How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Xiaohongshu (RedNote)?

Xiaohongshu advertising costs fall into three parts: creator collaborations booked through Pugongying (蒲公英), ads bought on Juguang (聚光), and boosts that push a single note to more people; around them sit the enterprise account fee and, in some sectors, a deposit. Each runs through Xiaohongshu’s own console. Pugongying is the platform’s marketplace for creator content and zhongcao (seeding) deals, and Juguang is its ad platform for everything except closed-loop e-commerce ads;⁠¹ boosts are bought through Pugongying’s content boost or through Shutiao (薯条).

The same layers in text, with the rates Xiaohongshu’s help centres gave on 17 October 2026 (amounts in RMB):

Cost item	How it is billed	Official rule
Enterprise professional account	Verification, then a yearly review	RMB 600, then RMB 600 a year⁠2
Pugongying creator collaboration	The creator’s flat rate plus a platform fee	Fee of 10% of the rate, paid in full at order⁠3
Pugongying content boost	Per 1,000 impressions	RMB 25 CPM⁠4
Shutiao	The amount set on each order	RMB 75–7,500 per order on desktop, set by the advertiser; no CPM price⁠5
Juguang ads	CPC, oCPC, CPM or oCPM auction	No fixed price; prepaid, deducted the next day⁠1⁠,⁠6
Licensing notes via Cooperation Square	Ad spend × a share, or a one-off fee	At least 3% for authors with 1,000+ followers, at most RMB 5,000 a note⁠7
Risk-industry deposit	Per company, refundable	68 sub-sectors, RMB 30,000–150,000⁠8
Production, samples, travel, agency	By agreement	Outside platform billing; store-visit travel and lodging are agreed between the two sides, and the platform stays out of it⁠9

These costs stack rather than substitute. A note booked through Pugongying can run as a Juguang ad under every marketing objective,⁠¹⁰ or take a Pugongying content boost,⁠⁴ and a business account can boost its own notes and its Pugongying deal notes with Shutiao.⁠⁵ The useful first cut in any budget is between money spent on content and money spent on reach.

Pugongying charges the brand 10% of the creator’s rate as a platform service fee, paid together with the rate when the order is placed. The custom-order page gives the arithmetic: a creator quoting RMB 10,000 costs the brand RMB 11,000, because the platform adds RMB 1,000; the default “standard mode” provides the content collaboration only and carries the 10% fee.⁠³

Who sets the price, and what fee applies, varies by deal type:

Deal type	Who sets the price	Platform service fee
Custom order (定制商单)	The creator, as a flat rate	10% of the rate⁠3
Custom order with negotiation	The creator revises it to 80%–150% of the listed rate	10% of the negotiated price⁠11
Product testing (众测招募)	The brand, per read or per note	10%, waived on a new client’s first order⁠12
Store visits (探店招募)	The brand, exchange or flat fee	RMB 20 per creator for exchange; 10% of a cash fee; first order free⁠13
Super Player submissions (games)	The brand sets a prize pool	10% of the pool⁠14
Xingfen Zhida (星粉直达, celebrity endorsement push)	The platform, by the star’s follower tier	No 10% fee⁠15

The fee is not always refundable. If a product-testing task is cancelled because recruitment or its targets fall short, the fee, charged on the project as a whole, stays with the platform;⁠¹² when too few creators complete a cash store-visit campaign, only their cash fees come back, not the 10%.⁠¹³

Creators pay a fee of their own. For a creator with no agency, the platform deducts a 10% service fee as earnings reach their wallet, so a RMB 100 order pays them RMB 90; for a creator signed to an agency, the platform bills the agency monthly and currently waives that 10%.⁠¹⁶ The deduction comes out of the creator’s side and is never added to the brand’s order, which in the default standard mode is the rate plus 10%.

