Key findings
- RankSupply found that the median guest post list price across 69,597 publisher listings (data current to August 2026) is $336, with the middle half of listings priced between $161 and $734.
- RankSupply found that 50.7% of 69,384 sponsored-post sites with traffic data report fewer than 1,000 monthly organic visits.
- RankSupply found that monthly organic traffic has a Spearman correlation of 0.361 with guest post price across 69,353 listings, compared with 0.344 for referring domains and 0.204 for Domain Rating.
- RankSupply found that the median guest post price rises about 5.8x across traffic bands ($181 under 100 monthly visits to $1,042.50 at 100,000+) but about 3.2x across DR bands ($241 at DR 0–19 to $782 at DR 80+) in its 69,597-listing sample.
- RankSupply found that 30.4% of 17,442 guest post sites with a Domain Rating of 50 or higher report fewer than 1,000 monthly organic visits.
- RankSupply found that DR 50+ guest post sites with fewer than 1,000 monthly visits have a median list price of $209, compared with $903 for DR 50+ sites with 10,000 or more visits, across 17,442 DR 50+ listings.
- RankSupply found that news and local news sites make up 22.8% of 69,597 sponsored-post listings, and that 41.6% of the 15,873 news sites with traffic data report fewer than 1,000 monthly organic visits.
- RankSupply found that crypto is the most expensive guest post topic (median $680, 356 listings) and religion the least expensive (median $160, 349 listings) among 35 topics with at least 300 listings each in its 69,597-listing sample.
- RankSupply found that among the 10 largest country markets in its 69,597-listing sample, German sites have the highest median guest post price ($846) and Indian sites the lowest ($155), while US sites have a median of $209 and UK sites $285.
- RankSupply found that 99.2% of 66,627 guest post listings that state a link attribute offer dofollow links.
All figures are vendor list prices and third-party metric estimates; see methodology and limitations. The listed publishers are examples of the wider market and are not owned or operated by RankSupply.
How much does a guest post cost in 2026? The price distribution
Guest post prices are heavily right-skewed. The median list price across 69,597 listings is $336, while the mean is $596.80 because a small number of listings are priced in the thousands (the maximum is $158,449). For that reason, this study reports medians and interquartile ranges (IQR) rather than averages.
| Statistic | Guest post list price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Median | $336 |
| 25th percentile | $161 |
| 75th percentile | $734 |
| Mean | $596.80 |
| 90th percentile | $1,371 |
| 99th percentile | $3,514 |
| Minimum / maximum | $62 / $158,449 |
| Share under $200 | 32.1% |
| Share under $500 | 64.0% |
| Share at $1,000 or more | 16.0% |
Grouped into price bands, almost a third of listings (32.1%) cost under $200, and the largest single band is $200–$499.
| Price band | Listings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under $100 | 4,371 | 6.3% |
| $100–$199 | 17,990 | 25.8% |
| $200–$499 | 22,214 | 31.9% |
| $500–$999 | 13,919 | 20.0% |
| $1,000–$2,499 | 9,629 | 13.8% |
| $2,500+ | 1,474 | 2.1% |
Guest post price vs traffic, referring domains and DR
RankSupply measured how closely each metric tracks price using Spearman rank correlation on the 69,353 listings that report all three metrics. Organic traffic has the strongest relationship with price (0.361), followed by referring domains (0.344). Domain Rating has the weakest (0.204). All three are moderate to weak correlations: no single metric explains most of the variation in price.
| Metric | Spearman ρ with price | Listings |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly organic traffic | 0.361 | 69,353 |
| Referring domains | 0.344 | 69,353 |
| Domain Rating (DR) | 0.204 | 69,353 |
The metrics are related to each other: DR and traffic have a rank correlation of 0.354, DR and referring domains 0.474, and traffic and referring domains 0.404. Within each DR band, traffic separates prices more sharply as DR rises.
