The honest answer is that the question is usually asking the wrong thing first. Rebranding doesn't have one cost, because "rebranding" isn't one project — a logo refresh and a full repositioning share a word and nothing else.
Here's how the number actually breaks down, and how to tell which project you're really buying.
The cosmetic version
A new logo, an updated color palette, a refreshed visual system layered onto a strategy that hasn't changed. This runs roughly $5,000 to $25,000 depending on scope, and it's the right call when the brand's substance is fine and only the surface has gone stale. The risk is buying this when the real problem is underneath it — a new logo doesn't fix a positioning that no longer matches what the company actually does.
The full version
Brand strategy, verbal identity, visual identity, and messaging frameworks rebuilt together, so the company can say what it is in language that matches what it's become. At the high end — full embedded engagements spanning strategy through execution — this runs upwards of $300,000. That number reflects the actual scope: a company being reconstructed in language and system, not redecorated.
What actually determines the price, either way
Not the size of your logo file. How much has to be reconciled. A rebrand is expensive in proportion to how far the current brand has drifted from what the company now is — how many stakeholders have to agree, how much existing material has to be rewritten or replaced, how many functions (sales, hiring, investor materials, product) the new brand has to actually reach.
Five signals it's the full version, not the cosmetic one
Any one of these on its own is a data point. Two or more together usually mean the surface-level fix won't hold:
- The brand no longer reflects what the company actually does, usually because of a pivot or unplanned growth.
- Prospects are confused about what you offer or how you're different, and it's costing you deals.
- A negative event — public or internal — has attached itself to the current name or story in a way a new logo won't detach.
- You're trying to reach a buyer the current brand was never built to speak to.
- Competitors have become sharper about what they stand for, and the gap is starting to show in pitches.
The question underneath the question
Before pricing anything, it's worth being honest about which problem you actually have. A cosmetic refresh on a strategy problem is money spent without solving anything — the same confusion, in nicer typography. The number only makes sense once you know which project it's actually paying for.
