Insense, Collabstr, Billo and Trend.io all connect brands with UGC creators — but they bill you in four completely different ways: a subscription plus a fee on every creator payment, a marketplace cut taken from both sides, a single per-video price with everything bundled in, and a credit system that has just been replaced. This guide compares the cost structures, the per-video math and the usage rights, because those three things decide what a video really costs you.
Brand plan billed annually ($500/mo billed quarterly), plus a 10% marketplace fee on creator payments. UGC from $100 per video.
Free plan with a 10% fee on each order. Optional Pro and Premium plans add campaign tools.
No mandatory subscription. You prepay a pack and order videos against the balance.
Trend.io was acquired by soona and relaunched as soona UGC in 2026. Credit packs are gone; pricing is now per video by creator level.
| Insense | Collabstr | Billo | Trend.io → soona UGC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Brands ordering UGC every month for paid social | Brands that want to browse, compare and book creators directly | Brands that want ad-ready video at a known per-video price | Brands buying batches of content (video and photo) without a subscription |
| How you pay | Monthly subscription plus a marketplace fee on each creator payment; creator pay is extra | Per-order fee on top of the creator's listed price; optional subscription for tools | Per video, bought as prepaid packs; everything bundled into the video price | Per video by creator level; the old prepaid credit packs were discontinued in the 2026 relaunch |
| Entry price | Trial $650 for one month; Brand from $400/mo billed annually | Free plan, $0; Pro $299/mo; Premium $399/mo (lower on annual billing) | From $99 per video; no subscription required | From $89 per video (Level 1 creator) |
| Fee on top of creator pay | 20% on Trial, 10% on Brand, 7% on Agency | 10% added to your order (5% on Premium) — and creators separately pay 15% out of their payout | None added at checkout; platform and transaction fees are inside the video price | No separate platform fee published for the current per-video model |
| Per-video cost signal | UGC campaigns start at $100 per video, before the fee and the subscription | Creators set their own prices; Collabstr's own 2026 marketplace report puts the average paid UGC engagement at $154 | From $99 for a basic video; longer videos, premium creators and extras cost more (full list is in-app) | $89 / $169 / $259 per video by creator level (Level 1 / 2 / 3) |
| Usage rights | Perpetual full digital rights (paid ads included) once approved and paid; copyright stays with the creator; broadcast and offline rights cost extra | Not included by default. Rights transfer only if your order says so — agree channels, duration and paid use before the creator films | Full usage rights included once you approve the video | Perpetual, unlimited usage rights described as included in the per-video price |
| Creator posts / ad accounts | Yes — influencer posts, Meta Partnership Ads and TikTok Spark Ads are core campaign types | Yes — sponsored posts are a core listing type, alongside UGC-only orders | Organic posting and Partnership / Spark Ads are add-ons, priced by each creator | No — content only; distribution is your job |
| Trade-off to know | The subscription is a fixed cost in months you order nothing, and the "trial" is a paid month that auto-upgrades unless you cancel in time | The headline 10% is only the brand side; the platform's combined take on a typical order is roughly a quarter of the listed price, and forgetting to buy rights is a real risk | Video only, a smaller vetted pool (US, Canada, UK), and you prepay packs before you see a single deliverable | The service is mid-transition: older articles still quote discontinued credit packs, and the legacy Trend.io brand is being folded into soona |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. Prices checked November 2026 — some vendors do not publish pricing in full: Billo's complete price list by length and creator tier is inside its app, and Trend.io's pricing model itself changed during 2026. Creator counts quoted by vendors (for example Insense's 115,000+ creators) are the vendors' own claims. Plans, fees and rights terms change — always confirm the current figures on the vendor's site before you commit budget.