| DR band | Spearman ρ, traffic vs price | Listings |
|---|---|---|
| DR 0–19 | 0.211 | 13,564 |
| DR 20–39 | 0.254 | 28,156 |
| DR 40–59 | 0.384 | 18,830 |
| DR 60–79 | 0.448 | 7,433 |
| DR 80+ | 0.406 | 1,370 |
Guest post price by traffic band
Median price rises at every step up in monthly organic traffic, from $181 for sites with under 100 visits to $1,042.50 for sites with 100,000 or more. Half of the 69,384 sites with traffic data (50.7%) sit in the two lowest bands.
| Monthly organic visits | Listings | Share of sites with traffic data | Median price | IQR (25th–75th) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 100 | 13,432 | 19.4% | $181 | $116–$360 |
| 100–999 | 21,767 | 31.4% | $265 | $159–$618 |
| 1,000–9,999 | 21,723 | 31.3% | $400 | $198–$807 |
| 10,000–99,999 | 9,718 | 14.0% | $615.50 | $260–$1,223 |
| 100,000+ | 2,744 | 4.0% | $1,042.50 | $515–$2,018 |
Guest post price by DR band
Median price also rises with Domain Rating, but less steeply: from $241 at DR 0–19 to $782 at DR 80+. The largest group of listings, DR 20–39 (28,167 sites), has a median of $286. The median DR across all listings is 34.
| Domain Rating | Listings | Median price | IQR (25th–75th) |
|---|---|---|---|
| DR 0–19 | 13,570 | $241 | $136–$508 |
| DR 20–39 | 28,167 | $286 | $165–$649 |
| DR 40–59 | 18,838 | $363 | $163–$798 |
| DR 60–79 | 7,433 | $688 | $259–$1,497 |
| DR 80+ | 1,373 | $782 | $260–$1,750 |
High DR, low traffic: how many DR 50+ sites get under 1,000 visits?
Of 17,442 listings with a Domain Rating of 50 or higher, 5,309 (30.4%) report fewer than 1,000 monthly organic visits, and 12.1% report fewer than 100. Among DR 70+ sites (4,900), 18.5% report fewer than 1,000 visits. Low traffic becomes less common as DR rises, but it does not disappear, even at DR 80+.
| Domain Rating | Listings | Under 1,000 visits/mo | Under 100 visits/mo | Median visits/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DR 0–19 | 13,570 | 70.5% | 27.6% | 337 |
| DR 20–39 | 28,167 | 56.3% | 20.6% | 709 |
| DR 40–59 | 18,838 | 41.3% | 16.6% | 1,761 |
| DR 60–79 | 7,433 | 23.1% | 9.2% | 8,767 |
| DR 80+ | 1,373 | 19.5% | 3.7% | 32,544 |
List prices reflect this gap. DR 50+ sites with under 1,000 monthly visits have a median list price of $209, less than the $286 median of DR 20–39 sites; DR 50+ sites with 10,000 or more visits have a median of $903.
| DR 50+ sites by monthly visits | Listings | Median price |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1,000 | 5,309 | $209 |
| 1,000–9,999 | 5,426 | $504 |
| 10,000 or more | 6,707 | $903 |
| All DR 50+ | 17,442 | — |
Guest post prices by topic
Median prices for the 35 topics with at least 300 listings range from $160 (religion) to $680 (crypto). Sports ($499) and economy and industry ($489.50) follow crypto. Among the 12 largest topics by listing count, technology has the lowest median ($219) and sports the highest. Topic labels are the vendors' "main theme" field.
