Creator Media Kit: What to Include + Free Tools 2026

A creator media kit is one page that answers the only three questions a brand has: who watches you, how much do they care, and what does a post cost. Most kits fail because they lead with follower count and leave the rate blank. Here is what to put in yours, where to get each number, and which free tools do the maths for you.

What a media kit actually is

It is a single-page PDF you attach to an email. Not a website, not a deck, not a Notion page a brand manager has to request access to. One page, sent as an attachment, readable on a phone in fifteen seconds.

The reason it matters: a brand manager is comparing you against a shortlist. If your numbers are missing, they cannot build a budget line for you, and you get skipped for the creator whose kit was complete. Vagueness costs you the deal more often than a high rate does.

Two pages is the absolute ceiling, and the second page should only exist if you have real case studies to show.

The seven things brands actually read

1. Who you are, in one line. Niche, location, and format. "Home cooking on a budget, UK, short-form video" beats a paragraph of personality.
2. Audience demographics. Age split, gender split, top three countries or cities. Pull these from your platform's own analytics — Instagram Insights, TikTok Analytics — because brands know those screens and trust them.
3. Reach numbers. Followers, average views per post, average reach over the last 30 days. A 30-day window is standard; older numbers look like you are hiding a decline.
4. Engagement rate. The number that decides whether they read the rest.
5. Rates. Per format, as a range, with a note on what is included.
6. Proof. Two or three past collaborations with an actual result attached — clicks, code redemptions, sell-through, whatever you have.
7. Contact. One email address and your typical response time. Nothing else.

Start with engagement rate, not follower count

Follower-based pricing has been fading for a few years and by 2026 most brand briefs ask for engagement rate up front. It is the cheapest signal they have for whether an audience is real.

The formula changes per platform, which is where people get it wrong. Instagram is normally measured against followers; TikTok and YouTube are normally measured against views, because reach on those platforms is driven by recommendation rather than who follows you. Run your numbers through the engagement rate calculator — it applies the right formula per platform and shows you the 2026 average next to your result, so you know whether your number is worth putting on the page.

Rough benchmarks to sanity-check yourself against:

• Instagram: around 0.5% measured against followers is average. Anything above 1% is a genuine selling point.
• TikTok: roughly 4.2% against views, or about 2.6% against followers.
• YouTube: around 2% against views.

If your rate is below average, leave it off and lead with something else you can prove — saves, shares, watch time, comment quality, or a niche audience that is small but exactly on-target. Padding a bad number is worse than omitting it, because brands cross-check with their own tooling.

Setting a rate you can defend

The most common mistake is not charging too much, it is leaving the rate box empty and asking the brand to name a figure. Give a range, then negotiate inside it.

Published rate data varies by two to three times across sources, so treat any single figure as an anchor rather than a fact. The Instagram money calculator and the TikTok money calculator both output a band rather than a number for exactly that reason — feed in your followers, engagement and format and you get a defensible starting range.

Every one of those tools sits on the creator calculators hub if you want to run several in one sitting. None of them need an account.

Price the package, not the post

Bundling is the easiest way to raise a deal's value without raising your per-post rate. "One Reel plus three Stories" as a single line item reads as better value to a brand than four separate charges, and it protects your headline rate for the next negotiation.

Say what the price does not cover, too. Whitelisting, paid amplification, exclusivity windows and usage beyond 30 days are all separate charges. Creators lose thousands by letting those ride in free.

The visual assets you need

A media kit is judged on looks before it is read. Three things to get right:

• A clean avatar. Use your actual profile photo so a brand recognises you when they open your feed. If you no longer have the original file, the Instagram profile picture downloader pulls your own avatar back at the size the platform stores it. One honest limit: Instagram serves profile photos at around 320×320, so it works as a small circular avatar but will look soft if you stretch it across a header.
• Three to six content stills. Frames from your own best-performing posts, cropped to the same aspect ratio so the grid looks deliberate.
• One screenshot of analytics. A real Insights screen with the date range visible is worth more than a typed-out number, because it cannot be invented.

Everything on the page should be your own content, or a brand's assets you were given permission to use. Lifting someone else's imagery to fill space is the fastest way to lose a deal you had already won.

How to send it

Export as a PDF, not a link. A brand manager triaging fifty emails will not click through to a Notion page, and a shared drive link that asks for access permission is an instant dead end.

Name the file properly: yourname-mediakit-aug-2026.pdf. It ends up in a folder with dozens of others called "media kit final v3", and the one that is findable three weeks later is the one that gets revisited when budget appears.

Keep the file under about 5MB so it does not bounce off a corporate mail filter. If your stills push it over, export the images at a lower quality before assembling the page rather than compressing the finished PDF, which softens text.

In the email itself, put the two numbers that matter in the body text as well as the attachment — average views and engagement rate. Some people reply without ever opening the file, and you want them to have enough to say yes.

What to leave out

• Follower milestones from two years ago. Only the last 30 to 90 days count.
• Vanity metrics with no denominator. "2M total views" means nothing without a time window.
• A long personal bio. Brands hire the audience, not the autobiography.
• Every platform you have ever touched. List the two where you are strong. A dead account signals neglect.
• Stock photos. They undo the credibility the rest of the page built.

Keeping it current

Update the kit monthly, or at least before any pitch. Numbers that are a quarter old get caught immediately — most brands run your handle through their own analytics tool before replying, and a mismatch between your kit and their dashboard reads as either careless or dishonest.

The practical routine: on the first of the month, pull your 30-day reach and average views from platform analytics, re-run the engagement rate calculator, and adjust your rate band if the numbers moved by more than about 20%. It takes ten minutes and means you are never scrambling when a brand email arrives on a Friday afternoon.