GST on digital marketing services in India: what the invoice actually adds up to

Does GST apply to SEO, social and paid media retainers?

Yes, to all three, at 18%. Digital marketing is an ordinary taxable service. There's no exemption for SEO, no lower slab for content writing, and nothing concessional for social media management. The GST Council's rate schedule puts all services not specified elsewhere at 18%, and marketing has never been specified elsewhere.

The 18% reaches your invoice in one of two shapes. If you and the agency are registered in the same state, it splits into CGST at 9% and SGST at 9%. If you're in different states, it's a single IGST line at 18%. The total is the same to the rupee. Which heads it lands under is your accountant's problem, not a pricing difference.

Accounting codes matter less than people assume. Advertising and marketing services sit in SAC group 99836, and most agencies bill a marketing fee under 998361. Picking a different code inside that group doesn't change the rate. If a quote shows anything other than 18% on the fee line, ask which notification they're relying on before you treat it as a discount.

A ₹99,000 bundle, written out line by line

Here is our Organic Growth Engine bundle — SEO plus organic social — exactly as it lands on paper. Two columns, because the only thing that changes between an in-state and an out-of-state client is how the same 18% is labelled.

• There is no ad spend on that invoice, because that bundle contains no media. SEO and organic social don't buy anything from Google or Meta.
• When media is involved — Full-Funnel Starter at ₹75,000/mo, or performance marketing from ₹40,000/mo — the spend is a separate line with its own tax treatment. That's two sections down, and it's the part most quotes get wrong.
• The invoice itself has to carry the usual particulars: both GSTINs, a serial number, the accounting code for the service, the taxable value, and the rate and amount of tax shown separately. If any of those are missing, it isn't a tax invoice, whatever the header says.

What 18% does to every price we publish

Our full price list, with the tax added. Ad spend sits outside every one of these numbers.

Why ad spend belongs on a line of its own

A quote that reads "₹2,50,000 a month, all in" when ₹1,75,000 of it is Google and Meta spend is concealing two numbers at once: what the work actually costs, and what margin is being taken on the media. You can't negotiate either one if you can't see them.

GST is the sharper reason to insist on the split. If the agency buys media in its own name, on its own card, and re-bills you, that spend is normally part of the value of its supply and carries 18% like everything else. There is a narrow carve-out — the pure agent rule — but it only applies where the agency pays the third party on your authorisation, shows that payment separately on the invoice, holds no title to what it bought, and recovers only the actual amount, nothing more. An agency running media on its own account and marking it up meets none of those tests.

The clean structure removes the argument entirely. The ad account sits in your name, funded by your card. Google and Meta invoice you directly and charge you GST directly, so you claim that credit directly and there's no markup to find because there's no intermediary. That's how we prefer to run it: ad spend billed separately at zero media markup, and the account is yours the day you stop working with us.

• Ask: whose name is the ad account in? If it's the agency's, you're renting your own audience data.
• Ask: is the media at cost, and can I see the platform invoice? A refusal here is the answer.
• Ask: what happens to the account if we part ways? Covered further in what should be in an SEO contract.

Reading two quotes when one includes GST and one doesn't

This is where founders lose money without noticing. Two agencies, two headline numbers, two different conventions, and the cheaper-looking one is often the dearer one.

Agency A quotes ₹1,00,000 a month, inclusive of taxes. Agency B quotes ₹90,000 plus GST. B looks ₹10,000 cheaper. It isn't.

1. Strip the tax out of any inclusive number. Divide by 1.18. A's ₹1,00,000 inclusive is a fee of ₹84,746 and tax of ₹15,254.
2. Compare fee to fee. ₹84,746 against ₹90,000. A is roughly ₹5,250 a month cheaper on the actual work — about ₹63,000 over a year — despite showing the bigger number.
3. Check whether ad spend is inside either figure. If A's ₹1,00,000 includes ₹40,000 of media, A's fee is really ₹50,847 and you're comparing something else entirely.
4. Then compare deliverables, which is the only comparison that matters once the arithmetic is level. How to compare SEO proposals covers the rest of it.

Who genuinely pays 18% more

For most B2B buyers the tax is a cash-flow item rather than a cost. You pay ₹1,16,820, you claim ₹17,820, your books show ₹99,000. The only real expense is the gap between paying and reclaiming, which for a monthly retainer is short.

Three groups don't get that. A business below the registration threshold has nothing to claim against. A business whose own supplies are exempt has its credit restricted to the taxable part of what it does — the Act apportions it, so a clinic or a school buying marketing usually eats a large share of that 18%. And a composition taxpayer can't take input credit at all.

If you're in one of those groups, budget inclusive numbers from the start. ₹75,000 SEO is ₹88,500 to you, and ₹1,75,000 is ₹2,06,500. Budgeting on the ex-GST number and discovering the difference in month one is how a perfectly sensible retainer starts feeling like a mistake. Our full price list is on the pricing page, and what SEO costs in India puts those figures against the wider market.

Exporters are the happy exception in the other direction. Zero-rated supplies still count as taxable for credit purposes, so an Indian exporter buying marketing keeps the credit rather than losing it.