Headline prices are not comparable across these four models, so here is one scenario run through each, using only published floor prices: 10 UGC videos ordered in a single month. Real creator rates are usually above the floors, which raises every total — the point is the structure, not a quote.
| Platform | The math (published prices only) | Total for 10 videos | All-in per video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insense (Brand, annual billing) | $400 subscription + 10 × $100 creator pay (the published UGC floor) + 10% marketplace fee on creator pay ($100) | $1,500 | $150 |
| Collabstr (Free plan) | No subscription. A $150 listed package (close to Collabstr's reported $154 average) costs you $165 after the 10% order fee: 10 × $165 | $1,650 | $165 — and the creator receives $127.50 of each $150 listing after their separate 15% payout fee |
| Billo | 10 × $99 starting price. Creator pay, fees, two revisions and full usage rights are inside that price; no subscription | $990 | $99 at the floor — longer videos and premium creators raise it |
| Trend / soona UGC | 10 × $89 at Level 1 creator pricing. No subscription; rights included. At Level 3 the same batch is 10 × $259 | $890 | $89 at Level 1; $259 at Level 3 |
Three things this math shows. First, volume flips the subscription math: at 30 videos a month, Insense's Brand plan works out to $400 + $3,000 + $300 = $3,700, or about $123 per video — but at just 3 videos, the same plan is $400 + $300 + $30 = $730, or about $243 per video. The subscription only pays off if you order every month. Second, a marketplace fee is not always visible in your invoice total: on Collabstr, your $165 and the creator's $127.50 differ by $37.50 on a $150 listing — roughly 25% of the listed price stays with the platform across the two-sided fees, which is also why creator list prices are set with that deduction in mind. Third, bundled prices buy certainty, not detail: Billo and soona fold fees and rights into one number, which makes budgeting easy and the internal split invisible.
And one expiry trap from the old model worth knowing if you hold legacy Trend.io credits: the discontinued packs (from $550) expired 12 months after purchase. A pack covering roughly six videos works out near $92 per video only if you use all of it — use just two videos and the effective cost is about $275 each. If you still hold legacy credits, confirm in writing how they are treated after the move to soona before you brief anything.
Insense is a subscription marketplace for UGC and influencer campaigns, and an official Meta and TikTok partner, which is why Partnership Ads and Spark Ads permissions are handled inside the platform rather than by exchanging codes manually. Its own count is 115,000+ creators across 57+ countries. Pricing has three layers, and you need all three in your budget: the subscription (Trial $650 for one month; Brand $500/mo billed quarterly or $400/mo billed annually; Agency $800/mo quarterly or $640/mo annually), creator payments on top (UGC campaigns start at $100 per video, per Insense's own pricing FAQ), and a marketplace fee on each creator payment — 20% on Trial, 10% on Brand, 7% on Agency. On rights, creators keep copyright, but once content is approved and paid you receive perpetual full digital rights, paid advertising and connected TV included; broadcast and offline rights are sold separately, and a full IP transfer is only offered as an extra contract through its managed service. Note that how long a creator's own account can run your ad (Spark / Partnership Ads) is set in the campaign brief — separate from the perpetual rights on the content file itself.
Collabstr is an open, self-serve marketplace: creators publish profiles and packages with prices attached, you search by platform, niche and budget, and payment sits in escrow until you approve the work. There is no subscription required to hire — the Free plan adds a 10% fee to each order. Pro ($299/mo, or $249/mo billed annually) adds campaign posting and audience reports but keeps the same 10% fee; Premium ($399/mo, or $333/mo billed annually) is the tier that cuts the order fee to 5%. What the pricing page states plainly, but is easy to skim past, is that creators pay a separate 15% fee on their payout — so the platform's combined take is larger than the headline 10%. Collabstr's own 2026 marketplace report, based on more than 21,000 collaborations in 2025, puts the average UGC asking price at $180 and the average paid price at $154 per engagement. The single most important operational fact: usage rights are not bundled. Collabstr's own guidance is to agree rights before filming, and its terms tie any transfer of content rights to what your accepted order actually says — an order that never mentions rights leaves you with a file you can review, not run as an ad.
Billo is built narrowly and on purpose: video ads. Its network is 5,000+ vetted creators in the US, Canada and the UK, and the commercial model is the simplest of the four to budget. Videos start at $99, bought through prepaid packs that load a balance (valid 12 months); there is no subscription you must hold to order. The final price moves with video length, format, Regular vs Premium creators and extras like additional hooks — the full price list lives inside the app rather than on a public page. Crucially, the video price already contains creator compensation (Billo states its fee is never deducted from creator pay), platform and transaction fees, two revisions within the brief, and full usage rights once you approve the video. Organic posting and Partnership / Spark Ads are separate services, priced by each creator. Two optional layers sit on top if you want them: CreativeOps, a creative-analytics subscription from $149/mo, and a managed service from $2,000/mo where Billo's team runs production for you. Product and shipping to the creator are always on you.