Creators on Pugongying set their own rates, and brands book them at that flat price. Pugongying’s overview of deal types says that in custom and batch orders the creator prices the work and is paid a flat rate, and both are open to creators of any follower count.⁠¹⁵ What a brand sees in the creator marketplace is the creator’s rate for the current month.⁠¹⁷

There is room to move within the platform’s rules:

• Batch orders: when applying, a creator may set a 30-day special price between 50% and 100% of their listed rate, so a RMB 1,000 rate can drop to anywhere from RMB 500 to RMB 1,000, and the two sides can negotiate.⁠⁹
• Negotiated custom orders: the brand ticks “negotiate the price with the creator” when ordering, the creator enters a new price within 80%–150% of their rate, and the brand must pay in full within 3 days of acceptance or the order lapses. The option appears only for brands that have already completed an order on Pugongying.⁠¹¹
• Celebrity orders: the star sets a flat price, and the platform does not normally allow deals below that floor.⁠¹⁵

Some deal types are priced by the brand or by the platform instead. The brand prices product testing, which is open to creators with fewer than 150,000 followers,⁠¹⁵ and store visits: in an exchange campaign for creators with 1,000–5,000 followers the brand pays no creator fee, only RMB 20 per creator to the platform, while a cash campaign for creators with 1,000–150,000 followers pays at least RMB 100 a note.⁠¹³ Xingfen Zhida is the one package the platform prices itself, in five tiers by a star’s active followers: RMB 90,000 under 100,000 followers, RMB 170,000 for 100,000–500,000, RMB 210,000 for 500,000–1 million, RMB 270,000 for 1–2 million and RMB 300,000 above 2 million, each with guaranteed impressions over 30 days ranging from 1.5 million to 5 million.⁠¹⁵

So there is no official answer to “how much does a Xiaohongshu KOL with X followers charge”. Apart from Xingfen Zhida, the platform publishes no follower-based price list, and each creator’s price is whatever they list in the marketplace.

The brand pays in full when it orders, the platform holds the money, and only after the note is published and the brand confirms completion does the platform settle with the creator or the creator’s agency. Pugongying lists escrow (资金托管) among the protections it offers.⁠¹⁷

In a custom order the money passes through five steps:

1. Top-up: Alipay top-ups arrive at once but are open to mainland companies only.⁠¹⁷ For offline company transfers, the brand guide accepts transfers from Chinese banks only, not CNY or foreign-currency transfers from abroad, arriving in 1–2 days from the same bank and 3–5 days from another;⁠¹⁷ the Super Player page instead gives 3–7 days for companies outside China.⁠¹⁴ Because the two pages disagree, a company outside China should confirm with Pugongying before it tops up.
2. Order and pay in full: the rate plus the 10% fee, in one payment.⁠³
3. Acceptance: the creator accepts or declines within 72 hours; if they decline or let the time run out, the full amount returns within 1 working day.⁠³
4. Review and publication: after platform review the brand approves the note, with at most 3 rejections, and silence for 72 hours counts as approval; a published note cannot be deleted for 30 days.⁠³
5. Completion and settlement: once the brand confirms completion the order goes to settlement, and orders still unconfirmed 7 days after publication complete automatically.⁠³ A creator without an agency is paid into their wallet a day after completion, so a RMB 10,000 order credits RMB 9,000, and since 1 October 2025 their withdrawals are taxed as income from labour services, with tax withheld; for a creator with an agency, the platform sends the agency a bill on the 1st of each month for the month before and pays against its invoice.⁠¹⁶

Cancelling part-way returns a share that depends on progress:

Stage	Share of the order returned to the brand
Before the creator accepts	100%
Waiting for the note, more than 30 days past the expected date	100%
Waiting for the note, within 30 days of the expected date	50%
Note submitted but not published	50%
Note published	No cancellation

These shares come from the custom-order page, and refunds reach the balance in 1–2 working days; if the note is still missing 15–30 days after the expected date, a full refund can be requested through customer service.⁠³

