Branding
How much a logo costs, and what changes at each price
From a €90 marketplace file to a €6,000 identity system — what you actually receive at each level, and where the jump is worth paying for.
"How much for a logo" is a question with a real answer, as long as you say what you mean by logo. The price is not really buying a drawing. It is buying how much thinking happened before the drawing, and how much you can do with the result afterwards.
Under €150
A marketplace or AI generator. You receive one file, usually a set typeface with an icon beside it. No research, no alternatives, no rights guarantee worth relying on, and often a mark that a hundred other businesses also bought. Fine for a side project or a placeholder. Genuinely risky as the face of a business that will spend money on advertising later.
€400 – €1,200
A freelance designer with a short process. A brief, two or three directions, one round of revisions, and a small file pack. You get something considered and yours. What you usually do not get is a system: no colour roles, no type scale, no guidance for what happens on a dark background, on a fifteen-pixel favicon, or embroidered on a jacket.
€1,200 – €3,000
The band most small companies should be in. Research into the market you are entering, positioning written down, a primary mark and the variants a real business needs — horizontal, stacked, icon-only, one colour, inverted — plus colour, typography and a short guide. Everything below this level tends to get quietly redone within two years.
€3,000 – €8,000
An identity system rather than a logo: several applications designed out, a fuller guide that a third party can follow without asking questions, and often photography direction and templates. Worth it when several people who are not you will be producing material — sales decks, social, packaging, signage.
Where the money actually goes
- Research and positioning. Usually a quarter to a third of the fee, and the part that decides whether the mark is right rather than merely nice.
- Exploration. Most of what a designer draws, you never see. That is the job.
- Production. Optical corrections, spacing, small-size testing, file formats, colour values for print and screen.
- Documentation. The part that stops the logo being misused six months later.
Two things worth checking before you pay
First, rights. You want full transfer of usage rights in writing — in Germany, moral rights (Urheberpersönlichkeitsrecht) stay with the designer no matter what, so what you are buying is exclusive, unlimited usage. Second, a search. A quick check of the DPMA and EUIPO registers before you commit costs nothing and has saved more than one launch.
Working on something like this?
Tell us what you are building — we reply to every enquiry.