ugcflowsUsage rights
Also called licensing, content licence, media rights
Usage rights are what a brand is allowed to do with a video after you deliver it: which channels it can appear on, whether they can put ad spend behind it, and for how long.
Usage rights are the part of a UGC deal that decides most of the price, and they are the part most rate cards never mention. Filming is an afternoon. A licence that lets a brand run your face as a paid ad for twelve months is twelve months of media, and it costs them nothing extra once they have it.
A licence has three axes and a brief has to name all three: the channels (their own account, paid ads, their website, retail screens, email), the territory, and the term. Any one of them left open defaults in the brand's favour, because they are the ones holding the file.
The practical rule is that organic use on the brand's own account for 30 days is the floor, paid ads for a month is about half again on top, and perpetual rights on any channel are roughly three and a half times the floor. The rate calculator walks the whole ladder.
Related terms
- Whitelisting
Whitelisting is when a brand runs paid ad spend through your social handle rather than their own, so the ad appears in feeds as a post from you.
- Perpetuity
Perpetuity means the brand's licence to use your video has no end date, so they can keep running it, including as a paid ad, forever and without paying again.
- Exclusivity
Exclusivity is a clause stopping you from working with competing brands in the same category for an agreed period, so it is paid time you cannot sell to anyone else.
- Raw footage
Raw footage is the unedited source clips from a shoot, and handing it to a brand lets them recut it into videos you never agreed to and never see.
Put a number on it
The free rate calculator prices a deal from the deliverable, the batch size and the licence, and hands you a sentence to send back. No account, nothing to sign up for.
Last reviewed September 12, 2026. Nothing here is legal advice.