A mobile app user acquisition agency typically charges a monthly retainer, a percentage of ad spend, or a hybrid of the two, and the ranges in circulation for 2026 run from about $3,000 a month for single-channel management to $40,000 for multi-channel work with creative production. Percentage-of-spend fees are quoted anywhere from 5% to 20%. But almost nobody publishes their own price, the most-cited ranges come from agencies rather than surveys, and the headline fee is rarely what you end up paying. The number that matters is the fully loaded monthly cost at your spend level, and what it does to your cost per paying user.
A disclosure before going further. We are a user acquisition and creative agency for mobile apps, we publish our own pricing, and this page includes it. That gives us an interest in how you think about agency fees. We have kept every competitor figure to what the company itself publishes, linked the source, and said "not published" wherever that is the truth. If you want the general explanation of the five fee models, our guide to Meta ads agency pricing covers it. This page is specifically about agencies that run paid acquisition for apps, where creative, measurement and multiple channels change the bill.
Key takeaways
- Of the mobile UA agencies we have compared, very few publish a management fee. Most quote on a call.
- The two most visible 2026 pricing guides are written by agencies, publish no methodology, and disagree on percentage of spend: 10% to 20% in one, 5% to 15% in the other.
- Creative production is the line that moves the total most, and it is often outside the quoted fee.
- A percentage fee costs the same share at every spend level. A flat fee is expensive at low spend and cheap at high spend. The crossover is easy to calculate before you sign.
- Fee differences between sensible quotes are usually smaller than the difference good creative makes to paid CAC. Compare fully loaded cost, then judge on output.
What mobile UA agencies actually publish
Start with what is verifiable. When we built our comparison of the best user acquisition agencies for mobile apps, we checked eight companies' own websites for a published fee. One published a management fee, one published a creative production price, and six quoted on request. RocketShip HQ, which we covered in our subscription agency comparison, publishes a minimum spend but no fee. We rechecked the first three of these for this article.
| Company | Management fee | Minimum spend | Creative pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Social Outline | Flat monthly fee, not a percentage of spend. From £1,500 a month up to £20k monthly ad spend; from £3,250 up to £75k; custom above £75k | £2,000 monthly ad spend | Creative strategy and production included in every tier |
| Admiral Media | Flat retainer or percentage of media spend, scoped per account. No figure published | Not published as a fixed figure | AI Creative Factory priced publicly: €10,000 for 20 video ads, €16,000 for 40, €29,000 for 80 (€500 to €363 per ad), one month rolling |
| RocketShip HQ | Not published | $50,000+ a month in ad spend for fully managed services; advisory service below that | Not published |
| REPLUG, Miri Growth, Phiture by Precis, SplitMetrics, Moburst, Yodel Mobile | Not published when we checked their sites for our user acquisition agency comparison in September 2026 | Not published | Not published |
Sources: our pricing page; Admiral Media's engagement and pricing page; the RocketShip HQ homepage. All checked on 5 October 2026.
Two cautions on reading that table. Admiral's €363 per video ad is the price of its AI creative output at the largest batch size. It is not a media management fee, and comparison lists sometimes treat it as one. And a published minimum spend is a statement about who an agency will take on. It says nothing about whether your budget is big enough to learn from, which is a separate question we come back to below.
Where the 2026 price ranges come from
Search for user acquisition agency pricing and two detailed guides dominate: one from Admiral Media, first published in March 2026 and updated in October, and one from AppAgent, published in June 2026. Both are useful. Both are written by agencies that sell the service, neither publishes the agency's own fee, and neither describes a survey or dataset behind its ranges. AppAgent's published work is predominantly mobile games, so its frame of reference is not identical to a subscription app's.
| Item | Admiral Media guide | AppAgent guide |
|---|---|---|
| Single-channel management (e.g. Meta only) | $3,000 to $8,000 a month | $3,000 to $7,000 a month (one or two channels) |
| Multi-channel management | $8,000 to $20,000 a month (3 to 5 platforms) | $8,000 to $20,000 a month |
| Full service or enterprise | $15,000 to $40,000 a month with creative production | $20,000+ a month |
| Percentage of ad spend | 10% to 20% of managed spend | 5% to 15%, lower at higher budgets |
| Hybrid base retainer | $3,000 to $8,000 plus a performance bonus | $3,000 to $8,000 plus performance bonuses |
| Minimum monthly ad spend | $10,000 to $30,000 for most specialists | Not stated as a range |
On retainers the two broadly agree. On percentage of spend they do not. At $50,000 a month in ad spend, 5% is a $2,500 fee and 20% is $10,000. Neither figure is wrong: they describe different agencies and different channel mixes. The useful conclusion is that these are asking prices, collected by sellers, and the range is too wide to tell you whether a specific quote is fair. Only the arithmetic at your own spend level can do that.
