Ask how much a professional logo costs and you’ll find answers ranging from £50 to £50,000 – sometimes considerably more.

That makes logo design particularly difficult to price from the outside. After all, the finished result might appear to be little more than a name, a typeface and a simple symbol. How can one cost £50 while another costs £5,000?

The difference is rarely the amount of time it takes somebody to physically draw the final logo.

What you’re paying for is the thinking behind it: research, experience, originality, typography, refinement, versatility and the ability to create something that represents your business properly – not just today, but potentially for many years to come.

So, how much could you expect to pay for professional logo design – and what should you actually get for your money?

How much does logo design cost in the UK?

There isn’t a standard price for professional logo design, but broadly speaking, you’ll find the market divided into several levels.

Under £100 – DIY, templates & budget marketplaces

At the very bottom of the market are DIY logo generators, ready-made templates and designers competing largely on price.

You can certainly get something that looks like a logo for £20, £50 or £100. For some temporary projects, hobbies or businesses being tested before a proper launch, that may even be enough.

The problem is usually not whether it looks acceptable on day one. It’s whether it is distinctive, flexible and professional enough to still work when the business starts growing.

At this level, you may be getting an adapted template or something assembled from readily available stock logos and graphics. Research and development are inevitably limited because there simply isn’t enough budget to spend several hours understanding the business before design even begins.

There can also be practical issues later: does it reproduce properly in one colour? Does it work at very small sizes? Do you have the vector artwork? Are the fonts licensed correctly? Is the symbol genuinely distinctive, i.e. is it used by a 1000 other companies?

A £50 logo can become surprisingly expensive if you need to replace it six months later.

£100–£500 – entry-level freelance logo design

This is a broad area of the market and the quality can vary enormously.

You might find a talented designer who is building their portfolio, somebody working with a fairly streamlined process, or an experienced designer offering a particularly simple logo service.

Equally, you can find work at this price that differs very little from the budget end of the market.

The important question is therefore not simply “How much does it cost?”, but “What am I actually getting?”

Ask how much research is involved, whether the work is bespoke, how concepts and revisions are handled and exactly which finished files will be supplied.

£500–£1,500 – professional freelance logo design

For many small businesses and SMEs, this is where professional bespoke logo design tends to sit.

At this level, you should be buying considerably more than somebody’s ability to operate Illustrator.

A professional designer should take time to understand your business, your customers, your market and where the identity needs to work. Ideas should be developed rather than simply decorated, typography should be considered properly and the finished identity should work across everything from a website favicon to signage, print and social media.

You should also expect the practical things to be handled properly: vector artwork, web formats, colour variations, mono versions and some guidance on how the identity should be used.

You are paying for a process designed to reduce the chance of getting the logo wrong.

And considering how long a good logo can last, that’s rather important.

£1,500–£5,000+ – wider brand identity projects

Once you move beyond a standalone logo, prices naturally increase.

A more substantial brand identity project might include positioning, a wider visual language, custom typography, colour systems, secondary graphics, imagery styles, comprehensive brand guidelines, stationery, marketing materials, packaging or digital assets.

At this point you aren’t really buying a logo at all.

You’re developing a visual system for the business.

I’ve covered that distinction in more detail in logo & brand identity design, because while your logo is an important part of your identity, it isn’t your entire brand.

And yes, logos can cost tens of thousands

At the corporate end of the market, branding projects can run into tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.

That doesn’t mean somebody has spent six months nudging a letter three millimetres to the left.

Large branding projects can involve research across multiple markets, stakeholder consultation, naming, positioning, brand strategy, testing, enormous identity systems and implementation across hundreds or thousands of applications.

Comparing that with a logo for a local business isn’t particularly useful.

But it does demonstrate something important:

The value of logo design isn’t determined by how complicated the finished picture looks.

Some of the world’s most valuable identities are extremely simple.

If you spend £50 on your logo, what does that say about your business?

This is something I’ve said to clients for years:

If you only value your business enough to spend £50 on its identity, don’t be surprised if customers place a similar value on it.

That’s deliberately provocative, but there’s an important point behind it.

Customers don’t know what you paid for your logo. Nobody is going to examine the kerning and announce, “£47.50 off the internet, surely.”

But people are remarkably good at forming an impression of a business very quickly.

A poorly considered identity can make a perfectly good company feel temporary, amateurish, generic or cheap. A confident, appropriate identity can make a new or relatively small business feel established and trustworthy.

Your logo starts setting expectations before you’ve had an opportunity to speak to the customer.

That doesn’t mean spending £2,000 automatically gives you a brilliant logo, any more than spending £50 guarantees a terrible one. Money alone doesn’t create good design.

What you’re buying from an experienced professional is a better process – and therefore a much better chance of ending up with something that represents the value of the business properly.

I’ve explored this in more detail in your logo is the hardest-working part of your brand.

Why can a simple logo cost so much?

One of the most common misconceptions about logo design is that complexity should determine the price.

Quite often, the opposite is true.

Getting an idea down to something simple, distinctive and memorable can take considerably more thought than adding more and more elements.

Before reaching the finished design, there may have been research, sketches, rejected ideas, typography experiments, colour exploration, competitor analysis and numerous refinements.

