2026 Independent Planner Pricing Survey

At Northstar’s Independent Planner Education Conference earlier this month, we shared the results of the 2026 Independent Planner Pricing Survey, which asked how, and how much, planners charge. This is the fifth such survey we’ve done since 2013, and while some things have improved, the industry is by and large still wrestling with two challenges, confirmed by feedback shared during the three-hour Independent Planner Bootcamp:

1. How much to charge, and 

2. How to justify that price.

The struggle many planners have with these challenges is at the root of why they’re not making more money.

More than 370 people completed the survey between Dec. 1, 2025, and Jan. 14, 2026, and respondents were limited to independent planners who are not employed by third-party companies, such as Maritz, Helms Briscoe and Conference Direct. 

Following are the key takeaways. To see the full survey results, refer to this downloadable deck.

Independent planners earn less than people think 

The audience was surprised to learn that 73 percent of independent planners earn under $100,000 a year, with the highest number of participants falling into the $50k-$59k compensation range. 

Surprised, but somewhat validated, as many people thought others were earning more than they were. As I shared during the bootcamp, "Successes are shouted from the mountaintops; failures occur in the shadows." We’re presented with rosy images of success on social media, but nobody posts having a bad year or losing a large client, though that happens just as often.

When we broke the annual compensation into $50k increments, the largest sector by far was the 58 percent of people earning in the $51k-$99k range.

One caveat: This does not factor in how much time people spend working. Some planners might choose to work part time, while others are grinding out more than 60-hour weeks, which is why hourly rates are a better measure of success than annual compensation.

Incomes are rising

When asked how they did in 2025 vs. 2024, 42 percent said they made more money than the prior year, with 33 percent making the same, and only 25 percent making less. 

That upswing looks to increase in 2026, as 49 percent of the respondents plan to make more money this year than in 2025, while only 11 percent said they anticipated making less. Some of this can probably be attributed to early-year optimism, but it’s encouraging nonetheless.

Flat fees are the top pricing model

When asked “what is your primary pricing model,” 39 percent said flat or project fee, easily the largest group. People were relatively split among the other models: 25 percent chose markups, 12 percent use a percentage of budget, 11 percent rely primarily on commissions and 10 percent charge time-based (hourly or daily) fees; 3 percent chose "other."

Many planners also use a combination of pricing models, which they adapt to client needs.

Flat fees were also the primary pricing model in 2022, at 38 percent, but the biggest change from that year is the drop in popularity of time-based fees, which fell from 32 percent of planners in 2022 to 10 percent this year. 

Since the respondents were not necessarily the same from year to year, it’s difficult to know what drove this change. One reason could be that in 2022 we were still coming out of the pandemic, when planners often had to do the same scope of work multiple times due to frequent changes in guest count, format (in person to virtual to hybrid) driven by sporadic shifts in pandemic developments. If so, using an hourly rate under those circumstances would have been a boon to planners. 

How much you charge is more important than how you charge

As we covered at length in the bootcamp, your pricing model is far less important than knowing how much to charge. Ultimately, planners should strive to get to a place where they know how much money they need to execute a given scope of work, then be able to justify it to the client. If they can do that, then the pricing model becomes nothing more than a payment method. It should be the equivalent of going into a store to buy a shirt, and the salesperson asks if you’d like to pay by cash or credit.

To calculate the amount they’ll need for each project, planners have to analyze how many billable hours they have to sell, and how much to charge for them, which brings us to hourly rates.

Hourly rates vary by company size and years of experience

Despite the fact that only 10 percent of respondents said hourly or daily rates are their main pricing models, we dug into this metric in detail because it gives the truest sense of the value of an independent planner’s time. Comparing how much planners earn from event-based pricing (flat fees, markups, percent of budget, etc.) is flawed because we don’t know the scope of each project. If planner A earns $50,000 per event and planner B earns $10,000 per event, it might seem like planner A is doing better, until you dig into the scope of work. If planner A’s events are so big that they can only do two events a year they’ll make $100,000, whereas if Planner B can execute 15 events in a year at $10,000 each, they earn $150,000.

