There are few topics in small business where the gap between what something costs and what it costs properly is wider than logo design.
You can get a logo for £5 on Fiverr. You can pay £500 to a freelancer. You can pay £5,000 to a branding studio. The final output in all three cases is a file with your business name in it — so why does the price vary by a factor of a thousand?
The honest answer isn’t that one option is always right and the others are always wrong. It’s that each price point represents a different thing — a different process, a different deliverable and a different outcome. Understanding what you’re actually buying at each level is the only way to make a sensible decision.
Why “just a logo” isn’t a useful way to think about it
Before getting into price points, it’s worth addressing the framing. A lot of new business owners approach logo design thinking: “I just need something to put on my website. How hard can it be?”
The problem with this is that a logo doesn’t exist in isolation. It needs to work at 16 pixels (a browser tab favicon) and at 2 metres (a van livery or banner). It needs to look right in full colour, in black and white, and reversed out on a dark background. It needs to sit alongside your brand colours and typography and not feel like it’s fighting with them.
A logo that was designed quickly, in isolation, without thinking about any of this will reveal its limitations fast — usually when you first try to use it somewhere it wasn’t designed for.
The five price points, honestly assessed
£0 – DIY with a free tool
Tools like Canva, Looka and Wix Logo Maker let you generate a logo without spending anything (or very little).
What you get: A template-based mark built from a library of generic icons and fonts. It will look professional enough in a small social media thumbnail. It will not look distinctive, because thousands of other businesses are using the same template library. File formats are often limited — many free tools will not give you an editable vector file, which means you can’t properly resize the logo for print without it becoming pixelated.
When it might be acceptable: If you are testing a business idea before investing in it, or operating in a sector where branding is genuinely irrelevant to the buying decision. If you’re building a business you intend to take seriously, this is a short-term solution that will cost you more to replace later than it saved you upfront.
£5–£50 – Fiverr and similar marketplaces
Fiverr, PeoplePerHour and similar platforms allow you to commission a logo from designers offering services at very low rates, many of them based overseas.
What you get: At this price point, you are usually getting a designer who is producing volume — delivering large numbers of logos per week to cover their income. The process is: you provide a brief, they deliver a few concepts, you pick one with minimal iteration. The risk is significant. At the lower end of this market, logos are sometimes generated using the same AI or template tools available to the public, sometimes lifted or adapted from existing marks (which creates potential intellectual property problems), and rarely supplied with a full set of file formats.
When it might be acceptable: It rarely is for a business you’re serious about. The time spent managing a poor brief, giving feedback on irrelevant concepts and chasing file formats often exceeds what you saved — and you frequently end up with a logo you’re not confident in.
£200–£800 – A junior freelancer or local designer
This is where you start getting into genuine design work — a real person who will ask you questions about your business, your customers and your competitors before putting pen to paper (or stylus to tablet).
What you get: At the lower end of this range, you’ll typically receive two or three logo concepts and a limited number of revisions. At the higher end, the process is more thorough — more initial concepts, more rounds of refinement and a more complete final delivery that should include all the file formats you need.
The quality varies considerably at this level. A talented junior designer charging £300 may produce better work than a mediocre mid-career designer charging £600. Portfolio review matters more than price at this level. Look for work that demonstrates an understanding of brand — not just software skill.
When it’s the right choice: For many small businesses, particularly those just starting out, this range hits the sweet spot of quality and cost. A good freelancer in this range will produce a logo you can use confidently for years.
£1,000–£3,000 – An experienced freelancer or small studio
At this level, you’re buying a more thorough process and a more experienced hand. The designer or studio will typically conduct a proper brand discovery session — understanding your positioning, your competitors and your audience before the design work begins.
What you get: A more developed concept stage, more considered revisions, and a final delivery that goes beyond the logo mark itself. At this level, you should expect a small brand identity system — not just a logo, but a colour palette, typography guidance and potentially a simple brand guidelines document. You’re not just getting a file; you’re getting the foundations of a visual identity.
When it’s the right choice: If your business is at a stage where you’re actively pitching for work, competing with established players or investing in broader marketing, the quality of work at this level will repay the investment. A business that looks significantly more professional than its competitors wins pitches it otherwise wouldn’t.
