How Much Does 1,000 Followers Cost? We Priced All 4,662 Services

Type "how much does 1000 followers cost" into a search box and you will get answers ranging from one dollar to a thousand dollars, usually from someone selling something. The honest answer sits somewhere in the middle and is almost useless on its own: $5.99.

That is the median price of 1,000 followers across every active service in the RunScale catalogue — 4,662 of them, measured on 23 October 2026. It is a real number, and it will still steer you wrong, because the same catalogue carries followers at $0.99 per 1,000 and followers at $279,997.99. A median computed across a 280,000-fold spread describes nothing you can actually buy.

So this guide does something narrower. It gives you the price of 1,000 followers on each platform, shows where the spread comes from, and answers the question that price is usually a proxy for — whether paying more for followers buys you anything.

1. The distribution, before the median hides it

Percentiles across all 4,662: $2.99 at the 25th, $5.99 at the median, $29.99 at the 75th, $137.99 at the 90th, $4,899.99 at the 99th.

Two things fall out of that table. A third of the catalogue sits in a narrow $2–$5 band, which is where commodity delivery lives — and much of it is not followers at all, but views, likes and impressions, which always cost less than followers do. And the top fifth — 922 services at $50 or more per 1,000 — turns out to be the one tier that carries no protection at all, which section 5 deals with.

2. What 1,000 followers costs on each platform

The number that matters when you are budgeting. Median price per 1,000 across every service on each platform, followers included alongside cheaper units:

Telegram is the deepest market by a wide margin — 1,058 services, nearly a quarter of everything we list — and also one of the tightest, with an upper quartile of $18.99. Facebook is the opposite: 306 services, a median of $31.99, and an upper quartile above $100, because its inventory is dominated by profile and page followers that cost more to source than reaction-type services.

3. Narrowing it to followers, members and subscribers

The table above mixes cheap units with expensive ones, which pulls every median down. Filtering to services whose title is specifically about followers, members or subscribers changes the picture substantially:

So the answer most people came here for: 1,000 Instagram followers runs about $18.99, and 1,000 Telegram members about $14.49.

Two outliers worth knowing. X follower services carry a median of $165.99 for 1,000 followers — roughly nine times Instagram — and the spread inside those 34 services runs from $3.99 to $95,199.99. And YouTube subscribers barely exist as a category: there are three services in the entire catalogue, priced at $81.99, $100.99 and $120.99 per 1,000. If a quote for YouTube subscribers looks wildly out of line with those three numbers, it is.

4. Why 1,000 followers can cost 21,105x more than 1,000 other followers

Within Instagram followers alone — 135 services, all selling what the label says is the same unit — the cheapest is $1.99 per 1,000 followers and the most expensive is $41,999.99. A factor of 21,105 for one noun. Telegram members show the same shape at smaller scale: 304 services running from $0.99 to $335.99.

Most of that spread is legitimate, and it comes from four places:

• Account origin. Untargeted followers cost a fraction of country-targeted ones; Japanese real-account followers run $338.99 per 1,000 against the $1.99 untargeted floor.
• Account quality. Followers delivered from aged accounts with real posting history cost more than followers from bulk-registered ones, and they behave differently after delivery.
• Speed and ceiling. A 50,000-per-day followers service with a 5,000 cap is a different supply chain from a 1,000-per-day one.
• What is actually being sold. Some high-priced follower listings are not follower delivery at all — the $41,999.99 entry above is a real-person campaign priced per unit of human labour, not per account.

And some of the spread is not legitimate. Thirty-nine services in the catalogue are priced above $10,000 per 1,000; twenty-one of those sit in Crypto & Web3, a category with a median of $41,999.99. Those are not comparable units and should not be read as prices for followers or anything else.

5. Paying more for followers does not buy protection

This is the part that surprises people. We checked every active service for whether its specification block actually carries Refill Guarantee: Supported, then cross-tabulated that against the price of 1,000 followers.

Across the whole catalogue, 42 of 4,662 services (0.90%) carry a refill guarantee you can actually claim on if the followers fall. They concentrate in Instagram (27), TikTok (10), Twitch (3) and YouTube (2). Telegram has zero, despite being the largest category we list — which matters, because Telegram members are the followers most people start with.

Read the bottom row again. Of the 677 most expensive services in the catalogue — everything above $100 per 1,000 followers — not one carries a refill guarantee. The tier where protection is most common is $5–$20, the boring middle. A premium buys you account quality and delivery behaviour. It does not buy you a remedy, and past $100 it stops buying even the possibility of one.