The pricing models, and what they do as you scale
Mobile UA quotes come in five shapes. The first three set the fee; the last two decide how much sits outside it.
- Percentage of spend. Scales with budget, usually on declining tiers. Simple, but the agency earns more whenever you spend more, including when the extra spend is buying worse users.
- Flat retainer. Predictable and detached from budget. Its weakness is the opposite one: a fixed fee can drift away from effort unless the output is written down.
- Hybrid. A base retainer plus a percentage of spend or a performance bonus. Admiral's guide calls it the dominant model for sophisticated UA relationships in 2026. Read what the variable part rewards, because a spend rider brings back the incentive a retainer was meant to remove.
- Creative billed separately. Per batch, per asset or as a second retainer. This is where quotes that look alike stop being alike.
- Channel specialists billed separately. App store optimisation, Apple Ads or lifecycle work, often from a different supplier, sometimes as an add-on from the same one.
The first three behave very differently as spend moves. Take three hypothetical quotes: Agency A at 15% of spend, Agency B at a flat £4,000 a month, and Agency C at £2,500 plus 5% of spend. The table shows each fee, and in brackets the fee as a share of total investment (media plus fee).
| Monthly ad spend (hypothetical) | A: 15% of spend | B: flat £4,000 | C: £2,500 + 5% |
|---|---|---|---|
| £10,000 | £1,500 (13.0%) | £4,000 (28.6%) | £3,000 (23.1%) |
| £30,000 | £4,500 (13.0%) | £4,000 (11.8%) | £4,000 (11.8%) |
| £80,000 | £12,000 (13.0%) | £4,000 (4.8%) | £6,500 (7.5%) |
Crossover spend = flat fee ÷ percentage rate
A vs B: £4,000 ÷ 15% = £26,667 a month. Below that, the percentage is cheaper. Above it, the flat fee is.
A vs C: £2,500 ÷ (15% − 5%) = £25,000 a month.
A percentage fee is a constant share of your acquisition cost forever. A flat fee is a fixed cost that shrinks as a share every time you scale, and that is precisely why it hurts at small budgets. Neither is better in the abstract. The right question is where your spend will be in six months, not where it is today, and whether the flat fee steps up at defined spend ceilings. We set out how fees feed into your fully loaded subscription app CAC separately.
Three quotes, one app: a worked example
The fee model table hides the line that matters most. Here is a hypothetical subscription app spending £30,000 a month on Meta at a £1.50 CPI, so 20,000 installs, of which 3% become paying subscribers: 600 a month, a paid media CAC of £50. It receives three quotes. None of these are real agencies or client figures.
| Line (hypothetical) | Quote A | Quote B | Quote C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline fee | 12% of spend = £3,600 | £6,000 flat | £2,500 base + 5% of spend = £4,000 |
| Creative | Not included. Separate studio, £4,000 | Included: strategy, production, iteration | Coordination only. Your freelancers, £3,000 |
| Performance bonus | None | None | £1,000 if the cost per subscriber target is hit |
| Monthly total at £30,000 spend | £7,600 | £6,000 | £7,000 to £8,000 |
| Monthly total at £60,000 spend | £11,200 | £6,000 (still inside its tier) | £8,500 to £9,500 |
| Added to CAC at £30,000 spend (600 subscribers) | £12.67 | £10.00 | £11.67 to £13.33 |
Three things fall out of it.
- The lowest headline fee is not the lowest bill. Quote C opens at £2,500 and lands between £7,000 and £8,000 once its spend rider, its bonus and the creative it does not make are counted. Quote B, the highest headline number, is the cheapest total at both spend levels.
