China marketing agency pricing: retainer, project or fixed price

China marketing agency pricing comes in three shapes. Almost every proposal you get is one of them wearing a different name.

Model	What you are buying	Where it leaks	Who it suits
Monthly retainer	A block of time	You cannot see the hours	Ongoing work, stable volume
Project fee	One deliverable	Anything outside the brief is a change order	A launch, a build, a film
Fixed scope, fixed price	A written list of outputs	Rigid when your plan changes	Known scope, repeating cadence

Ad spend is a separate question, and the expensive one. Whichever model you pick, one thing decides more money than the model does: whose name is on the ad account, and who keeps the rebate the platform pays on your spend. The paragraphs on where your ad money goes have the contract language.

Every source below was checked twice in September 2026.

China marketing agency pricing: who carries the risk

The table above is the whole argument. What changes between the three models is not the amount of work. It is who carries the risk when the work turns out to be bigger than anyone thought.

A retainer puts that risk on you. With a project fee it starts on the agency’s side of the table, and stays there right up until somebody writes a change order and slides it back. Fixed price is the only one of the three where the agency cannot hand it back, which is exactly why the scope has to be nailed down before anyone signs anything.

China raises the stakes, because the thing being scoped keeps moving.

China’s advertising business revenue passed two trillion yuan for the first time in 2025, reaching 2.05 trillion yuan, up 32.6% on the year. The industry development index hit 143.3 points, up 11.6%. Source: Xinhua News Agency (新华社), June 2026. https://www.news.cn/20260623/6f2c784d1386418ca163ef25f9cf7f4b/c.html

A market that adds a third of its size in twelve months does not hold still for a scoping document. Formats change, ad products launch, and the plan you signed in March is describing a different platform by September. The argument between the three models is less about price than about who absorbs that change.

Our guide to China social media marketing cost breaks down what each line of that spending buys. This piece is about the shape of the invoice.

The monthly retainer, and the hours you cannot see

A retainer is a standing monthly fee for a standing team. It is the default in China, and not without reason. Social accounts on WeChat (微信), Xiaohongshu (小红书) and Douyin (抖音) need feeding every week, and a team that has to be re-hired every quarter never gets good at your brand.

A China retainer usually bundles five things: Chinese-language copy, posting and community replies, creator sourcing, ad operations, and a monthly report. Five jobs, one number, no breakdown.

You are paying for time, and you cannot see the time.

The retainer covers “the account.” Nobody writes down how many posts that is, how many revisions you get, or what happens in a quiet month. In a busy month you feel underserved. In a quiet month you are overpaying, and nobody mentions it.

The gap isn’t a China problem. It’s worse in China because you can’t read the work. If the copy is in Chinese and the dashboard is in Chinese, the monthly report is the only window you have, and the agency writes it.

Asked to name their biggest problems for 2026, advertisers put results being hard to measure first (52%), marketing return being hard to improve second (48%) and media fragmentation third (45%). Source: China News Service (中新网), January 2026, reporting the 2026 China Digital Marketing Trends Report from Miaozhen Marketing Science Institute (秒针营销科学院) with GDMS and Media360 (媒介360), a survey of 198 advertisers. https://www.sh.chinanews.com.cn/chanjing/2026-01-14/144009.shtml

Fifty-two percent cannot measure the result. Those are the same buyers signing retainers priced on trust.

A retainer is the right answer when the work genuinely is open-ended, when volume is steady, and when you have someone on your side who can read the output. Ask for a monthly output floor in writing. If the agency won’t give you one, you’re buying availability, not work.

The project fee, and the change order

A project fee buys a defined thing. A WeChat (微信) Mini Program. A launch film. A Singles’ Day (双十一) campaign. You agree a price, the agency delivers, you pay.

Then the brief moves. It always moves.

Scope creep in China has its own shapes, and they catch foreign brands in the same three places every time.

Language. Chinese copy is written, not translated. A round of “please match our English tone” is a rewrite, and rewrites are billable.

Approvals. Your legal team in Europe reviews Chinese creative it cannot read. Every round costs the agency a week.

Platform rules. A note that was compliant in March is not in June. A re-edit is real work, and it was not in the brief.

The third one is not optional, and it is not the agency being difficult.

