A $5,000 retainer is about 30 hours. Everything an agency promises you for that money has to happen inside those hours, and most proposals are written as if it does not.
Pricing guides for Amazon agencies are easy to find and they all say roughly the same ranges, because they are all written by agencies quoting each other. This one is too. The difference is that it shows the arithmetic behind the ranges, tells you which pricing model creates which incentive, quotes our own prices from our own pricing page, and spends a full section on the cases where you should keep the money.
Evolve Media Agency is an Amazon agency. We sell photography, video, listing copy, A+ and Brand Store design, ads management, email and AI search work, mostly as fixed-price projects with one monthly retainer option. We benefit if you hire an agency and we benefit more if it is us. Every industry range below comes from other agencies' published pricing pages and guides, cross-checked against each other; every figure about us comes from our live pricing page as of September 15, 2026. Section 10 is written to lose us business where it should.
If your question is what to spend in total on Amazon at your revenue level, the monthly spend by revenue tier guide covers the whole budget. This post is only about the agency line inside it.
Read This First: Who Writes These Guides
We checked six 2026 guides to Amazon agency pricing while writing this. Six were published by agencies. Their ranges agree closely, which is usually a sign of one source echoing rather than six measurements, and in this case is probably both: agencies read each other's pricing pages and price accordingly. So the ranges are real in the sense that they describe what agencies charge. They are not evidence of what the work is worth.
Two things every one of those guides gets right and one thing they all leave out. They agree flat retainers beat percentage-of-spend on incentives. They agree the fee is the least important number in the proposal. What they leave out is the hours, because once a client knows a retainer is 30 hours, they start asking what happens in each one. Section 3 does that.
The Three Pricing Models And Their Incentives
| Model | 2026 Range (Across Agency Sources) | The Agency Earns More When | Best Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly retainer | $1,500 (offshore, basic) to $25,000+ (enterprise). $3,000-5,000 for $500K-2M brands; $5,000-10,000 for $2M-10M brands | They spend fewer hours on you. No tie to your growth. | Stable revenue; you want a predictable cost and will enforce a scope |
| Percentage of ad spend | 10-20% of monthly Amazon ad spend, minimums of $1,500-2,500; some PPC-only shops quote 5-10% at high spend | You spend more on ads, whether or not the extra spend returns anything | PPC-only engagements at $15,000+ monthly spend, with a cap negotiated |
| Percentage of revenue | 3-10% of Amazon revenue for full service; "free" agencies at the top of that range | You grow, including growth they did not cause; at $5M revenue, 5% is $250,000 a year | Rarely. Early-stage brands with no cash and real upside, with a cap and an exit |
| Hybrid | $1,000-2,000 base plus 2-5% of ad-attributed revenue, or a lower retainer plus a performance bonus | Attributed results improve; attribution is the fight | Brands with clean attribution who can audit the bonus |
Percentage-of-spend incentive. Under a percentage-of-ad-spend fee, the agency's revenue rises with your ad budget regardless of the return on the incremental spend. At 15%, a jump from $10,000 to $30,000 a month in spend raises the fee from $1,500 to $4,500 for what is usually the same campaign structure. Agencies charging this way are not villains; the model simply pays them to recommend more spend, and you should read their recommendations knowing that.
Our position, for what it is worth from an interested party: flat pricing, project or retainer, with a scope that lists deliverables and hours. We have never charged a percentage of spend or revenue and this section is why.
What A Retainer Is Made Of: The Hours Math
A retainer is hours times a blended rate plus tools and margin. The blended rate is what decides how many hours you get, and it varies more than the retainer does.
The point is not that senior-led is better. Sometimes 100 hours of careful execution is exactly what an account needs, and sometimes 25 hours of someone who has run 40 accounts is worth more. The point is that a $5,000 line on a proposal can mean either, and the only way to know is to ask two questions: how many hours does this scope assume, and who does them.
Then check the scope against the hours. A "full-service" proposal at $5,000 that lists PPC management, weekly listing optimization, A+ content, review management, inventory forecasting, monthly reporting and strategy calls is describing about 80 hours of work. If the agency's blended rate makes that 30 hours, five of those seven items are not happening the way the proposal implies.
The $2,000 Tier
At $1,500 to $2,500 a month you are buying one channel or one recurring deliverable. Anyone selling "full service" at this price is either offshore-delivered or under-delivering.
Campaign structure, weekly search term work, bid management, a monthly report. This is what most percentage-of-spend agencies deliver at their minimum. Realistic for spend under $15,000 a month.
Ten to twelve hours a month of one experienced operator reviewing your work, prioritizing, and doing the hardest tasks. Our own $1,495 part-time marketing expert offer is this model.
One listing's worth of new images or one video a month, on a schedule. Cheaper as projects (section 7) unless you need the cadence.
PPC plus listings plus creative plus inventory plus strategy is 60-80 hours. At $2,000, that is $25-33 an hour blended, which means an account manager and a queue.
The right buyer at this tier is a founder who still runs the account and wants one piece taken off their plate or one senior brain on call. The wrong buyer is a founder who wants to stop thinking about Amazon; that costs more than $2,000 a month, and a $2,000 agency that says otherwise is the one you will fire in five months.
