How much does a logo cost?
A logo costs anywhere from under $50 to $50,000 or more, and the range reflects what is actually being bought rather than the quality of the drawing. A marketplace template or an AI generator ($5 to $500) buys a file. A freelance designer ($500 to $5,000) buys a considered mark made by one person. A studio or brand practice ($5,000 to $50,000 and up) buys the decision the mark expresses: the positioning, the naming logic, and the identity system the logo belongs to. The cheapest options cost the most when the business outgrows them and pays to do the work again.
Price tracks the decision behind the mark, not the pixels in it. A logo is the visible artifact of brand work, and the cheapest tiers sell the artifact with no decision underneath it. They are fast and inexpensive because they skip the part that takes judgment: deciding what the business is, who it serves, and what the mark therefore needs to carry. A forty-dollar logo gets replaced within a year because there was never a decision underneath it worth keeping. That is the pattern cheap marketing repeats everywhere; the saving is real at purchase and gone by the rebuild.
Where this matters
What a business should spend depends on how much the mark has to carry. A sole proprietor testing an idea is right to start cheap, as long as everyone involved knows the logo is a placeholder. A business making a real market commitment, with a name it intends to keep and surfaces it intends to grow, is buying something the cheap tiers cannot produce: a mark chosen against a decision, built to the right type, and specified to hold up everywhere it appears. The number matters less than the match between what is paid and what the business actually needs the mark to do.
For how brand and identity work is scoped inside the practice, see In Practice.