So we asked participants: “How much is your hourly rate, and if you don’t charge hourly, what would you charge per hour if a client insisted on it?” The largest sector, at 35 percent, charged $50-$99 per hour, followed by 31 percent charging $100-$149 per hour. Another 23 percent bill $150-$199, while 8 percent charge under $50. At the top end, only 3 percent bill $200+ per hour.

In this case, the statistics don’t consider variations in the cost of living in different cities. For example, a planner living in Boise, Idaho, who charges $50 an hour, might be handling a similar amount of work as a planner in New York City who charges $100 an hour.

When we break down hourly rates by number of years in business as an independent planner (which is different from how many years someone might have been in the industry), we see a noted difference between those with eight or more years of experience, 68 percent of whom charge $100+ per hour, and those with 0-3 years and 4-7 years of experience, 36 percent and 53 percent of whom charge $100+ per hour, respectively. 

Similarly, the size of the company makes a big difference in rates. For firms with 11+ employees, 51 percent charge $150 an hour, compared with 23 percent for companies with staffs of 6-10 people, 20 percent for companies with 2-5 people on staff and 12 percent for the solo practitioners.

Most planners don’t calculate their rates properly

Since the hourly rate is the best measure of productivity and value (see above), in the bootcamp we went through the formula for calculating your hourly rate. (To get a copy of the Excel rate calculator, email me here.)

Once we have an hourly rate, we can convert it into a flat fee or other pricing model if we know how many hours a job will take. And as much as people might bristle at the idea, tracking your time is the only surefire way to get an accurate number. In the survey, 20 percent said they always track their hours, 51 percent do so most of the time, 24 percent do it sometimes and 5 percent never do.

Still, this is one of those questions where people are prone to fudge their answers in favor of what they think they should be doing, like answering a survey of how often you go to the gym, so these numbers likely are somewhat overstated.

In addition to not tracking time diligently, the other way planners often get tripped up here is by not understanding utilization rates fully. People understand the concept of nonbillable hours: time involved in running the business that can’t be monetized (bookkeeping, marketing, HR, tech, legal, etc.). If you work 45 hours a week, and we assume 40 percent of that time is nonbillable, that leaves 27 hours that you can bill to client and event work.

The problem is, most planners can’t reliably sell or bill 100 percent of those 27 billable hours. The percentage of those hours that are billed is your utilization rate. If you’re consistently only monetizing 15 or 20 of those 27 available billable hours, you’d need to increase your hourly rate to stay at the same income level.

More commissions, more disclosure

Our survey found that more people are relying on commissions in 2026, with 87 percent accepting commissions sometimes, most of the time or always, compared with 71 percent in 2022 and just 67 percent in 2024. This year’s numbers break down as follows: 13 percent always take commissions, 33 percent do so most of the time, 41 percent do it sometimes and 13 percent never do.

Commissions are a sensitive topic in our industry, although they shouldn’t be. Many professions use commissions as compensation models, as they align incentives well. Where people get into trouble is when they don’t disclose to their clients that this is one way they’re receiving compensation. I’ve often said that the difference between a commission and a kickback is one word: disclosure.

When we asked how often those accepting commissions disclose the fact to their clients, 24 percent said always, 41 percent said most of the time, 32 percent said sometimes and 3 percent said never. This is another one of those questions were respondents likely overstated how often they did the perceived acceptable behavior, in this case commission disclosure.

RFPs are a fact of life, but the process could be improved

When asked how often they’re asked to submit a proposal in response to an RFP, 25 percent of those surveyed said all the time, 41 percent said most of the time, 29 percent said sometimes and 5 percent said never. In aggregate, that translates to 95 percent of people having to deal with RFPs at some point every year.

We then asked how the RFP process compares with previous years, and 48 percent said it was better, 41 percent said it was the same, while only 11 percent said it was worse.

The past year has seen a significant increase in online chatter about challenges planners and agencies are having with the RFP process. Top reasons include:

• RFPs are being sent to far too many agencies or planners;
• The process involves more paperwork and lengthy contracts;
• The RFPs are poorly written with vague objectives;
• Clear budgets are not being included;
• Questions on RFPs are not being answered quickly enough; and
• Planners are not being told when they lose a proposal or they are not being told why they didn’t get the job.

(This is the topic of an upcoming webinar on Feb. 27: Navigating the Broken Event Agency RFP Process.)