The whole deal has to stay on the platform. Pugongying’s client fulfilment rules require brands to order, accept, pay and invoice through the platform’s process and forbid them to induce or help creators or MCNs to bypass it with offline deals, split payments or private settlement.⁠¹⁸ A note ordered through Pugongying carries a “brand-sponsored” (品牌赞助) label when published; this is what Chinese marketers call a registered sponsored note.⁠¹

Juguang sells ads by auction, with no rate card: advertisers bid per click (CPC, oCPC) or per 1,000 impressions (CPM, oCPM), and an eCPM of bid × predicted click-through rate × predicted conversion rate × 1,000 decides whether an ad wins and where it sits.⁠¹ Ads appear in the feed, in search results and in the video feed; the brand zone at the top of search usually needs brand credentials and a high budget.⁠¹

There are three bidding strategies:⁠¹⁹

• Stable cost (oCPX): set a target cost per conversion and the system keeps the average near it.
• Max conversions (nobid): set only a budget, and the system spends it for as many conversions as it can.
• Manual bid (CPC): set the bid per click or conversion yourself.

For product-seeding campaigns, the bid guidance the platform shows is drawn from the previous day’s bids in the same sub-sector and placement, and outside search it shows the bids that would beat 50% and 80% of competitors.⁠²⁰ In other words, the price of a click on RedNote moves with the sector and the competition, and there is no single number.

Money moves differently from Pugongying:

• Prepaid: the account balance has to be topped up before ads run.⁠¹ Top-ups go by Alipay or bank transfer; amounts may carry up to two decimal places, and the guide states no minimum; from outside China the payee is Youtong Trading (Hong Kong) Limited and funds usually arrive in 3–5 working days.⁠²¹
• Next-day deduction: the platform deducts each day’s spend the following day; at traffic peaks delivery can overshoot, but deductions are capped at 105% of the account budget or 120% of the campaign budget, provided the budget was set successfully.⁠⁶
• Rebates: clients with an annual framework agreement (年框) who reach the agreed spend receive monthly rebate credits, which expire on 30 June of the following year.⁠⁶
• Cost guarantee: for automatically bid campaigns, if the cost per conversion runs 20% or more above target in the 7 calendar days from first spend, the advertiser kept within the limits on changes, and the campaign reaches the required number of conversions (at least 200 clicks where click cost is the target, for example), the excess comes back as account credit that cannot be withdrawn.⁠²²

Some sectors pay a deposit first. From 15 April 2026 the platform charges a risk-industry deposit in 68 Juguang sub-sectors, per client company, of RMB 30,000 to RMB 150,000, across health, legal services, local services, education, finance, real estate, food and drink, franchising, pets and mother-and-baby products. The rule covers Juguang, Pugongying and Qianfan; the deposit earns no interest and can be reclaimed when the cooperation ends.⁠⁸

Shutiao charges the amount you set on each boost order, between RMB 75 and RMB 7,500 on desktop, and Xiaohongshu publishes no per-impression price for it; Pugongying’s content boost, by contrast, is priced at RMB 25 per 1,000 impressions.⁠⁵⁠^,⁠⁴ Both buy reach for a note that is already live. Juguang, the auction-based ad platform, describes Shutiao in its own glossary as a note-promotion tool that is “not strictly advertising”, with goals such as more reads, followers, interactions or searches.⁠¹

	Pugongying	Juguang	Shutiao
What you buy	A sponsored note made to your brief	Ads in the feed, search and video feed	A boost for a published note
Who sets the price	The creator; the brand for tests and store visits	The advertiser’s auction bid	The advertiser sets the amount
How it is billed	Rate + 10% service fee	CPC, oCPC, CPM, oCPM, deducted the next day	The order amount, RMB 75–7,500 on desktop
Paid from	Pugongying balance	Juguang balance	Shutiao coins, Shutiao wallet or company wallet; not the Juguang wallet