The $5,000 Tier
This is where most $1M to $5M brands land and where the proposals get vaguest. At $4,000 to $6,000 a month a US agency can deliver two channels well and a third partially.
| Included At $5,000 (US, Tiered Team) | Hours / Month, Roughly | What "Included" Should Mean |
|---|---|---|
| PPC management | 12-16 | Weekly search term and bid work, structure changes monthly, one experiment running at all times |
| Listing upkeep | 6-10 | Copy and image changes on a defined number of ASINs per month (ask for the number), A/B tests through Manage Your Experiments |
| Monthly review and plan | 3-4 | A written review with numbers, a call with the strategist (not only the account manager), next month's priorities |
| Account health and catalog | 3-5 | Suppressed listings, cases, catalog errors, Brand Registry issues handled within a stated response time |
| Reporting | 2-3 | A dashboard you can open any day, plus the monthly narrative |
| Total | 26-38 | Consistent with $5,000 at $130-190 blended |
Notice what is missing: new creative (photo, video, A+ design) and anything off-Amazon. Those are projects at this tier, quoted separately, and a proposal that folds "creative" into a $5,000 retainer is either amortizing one shoot across a year or counting a stock-template A+ page as creative. The listing optimization service guide covers what a real listing project includes.
The $10,000 Tier And Up
From $8,000 to $15,000 a month a US agency can run the account: PPC and DSP, listing and catalog, creative production on a cadence, inventory planning input, and a named strategist who knows your P&L. Above $15,000 you are usually paying for multiple marketplaces, a dedicated team, or an enterprise brand's reporting requirements.
Three things to check at this tier, because the money is large enough that the failure modes are expensive.
- Who is the strategist and how many accounts do they carry. A senior strategist running twelve accounts gives you three hours a month. Ask for the number.
- Is creative a real production budget or a template. $10,000 should include a shoot or two a quarter, priced as a line, with a shot count. "Unlimited graphic design" means a queue and a template.
- What is the exit. Thirty-day termination, your data and ad accounts in your name, campaign structures and creative files handed over. An agency confident in its work does not need a 12-month lock.
At this tier, compare against an in-house hire honestly. A senior in-house Amazon manager costs roughly the same fully loaded, carries one account, and stays. The in-house vs agency cost calculator runs that comparison with your numbers; it was built for AI search work and the structure holds for Amazon.
Project Pricing: Photo, Video, Listing, A+
Most of what a brand under $3M actually needs from an agency is a project rather than a retainer: a listing rewrite, a photo set, a video, an A+ page, a Brand Store. Project pricing is more transparent than retainers because the deliverable is countable. The ranges below are what we see quoted across US agencies and studios in 2026; our own numbers are in the next section.
| Project | Typical US Range, 2026 | What Moves The Price |
|---|---|---|
| Listing copy (title, bullets, description, backend) | $300-1,500 per ASIN | Keyword research depth, competitor analysis, whether variations are included |
| Product photography, white background set | $200-800 per product | Shot count, retouching, hand model, whether they ship the product back |
| Lifestyle photography | $500-3,000 per product | Models, location, props, usage rights |
| Listing video, 20-45 seconds | $400-3,000 | Script, model, on-camera read, location, number of cuts delivered |
| A+ Content design, 5-7 modules | $300-1,500 | Standard vs Premium, custom photography vs supplied assets, copy included |
| Brand Store, 3-5 pages | $800-4,000 | Page count, custom graphics, video tiles |
| Listing audit | Free to $500 | Free ones are sales calls; paid ones come with a written document |
The product photography guide and the Soona vs Snappr vs agency comparison cover the photo side in depth, including when a self-serve studio beats an agency on price.
What We Charge, In Public
Since we are asking every other agency to be transparent, here is our pricing page as of September 15, 2026, quoted rather than described. Prices are fixed per project, no contracts, and they change; the page is authoritative if this list and the page ever disagree.
What that structure says about us, so you can judge it: we are a creative and content agency that sells outcomes you can count (images, videos, pages, copy), and our one retainer is a part-time senior person rather than full account management. If you need a $10,000-a-month full-service operator, that is a different kind of agency, and section 12 covers how to compare them. If you need creative and listings done well at a known price, that is what the page is for.
What To Demand In Writing
Whatever the tier, the proposal should answer these before you sign. A proposal that cannot answer them is describing a price rather than a service.
The agency hiring questions guide has the longer interview version for AI search engagements; the checklist above is the Amazon one.
The Ecom Profit Box
Our library of ecommerce growth guides, including the budgeting and hiring frameworks behind this post.
Get It FreeRun The Checklist On A Proposal
Bring any agency proposal, ours or a competitor's. We will fill in the hours, the deliverables and the exit cost with you, and say plainly if you should sign it, keep the money, or hire in-house.
Book A CallWhen You Should Not Hire An Agency
This section exists because the disclosure at the top only means something if it costs us. Five situations where the right answer is to keep the money, in the order we see them.