- Scaling exposes the model. Doubling spend adds £3,600 to Quote A and £1,500 to Quote C before any bonus, and nothing to Quote B until it reaches its tier ceiling.
- The fee gap is smaller than the creative gap. Across all three, fees and creative add between £10.00 and £13.33 to each subscriber. If one team's creative takes paid CAC from £50 to £45, that saves £3,000 a month on 600 subscribers, more than the spread between the quotes. A fee only looks cheap or expensive relative to what the work does to the media.
That last point is the one we would underline. When you compare UA quotes, normalise them to a fully loaded monthly figure at your current spend and at double it. Then stop comparing fees and start comparing what each team will produce: how many genuinely new concepts a month, how quickly losers are cut, and who reads the results against your subscription data rather than the platform's. Our guide to CPI, CPA and CAC for subscription apps explains why cost per install is the wrong number to judge that on.
Creative: the line that moves the total most
Managing a Meta or TikTok account is a bounded amount of work. Producing enough different creative to keep it out of fatigue is not, and it is where quotes diverge. Admiral Media's own guide says creative production can run from a few thousand dollars a month for static assets to $15,000 or more for regular video, dynamic creative testing and UGC-style formats. Its AI Creative Factory puts a public price on one version of that: €10,000 for 20 video ads, €16,000 for 40, €29,000 for 80.
The trap is counting deliverables instead of ideas. Forty variations of one hook are one concept in forty outfits, and the auction treats them that way. Ask any agency how many distinct concepts a quote buys, how it defines a concept, and how many iterations each winner gets. If you want a rough sense of the volume your spend needs, our creative refresh calculator estimates it from spend and fatigue, and our piece on creative diversity versus volume explains why the count of concepts matters more than the count of assets. If AI-generated video is part of the plan, the real cost drivers are in our breakdown of what AI UGC actually costs.
Costs that sit outside the agency fee
For an app, three lines regularly appear after the contract is signed.
Measurement
Most apps buying installs at scale use a mobile measurement partner, and that is normally your contract, not the agency's. Pricing models differ by vendor. One that publishes a list price is AppsFlyer, whose Growth plan includes 12,000 free conversions in the first year and then charges $0.07 per conversion, where a conversion is an install, re-engagement or re-attribution it measures. At list price, the hypothetical app above recording 20,000 conversions a month would pay about $1,400 a month once its free allowance is used. That is not an argument against an MMP. It is a line to put in the budget before comparing agency quotes.
Channels the agency does not cover
Ask exactly which channels the fee covers. Store listing work, Apple Ads, lifecycle messaging and CRM are often separate specialisms and separate invoices. We do not offer app store optimisation or lifecycle work ourselves, which is why our comparison of mobile app marketing agencies points to the firms that do.
Performance bonuses
Admiral's guide puts hybrid bonuses at typically $1,000 to $10,000 per milestone exceeded. A bonus is only as good as its trigger. For apps, iOS attribution arrives delayed and aggregated (our explainer on SKAdNetwork postback delays covers the timing), and Meta, your MMP and your subscription platform rarely report the same number. Before agreeing a bonus, write down the metric, the cohort window and the source of truth. Otherwise you are agreeing to an argument.
Minimum spend: who an agency takes on is not when you should hire one
Published minimums range from £2,000 a month on our pricing page, through the $10,000 to $30,000 Admiral's guide describes as typical for specialist UA agencies, to RocketShip HQ's $50,000 or more for fully managed work. The spread reflects different services more than different standards: a single-channel creative and Meta team can work usefully at a lower budget than a multi-channel programme that has to feed several algorithms at once.
The more important test is yours, not theirs. A fee that is a large share of total investment needs to buy something the media alone cannot. At £10,000 of spend, Agency B in the table above takes 28.6% of the total. That can still be the right decision if the account cannot produce winning creative without help, but it should be a conscious one. Our guide to Meta ads testing budgets explains how much delivery a concept needs before its result means anything, which is the real floor.
How to get quotes you can actually compare
Send every agency on your shortlist the same brief and ask for the same answers. This list turns five incompatible proposals into one spreadsheet.
- The fully loaded monthly cost at your current spend, and at double it.
- Where the fee steps up, and what triggers the step.
- Whether creative strategy and production are included, and how many distinct concepts a month that buys.
