Use this guest post price calculator to find out what a guest post on a given site should cost before a vendor tells you what they want for it. Enter the site’s DR or DA, its real monthly organic traffic, the niche and the type of link, and you get a fair price range, a per-visitor cost, and a verdict on the quote you were sent. The ranges come from the prices I actually pay and negotiate for clients, cross-checked against the two largest public pricing studies, and they are updated as the market moves.
How the guest post price calculator works
Every price starts from a base rate for the site’s authority tier, then gets adjusted for the things that actually change what a link is worth: whether the traffic backs up the DR, how competitive the niche is, whether the link is dofollow and inside the article, who writes the content, and whether the post stays up permanently. The output is a range rather than a single number because the same DR 45 site is worth more to a fintech buyer than to a travel blog, and because the seller’s margin varies.
Guest post price by domain rating in 2026
| DR / DA tier | Typical price (you write it) | Typical price (they write it) | What you usually get |
|---|---|---|---|
| DR 10–19 | $40–$90 | $80–$150 | Small blogs, often owner-run. Good for relevance, not for authority. |
| DR 20–29 | $70–$140 | $120–$220 | Niche blogs and marketplaces. The bulk of cheap link building lives here. |
| DR 30–39 | $120–$220 | $180–$320 | Established niche sites. This is where quality starts mattering more than the number. |
| DR 40–49 | $180–$320 | $260–$450 | Mid-authority publications. A sensible default for most SaaS and B2B campaigns. |
| DR 50–59 | $260–$450 | $380–$620 | Recognised industry sites with real editorial standards. |
| DR 60–69 | $380–$650 | $520–$900 | Trade publications and large blogs. Editors will push back on weak drafts. |
| DR 70–79 | $550–$950 | $750–$1,300 | Major publications. Often “sponsored” labelled, which changes the value. |
| DR 80+ | $900–$2,500+ | $1,200–$3,500+ | Top-tier media. Price is driven by the brand as much as the link. |
These are the ranges I see when buying directly from site owners in 2026. Marketplaces and agencies add 30 to 100 percent on top. The BuzzStream study of 500,000 sites and Adsy’s analysis of 52,000 publishers land in the same neighbourhood, which is why the calculator uses them as a sanity check rather than a source of truth.
What moves a guest post price up or down
- Traffic that matches the DR. A DR 50 site with 300 organic visits a month is either brand new or a link farm. The calculator discounts it hard and flags it. A DR 30 site with 40,000 real visitors is underpriced by DR alone and the calculator marks it up.
- Niche. Finance, crypto, health, legal and gambling links cost the most because publishers take on risk and demand is deep. Travel, home and general lifestyle cost the least.
- Link type. A dofollow link inside the article body is the full-price product. Nofollow, sponsored-tagged and author-bio links are worth roughly half.
- Who writes it. Publisher-written content adds $60 to $250 depending on tier. Writing it yourself is cheaper and usually gets a better article.
- Permanence. Some sites now sell 12-month placements. A link that disappears is worth about 70 percent of a permanent one, and you should know before you pay.
Red flags the calculator watches for
Cheap is not a win. When a quote comes in far below the fair range, the site is almost always selling volume: dozens of sponsored posts a month, a “write for us” page that ranks for its own name, and outbound links to casinos three posts down. Those links are the ones that get devalued in a spam update, and I wrote about the pattern in detail in my guide to buying backlinks safely. On the other side, a quote 50 percent above the range is not automatically a scam; it usually means a middleman. Ask the vendor for the publisher’s name and price it again.
If you are running a full campaign rather than pricing one placement, start with how I land guest posts that actually rank and the anchor text ratio checker, because the anchor you negotiate is worth as much as the price you pay.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a guest post cost on average?
Across all tiers the median price in 2026 is around $150 to $250 for a dofollow, in-content link on a site with real traffic. The average is pulled higher by DR 70+ publications and lower by the flood of DR 20 blogs on marketplaces, which is why a tier-based guest post price calculator is more useful than a single average.
Is DR or traffic more important for the price?
Traffic. DR can be inflated with cheap links; organic traffic cannot. If you only check one thing before paying, check that the site ranks for keywords in its own niche and that the traffic did not fall off a cliff in the last six months.
Should I pay more for a “sponsored” label?
Pay less. A sponsored label usually comes with rel=”sponsored”, which tells Google the link was paid for. It is fine for referral traffic and brand exposure, but as a ranking signal it is worth roughly half of an editorial dofollow link, and the calculator prices it that way.
Why is a nofollow guest post still worth anything?
Because referral clicks, brand searches and unlinked mentions from the audience still happen, and because a natural profile has nofollow links in it. It just should not cost dofollow money.
Where does the calculator get its prices?
From the placements I buy and negotiate for clients, updated as the market moves, and checked against the BuzzStream and Adsy pricing studies. It runs entirely in your browser and nothing you enter is stored.
If you would rather have the negotiating done for you, that is what my link building service does every week.