- Under about $30,000 a month in Amazon revenue. A $3,000 retainer is 10% of revenue before the agency has done anything, and at that scale the founder doing PPC for four hours a week with a $100 tool usually outperforms a junior account manager. Buy a project (a listing rewrite, a photo set) and run the account yourself until the account earns a retainer.
- The listing is the problem. If the main image is weak, the title is vague, the price is wrong or the reviews are under fifty, no amount of PPC management fixes it, and an agency that takes the retainer anyway is billing you to pour traffic into a broken page. Fix the listing first, as a project, then decide.
- You already have someone who could grow into it. An ops coordinator or a marketing generalist who is curious about Amazon, given a course, a tool and six months, becomes an in-house manager who knows your product. That person costs less than the retainer and does not leave when the contract ends. This is the cheapest option on the list and the one agencies never mention.
- The account is healthy and stable. If ACoS is on target, listings are complete, and revenue is flat because the category is flat, an agency will be tempted to generate activity to justify the fee. Activity on a stable account is risk. Buy a quarterly audit instead.
- You cannot describe what you want changed. "Grow it" is not a scope. Until you can say "our TACoS is 18% and needs to be 12% at the same revenue" or "we launch four SKUs in Q1 and need creative for all of them," you cannot evaluate a proposal, and the agency will define the scope for you in its own favor.
A tested phone-shot main image and a founder who reads the search term report every Friday beats an untested $5,000 retainer. Hire when the account has outgrown the founder rather than when the founder is tired.
The Break-Even Question
An agency has to produce more incremental gross profit than it costs, and the arithmetic is simple enough to do before the first call.
Two honest notes on this math. Attribution is messy, and an agency will claim organic lift it cannot prove; the Amazon P&L guide covers reading the numbers yourself so you are not taking their word for it. And the break-even bar rises with the retainer: a $10,000 agency on the same account needs to find $33,000 a month of incremental revenue at 30% margin, which is a 50% lift, which is a lot to promise.
How To Compare Two Proposals
Normalize both to the same four numbers and the comparison usually makes itself.
| Normalize To | How | Why It Decides |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per senior hour | Retainer divided by senior hours per month (ask; if they will not say, assume 20% of total hours) | The senior hours are what you are paying for; the rest is execution you could buy anywhere |
| Countable deliverables per month | List every "N per month" item; strike every item without a number | What survives the strike is the actual scope |
| Twelve-month cost at your growth | Project the fee at your expected ad spend and revenue in month 12, under each model | A percentage model that is cheaper today is often more expensive by month 8 |
| Exit cost | Term length plus what you lose at exit (structures, files, accounts) plus setup fees | The proposal you can leave is worth more than the one you cannot |
Then ask each agency for one client at your revenue level who has been with them for more than 18 months, and call that client. Not the reference they offer first; a client at your size. What you want to hear is what the agency is bad at, because every agency is bad at something and the one that will tell you is the one that will tell you when it goes wrong later.
The same structure applies to hiring for TikTok Shop, where the pricing models are even less standardized and the creator-management line makes hours harder to count; that gets its own guide later in this series. For AI search work specifically, the AI search agency pricing guide already covers it. And if you want to run the four-number comparison on a proposal that includes us, book the call and bring the other proposal; we will do the arithmetic on both.
What To Remember
- Every Amazon agency pricing guide, this one included, is written by an agency; the ranges describe what agencies charge rather than what the work is worth.
- Flat retainers run $3,000-5,000 for $500K-2M brands and $5,000-10,000 for $2M-10M brands; percentage of ad spend runs 10-20% with $1,500-2,500 minimums; percentage of revenue runs 3-10% and gets expensive as you grow.
- A retainer is hours: $5,000 buys 25 to 125 hours depending on who does them, and a "full-service" scope at $5,000 usually describes 80 hours of work.
- $2,000 buys one channel or one senior part-timer; $5,000 buys PPC plus listing upkeep with a real monthly review; $10,000 buys the account with creative on a cadence.
- Percentage-of-spend pays the agency to recommend more spend; if you use it, negotiate a cap, and read their spend recommendations knowing the incentive.
- Do not hire under about $30,000 a month in revenue, when the listing is the problem, when someone in-house could grow into it, when the account is stable, or when you cannot state what should change.
- Normalize proposals to cost per senior hour, countable deliverables, twelve-month cost at your growth, and exit cost, then call a client at your size who has stayed 18 months.
Where This Came From
- Evolve Media Agency, pricing page, quoted as of September 15, 2026. First-party and interested; the page is authoritative over this post.
- Industry pricing ranges cross-checked across six 2026 agency-published guides, including SupplyKick, My Amazon Guy, Marknology and PPC Jumpstart. All are agencies with an interest in the ranges; their figures agree closely, which we read as agencies pricing off each other rather than as independent measurement.
- Inference note: the hours math in section 3, the tier scopes in sections 4-6, the project ranges in section 7 and the break-even example in section 11 are our estimates from operating an agency and reviewing competitors' proposals for clients. Blended rates are illustrative; ask any agency for its real mix.