£5,000+ – An established branding agency or senior designer
At the top end of the market, the logo itself is often a smaller part of what you’re paying for. An agency engagement at this level involves extensive discovery work, competitor analysis, positioning strategy and a fully developed brand identity system — tone of voice, photography direction, application examples across multiple touchpoints.
What you get: A comprehensive brand identity, not just a logo. The output at the end of this process is a brand guidelines document that any designer, printer or marketing agency can work from.
When it’s the right choice: For businesses with investment behind them, franchises, or companies repositioning after a period of significant growth. For most early-stage small businesses, this level of investment doesn’t make sense until the business has proven itself — and by that stage, the budget is easier to justify.
What file formats you should always receive
Regardless of what you pay, a professional logo delivery should always include:
Vector formats (for print and large-format use):
- SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) — the most universally useful vector format
- AI (Adobe Illustrator) or EPS — the original working file
Raster formats (for digital use):
- PNG with transparent background — for use on your website, email signature and any coloured backgrounds
- JPEG — for use where a transparent background isn’t needed
Colour variants:
- Full colour version
- Black version (for use on light backgrounds when colour isn’t available)
- White version (for use on dark or coloured backgrounds)
If a designer hands you a single JPEG and considers the job done, that is not a complete logo delivery. A logo that only exists as a JPEG cannot be properly used in print, cannot be legally used at large scale without quality loss and is not a professional deliverable.
The hidden cost of doing it cheaply
There’s a calculation that most people don’t make when they decide to spend as little as possible on a logo.
A logo that doesn’t work — that looks amateurish, that falls apart at certain sizes, that doesn’t come with the right file formats — will need to be replaced. When you replace it, everything that carried the old logo gets updated too: your website, your social profiles, your email signature, your printed materials, any signage. That is not a trivial exercise, and it is not a cheap one.
A logo designed properly in the first year of a business’s life, by someone who understood what they were producing, is still doing its job five years later. One produced cheaply and quickly is usually replaced within eighteen months.
The question isn’t “what does a logo cost?” It’s “what does replacing a logo that didn’t work cost?” When you include the design work, the website updates, the reprinting of materials and the time spent managing the process, that number is almost always higher than doing it properly the first time.
What to look for when briefing a logo designer
Whether you’re spending £300 or £3,000, the quality of your brief will directly affect the quality of what you receive. A designer cannot make sensible creative decisions without understanding your business.
A good brief should cover:
Your business in plain language. What do you do, who do you do it for, and what makes you different from competitors? This doesn’t need to be long — two or three sentences of honest, specific information is more useful than a page of generic positioning language.
Your customers. Who are they? What do they care about? A logo aimed at young creative professionals looks and feels different from one aimed at construction company owners or medical practices. The designer needs to know which direction they’re working in.
The feeling you want to create. Words like “trustworthy,” “modern,” “approachable,” “premium” or “energetic” are imprecise, but they’re a useful starting point. Show the designer brands you admire — not necessarily in your sector, just brands whose visual identity resonates with the feeling you’re aiming for.
What to avoid. If there are colour combinations, styles or references that would feel wrong for your business or your audience, say so early. It saves everyone’s time.
Where the logo needs to work. Tell the designer about every context the logo needs to function in — website, social media, business cards, van livery, workwear, signage. Each of these has different constraints, and a designer who knows about them can make decisions that account for all of them.
Logo vs. brand identity: knowing what you actually need
A logo is a mark. A brand identity is a system. For a small business, understanding the difference helps you decide what level of investment is right for where you are.
If you’re in the very earliest stages — testing an idea, operating as a sole trader with a small client base — a good logo at the £300–£500 level will serve you well. Get it from a credible freelancer, get the right files, and move on.
If you’re building a business you intend to grow, invest in, market and eventually sell — the investment in a full brand identity, including colour palette, typography, tone of voice and brand guidelines, pays for itself through the consistency it creates. Every piece of marketing you produce is more effective when it’s working from a coherent foundation.
The two are not the same thing. Knowing which one you need is the first decision to make.
What Uprize Digital includes
If you’re at the stage of launching a business and want a complete brand identity — logo, colours, typography, brand guidelines and a bespoke website — handled properly and at a price designed for small business founders rather than corporate budgets, the Uprize Digital Brand Launch Kit brings all of this together in a single, fixed-fee package.
No retainers. No ongoing contracts. Everything designed, delivered and owned by you.
