Pricing

What a full digital marketing agency costs in India

The number

A digital marketing agency in India charges a management fee of ₹30,000–₹2,00,000 a month, and ad spend is billed separately on top. Ours: SEO from ₹75,000, social ₹30,000–₹70,000, performance ₹40,000–₹1,50,000, bundles at ₹75,000, ₹99,000 and ₹1,75,000. All ex-GST, no media markup.

Updated 26 July 2026 · Written by the Last Agency team · See what SEO actually costs

The short version

  • Every Indian agency quote is two numbers: the management fee and the media budget. Only one of them is the agency's revenue.
  • Below roughly ₹1,50,000 a month of ad spend, the management fee is the majority of your paid marketing cost. That usually means paid isn't your channel yet.
  • Percentage-of-spend pricing pays the agency more to spend more. Ask what happens to their invoice if they advise you to halve the budget.
  • Bundles beat à la carte from the middle tier upward. At the smallest tier of each service, buying separately can be ₹5,000 cheaper — we'll say so.
  • 18% GST on top: ₹1,75,000 invoices at ₹2,06,500. Nobody puts that on a pricing page. We just did.

Every quote in this market is two numbers

The single biggest source of shock in Indian agency pricing is a founder who signed a ₹75,000 proposal and got a ₹4,75,000 monthly outlay. Nobody lied. The proposal was the management fee; the other ₹4,00,000 was ad spend going straight to Meta and Google.

The fee pays humans to plan, build, buy, write and measure. The spend pays the platforms for attention. They behave completely differently: the fee is fixed and negotiable, the spend is variable and set by your own unit economics rather than by the agency.

Ask any quote to separate them on the first page. If an agency gives you one blended number, you cannot tell whether you're paying for work or for media — and you certainly can't compare two proposals.

Our published rates, in rupees, with no decoding required

We publish these rather than hiding them behind a discovery call, because a pricing page that says "custom" exists to find out what you'll pay before it tells you what it costs.

Last Agency monthly management fees, ex-GST. Ad spend billed separately at cost.
ServiceMonthly feeWhat that tier covers
SEOFrom ₹75,000 (smaller sites from ₹40,000)Technical, content, links, reporting. The full system at ₹75,000; a narrower scope on smaller sites.
Organic Social & Content — entry₹30,0002 platforms, 16 posts + 4 produced reels, 1 SEO blog, community management.
Organic Social & Content — mid₹50,0003 platforms, 20 posts + 8 reels, 2 SEO blogs sliced into social, bi-weekly strategy.
Organic Social & Content — top₹70,0003–4 platforms, 30 posts + 12 reels, 4 blogs in a pillar/cluster structure, dedicated pod.
Performance Marketing — entry₹40,000Meta + Google, senior buyer, 8–12 creative variants. Manages up to ₹2L/mo of spend.
Performance Marketing — mid₹75,000Full-funnel, 20–30 variants, server-side tracking, landing-page ownership. Manages ₹2L–₹8L.
Performance Marketing — top₹1,50,000Buyer + creative team + analyst, incrementality testing. Manages ₹8L–₹25L.

What ad spend adds, and when the fee is the problem

Your media budget isn't an agency decision. Work backwards from your own numbers: target cost per lead × leads you need. If you want 60 leads a month and your acceptable cost per lead is ₹800, that's ₹48,000 of spend. Not a rupee more until the maths changes.

The uncomfortable consequence: at small budgets, the fee dominates. Here's what the ratio looks like across our tiers.

Management fee as a share of total monthly paid outlay.
Monthly ad spendFee tierTotal outlayFee as % of outlay
₹50,000₹40,000₹90,00044%
₹2,00,000₹40,000₹2,40,00017%
₹5,00,000₹75,000₹5,75,00013%
₹8,00,000₹75,000₹8,75,0009%
₹15,00,000₹1,50,000₹16,50,0009%

Percentage-of-spend pricing and the conflict inside it

The most common alternative model in India is a percentage of ad spend — typically 10–20%. It sounds elegant: the agency's revenue scales with your investment. Look at it from the other side of the table and the problem is obvious.

Under a pure percentage model, the agency earns more by spending more of your money, and earns less by telling you to cut a channel that isn't working. Every recommendation to reduce spend is a recommendation to reduce their own invoice. Most people are honest; very few are honest enough to make that call twenty times a year.