The Advertising Law requires advertising operators and publishers to build and keep systems for accepting, checking and archiving advertising business, to verify the supporting documents, and to refuse design, production or placement where the content does not match those documents. Source: Advertising Law of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国广告法), Article 34, as amended 2021. https://www.gov.cn/guoqing/2021-10/29/content_5647620.htm

Document checks and license copies take hours. So does creative that comes back rejected. None of it goes in a creative brief, and on a project fee it surfaces later as a change order.

None of that is dishonest. The agency quoted the brief, and the brief changed. But a project fee turns every surprise into a negotiation, and you will be negotiating from a weak position because the campaign is already half built.

If you buy on project fees, fix two things in the contract before you sign: how many revision rounds the price includes, and what the hourly or daily rate is for work outside the brief. A change order with no published rate is a blank check.

Fixed scope, fixed price: everything decided up front

Fixed price means the list is written down: twelve notes a month, four creator collaborations a quarter, a report on the fifth. One number, every month, for the term of the contract.

The benefit is obvious. You can budget it, your finance team can approve it, and nobody has to argue about whether something was included.

The cost is less obvious. You have to decide the scope before you know the answer, and that’s hard when you’ve never sold in China.

That’s the honest trade. Fixed price moves the work of thinking from month six to month zero, and month zero is when nobody wants to do it, because the contract isn’t signed, the team isn’t hired and the whole thing still feels like a plan rather than a budget. Most brands find that stage uncomfortable. Most of them also say afterward it was the useful part.

You pay for the thinking either way. Only the timing changes.

It also changes what you can check. Both models pay the agency the same whether it does more that month or less. The difference is that a fixed scope writes down what enough looks like, so a shortfall shows up on the page instead of in your gut. That only works if the list is specific. “Content support” is not a scope. “Twelve Xiaohongshu notes a month, four with a paid boost” is.

When budgets came under pressure in 2026, 37% of advertisers said they were cutting their own internal running costs, up five points on the year, while the share reaching for external fixes fell. Source: China News Service (中新网), January 2026. https://www.sh.chinanews.com.cn/chanjing/2026-01-14/144009.shtml

The survey is about internal costs, not agency fees. But it points the same way as the pressure that pushes buyers toward a fixed scope. A number that never has to be checked, queried or reconciled is cheaper to own than a number that does, and the saving is in your team’s time rather than the invoice.

Where your ad money goes

Ad spend and agency fees are different kinds of money, and they should arrive on different invoices. Media money goes to the platform. Agency money pays for work. When the two are folded into one figure, you cannot audit either.

China is unusually good on this point, because the platforms publish their own cut. Ocean Engine (巨量引擎) runs Xingtu (星图), the creator marketplace behind Douyin (抖音), and its settlement rules break the client’s bill into three named lines: the creator’s fee, the service provider’s fee and the platform’s technical fee.

On Xingtu, the platform service fee charged to the client is 5% of the creator fee plus any service provider fee on assigned, co-created, recruitment and drama tasks, and 10% on open-call tasks. Payment is pre-charged: the platform does not start work until the balance is in. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Xingtu settlement rules, June 2026. https://www.xingtu.cn/help-center/author/133057

The platform even publishes the arithmetic.

Xingtu’s own worked example: a creator quotes 10,000 yuan, the platform fee adds 500 yuan, and the deposit is 10% of the 10,500 total, so 1,050 yuan. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Xingtu deposit rules, September 2026. https://www.xingtu.cn/help-center/demander/109324

Xiaohongshu (小红书) does the same thing on its own creator marketplace.

Pugongying (蒲公英), Xiaohongshu’s creator marketplace, takes 10% of a collaboration in standard mode and 20% in the premium mode that adds platform promotion. Source: Niaoge Biji (鸟哥笔记), October 2022. https://www.niaogebiji.com/article-482538-1.html

The creator side is published too, which is how you can sanity-check a collaboration invoice from both ends.

Xingtu charges a 5% service fee to creators who are not signed to an agency, and none to creators who are. Since April 3, 2023, creator agencies pay the platform a 3% technical service fee instead. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Xingtu agency handbook, August 2026. https://www.xingtu.cn/help-center/mcn/109107

Paid media on WeChat (微信) works the same way. The floors are printed.

