This is the question every founder asks and almost no agency answers directly. Branding pricing ranges from a few hundred dollars to six figures, and the range exists for real reasons. Here's what actually drives the number, so you can budget with confidence instead of guessing.
"Branding" means different things depending on who you ask. At minimum it should include a logo suite, a color palette, typography, and basic usage guidelines. A fuller identity project adds brand strategy and positioning, a style guide, business collateral (cards, templates, signage), and often packaging or web design. The scope, not just the design work itself, is what sets the price.
Strategy work drives cost more than design output. A studio that starts with audience research, competitive analysis, and positioning before opening a design file is doing more work than one that jumps straight to logo concepts, and that shows up in the price. Number of deliverables, number of revision rounds, and how many touchpoints (physical products, signage, packaging, digital) the brand needs to cover all factor in too.
A $200 logo package usually means a template with your business name dropped in, no strategy, and no ownership of the process or files. It's not that cheap branding never works, it's that it rarely holds up once the business grows past its first year. Founders often end up paying for a proper identity anyway, on top of what they already spent.
If you're pre-revenue or very early stage, a lean identity project in the $2,500 to $5,000 range is reasonable and keeps you from overspending before you have traction. Once you have real revenue and are ready to invest in growth, a full brand suite is the better long-term value, because it's built to scale with you instead of needing to be redone in a year.
