How to Find UGC Creators: Marketplaces, Search Tools and TikTok

TL;DR

• There are three places to look: UGC marketplaces (Billo, Insense, Influee, Collabstr), creator search tools such as Tokfluence, and TikTok itself. Each one suits a different brief.
• Marketplaces are fastest, but you pay twice: a subscription or a per-order fee on top of what the creator charges. Insense adds 7% to 20%, Influee and Collabstr add 10%.
• Self-described UGC creators are a small pool. Fewer than 1 in 10,000 creators in our index of 15M+ TikTok creators call themselves a "UGC creator", and 78% of those have under 10,000 followers.
• The bigger pool never calls itself UGC. Small creators who already film your product category on camera make the same kind of video. A search tool like Tokfluence finds them by what they film, and most have never been on a marketplace.
• Expect roughly $100 to $300 per video from a typical creator, before usage rights for paid ads. One 2026 survey of six marketplaces puts the average at $212.

Search "UGC creators" and half the results are written for people who want to become one. The other half are marketplaces ranking their own platform first.

This guide is for the brand side. What a UGC creator actually is, the three places to find one, what each route costs with sources, and how to find the creators who make good UGC but have never listed themselves anywhere.

What is a UGC creator?

A UGC creator is someone a brand pays to make videos or photos that look like ordinary customer content, which the brand then posts on its own channels or runs as ads. The creator's audience is not part of the deal. You are buying the video, not the reach.

That is the whole difference from an influencer, and it changes what you should look for:

The line blurs in practice. Plenty of creators will make the video, post it on their own account, and license it to you for ads, all in one deal. That hybrid is often the best value, and it is where small creators shine. More on that below.

Where can you find UGC creators?

There are three routes, and the right one depends on how many videos you need and how much of the admin you want to own.

The honest version: if you need 20 ad variations next week and do not care who makes them, a marketplace is the right call, and we are not the tool for that job. If you need creators who genuinely use products like yours, in a specific niche or country, a marketplace only shows you the people who chose to list there. That second job is what we built Tokfluence for, and the step-by-step is below.

What do UGC marketplaces cost?

Most marketplaces charge you twice: a platform fee, and the creator's own rate on top. Here is what each one publishes.

Two things worth noticing. First, the fee scales with your spend, so a marketplace that looks cheap at $500 a month of creator payments looks very different at $5,000. Second, every one of these pools is limited to creators who signed up. That is fine for generic ad creative. It is a real limit when you need a pet-supplement creator in Ireland.

We went through the subscription-versus-commission maths in detail in our Collabstr alternatives comparison, if you are deciding between the two models.

How much does a UGC creator charge per video?

Roughly $100 to $300 for a single 30 to 60 second video from a working creator, before any paid-ad usage rights. Published figures vary with who is counting:

Treat these as a starting point. The main things that move the price:

1. Usage rights. A video you can run as a paid ad, for months, costs more than one used organically for 30 days. Agree the licence term and channels in writing before filming.
2. Hook variations. Three different opening seconds on the same video is the most useful thing you can ask for. Ask whether it is included in the rate.
3. Raw versus edited. Raw footage is cheaper. Edited with captions and music is more.
4. Posting on their own account. If you also want the creator to post it, you are now buying reach too, and the price follows their audience.

If you want benchmarks on what creators charge to post to their own audience, our first influencer campaign guide has rates by follower size.

Who are the self-described UGC creators?

A small crowd of very small accounts, many of whom post for each other. We checked our own index on 14 October 2026:

Measured: Tokfluence creator index, 14 October 2026. Every count above is a count in our index, so it is also the floor for TikTok as a whole: at least 887 self-described UGC creators and at least 7,800 #ugccreator users with 1,000+ followers exist on TikTok. TikTok has more accounts than we have crawled, so the real numbers are higher. As a share of TikTok's 1.59 billion ad reach these round to zero, so we leave that figure out.

We then read the top 100, by relevance, of the 829 under 50,000 followers. Their median follower count was 5,266, median engagement rate 6.9%, and 89 of the 100 had an email address that passed our validation check.

The more interesting finding was what they post about. Their most common hashtags after #ugc and #ugccreator were #ugccommunity, #ugcexample, #ugctips and #ugcjourney. A large share of self-described UGC creators make content about doing UGC, for other UGC creators.

That matters less than it sounds for pure ad creative, because you are not buying their audience. It matters a lot if you were hoping for a creator who will also post the video to people who might buy your product. An audience of aspiring UGC creators rarely is.

Caveats, plainly: keyword matching on bios and hashtags undercounts creators who do UGC without saying so, and overcounts a few who mention it once. The top-100 sample is ranked by our search relevance, not drawn at random. Read these numbers as the shape of the pool, not a census.

How do you find UGC creators who never call themselves UGC creators?

Search for the content, not the label. A creator who already films skincare routines, unboxes kitchen gadgets or reviews running shoes on camera is making UGC-style video every week. Most of them have never joined a marketplace.

The numbers above show why. About 1 in 2,000 creators in our index has ever used #ugccreator, and fewer than 1 in 10,000 put "UGC creator" in their profile. Search for the label and you only see that sliver. Search for the product category and you see everyone who already films it.