The same inversion shows up in the wording that sounds like a guarantee. Follower services whose title claims "non-drop" carry a median price of $12.99 against $4.99 for everything else — a 2.6x premium — and exactly one of those 397 services carries a real refill guarantee, a rate of 0.25%. Services making no claim whatsoever are nearly four times more likely to be guaranteed (0.96%). We pulled that apart in our breakdown of what "non-drop" actually means; the pricing point here is only that the premium and the protection are not the same purchase.

If you want the guarantee rather than the adjective, start from Instagram followers with a 30-day refill at $3.99 or a 90-day refill listing at $15.99, and check the refill line rather than the title.

6. What your first 1,000 followers should cost: $1.40

Every listing carries a minimum quantity, and the minimum quantity decides what your first order of followers costs. Across all 4,662 services, the median minimum order works out to $1.40.

• 2,110 services can be ordered for $1 or less
• 4,044 services can be ordered for $5 or less
• 84 services need more than $50 to start

In practice: Telegram members at $0.99 per 1,000 followers with a 500 minimum cost $0.50 to test. Instagram followers carrying a 30-day refill cost $0.04 at their 10-unit minimum. Facebook profile followers cost $0.02.

That is the most useful number in this article. A first order of followers is not a purchase, it is a measurement — of start time, of delivery curve, of how many of those followers fall off in the following week. Those three inputs are worth more than any price comparison you can read off a page, and they cost about a dollar. Our guide to reading a service specification covers which fields to watch while that test order runs, and how drip-feed works explains the scheduling option that changes how a large order of followers arrives.

7. What this data cannot tell you, and what we should disclose

RunScale sells these follower services, so three things need saying plainly.

We are a reseller, not the supplier. Every price in this article carries our markup over what we pay upstream. Across the catalogue that markup has a median of about 2.06x, with a quarter of services below 1.42x and a quarter above 3.28x. You are not looking at wholesale for followers. A cheaper panel is usually a panel running a thinner margin, not a better supply chain — but the wholesale floor is real and we sit above it.

This is catalogue data, not delivery data. We did not buy 4,662 services and measure how many followers stayed. Every figure here is computed from what the listings say. The things we can verify from operations — whether an order started, completed, or refunded automatically — are a different question, covered in how dispatch actually works.

The catalogue is not curated, and the spread reflects that. Thirty-nine services above $10,000 per 1,000, a 21,105x range inside a single platform, and a category whose median is $41,999.99 are all signs of an inventory that mirrors what suppliers list rather than what a careful buyer of followers would hand-pick. Our own filters do not hide it, and a price article should not either.

Measured on 23 October 2026 across all 4,662 active services. Prices and availability move with supply — treat the ratios as the durable signal and the dollar figures as a snapshot.

8. FAQ

What is the cheapest way to buy 1,000 followers?
Around $0.99 per 1,000 for Telegram members and $1.99 for Instagram followers are the floor prices in our catalogue, and 395 services sit below $1 per 1,000 overall. Cheapest is not the same as best value — check whether the listing carries a refill window before optimising on price alone.

Why is there a 21,000x price difference for the same followers?
Because the same label is not the same product. Account origin, account age, delivery speed and whether a human performs an action all change the cost of supplying followers. Some of the spread is real, and some is nonsense pricing in categories that are not comparable units.

Does paying more mean the followers stay?
Partly. Higher-priced followers generally come from better accounts with slower delivery, and that genuinely improves retention. But price does not buy a remedy: only 42 of 4,662 services (0.90%) carry a refill guarantee, and none of the 677 services above $100 per 1,000 do.

How much should my first order of followers be?
As little as the minimum allows. The median minimum order across the catalogue is $1.40 and 2,110 services can be ordered for a dollar or less. A small first order gives you real start-time and drop-rate data before you commit a real budget to followers.

Are prices quoted per 1,000 or per unit?
Per 1,000, throughout this article and throughout our catalogue. A $5.99 followers service with a 100 minimum costs $0.60 to order, not $599.

Do these prices for followers change?
Constantly, with upstream supply. Everything here was measured on one day across 4,662 active services. The platform rankings, the 0.90% guarantee rate and the 2.6x premium on non-drop claims are the durable parts; the dollar figures are a snapshot.

The short version

1,000 followers costs about $18.99 on Instagram and $14.49 on Telegram. The catalogue median is $5.99 and it is close to useless — the range runs from $0.99 to $279,998, so the only price that matters is the one on the platform whose followers you are actually buying.

More usefully: 42 of 4,662 services carry a guarantee, none of them costs more than $100 per 1,000 followers, and your first order should cost about $1.40. Filter on the refill line rather than the price tag, and spend the dollar finding out whether a service delivers followers before you spend the rest.

Ready to check it against live listings? Browse the Instagram collection and read the refill line on each specification block — or start from our Telegram service review if Telegram members are the followers you need.