| Topic | Listings | Median price | IQR (25th–75th) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto | 356 | $680 | $278–$1,109 |
| Sports | 3,856 | $499 | $235–$909 |
| Economy and Industry | 318 | $489.50 | $191–$1,032 |
| Travel, Hotels, and Tourism | 4,008 | $462 | $235–$885 |
| Female | 655 | $418 | $210–$864 |
| Cars, Transportation, and Logistics | 1,576 | $413.50 | $208–$851 |
| Animals and Pets | 656 | $392 | $209–$827 |
| Nature, Environment, and Ecology | 531 | $392 | $193–$765 |
| Children | 788 | $383.50 | $210–$790 |
| Work and Career | 873 | $381 | $191–$818 |
| Construction/Repair | 519 | $374 | $200–$778 |
| Shopping and Reviews | 1,174 | $370 | $180–$738 |
| Local News | 7,771 | $362 | $192–$730 |
| Health/Medicine | 1,922 | $359 | $174–$800 |
| Business/Finance | 4,222 | $358.50 | $174–$818 |
| News | 8,124 | $357 | $165–$757 |
| Music, Cinema, Movies, and Shows | 2,417 | $336 | $145–$799 |
| Food/Cooking | 2,140 | $300 | $165–$734 |
| Real Estate | 499 | $294 | $181–$726 |
| IT Services | 1,383 | $290 | $170–$629 |
| Law, Legal, and Jurisprudence | 410 | $287 | $161–$771 |
| Home, Garden, and Interior | 1,676 | $285 | $177–$652 |
| Games, Video Games, and Gaming | 1,472 | $283.50 | $153–$770 |
| Fashion, Beauty, and Style | 1,630 | $281 | $163–$646 |
| Hobbies/Entertainment | 1,478 | $270 | $130–$688 |
| Marketing, SEO, PR | 1,526 | $264.50 | $144–$639 |
| Adult | 381 | $253 | $125–$630 |
| Science, Education, Learning, and Development | 2,554 | $246 | $135–$595 |
| Psychology and Personal Development | 611 | $246 | $135–$529 |
| Lifestyle | 3,879 | $246 | $135–$618 |
| Technology | 5,288 | $219 | $124–$520 |
| Photography and Videography | 375 | $209 | $112–$497 |
| Culture and Art | 1,509 | $207 | $113–$462 |
| Gambling | 1,195 | $165 | $95–$632 |
| Religion | 349 | $160 | $110–$266 |
The gambling topic covers sites whose subject is gambling. It does not measure the surcharge some general-interest publishers apply to gambling-related content, which this dataset does not record.
Guest post prices by country: US, UK, Canada and the largest markets
Prices vary widely by market. Among the 10 largest markets, German listings have the highest median ($846) and Indian listings the lowest ($155). US listings, the largest group at 15,420, have a median of $209, the UK $285, and Canada $669 (632 listings, outside the top 10). English-language listings have a median of $230, compared with $403 for all non-English listings.
| Country (vendor GEO label) | Listings | Median price | IQR (25th–75th) |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 15,420 | $209 | $124–$489 |
| France | 6,854 | $270 | $177–$615 |
| Poland | 4,451 | $223 | $148–$519 |
| India | 4,438 | $155 | $110–$340 |
| Germany | 4,321 | $846 | $453–$1,483 |
| Italy | 3,649 | $532 | $288–$890 |
| United Kingdom | 3,358 | $285 | $135–$734 |
| Netherlands | 3,218 | $410 | $235–$718 |
| Spain | 2,918 | $462 | $236–$889 |
| Brazil | 2,563 | $400 | $209–$708 |
| Canada (outside top 10) | 632 | $669 | $260–$1,451 |
In the US and UK, low traffic is more common than in the sample overall (50.7%): 54.3% of US sites and 54.1% of UK sites report under 1,000 monthly visits, as do 37.9% of DR 50+ sites in each market. In Canada the figure is 41.0%.
| Market | Sites with traffic data | Under 1,000 visits/mo | DR 50+ sites | DR 50+ under 1,000 visits/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 15,366 | 54.3% | 5,678 | 37.9% |
| United Kingdom | 3,331 | 54.1% | 1,005 | 37.9% |
| Canada | 630 | 41.0% | 269 | 22.7% |
Do news sites that sell sponsored posts get traffic?
News and local news sites are a common destination for brand mentions and Digital PR. They make up 22.8% of the listings (15,895 domains), with a median list price of $359. They report more traffic than the rest of the sample (median 1,644 monthly visits vs 798), but 41.6% of the 15,873 news sites with traffic data still report fewer than 1,000 monthly visits, and 23.0% report 10,000 or more.
| Topic | Listings | With traffic data | Under 1,000 visits/mo | 10,000+ visits/mo | Median visits/mo | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| News | 8,124 | 8,114 | 41.1% | 26.6% | 1,755.5 | $357 |
| Local News | 7,771 | 7,759 | 42.2% | 19.3% | 1,548 | $362 |
| News + Local News | 15,895 | 15,873 | 41.6% | 23.0% | 1,644 | $359 |
| All other topics | — | — | 53.4% | — | 798 | — |
What share of guest posts are dofollow?
