What should a year of social media cost? Work it out per day, not per month

You know what a plate of dal makhani costs you, down to the last spoon of butter. You know the weekly gas bill, the wages for each shift, and what every table has to bring in on a slow Tuesday. But ask what your Instagram page should cost, and the numbers go vague. One quote is a monthly fee, another is a "package", an app wants a plan you may never open, and none of it lines up with the rest of your costs.

So use the unit you already use for your menu. Work out the social media posts cost per day: what one finished post costs you, on one day, including the time you still have to give it. Put every option into that unit and the choice usually gets much easier. This guide walks through the sum, the costs most quotes leave out, and what about ₹11 a day gets you with Content365.

Why the per-day number is the honest one

Monthly prices hide two things. A month is an odd unit for posting: some months carry five weekends, some carry Diwali, and some are the quiet weeks when footfall drops. And a monthly fee tells you nothing about how many finished posts arrive, or how many of them you will actually use.

A per-day figure fixes both problems. Your page is seen every day, by someone deciding where to eat tonight or where to book the family lunch on Sunday. The cost that matters is what it takes to have something good on the page on each of those days.

You would never price a thali by the month. You price it per plate, because that is how people buy it. Your page is looked at the same way, one day at a time, so it makes sense to cost it the same way.

How to work out social media posts cost per day for any option

Use the same three steps on every quote, app and plan in front of you.

1. Find the full price for a year, with GST. If the quote is monthly, multiply it by twelve. If it is per post, multiply by the number of posts a year of daily posting needs. If GST is not shown, ask, and add it.
2. Divide by the days that will really have a finished post. Not the number in the brochure, the number that will actually be ready to go up. A plan with a dozen posts a month leaves most days of the year empty.
3. Add the value of your own time. If you or a staff member still has to think of the idea, design the picture, write the caption or fix mistakes, those minutes belong in the sum.

Here is the usual shape of each option once it goes through those steps. Agency and freelancer prices vary widely by city and by what is included, so the table describes how each one is charged rather than giving numbers.

Divide a monthly fee of several thousand rupees by thirty, and the daily figure is often in three digits. With Content365, ₹3,999 including GST spread across 365 days comes to about ₹11 a day, and each of those days has a finished post waiting.

If you want a full checklist of what any yearly package should contain, our guide to the yearly social media package price goes line by line, and our look at what a social media agency costs in India explains what a retainer usually covers.

The cost that never shows up on a bill: your own time

The largest line in the sum is often the one owners leave out. In a restaurant, posting tends to land in the worst gap of the day. Lunch service winds down, dinner prep starts, and somewhere in between you are meant to come up with an idea, find a picture, write a caption and put it up.

Try a small experiment for one week. Every time you or someone on your team works on a post, write the minutes on a slip kept beside the billing machine: thinking of the idea, taking or finding a photo, editing it, writing the caption, posting it. At the end of the week, add up the minutes and divide by the number of posts that actually went up.

Then ask yourself a plain question: what is an hour of your time worth during service? Whatever your honest answer is, it belongs in your per-day cost. A free tool that eats forty minutes of your evening is not free. It is simply paid for in a different currency.

There is also the cost of the days that get skipped. Nobody sends an invoice for the Sunday your page stayed empty, or the festival greeting that went up two days late. But a family looking you up before booking a birthday dinner sees an old post and quietly wonders whether you are still open. That is why the useful question is not "how cheap is one post?" but "what is the cheapest way to make sure there is a good post every single day?"

Divyaprakash Jha, Founder & CEO of Content365, puts the whole problem down to how the work has been sold. "Handling your social media is not a big deal," he says. "The market has made it a big deal, and it charges people for that. We are AI techies, and we built Content365 to challenge that belief."

What roughly ₹11 a day buys a restaurant

Content365 is built around that question of a good post on every single day. You tell the studio about your restaurant once: its name, the kind of food you serve, your logo, and your website if you have one. It then makes the whole year for one brand, for ₹3,999 including GST for the whole year. That is the price of the year, not a monthly fee. A second outlet with its own name counts as another brand, and each extra brand is the same ₹3,999 including GST.

For about ₹11 a day, every day of the year comes with:

• One finished picture, 1080 x 1350 in the 4:5 shape, with a square-safe centre, ready for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X and WhatsApp.
• That day's captions, written for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and X, plus one in Hindi.
• Your real details on top. The image model paints only the scene, with no words in it. The studio's compositor then places your actual logo, restaurant name, phone, website and call to action from the exact text you typed. The logo is never redrawn.
• A planned idea. Indian festivals and the financial year sit on the days they fall, and ordinary days draw on 1,825 concepts grouped into 21 families, so a Tuesday in July does not look like the Tuesday before it. Near-duplicate pictures are rejected.
• A checked picture. A vision model inspects each picture for stray lettering and other faults, and a day gets up to three attempts. A day that never passes still arrives, with a visible warning, so you always know.

That is a sample design for a made-up restaurant from our sample library.

The year also downloads as one folder: every picture, captions.csv, prompts.csv, calendar.csv, and a gallery that opens on any phone. Each day waits in your own private gallery until you have looked at it; then you, or someone on your team, put it on your page. Content365 never posts on your pages.

"Nobody should need a monthly budget just to stay visible," says Divyaprakash Jha. "We kept the price at ₹3,999 including GST for the whole year so that every business can show up every day."

Spend your ₹11 a day well: a week of restaurant posts

A finished post is only worth its daily cost if it actually goes up. Here is a simple weekly rhythm a restaurant can follow, whether the posts come from Content365 or from your own phone.

Two habits make the rhythm hold. Post at the same moment every day, say just before you open, so it becomes part of lifting the shutter rather than one more job. And let someone else on the team post on the days you cannot. When the post is already finished, that handover takes a minute.

For more ideas, see our restaurant Instagram post ideas.

Frequently asked questions

How do I work out social media posts cost per day?

Take the full yearly price with GST, divide it by the number of days you will actually have a finished post, and add the value of the time you or your staff still spend on each one. Use the same method on every option so you compare like with like.

Is ₹3,999 including GST charged every month?

No. You pay it once and it covers a full year of daily posts for one brand, which is where the figure of about ₹11 a day comes from. A second brand costs the same ₹3,999 including GST.

Are there any costs after I pay for the year?

Your posts are hosted for 90 days from payment. After that, keeping them hosted is ₹3,000 a year before GST, or you can simply keep the download folder, which has everything in it.

Does the daily price include posting for me?

No. Content365 makes the posts and captions, and the posting stays with you or your staff. Nothing appears on your pages unless you put it there.

Can I check the quality before paying?

Yes. On the free plan you get 2 posts for your own brand every 48 hours, and you pay nothing. Sign in with Google to start free and see your restaurant's posts first.

Price your posts the way you price a plate

You would never put a dish on the menu without knowing its cost per plate. Give your page the same care: put every option into rupees per day, add your own time, and see which one leaves a good post on every day of the year. When you are ready, see what the yearly plan includes, or set it beside what you pay now on the pricing page.

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