WeChat Moments ads run from a 1,000 yuan daily budget with a 30 yuan CPM floor on bidding buys, and from 50,000 yuan for a single scheduled placement. Source: Tencent Ads (腾讯广告), WeChat advertising product page, confirmed September 2026. https://e.qq.com/topic/marketing/industry/weixin/

So the platform’s take is knowable, top to bottom. One number is missing from every one of those pages: the agency’s own margin on your media.

Money you spend	Published rate	Who publishes it
Xingtu platform fee, most task types	5%	Ocean Engine
Xingtu platform fee, open-call tasks	10%	Ocean Engine
Xingtu fee on a creator with no agency	5%	Ocean Engine
Xingtu technical fee on creator agencies	3%, since April 2023	Ocean Engine
Xiaohongshu Pugongying fee	10%, or 20% premium	Niaoge Biji, 2022
WeChat Moments ad floor	1,000 yuan a day, 30 yuan CPM	Tencent Ads
Platform rebate on ad spend	Not published	Nobody
Agency markup on media	Not published	Nobody

None of the top six rows is secret. They just aren’t in the proposal you were sent.

Rebates are the part most foreign brands have never heard of, and they are not market gossip. They sit in the platform contract, with a section number.

Tencent’s advertiser agreement devotes a section to bonus inventory and rebates (返货/返点). Tencent alone sets and adjusts the policy, and the policy binds the advertiser from the moment it is announced. Source: Tencent Ads (腾讯广告), advertiser cooperation agreement, confirmed September 2026. https://e.qq.com/contract.html

Rebates flow to whoever holds the ad account. If that’s your agency, the rebate is theirs unless your contract says otherwise. Most contracts don’t.

The same agreement states that the non-cash part of an ad account, including bonus inventory and credit, is not refundable, and that fees already paid for services not yet delivered are not returned if the advertiser ends the buy. Source: Tencent Ads (腾讯广告), advertiser cooperation agreement, confirmed September 2026. https://e.qq.com/contract.html

Foreign brands often cannot hold the account themselves anyway, which is what makes the rebate question worth asking early.

Since February 2, 2026, overseas merchants have been admitted to Xiaohongshu’s Jiguang (聚光) ad platform only through an authorized agent. There is no self-serve route. Source: Ziyouxing Studio (自由行Studio), August 2026. https://zyxstudio.net/articles/xiaohongshu-jiguang-guide.html

Douyin leaves you a choice, and prices it.

On Douyin, the official channel charges a service fee to open an ad account. Agents may open one for free, and set their own minimum first deposit. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), account opening FAQ, June 2021. https://www.oceanengine.com/faq/douyin-kaihu-feiyong.html

There is no credible published figure for the typical agency markup on media in China. Anyone who quotes you one is quoting a reseller blog. So stop asking what the market rate is. Ask these three instead, and ask them by email.

1. Whose legal entity holds the ad account?
2. What happens to any rebate the platform pays on our spend?
3. Will media be invoiced at cost, on its own line, with the platform receipt attached?

An agency that won’t answer all three in writing has answered them.

Five clauses to read before you sign

Chinese law requires the paperwork to exist.

The Advertising Law requires advertisers, advertising operators and advertising publishers to conclude written contracts for advertising activity. Source: Advertising Law of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国广告法), Article 30, as amended 2021. https://www.gov.cn/guoqing/2021-10/29/content_5647620.htm

A written contract is the floor, not the finish line. Five clauses decide what happens in practice.

Clause	What to ask	A bad answer
Account ownership	Whose legal entity holds the ad accounts and the official accounts	“We hold everything, it is simpler”
Money on account	What happens to prepaid balance, credit and rebates when we leave	Silence, or “that is a platform matter”
Definition of an output	What counts as one post, how many revisions, who pays for a reshoot	“Standard rounds”
Reporting and raw data	Do we get platform-level exports, not just your deck	Screenshots only
Exit	Notice period, and what we take with us	Thirty days’ notice, nothing leaves

Account ownership is the one that costs real money.