Of 66,627 listings that state a link attribute, 66,091 (99.2%) are dofollow. The 534 nofollow listings have a much higher median price ($1,361), which likely reflects larger media outlets that only offer nofollow placements. 2,970 listings do not state an attribute. A separate disclosure-label field (for example "Sponsored" or "Guest Post") is filled for only 1.6% of listings, so the data cannot show how placements are labelled on the page.
| Stated link attribute | Listings | Share of stated | Median price | IQR (25th–75th) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dofollow | 66,091 | 99.2% | $348 | $168–$747 |
| Nofollow | 534 | 0.8% | $1,361 | $458–$2,799 |
AI search context: what Pew and Ahrefs found
Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity present summarized answers that cite or name a limited set of sources. Research published over the past year indicates these answers affect both how often users click through to websites and which sites are selected.
A Pew Research Center analysis of the March 2025 browsing activity of 900 U.S. adults found that users clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits to Google pages that showed an AI summary, compared with 15% of visits to pages without one. Users clicked a link inside the AI summary itself in 1% of such visits.
Ranking on the first page has also become a weaker indicator of being cited. In a study published in March 2026 covering 863,000 keyword results pages and 4 million cited URLs, Ahrefs found that 37.9% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews also appeared in the top 10 results for the same query, while 31.0% did not appear in the top 100. An earlier Ahrefs study, from July 2025, had put the top-10 share at about 76%; Ahrefs noted that it changed its parsing method between the two analyses.
A separate Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, published in May 2025, found that the number of times a brand was mentioned across the web had a stronger rank correlation with its visibility in AI Overviews (0.664) than its number of backlinks (0.218) or its Domain Rating (0.326). The authors cautioned that correlation does not establish causation.
RankSupply's dataset does not measure whether any listed site is cited in AI-generated answers. Third-party traffic figures are generally modeled from the search terms a site ranks for, so a low estimate suggests that a site's pages appear for few searches. Read together, the public research and this data suggest that a single authority score says little about whether a publisher is visible in search, and that search visibility and topical fit are separate checks.
What the data means when you compare guest post quotes
- Ask for traffic next to DR. A DR figure alone does not tell you whether a site has search visibility; in this sample, almost a third of DR 50+ sites report under 1,000 monthly visits. The nine checks for vetting guest post sites cover traffic history, indexation and outbound links.
- Compare like with like. A $209 DR 50+ site and a $903 DR 50+ site are different products. Our guide to link building costs and white-label pricing explains how list prices turn into agency invoices.
- Match the placement type to the goal. A new article on a relevant publication (white-label guest posting for agencies), a link added to an existing indexed page (niche edits on pages that already rank), and media coverage or syndication (Digital PR and press-release distribution) are priced and measured differently.
Disclosure: RankSupply sells guest posts, niche edits and Digital PR to SEO agencies. The listings analysed here come from third-party vendor price lists; they are not RankSupply's inventory and their prices are not RankSupply's prices.
Methodology and limitations
- Source. 69,680 rows of sponsored-post (guest post) listings compiled from price lists supplied by third-party vendors. Listing update dates run from 26 January 2024 to 5 August 2026; 64.5% were updated in 2026. This is a market price-list dataset, not an inventory owned or operated by RankSupply.
- Deduplication. Domains were lower-cased and trimmed. Where a domain appeared more than once, the most recently updated listing was kept (ties: the lower price), leaving 69,597 unique domains, all with a valid price.
- Cleaning. Price, Domain Rating (Ahrefs-style DR), monthly organic traffic and referring domains were converted to numbers; non-numeric values were treated as missing. After deduplication, DR is available for 69,381 listings, traffic for 69,384, and referring domains for 69,353. Link-attribute labels were normalized for casing.