First, the fact that shapes everything else: Trend.io is no longer a standalone service. soona acquired it in 2023 and relaunched the offer as soona UGC in April 2026. The prepaid credit packs that older comparison articles still quote — Starter at $550 and up — were discontinued in that relaunch. The current model is pay-per-video with no subscription: $89 for a Level 1 creator, $169 for Level 2 and $259 for Level 3, with 15-, 30- and 60-second options, two revisions, and perpetual, unlimited usage rights described as included in the price. The model is content-only by design: creators film and deliver files for your own channels and ads; nobody posts to an audience for you, and there are no Spark or Partnership Ads workflows of the kind Insense and Billo sell as add-ons. Because the service is mid-transition, treat any Trend.io price you find in an older article — credit packs, or claims that pricing is unpublished and quote-based — as out of date until you have confirmed the current soona UGC terms.
Every month, without fail → a subscription model (Insense) can win, because its fee rate drops and the monthly cost spreads across videos. A few videos per quarter → pay-per-video (Billo, soona UGC) or the free marketplace tier (Collabstr), where idle months cost nothing.
Add subscription + creator pay + every fee layer before you compare. On Insense that is three lines; on Collabstr, remember the creator-side 15% is baked into the prices creators set; on Billo and soona, the single price is the stack — compare like with like using the 10-video scenario above.
Decide where each video will run (your ads, your product pages, a creator's account) and for how long, then check how each platform delivers that: bundled and perpetual (Billo, soona), perpetual digital by default with account-level ad duration set in the brief (Insense), or written into your order by you (Collabstr). Perpetual rights on a file and a time-limited licence to advertise from a creator's handle are different things — you may need both.
Every model here lets you start small: one Collabstr order, one Billo pack, a few Level 1 soona videos, or Insense's trial month — but diarise the Insense trial's cancellation deadline before you start it, and confirm any legacy Trend.io credit position in writing. Judge the batch on briefing effort and usable deliverables, not on promises.
On published prices, the lowest entry points are Collabstr's free plan (you pay the creator's listed price plus a 10% order fee), soona UGC's Level 1 videos at $89, and Billo from $99 per video. Insense is the most expensive way to start — its one-month trial alone is $650 before any creator payments — because it is priced for brands that will keep ordering every month.
It depends on what you want to escape. If the subscription is the problem, Billo and soona UGC remove it entirely and charge per video. If you want to keep a marketplace but drop the monthly fee, Collabstr's free plan does that — at the cost of managing usage rights yourself on every order. If you mainly use Insense for Partnership Ads and Spark Ads, check the alternatives carefully: that ad-account workflow is Insense's core strength, an add-on on Billo, and not offered by soona UGC.
Usually you license them rather than own them outright, and the details differ. On Insense the creator keeps copyright while you receive perpetual digital usage rights. Billo and soona UGC include full or unlimited usage rights in the price once content is approved. On Collabstr, rights transfer only if your order provides for it. In every case, read the current terms for the channels and duration you need — especially whether paid advertising from the creator's own account is included, and for how long.
They were discontinued when the service was relaunched as soona UGC in April 2026, replaced by per-video pricing ($89–$259 by creator level). Articles still quoting $550 credit packs are describing the old model. If you bought credits under Trend.io, confirm directly with soona how your balance is treated before relying on it.
No, and none of the published pricing on this page should be read that way. These platforms sell creator content and workflow — what the content earns back depends on your product, offer and media buying. Be wary of any service that promises a return on content spend as part of the price.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information — pricing pages, published terms and the vendors' own marketplace data — not from hands-on testing. We have not placed orders with these platforms. Where a judgment appears (for example, that a subscription only pays off at steady volume), it is arithmetic on the published prices, shown next to it so you can check it yourself.