You aren’t simply paying for the final hour spent drawing it.

You’re paying for the experience that helps determine what should be drawn in the first place.

A professional designer also has to consider how that logo will behave in the real world.

Will it still be recognisable as a tiny social media icon?

Can it be embroidered onto clothing?

Will it work in black and white?

Can a sign company reproduce it?

Does it become an indistinguishable blob when it’s printed small?

Does it look suspiciously like somebody else’s?

Those questions are considerably less exciting than unveiling a shiny new logo – but five years later, you’ll be rather pleased somebody asked them.

What should professional logo design include?

Before comparing prices, compare what is actually included.

At a minimum, I’d expect a professional logo project to provide suitable versions of the finished identity for both print and digital use.

That normally means scalable vector artwork such as EPS or SVG files, alongside more familiar JPG and PNG versions. Depending on the identity, you may also need full-colour, single-colour, reversed and alternative layout versions.

Some form of brand guidance is valuable too, even for a relatively simple identity. Knowing the correct colours, typefaces and basic rules for using the logo prevents it slowly mutating as different suppliers get their hands on it.

My own logo design service includes the appropriate print and web file formats, mono versions, social media assets and a basic brand guideline as standard.

What actually affects the price of a logo?

A logo isn’t priced according to the number of letters in your company name.

Several things can affect the amount of work involved.

A straightforward wordmark based primarily around typography may require less development than a completely bespoke symbol or emblem. A company operating in a crowded market may require more research to create something genuinely distinctive. Some businesses need multiple logo configurations because the identity has to work across very different applications.

The amount of strategy, concept development and refinement required matters too.

That’s also why it’s useful to understand the difference between wordmarks, combination marks, emblems and other approaches before deciding what you need. My guide to the different types of logo design explains the main options and where each tends to work best.

Should a startup spend money on professional logo design?

I’d argue that professional presentation can be even more important for a new business.

An established company may already have years of reputation, referrals, reviews and customer recognition behind it.

A startup doesn’t.

Potential customers are encountering it without that history, which means its name, logo, website and marketing materials are doing a disproportionate amount of the introductory work.

You don’t necessarily need to spend a fortune. In fact, a startup should be particularly careful about where its money goes.

But there’s a difference between being careful with money and making the business look as though no money has been invested in it at all.

If you’re launching something you intend to build into a serious business, your identity should look like it belongs to the business you intend to become – not merely the business you can afford to be on Tuesday morning.

A logo on its own isn’t always the cheapest option

There’s another consideration for startups and businesses going through a larger rebrand.

If you know you’re going to need a logo, website, stationery, social graphics, brochures or other marketing materials, commissioning every element separately isn’t necessarily the most economical approach.

A large part of good design is establishing the visual direction in the first place.

Once the research, typography, colours and identity have been developed, that thinking can be carried consistently through the website and other materials. You’re not starting the creative process again every time you need something new.

That’s why a broader startup branding package can make more financial sense for a new business than treating the logo, website and supporting design as completely separate projects.

Where I’m working on a larger branding or startup project, I can also price the work as a combined project rather than simply adding together the individual cost of every service.

It’s more efficient for me – and that saving can be reflected in the overall project.

More importantly, everything looks as though it belongs to the same business from day one.

How much does Influense charge for professional logo design?

For some real-world context, my own bespoke logo design currently starts from:

• Wordmark / logotype design – from £599
• Combination logo design – from £949
• Lettermark / emblem design – from £1,499

Those are guide prices rather than a rigid menu because every business and brief is different.

A relatively straightforward typographic identity doesn’t necessarily require the same development as an original emblem or symbol, so it makes little sense to pretend every logo should cost exactly the same amount.

You can see what’s included, along with examples of previous work and current pricing, on my professional logo design page.

And if you’re wondering whether you need a wordmark, combination logo, emblem or something else entirely, don’t worry about learning the terminology before getting in touch. That’s part of my job.

Is professional logo design worth the money?

If you’re serious about the business, usually yes.

Not because an expensive logo magically makes a business successful. It doesn’t.

A beautifully designed logo won’t rescue a bad product, dreadful customer service or a business nobody actually wants.

But a poor identity can undersell an otherwise excellent company.

Professional logo design is about making sure the way your business presents itself matches the quality of what it actually provides.

Think about how many places that identity may appear over its lifetime: your website, invoices, quotations, vehicles, clothing, social media, brochures, signage, advertising, packaging and perhaps products themselves.

Then consider how many customers might see it over five, ten or twenty years.

Viewed that way, the difference between a £50 logo and investing several hundred pounds in a professionally developed identity starts looking rather different.

Don’t buy a logo purely on price

There will always be somebody willing to design a logo more cheaply.

Equally, there will always be somebody willing to charge considerably more.

Neither fact tells you whether they’re the right designer for your business.

Look at their previous work. Ask about their process. Find out what’s included. Make sure you’ll receive the files you actually need and, most importantly, choose somebody whose work suggests they understand how to create identities that last.

A logo shouldn’t simply fill the empty space at the top of your website.

It should give your business an identity worth remembering.