- Which channels and markets are covered, and which are not.
- Which tools you pay for directly, including the MMP.
- The metric any bonus is paid on, its window, and whose data decides.
- Minimum term and notice period.
- Who owns the ad accounts, pixels, SDK set-up and raw creative files if you leave.
The non-price questions matter as much. Our list of questions to ask an agency before you hire them covers what good and bad answers sound like.
How we price, for comparison
We charge a flat monthly fee, not a percentage of spend: from £1,500 a month for apps spending up to £20k a month, from £3,250 up to £75k, and custom above that, with a £2,000 minimum monthly ad spend. Creative strategy, performance creative production and Meta campaign management are included in every tier, which is the line most often missing from other quotes. After an initial three-month commitment it runs monthly with 30 days' notice. We are a Meta-led creative and media team, so if your plan needs Apple Ads, ad networks or store optimisation run by the same supplier, a multi-channel agency is the better fit and we would say so. Full details are on our pricing page, and our Meta ads service page explains the work itself.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a mobile app user acquisition agency cost?
Very few agencies publish a fee, so the honest answer is a range from agency-written guides rather than a survey. Admiral Media's 2026 guide puts single-channel management at $3,000 to $8,000 a month, multi-channel management at $8,000 to $20,000, and full service with creative production at $15,000 to $40,000. AppAgent's 2026 guide puts typical retainers at $3,000 to $25,000. Neither publishes a methodology. What you actually pay depends on channels, markets, creative volume and whether tooling and creative sit inside the fee or outside it.
Do user acquisition agencies charge a percentage of ad spend?
Many do, but the published ranges disagree. Admiral Media's guide says agencies on this model typically charge 10% to 20% of monthly ad spend. AppAgent's guide says 5% to 15%, falling as budgets grow. At $50,000 a month in spend that is the difference between $2,500 and $10,000 in fees, so the percentage alone tells you very little until you know the spend tiers and what the fee includes.
What minimum ad spend do UA agencies require?
It varies widely. Admiral Media's guide says most specialist UA agencies require $10,000 to $30,000 a month in ad spend. RocketShip HQ states $50,000 or more a month for fully managed services and offers an advisory service below that. The Social Outline publishes a £2,000 minimum monthly ad spend on its pricing page. A low minimum tells you who an agency will take on, not whether your budget can produce a reliable read on creative tests.
Is creative production included in a UA agency fee?
Often not, and it is the line that moves the total most. Admiral Media's own guide says creative production can range from a few thousand dollars a month for static assets to $15,000 or more for regular video, dynamic creative testing and UGC-style formats. Its AI Creative Factory is priced separately at €10,000 for 20 video ads, €16,000 for 40 and €29,000 for 80. Always ask whether a quote includes concepting and production or only the coordination of creative you supply.
Are performance-based fees common for mobile app UA?
Pure performance pricing is uncommon. More often a performance element sits on top of a base retainer as a bonus for hitting a ROAS, CPA or volume target. The difficulty for apps is measurement: iOS attribution arrives late and aggregated, and Meta, your MMP and your subscription platform rarely agree on the same number. Before agreeing a bonus, fix in writing which metric triggers it, over what window, and whose dashboard is the source of truth.
What costs sit outside the agency fee?
The media itself, plus anything the quote does not name. For apps the usual extras are creative production or creator fees, the mobile measurement partner, and specialists for channels the agency does not cover, such as app store optimisation. AppsFlyer, for example, publishes a Growth plan with 12,000 free conversions in the first year and $0.07 per conversion after that, where a conversion includes installs, re-engagements and re-attributions it measures.
The bottom line on UA agency pricing
Mobile app user acquisition agency pricing is opaque by habit, not by necessity. The ranges you will find are sellers' estimates, the percentage-of-spend ranges do not agree with each other, and the line that decides the total, creative, is often left out of the quote. Convert every proposal to a fully loaded monthly cost at today's spend and at double it, then judge the work on what it does to cost per paying user, because that moves the economics far more than the fee does.
If your app is already spending on Meta and creative is the constraint, you can see the results behind our approach on the case studies page, including Steps & Beasts, where heavy creative testing and onboarding changes came alongside a 145% rise in revenue and 118% more active subscriptions. When you are ready, apply to work with us.