Agency, freelancer or in-house: what actually costs less?
A fully loaded cost comparison for a company spending €10,000–50,000 per month on ads, including the costs that never appear in the salary line.
Short answer
A senior in-house performance marketer in Northern Europe costs roughly €70,000–95,000 fully loaded and gives you one person's channel expertise. An agency retainer covers a team across channels plus creative for a fraction of that. In-house wins at very large, stable spend; agencies win during scaling.
Key takeaways
- Fully loaded in-house cost is 1.3–1.4x salary once employer contributions and tooling are counted.
- One in-house hire is one person's skill set; multi-channel accounts need several.
- Freelancers are cost-effective but carry continuity and capacity risk.
- The crossover point is usually somewhere above €80,000–100,000 monthly ad spend.
- Hybrid — in-house owner plus agency execution — is common and often the best answer at scale.
The fully loaded in-house number
A senior performance marketer's salary is the smallest part of the cost. Employer contributions, pension, holiday cover, recruitment, tooling, creative production and management time all belong in the comparison.
| Line | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Gross salary | €60,000–75,000 |
| Employer contributions | €19,000–24,000 |
| Recruitment (amortised) | €4,000–8,000 |
| Tooling and subscriptions | €3,000–8,000 |
| Creative production | €10,000–30,000 |
| Total | €96,000–145,000 |
Excludes management time and the risk of a three-month vacancy after a resignation.
What each model actually gives you
An in-house hire gives you full attention, deep product knowledge and complete control — limited to one person's channel expertise and one person's availability.
A freelancer gives you flexible, often excellent execution at a lower cost, with the risk that they take on a bigger client or go on holiday during your peak season.
An agency gives you a team across Meta, Google, TikTok and YouTube, plus creative testing and tracking implementation, with less product intimacy than an employee has.
| Factor | In-house | Freelancer | Agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | €96K–145K | €24K–60K | €20K–80K |
| Channels covered | 1–2 | 1–2 | 3–6 |
| Creative production | Extra | Rarely | Usually included |
| Continuity risk | Medium | High | Low |
| Product knowledge | High | Medium | Medium |
| Speed to start | 2–4 months | 1–2 weeks | 1–2 weeks |
Where the crossover sits
Agency fees typically combine a fixed retainer with a percentage of spend, so cost rises with scale. In-house cost is broadly fixed. Somewhere above roughly €80,000–100,000 in monthly spend, a dedicated in-house team usually becomes cheaper per euro managed.
Below that, the agency's breadth — multiple channels, creative, tracking — is very difficult to replicate with one or two salaries.
The hybrid that works
The most effective structure we see at €50,000+ monthly spend is one in-house owner who holds strategy, brand and data, working with an agency that executes across channels and produces creative volume.
The in-house person gets leverage instead of being buried in campaign maintenance, and the agency gets a decisive counterpart rather than a committee.
- In-house: strategy, brand, offer, data ownership, prioritisation
- Agency: media buying across channels, creative production, tracking, testing
- Shared: weekly numbers review against one agreed set of metrics
Questions to ask before deciding
Can you hire someone genuinely senior at the salary you have budgeted? Can you keep them learning across four platforms? Who covers August and December? Who produces the creative? What happens in the three months after they resign?
If the honest answers are uncomfortable, an agency or hybrid model is likely the lower-risk choice at your current stage. We publish our retainers and setup fees so this comparison can be made with real numbers rather than estimates.
FAQ
At what ad spend should we hire in-house?
Usually somewhere above €80,000–100,000 per month, and only when spend is stable rather than seasonal. Below that, a single hire rarely covers the channel breadth and creative output an agency provides.
Is a freelancer good enough for a €15,000/month account?
Sometimes, if the account is single-channel and the freelancer is genuinely senior. The main risks are capacity during peaks and having no cover when they are unavailable, so agree those terms explicitly up front.
How do agency fee models compare?
Fixed retainers are predictable but do not scale with results; pure percentage-of-spend rewards spending more; a hybrid of fixed fee plus a performance component keeps incentives aligned. Ours is a fixed monthly fee plus a performance component for that reason.
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