The most common question we hear — and the one most agencies answer with "it depends" and a pitch deck. Here are the real ranges we see in the Singapore market in 2026, and more importantly, how to think about them. Prices are indicative, in SGD, and assume serious work — not the cheapest possible version of each service.
The short answer
| Service | Typical monthly range | Typical one-off |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | $1,500 – $4,000+ | Audits from ~$2,000 |
| SEM / paid ads (fees) | $2,500 – $5,000+ or 10–20% of spend | — |
| Social media management | $2,500 – $8,000+ | — |
| Live commerce | Per-stream after pilot | Pilots low five figures |
| Content engine | $4,000 – $15,000+ | Per-shoot quotes vary widely |
| Brand strategy & identity | — | Low five to six figures |
| Website | — | Low-to-mid five figures |
Why the ranges are so wide
Because "SEO" can mean a junior posting AI articles, or a team rebuilding your site architecture and earning links from national press. Both invoice monthly. The spread in every category above is the spread between renting activity and buying outcomes. When you compare quotes, compare what is actually being done — deliverables, seniority of the people doing them, and what number they've agreed to move.
The mistake that costs more than any retainer
Spreading a small budget across five channels. A $4,000 monthly budget doing five things badly loses to the same budget doing one thing properly, every time we've measured it. The channels compound in sequence, not all at once: fix the destination (brand and website), then capture existing demand (search), then create demand (social, creators, live). Skipping the early steps is why paid traffic gets expensive — you're paying premium CPCs to send people to an argument that isn't finished.
Questions that expose a weak quote
- "Which number in my business will this move, and when should I fire you if it hasn't?"
- "Who exactly works on my account — and how senior are they?"
- "What did you do last month, in plain English, and what did it change?"
- "If my budget were half this, what would you cut first?" (The answer reveals what they think actually works.)
Where we sit — full transparency
Since we wrote the guide, here's our own answer to the question: Join The Gaps™ runs integrated brand-plus-performance retainers of SGD 8,000–20,000+ per month, with focused single-discipline engagements starting around SGD 4,000. That's deliberately not the cheap end of the table above — one senior integrated team costs more per month than a basket of vendors, and reliably costs less per result. If your budget sits below that, some of the best agencies for you are in the lower tiers, and the questions in the next section will help you choose one well.
Where should your first dollar go?
If customers can't tell you apart from competitors: brand strategy. If people search for what you sell and find competitors: SEO. If you have proven demand and unit economics: performance. If you have buyers who never return: CRM and retention. And if you genuinely don't know which of those describes you — that's exactly what a gap audit is for, and ours is free: request it here.