Ask five agencies what it costs to name a company and you'll get five different numbers. One folds it into a five thousand dollar logo package. Another prices it as its own twelve thousand dollar engagement. A specialist shop can run past a hundred thousand for what looks, on paper, like the exact same deliverable: a name, a tagline option, a green light to file. The spread is real. It comes down to one thing: how much trademark and legal defense work actually sits inside that number.
Most branding agencies bill naming at whatever rate they bill everything else, roughly one hundred to one hundred fifty dollars an hour in the US. Fold in a logo, a starter style guide, and the whole project usually lands between ten and fifty thousand dollars, with naming as one line inside that number rather than its own deep engagement. You get a handful of workshops and a shortlist fast. What you don't get, most of the time, is a serious trademark search on every candidate. Just a quick database check to rule out the obvious clashes.
Naming only shops price differently, because naming is the entire business, not a line item. Minimums start around ten to twenty five thousand dollars. Hourly rates run two to three hundred. And a real share of their finished projects land between fifty and two hundred thousand. That money buys several rounds of a hundred or more candidate names, a proper trademark and linguistic conflict check on the shortlist, and someone in the room who can defend that shortlist to a skeptical founder or board. The brainstorm is the cheap part. Screening and defense is the premium.
The government's own cut is small. A standard US trademark application costs three hundred fifty dollars per class online, plus another hundred if the filing is missing required details. That's not where the money goes. The expensive part happens before anyone files: a search across federal and state trademark databases, plus real use on the ground, because a name can be blocked by a mark that was never even registered. Skip that step and you risk a rejected application, an opposition after launch, or a lawsuit once the name is already on the building. Geography moves the number too. The same scope runs twenty five to fifty dollars an hour in lower cost markets, and one hundred to one hundred fifty here. That alone can triple a quote before anyone has written a single candidate name.
When a quote comes in, ask one direct question: is trademark screening included, or is it a surprise add on once you've already fallen for a name? A price that looks too good almost always means that piece got cut. Weighing a generalist agency against a specialist naming shop? Bring your shortlist and that exact question to the first conversation. It costs nothing but the meeting, and it's the fastest way to find out which kind of engagement the name actually needs.