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Logo pricing is genuinely confusing because the deliverable sounds identical at every price point. Someone charging $10 and someone charging $10,000 will both promise you "a professional logo with source files". The difference is not the drawing. It is how much thinking precedes it, how many people have already been sold the same idea, and what happens when you need something the original brief did not anticipate.
The five tiers, and what actually differs
| $5 to $50 — marketplaces and generators | A template or an AI generation with your name set into it. Fast, and occasionally fine for a side project. The mark is rarely exclusive, source files are often withheld, and trademark registration is usually impossible because you cannot prove authorship. |
|---|---|
| $50 to $500 — professional entry level | A designer drawing something original for your specific business. Limited concepts, limited revisions, full vector files and copyright transfer. This is where the great majority of small businesses should be. |
| $500 to $3,000 — identity, not just a logo | The mark plus the system: palette, typography, applications and usage rules. What you are buying is consistency across everything else you make. |
| $3,000 to $15,000 — strategy-led branding | Research, positioning and competitor work before the design. Appropriate when the brand decision affects a large revenue line or a funding round. |
| $15,000 and up — agency engagements | Multi-brand architecture, naming, extensive research, governance. Genuinely necessary for large organisations and a waste of money for everyone else. |
What actually drives the price
- Exclusivity. A template sold a thousand times costs less than a mark drawn once. That is the single biggest variable.
- Revision structure. Fixed revision counts are cheaper to sell and worse to buy, because the design ends when the counter runs out rather than when it is right.
- Deliverable breadth. A logo is one file. A brand identity is fifty, and most of the cost sits in the applications rather than the mark.
- Ownership. Full copyright assignment in writing costs more than a licence, and it is the thing that matters if you ever want to trademark or sell the business.
- Who does the work. A studio with a named designer costs more than an anonymous marketplace queue, and the difference shows most when a brief is unusual.
The honest test for which tier you need
Ask what the logo is going to be doing in three years. If the answer is "sitting on invoices for a business that will still have four employees", the entry tier is entirely adequate and spending more is vanity. If the answer involves retail shelves, franchise locations, an acquisition or a category where customers compare brands before buying, the identity tier pays for itself the first time you avoid redoing everything.
The expensive mistake is not buying cheap. It is buying cheap twice, then paying the identity price anyway eighteen months later, having thrown away whatever recognition the first mark built.
What to check before you pay anything
- 1Is copyright transferred in writing, or are you buying a licence? Ask explicitly. A licence cannot be trademarked in your name.
- 2Do you get editable vector source files, not just PNGs? Without them every future change means redrawing.
- 3Is there a revision limit, and what happens when you hit it?
- 4Has the mark been checked against existing trademarks in your class? A basic search costs nothing and prevents an expensive rename.
- 5Does it work in one colour, at favicon size, and reversed out of a dark background? Ask to see all three before approving.
Want this done for you?
We will tell you honestly whether you need us for it. Send a two-line description of the business and we come back with a plan, a timeline and one fixed price.