Pugongying content boost works only on Pugongying deal notes and can be added when ordering or after the order completes. Since the move to a new delivery route on 23 January 2026 it costs RMB 25 per 1,000 impressions, up from RMB 15, and the old cap of RMB 5,000 of spend per note within 30 days is gone; the default budget is RMB 150 over 24 hours, and estimated impressions = budget ÷ 25 × 1,000.⁠⁴ By that formula, RMB 150 buys about 6,000 impressions.⁠⁴

Shutiao can be ordered in the app or on desktop. On desktop it sits inside Juguang under Tools, then Creative Center; a business account can boost all its own notes, its Pugongying deal notes and other users’ notes it uploads, and each order sets a goal (likes and saves, note reads, follows or profile visits), a start time, a duration from 6 hours to 7 days, an amount between RMB 75 and RMB 7,500, and a target audience.⁠⁵ There are three ways to pay: Shutiao coins, the Shutiao wallet and third-party cash, one per order. The wallet is for professional accounts only, direct top-ups are for business accounts only, spending draws cash and promotional credit at 5:1, and refunds return only the cash part.⁠²³ App and desktop Shutiao share one fund system, but the Juguang wallet cannot pay for it.⁠⁵

A 20% Pugongying fee, a RMB 15 CPM boost, 5,000 Shutiao impressions for RMB 75, RMB 0.3 Juguang clicks, an official KOL price list: none of these matches Xiaohongshu’s own help centres. Some mix the brand’s and the creator’s costs; others have no source in the platform’s documents. Checked on 17 October 2026:

Claim	What the official pages say (checked 2026-10-17)
Pugongying takes 20%	The brand pays 10% of the rate on a custom order in the default standard mode;⁠3 a separate 10% comes out of the earnings of creators without an agency.⁠16 They sit on different sides of the deal and do not add up. An optional paid “premium mode” (优效模式) also exists, and the help pages read do not state its fee⁠9
A Pugongying boost costs RMB 15 CPM	RMB 25 since the move of 23 January 2026⁠4
RMB 75 buys 5,000 Shutiao impressions	On desktop each order’s amount is set by the advertiser between RMB 75 and RMB 7,500;⁠5 no per-impression price or guaranteed reach is published
Juguang clicks cost RMB 0.3, with a RMB 5,000 minimum	Juguang bills by auction, with bid guidance from the previous day’s bids in your sector;⁠20 the top-up guide allows amounts to two decimal places and states no minimum⁠21
Xiaohongshu publishes a KOL price list	Creators set their own rates; only Xingfen Zhida is priced by the platform, by a star’s follower tier⁠15

Platform rules change with the product, so the order page and the latest help-centre text always govern. This article sets out Xiaohongshu’s published platform rules only; it does not cover any agency’s prices.

MVP runs Xiaohongshu campaigns for foreign brands through the same official consoles described above: the brand’s enterprise professional account for its own notes, Pugongying for creator collaborations, Juguang for feed and search ads, and Shutiao for small boosts to single notes. MVP watches how content does on its own first, then buys reach for what is already working; how much, to whom and when to stop are decided by the numbers.

Three things differ from a brand opening its own accounts:

• Accounts and billing: ad accounts are opened in MVP’s name and MVP settles the ad spend, so the brand does not open and top up accounts platform by platform.
• Targets in the contract: reach, ROI and other targets are agreed at the proposal stage and written into the contract, and MVP provides evidence that can be checked line by line afterwards, such as the platform’s own reports.
• Quoted to the brief: MVP does not publish a standard price; the quote depends on which services, which platforms and how long. How MVP charges is covered in the brand FAQ.

Xiaohongshu work is part of MVP’s China entry: PR and social ads service, and creator partnerships are under cross-border influencer marketing. MVP (Mega Volume Production, 十方众声) is headquartered in Toronto and contracts through two companies, 北京十方众声传媒有限公司 and Mega Volume Production Inc., working in talent management and cross-border brand marketing; it has run cross-border brand marketing since 2023. To scope a Xiaohongshu budget, tell MVP the product, the audience and what you want to achieve.