You can do this by hand on TikTok (see the free method further down), or with a creator search tool.

How do you find UGC creators with Tokfluence?

Describe the creator in plain words, filter down to small accounts you can email, then save and export the list. Tokfluence is a TikTok creator search tool with more than 15 million creators indexed. It is also the tool we build, so weigh this section accordingly.

Plain-language search returns creators by what they film, not by what they put in their bio.

1. Describe the creator in plain words. For example "UK skincare creators who film their routine on camera". Search your product category, not "UGC", and run three or four phrasings: "home espresso", "coffee gear review", "morning coffee routine". Different words find different people.
2. Set followers to 1,000 to 50,000. Under 50,000 covers 92% of the creators we index, which means at least 15.3 million TikTok creators (12,820,941 nano + 2,434,184 micro in our index on 8 September 2026; a floor, since TikTok has more accounts than we have crawled), and the follower tier data shows small accounts are not less engaged. Our guide on how to find micro-influencers covers this band in more detail.
3. Add engagement, region and "has email". A minimum engagement rate drops dormant accounts. Region keeps you to the markets you ship to. The email filter keeps only creators you can reach without a DM, which matters here: 81% of self-described UGC creators list one.
4. Selling through TikTok Shop? Add the TikTok Shop filter. It narrows the results to creators active on TikTok Shop, who are already used to filming a product for people to buy. Skip it if you only want ad footage.
5. Check recent posts, save to a list, export. Open each profile and check three things: do they talk to camera, are the light and sound usable, and would the first two seconds stop a scroll. Save the keepers to a list, then export a CSV with username, email, followers, engagement rate, region and profile URL for whatever tool you send email from.

Every filter sits in one row. For UGC, region, contact and follower range do most of the work.

Every list exports to CSV, so the shortlist goes straight into your email tool.

What does Tokfluence cost for UGC sourcing?

Pro is $99 a month for 10,000 credits, and one credit is one creator profile. That is 10,000 profiles a month, enough to shortlist creators across several product categories and countries every month. There is a free plan with no card; you add a card only at checkout.

Source: tokfluence.com/pricing, read October 2026. If you would rather not do the searching yourself, the Discovery Service is the plan where we build the list.

We are not putting these next to marketplace fees, because they buy different things. A marketplace fee also covers the brief, the payment and the licence. With Tokfluence you pay creators directly and agree usage rights with them yourself.

When is a marketplace still the better pick?

When you want someone else to run the deal. We do not handle briefs, payments or licensing contracts. If you need 20 ad variations next week from whoever is available, or one system that recruits, pays and licenses, a marketplace like Insense or Influee fits better. Tokfluence finds and vets niche creators at volume, then hands clean data to the tools you already run outreach in.

How do you find UGC creators on TikTok for free?

Use TikTok's own search, hashtags and your competitors' tagged posts. It costs nothing and it is slow, which is fine for a first test of five creators.

• Search the hashtags UGC creators use: #ugccreator, #ugcexample, #ugcportfolio. Both #ugcexample and #ugcportfolio showed up in our sample, and they are the tags creators use to post work they made for brands, which is the most useful signal.
• Search your category plus "review" or "honest review". This finds people already filming products like yours.
• Look at who tags your competitors. Open a competitor's tagged videos and note the small accounts. They have already proved they can make a product video in your category.
• Check for an email in the bio. In the self-described UGC group, 81% list one. DMs work, but email gets a faster yes on rate and usage terms.

The limit is scale. Past ten creators, the manual checking takes longer than the briefing.

How do you vet a UGC creator before paying?

Ask for examples, then check them against your brief. Four checks catch most bad fits:

If they will also post the video, add the influencer checks: engagement rate and average views, compared against their tier. Our nano to mega tier breakdown has the medians.

Which route should you pick?

Pick from the constraint that actually binds:

• You need creators in a specific niche or country. A creator search tool like Tokfluence, searching your category rather than the word "UGC".
• You need lots of ad variations, fast, and do not care who makes them. A marketplace. Insense or Influee if you want payments and usage rights handled in one place, Collabstr if you want to pay per order with no subscription.
• You want the video and the creator's audience. Small creators from a search tool, on a hybrid deal: they post it, and you license it for ads.
• You are testing with five creators and no tool budget. TikTok search and competitor tags.

Most brands end up using two of these. A marketplace for volume ad creative, and a direct shortlist of small niche creators for the content that needs to feel like it came from a real customer.

Sources

• Insense pricing: insense.pro/pricing, read October 2026
• Influee pricing and average video price: influee.co/pricing, read October 2026
• Collabstr pricing: Collabstr pricing page, read September 2026, as documented in our Collabstr alternatives comparison
• Billo: no public pricing on billo.app; bundle prices as reported by ppc.io, January 2026
• UGC rate averages: ppc.io, UGC Rates in 2026
• Disclosure rules: FTC, Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking
• Tokfluence plans and credits: tokfluence.com/pricing, read October 2026
• Creator counts, follower bands, engagement and hashtags: Tokfluence creator index, queried 14 October 2026