Brand Naming Service Cost: What Agencies Charge
Naming is the most legally exposed branding decision you'll make. Here's what the service costs - and what you get at each price point.
Brand naming service cost is the most underresearched line item in a branding budget - and the most legally consequential. The name your business or product launches under will either be a trademark asset or a liability. Professional naming services exist to give you the former.
Most founders either ignore naming (defaulting to whatever sounds good in a meeting) or hand it to their logo designer as a free bonus. Neither approach holds up when you encounter a trademark conflict at scale - or when a name fails to travel across markets, categories, or languages.
At Through The Glass Creatives, naming is part of every full brand engagement where the client is launching something new. What follows is an honest look at what professional naming costs and why.
What Professional Brand Naming Includes
Professional naming is not a brainstorm. It is a structured process: linguistic analysis, competitor audit, audience association research, name generation across multiple naming strategies (real words, coined words, portmanteaus, acronyms, metaphors), trademark pre-screening against USPTO and relevant international databases, domain availability check, and cultural/language review for international brands. Each phase has legitimate cost.
Price Ranges for Professional Naming
Naming Bundled in a Brand Engagement ($2,000-$6,000 add-on)
Most brand studios - including TTGC Global - offer naming as a phase within a full branding services engagement. This is appropriate for startups and growth-stage businesses that are also developing their identity simultaneously. The process is rigorous but scoped to the project context. Expect $2,000-$6,000 on top of the base brand engagement.
Standalone Naming from a Boutique Studio ($5,000-$15,000)
A boutique naming engagement - research, generation, screening, rationale, domain recommendations - runs $5,000-$15,000 from a specialist studio. This tier is appropriate for single-product launches, sub-brand naming, and campaign names where the business identity is already established.
Specialized Naming Firm ($15,000-$75,000+)
Firms like Catchword, Namebase, or Igor International specialize exclusively in naming. Their process is the most rigorous - cultural analysis, international linguistic screening, legal-grade trademark research across multiple jurisdictions, and executive facilitation. This tier is appropriate for enterprise rebrands, product launches in regulated categories, and names that must work in multiple languages and markets.
"A name that fails a trademark search after you've built awareness around it doesn't cost you the naming fee. It costs you your brand equity." - Mherie, TTGC Co-Founder
Why Cheap Naming Is Expensive
Trademark conflicts discovered after launch require rebranding - a far more expensive exercise.
Names that test poorly with audiences cost you conversion before you've launched a single ad.
Names that don't travel across languages create international expansion barriers.
Domain unavailability forces compromised URLs that erode SEO and brand recall.
How TTGC Approaches Naming
When naming is part of a TTGC brand engagement, we take it through research, creative generation, and trademark pre-screening before presenting any options. We don't present names we can't defend. If you're at the stage where naming is the right starting point, the Growth Assessment will tell us where to begin.
Ready to work with Through The Glass Creatives?
Book a free Brand and Growth Assessment and see exactly how Through The Glass Creatives would approach it.
Sources
- Naming Newsletter. "What Naming Firms Charge in 2025." The Naming Newsletter, Mar 2025.
- Catchword. "Brand Naming Pricing Guide." Catchword Blog, 2024.
- Kohli, C. & LaBahn, D.W. "The Corporate Brand Naming Decision Process." Journal of Business Research, Jan 2024.
- INTA. "Trademark Filing and Clearance Costs - 2025 Survey." International Trademark Association, 2025.