We use flat fees at every tier except the top one, where the structure is a ₹1,50,000 floor, or the floor plus 8–10% of spend, whichever is higher. That's a hybrid, and the incentive it creates only bites above roughly ₹18 lakh of monthly spend — at which point you have an in-house analyst checking the work anyway. Below it, the flat floor applies and cutting your budget costs us nothing.

  • Flat fee — agency revenue is independent of your budget. Best alignment, worst fit at very large spend.
  • Percentage of spend — simple, scalable, quietly rewards inflation of budget.
  • Floor + percentage — what large accounts usually settle on, including ours at the top tier.
  • Fee + performance bonus — only honest if the metric is defined before work starts and can't be gamed.

When a bundle wins, and when it doesn't

Bundles are cheaper for a real reason, not a marketing one: the same content pipeline feeds all three services. A researched blog becomes carousels, reel scripts and ad copy, so it's produced once and paid for once. We pass that saving on.

It doesn't hold at every tier, and here's the part a sales page would leave out.

  • The exception, stated plainly: if you only need the entry tier of each — social at ₹30,000 plus performance at ₹40,000 — that's ₹70,000 separately, which is ₹5,000 *less* than the ₹75,000 Full-Funnel Starter. Buy separately. We'll tell you that on the call.
  • Bundles win from the middle tier up, because that's where the shared production actually starts saving hours.
  • Don't buy SEO inside a bundle if you're not going to keep it for a year. SEO is the slowest line in the stack; bundling it just makes the exit conversation harder.
Bundle pricing against buying the same tiers separately, monthly, ex-GST.
BundleWhat's insideÀ la carteBundleYou save
Organic Growth EngineSEO ₹75,000 + Social ₹50,000₹1,25,000₹99,000₹26,000
Full-Funnel StarterSocial ₹50,000 + Performance ₹40,000₹90,000₹75,000₹15,000
Own Everything StackSEO ₹75,000 + Social ₹70,000 + Performance ₹75,000₹2,20,000₹1,75,000₹45,000

GST, contract length, and what "no lock-in" actually means

Three things get discovered after signing more often than anything else in this market. All three are answerable in one paragraph, so here they are.

GST. Every price on this page is ex-GST. Add 18%: ₹75,000 invoices at ₹88,500, ₹99,000 at ₹1,16,820, ₹1,75,000 at ₹2,06,500. If you're a registered business you'll claim input credit, so it's a cash-flow line rather than a cost — but budget it anyway.

Contract length. The Indian default is a twelve-month lock-in with a 90-day notice period, which protects the agency's revenue rather than your outcome. Ours is month-to-month after the first quarter, with 30 days' notice. The first quarter exists because SEO physically cannot show a fair read in six weeks — not because we need the runway.

Ownership. You keep every asset: the ad accounts, the pixels, the content, the dashboards, the documentation. If you leave, nothing has to be rebuilt. An agency that holds your Google Ads account hostage is telling you something about how it retains clients.

Related questions.

How much does a digital marketing agency cost per month in India?

Management fees run ₹30,000 to ₹2,00,000 a month depending on how many services you buy and how big the account is. Ad spend is separate and typically the larger number. Our own rates: SEO from ₹75,000, social ₹30,000–₹70,000, performance ₹40,000–₹1,50,000, all ex-GST.

Is ad spend included in an agency's fee?

Almost never, and you shouldn't want it to be. Ad spend should be billed at cost and paid straight to Meta and Google from your own accounts, with no markup. A blended fee that includes media hides both the margin and the actual performance of the campaigns.

What is a reasonable minimum ad budget in India?

Work it out from your own numbers rather than a rule of thumb: target cost per lead multiplied by the leads you need. Practically, below ₹1,50,000 a month of spend the management fee outweighs the media and there's too little data for optimisation to mean much.

Are agency bundles actually cheaper?

From the middle tier upward, yes — because one content pipeline feeds search, social and ads, so production is paid for once. At the entry tier it can invert: social at ₹30,000 plus performance at ₹40,000 is ₹70,000, which undercuts the ₹75,000 bundle. Check the tiers, not the label.

Do Indian agencies charge GST on top?

Yes, 18% on the management fee. A ₹99,000 retainer invoices at ₹1,16,820. Registered businesses claim it back as input credit, so treat it as cash flow rather than cost — but a quote that doesn't mention GST is understating your monthly outgo by nearly a fifth.

How long should a digital marketing contract be?

One quarter, then monthly. A quarter is the minimum honest window for SEO and roughly two full optimisation cycles for paid. Anything longer is protecting the agency's revenue forecast. Insist on 30 days' notice and written confirmation that you keep the accounts and assets.

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