How much does a digital marketing agency cost per month? (2026)

How much does a digital marketing agency cost per month?

Quotes published in Spain in 2026 run from €75 a month for basic ad management to over €5,000 for running several channels. Ad spend and VAT come on top. Our fees start at €690 for email, €1,200 for paid ads or social media and €1,400 for SEO, excluding VAT.

Spain is the market we work from and the one these figures describe. We have not checked other European markets, so read the ranges as a Spanish benchmark and not as a European average.

None of the ranges comes from a study with a method. They are published by trade media, freelancer marketplaces, associations and agencies showing their own rates, and none says how many quotes it looked at. We found no public body or sampled study giving agency prices for Spain.

In almost every service we sit in the upper part of what is published, and in ad management we are above half the sources. We say it here because it is the first thing you will notice when comparing. Every fee includes an assigned consultant, measurement set up, a dashboard with business metrics, a monthly report with recommendations and full access to your accounts.

Price by service: SEO, paid ads, social media, email and content

For each service, the table sets the range of quotes published in Spain in 2026 next to our starting fee. None of them includes ad spend.

SEO

The SEO range is wide because the same name covers anything from a rankings report to a plan with content, technical fixes and links. Our monthly SEO starts at €1,400 and includes all three. If an audit is needed first, it starts at €1,200.

Paid ads

Ad management shows the widest spread in the table. Our management of one channel starts at €1,200 a month, with fresh creative every fortnight and campaign pages included. That puts us above half the sources and within the rest, and an account audit, if you start there, costs from €900.

Social media and email

For social media, the fee changes with the number of profiles and with whether community replies are included. Ours, at €1,200 a month, covers publishing on two networks and community management. The strategy and set-up phase, with templates and a calendar, is quoted separately from €1,500.

Email is the cheapest line in the table and it works on contacts you already have. Our email and automation service starts at €690 a month and includes building the missing sequences, from the welcome series to abandoned cart.

Services with no published range

For some services we found no comparable published figures, and we give ours anyway. Digital PR starts at €2,200 a month, partnerships at €1,900 a month and AI visibility work at €1,200 as a project. The website and its upkeep are broken down in how much a website costs.

Why don't published agency prices agree?

Because nobody publishes how they are calculated, and each source looks at a different market. A marketplace summarises quotes from individual freelancers, a trade outlet gives «indicative» figures with no origin and an agency shows its own rate. In ad management the published floor is €75 and the ceiling €3,000, forty times higher.

Some sources contradict themselves. One marketplace gives a minimum of €80 for SEO in one section and €100 in another, and its overall range changes from one part of the page to the next.

The only two surveys with a declared sample that we found do not solve the problem either. They are international, priced in dollars and run in 2023 and 2024, and one admits its sample leans towards small agencies. They show that a monthly retainer is the most common way to charge for SEO, but they cannot set a price for Spain.

The practical reading is that a published range does not tell you what you should pay. It tells you where the market moves, and the useful question becomes what each fee includes.

Is ad spend included in the agency fee?

No. Ad spend is paid directly to each platform from the advertiser’s own accounts, and the agency fee covers the work. That is how we do it and how almost every published source describes it. We recommend at least €3,000 a month in spend, because below that the data takes too long to say anything.

The platform invoice is not only the spend either. Since 1 July 2024, Google has added a 3% surcharge to the cost of ads served in Spain, up from 2%. It sets this out in its help page on jurisdiction-specific surcharges, which also lists other countries, so check yours. On €3,000 of spend in Spain that is €90 a month outside the agency fee.

To make the month close at that figure, Google’s help explains that a monthly budget becomes a daily one by dividing it by 30.4. At €3,000 a month that is about €98.70 a day.

Flat fee, percentage or results: how an agency charges

A flat fee is the model we use. It is predictable and creates no push to spend more, though it falls short if the account grows a lot and nobody reviews it.

A percentage of spend runs from 10% to 20% in the quotes published in Spain in 2026, often with a minimum fee. It scales with the account, but whoever charges a percentage has an incentive to recommend more spend. We work through the numbers in how much Google Ads costs.

Payment by results demands clean attribution that almost no account has, and it rewards harvesting demand that already existed. Only an incrementality test tells one from the other.

How much a digital marketing agency costs in a real month

The example combines our starting fees, monthly SEO and one Google Ads channel, with the minimum spend we recommend, for a business advertising in Spain. These are reference prices and not an offer, and it is not any client’s case.

Of that €6,236, the agency charges €2,600. It is the gap between «the agency costs €1,200 a month» and what actually leaves the bank. Keep it in front of you before approving any quote. If your company recovers VAT, the cost comes down to €5,690.

Google’s invoice has its own VAT treatment, separate from the agency’s, and the example leaves it out. Check it with your accountant before the first one arrives, and swap in your own country’s VAT rate and surcharge if you advertise elsewhere.

Does an agency price include VAT?

Usually not. Agencies quote their rates excluding VAT, and published ranges rarely say. Spain’s standard rate is 21%, so a €1,200 fee is invoiced at €1,452 to a Spanish client. Our reference prices always exclude VAT, ad spend is invoiced separately, and for a business elsewhere in the EU the treatment depends on where it is registered.

For a company that recovers VAT, the figure that matters is the net price. An organisation that cannot recover it should compare gross prices, because a €300 difference in the fee becomes €363 at Spanish VAT.

What to ask before you sign

Two agencies charging the same fee can be selling very different things. These questions put them on the same footing.

• Who runs the account each week, and does that person change halfway through the year?
• Are the ad accounts and the data in my company’s name?
• Are creative and campaign pages included in the fee?
• Does the monthly report talk about customers and sales, or only clicks?
• Does the figure include VAT, and is ad spend on top?

The second question prevents the most trouble. With us, spend is paid from the client’s own accounts, which the client always owns, and access to accounts and data is complete.

Where to start

Start with a single service, the one closest to bringing in customers, and add the others once the first is paying for itself. Before asking for proposals, note how much you can spend on ads each month and add fee, VAT and surcharge as in the example. Our starting fees are on pricing, and if you want us to run the sums with your own numbers, write to us through contact.

Frequently asked questions