- Statistics. Medians and interquartile ranges (25th–75th percentile) are used because prices are right-skewed. Correlations are Spearman rank correlations on the 69,353 listings with all three metrics. Topic medians are shown for topics with at least 300 listings. IQR values in the tables are rounded to the nearest dollar.
- Bands. Traffic bands: under 100, 100–999, 1,000–9,999, 10,000–99,999, and 100,000+ monthly visits. DR bands: 0–19, 20–39, 40–59, 60–79, 80+. "News sites" means the vendor topics News and Local News combined.
- Prices are vendor list prices in US dollars for one sponsored placement. They are not transaction prices and exclude agency or reseller margin.
- Limitations. DR, traffic and referring domains are third-party estimates recorded by vendors at each listing's update date, and site-level traffic does not measure traffic to an individual sponsored article. Country reflects the vendor's GEO label (163 labels, including territories and one regional label). The sample over-represents some markets (USA 22.2%, France 9.8%) and is not a census of all publishers. Publication-time data covers only 20.5% of listings, so it is not analysed here. The study does not measure rankings, link value or AI citations.
- Reproducibility. The figures on this page were produced by RankSupply's analysis scripts and re-run on 7 October 2026; the downloadable CSV contains every aggregate shown in the tables.
Download the guest post pricing 2026 data (CSV)
The CSV contains the aggregate tables from this page: price distribution, price bands, correlations, price by traffic band, DR band, topic and country, traffic reach by DR band and country, news-site traffic and link attributes. It does not contain the domain-level listings.
Download the aggregate tables (CSV)
Suggested citation:
RankSupply (2026). Guest Post Pricing 2026: What 69,597 Publisher Listings Cost, and Why Traffic Tracks Price More Than DR. Muhammad Qasim; reviewed by Muhammad Ali. https://ranksupply.io/blog/guest-post-pricing-2026/
Guest post pricing FAQ
How much does a guest post cost in 2026?
In RankSupply's 2026 study of 69,597 publisher listings, the median list price for a guest post (one sponsored placement) is $336, and half of listings cost between $161 and $734. 32.1% of listings cost under $200 and 16.0% cost $1,000 or more. These are vendor list prices and exclude agency or reseller margin.
Is Domain Rating a reliable metric for buying guest posts?
Domain Rating describes a site's backlink profile, not its audience. In RankSupply's data, DR has the weakest rank correlation with guest post price of the three metrics tested (0.204, compared with 0.361 for organic traffic), and 30.4% of 17,442 DR 50+ sites report fewer than 1,000 monthly organic visits. DR is one input; traffic, topical fit and indexation are separate checks.
Do sponsored posts get traffic?
Many sites that sell sponsored posts report little search traffic. RankSupply found that 50.7% of 69,384 sponsored-post sites with traffic data report fewer than 1,000 monthly organic visits and 19.4% fewer than 100, while 18.0% report 10,000 or more. These are third-party site-level estimates; they do not measure traffic to an individual sponsored article.
Does traffic or DR affect guest post price more?
Traffic. Across 69,353 listings, organic traffic has a Spearman correlation of 0.361 with price, referring domains 0.344 and Domain Rating 0.204. Median price rises about 5.8x across traffic bands but about 3.2x across DR bands, and DR 50+ sites with under 1,000 visits have a median price of $209, compared with $903 for DR 50+ sites with 10,000 or more visits.
Do backlinks help with Google AI Overviews?
Public research suggests links are a weaker correlate of AI Overview visibility than brand mentions. A May 2025 Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands found that web mentions had a stronger rank correlation with AI Overview visibility (0.664) than backlinks (0.218) or Domain Rating (0.326), and cautioned that correlation does not establish causation. A March 2026 Ahrefs study found that 37.9% of URLs cited in AI Overviews also appeared in the top 10 results for the same query. RankSupply's guest post dataset does not measure AI citations.
Which topics and countries have the most expensive guest posts?
Among 35 topics with at least 300 listings, crypto has the highest median price ($680) and religion the lowest ($160). Among the 10 largest country markets, Germany has the highest median ($846) and India the lowest ($155); the US median is $209, the UK $285 and Canada $669.