before you price a deal:

Beauty has the deepest benchmark pool and the most competitive rates relative to reach, a direct result of saturation — more brands competing for the same creators pushes fair rates up even as individual campaign performance per creator trends flat.

Fitness rewards engagement rate more than any other category in the index; a fitness creator with above-median engagement commands a real premium over a peer with more followers but average engagement, because fitness audiences convert on trust more than reach.

Fintech has the smallest benchmark pool and the widest rate variance, because there are simply fewer creators who credibly cover the category — scarcity, not audience size, drives the fair rate here.

Food rates track closely with production value rather than audience size; a creator who shoots and edits like a small studio commands more than a peer with a larger but less produced feed.

The category lesson: a fair rate calculated without category context is really just a follower-count calculation with extra steps. Category-aware benchmarking is what separates a real fair rate from a rough guess.

Harpper's rate index is segmented by category before it's segmented by anything else. See what your category's creators are actually converting for.