Tencent’s service provider agreement defines a “sub-client” as a customer introduced by the service provider, and holds the service provider responsible for that customer’s account and conduct. Source: Tencent Marketing (腾讯营销), service provider cooperation agreement, confirmed September 2026. https://ad.qq.com/customer_service_cgi/v1/agreement/show?agreement_type=5

Sensible enough, from Tencent’s side. For you it means your ad history and your audience data can sit inside somebody else’s account. So can any rebate.

Ask for your own entity on the account where the platform allows it. Where it does not, ask for a written assignment on exit.

One more thing for brands paying from outside China.

Xingtu (星图) settlement rules put remittance fees, exchange-rate losses and any local withholding tax on clients based outside the mainland. Every top-up is converted to yuan at the bank rate on the day. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Xingtu settlement rules, June 2026. https://www.xingtu.cn/help-center/author/133057

Budget them as their own line. They are not the agency’s fee and they should never be buried inside it.

When fixed price is the wrong answer

Fixed price is what TheRedScroll sells. It isn’t right for everyone, and pretending otherwise would be a bad way to start.

Do not buy a fixed scope if you are still finding out what the scope is. A genuine first market test, where you do not yet know whether your product belongs on Xiaohongshu (小红书) or Douyin (抖音), is exploration. Exploration is bought by the month.

Do not buy a fixed scope if your year is one spike. A brand whose entire calendar is Singles’ Day (双十一) needs eight quiet months and one enormous one. A flat monthly number is the wrong shape for that business.

A one-off build is a different animal again. Mini Programs, flagship stores and brand films have a start and an end, and a project fee prices that shape better than a monthly number ever will.

And don’t buy a fixed scope if what you want is a person. Some brands want an embedded strategist on the weekly call. That’s a retainer, or really a hire.

Advertisers expect their marketing budgets to grow around 10% in 2026, up two points on 2025, the first rise in expected growth since 2022. Thirty percent expect spending to increase, up eight points, and 47% expect it to fall, down from 54%. Source: China News Service (中新网), January 2026. https://www.sh.chinanews.com.cn/chanjing/2026-01-14/144009.shtml

Budgets are recovering, not booming. More buyers are adding money than last year, and most still are not. In that market a predictable number is worth more than a flexible one, because the flexible one is the first thing finance asks about.

Fixed price earns its keep when the work repeats. Monthly content, steady creator collaborations, reporting on the same cadence. If that is your year, the model saves you an argument every month.

What we charge, and why we print it

TheRedScroll publishes a full rate card on its pricing page. Monthly packages and per-item rates, in public, with no form to fill in.

That is unusual, and the reason is in the market data.

0 out of 37 agencies analyzed offer fixed-price packages. Source: TheRedScroll competitive analysis, April 2026.

Not one competitor publishes a monthly retainer figure either. An industry where nobody prints a price is one where every price gets negotiated against what the buyer looks able to pay. Publishing takes that away.

The rest of the position follows from it. Fixed scope. Fixed price. Six-month minimum contract, because three months of China social data tells you nothing. Ad spend billed separately, at cost, with no markup, which is only meaningful because the platform receipts above show what cost actually is.

Creator fees work the same way. Xingtu (星图) and Pugongying (蒲公英) publish their percentages, so a collaboration invoice can be reconciled to the yuan.

Our pricing page has the figures. Our contact page books the call.

Frequently asked questions

Do China agencies mark up media spend?

Some do, and no dated source publishes a typical rate, so treat any quoted market markup as marketing. What is documented is the rebate mechanism. Tencent’s advertiser agreement has a whole section on bonus inventory and rebates. Tencent sets the policy, and it pays out to whoever holds the account. Ask three questions in writing: who holds the account, who keeps the rebate, and will media be invoiced at cost.

What is a typical retainer for a China social media agency?

There is no published answer, because almost nobody publishes. A TheRedScroll competitive analysis in April 2026 found 0 out of 37 agencies analyzed offering fixed-price packages, and none printing a monthly retainer figure. Our own rate card is on the pricing page. Treat any range you are quoted elsewhere as an opening position rather than a market rate.

Is fixed-price better than a retainer?

Only when your scope is knowable. Fixed price is better for repeating work: monthly content, steady creator collaborations, reporting on a set cadence. A retainer is better when the work is genuinely open-ended, when volume swings hard across the year, or when you want a named person embedded in your team rather than a list of outputs.