How much do creative agencies charge per hour?
US creative agency hourly rates typically fall: freelancer/solo $40–$100/hr, small agency (2–10 people) $75–$150/hr, mid-size (11–50) $125–$200/hr, large (50+) $150–$300+/hr. Most engagements are priced by project or retainer, not hourly. The hourly rate matters mostly for calculating whether a fixed price is reasonable given estimated hours.
What the discipline charges
Creative Strategy is the largest discipline in The Wall at 1,185 US listings, and 979 of them publish an hourly rate. 791 sit between $100 and $199 an hour. 98 price at $200 or above and 90 price under $100.
The hourly number understates how this work is sold. 352 of the 1,051 firms publishing a minimum project size require $25,000 or more, the highest share of any discipline in the index. Creative is bought in projects, and the project floor is where the real price sits.
886 of the 1,083 firms that publish a team size run fewer than 50 people. At that size the hour you buy is frequently a principal's hour, which is the honest explanation for a rate band that looks steep next to a production studio.
How to use this
Ask for the rate card and the minimum in the same email. A $150 an hour shop with a $50,000 floor and a $150 an hour shop with a $5,000 floor are selling to different companies, and the rate alone will not tell you which one you are talking to.
How this was computed. Every figure on this page is counted from The Wall's own directory of approved, US-headquartered, machine-verified-live listings: 3,460 of them in the snapshot captured 2026-09-14. Rates, minimum project sizes, team sizes, founding years and ratings are provider-declared figures published on public profiles. 1,738 of those listings publish a service list, and that field holds at most 4 services per firm, so service counts are counts of what firms name first rather than everything they sell. Percentages of disclosed values exclude listings that publish no figure. Nothing here is modeled or estimated. Sourcing standards: editorial policy.
Why this matters
Google puts this question in People Also Ask for the "creative agency" query, which means buyers are asking it while they shop. The Wall answers it from the directory position: we index 3,460 verified US growth-services vendors across 10 pillars, so the figures above come from those records rather than from a survey.
If you are evaluating vendors in this category, the Creative Strategy pillar page carries the full US firm list with rate, team size and headquarters filters.