We get asked all the time where you can find the best UGC creators, so we've put together this simple guide which outlines all the ways our clients have found UGC creators in 2026 (so far). This includes methods that we have used ourselves when we were building and scaling mobile apps fast with a small army of UGC creators.

Let's jump into it.

Sources

#ugccreator and #ugccreators on TikTok

If you go on TikTok and literally search for #ugccreator or #ugccreators, you will find thousands of creators posting their portfolio and open to new work. Scroll through these creators and pick your favourites to DM or email.

We'll get into specifics of what you should look for in a bit, but generally creators that have posted a lot, speak well, and create authentic looking videos are best (especially for TikTok where authenticity sells).

This is the best method for finding UGC creators, however it's all outbound and can take the longest.

Post a job on Upwork

If you don't know about Upwork, it's time to get to know it. Upwork is a freelancer website that lets you post jobs and have people apply for the job. This is great for getting a bunch of inbound very quickly; you post a description of what you're looking for, what your app is, and you'll literally have people sending in their portfolio and a short message to work with you.

You can very quickly see if this a creator that matches your customer profile, if they will resonate with your audience, and if they'll complete the job. Upwork lets you see previous reviews for the creator's work and how much money they've made on the platform, in total. Generally you want a healthy amount of reviews that sound real, and a good amount of money made on the platform.

This is the fastest method for finding UGC creators, the quality is pretty solid, and it's all inbound.

Send out a Tweet saying you're looking for UGC creators

You can go onto Twitter (now X) and send out a tweet saying something like:

"I am hiring UGC creators to market [a mobile app | socks | whatever] DMs are open! #ugc #ugccreator #ugccreators" You will get a LOT of inbound. Assuming your DMs are actually open, I've made that mistake before. Sometimes they will only reply to your tweet and you'll have to DM them (they're using a Twitter automation tool), but that's pretty easy to keep up with.

This works pretty well, it's just generally an older crowd. You will get some Gen Z, but a lot of UGC creators on Twitter are Millenial or Gen X. There are also many bots, which you'll have to be wary of.

Platforms or UGC Marketplaces

There are a lot of platforms out there that offer sourcing UGC as a service, there are probably even a few names you know like SideShift. These platforms generally source creators from university kids that want to make a couple extra dollars, charge a "finders fee" on the creators, and connect you with them for jobs.

These platforms usually don't work out well. We have personal experience with SideShift, and other platforms like it, and what tends to happen is their creators flake. Since they are not actually UGC creators, and often times have no aspiration to be UGC creators, they will do half the job, get paid for what they did, then leave you hanging half way through your campaign. Not ideal.

All that being said, this is a very fast solution, and all inbound. The quality of the creators is just not ideal, and there is a lot of overhead having to manage and keep on-top of everything they do.

What to look for in a Portfolio

When you have a hundred portfolios to look through for the first time, you are going to wonder what it is that you are even looking for that separates the "bad" creators from the "good" creators. It's hard to narrow it down specifically, and honestly it's very dependent on your customer profile and your target audience, but here are some general things to keep in mind:

1. Posting consistency: Did the post at a regular cadence (ideally at least once a day)?
2. Hook variety: Have they tried a bunch of different styles at getting people's attention?
3. Authenticity: Does the video feel authentic (super important for TikTok)?
4. Knowledge of the platform: Are the videos getting out of 200 view jail? Are they prompting the audience to engage with the content?
5. Targeting: Are they targeting the correct audience (if you are selling to the US, are their posts primarily getting a US audience)?

Posting Schedules

Every platform you post on is a bit different, each one rewards uploading content in different ways, but generally, the safest bet is to:

• Ask the creators to post once a day for a month,
• Change their hooks every few days until something resonates with your audience, and then keep doing that one,
• Make sure their account are warmed up, and they are posting from the account you are targeting (So important)

Ways to Pay Creators

There are a number of ways you can setup the payment terms with the creators, but generally these are the ones we see most often:

• Retainer: ~$30 per video, or ~1k per month (assuming they are posting everyday) is fairly normal for good quality creators that post everyday on a fresh account that they manage, writing the hooks and scripts themselves.
• Performance (CPM): pay per 1000 views, with minimum and maximum view thresholds; this is great to incentivize a creator to take ownership of the videos and really push to increase the virality and spread of their content.
• Hybrid: set a lower base retainer for the month, and then pay performance on-top of that.
• Bonus: give an extra bonus once videos reach specific milestones ("If you get 250k views, I'll give you an extra $200); this just further incentivizes the creator to take ownership of the videos.

Our recommendation: Pay a low retainer ($250 per month) with a CPM of ($0.30 per 1k views).

How to Pay Creators

We build the easiest solution to pay creators globally, without the invoice, tax, or payment method headache with Grade (usegrade.com). I obviously highly recommend that, but I may be biased.

Creators tend to like to get paid via PayPal, CashApp, Zelle, or Venmo if they are in the United States. If they are elsewhere, they require international bank transfers, PayPal, or crypto.

Grade offers all of those payment methods, and even local options, for 190 countries worldwide.

Creators love us because we offer the exact payment method they want, every time.

Brands and agencies love us because there is no onboarding for the creators, no fussing with invoices, they don't have to worry about global tax compliance, and they can offer any payment method to their creators, anywhere in the world.

Usage Rights

A lot of creators will try to charge you extra for usage rights. You should never pay extra for usage rights, this is usually just a negotiation tactic. Tell them you won't pay them more for it, and walk away; they almost always re-engage the conversation.

What to do after UGC

UGC is just the beginning; what UGC gets you is an understand of what content resonates with your audience, content market fit as we call it. It is possible to power your entire distribution strategy with just UGC, but it is incredibly difficult to do and often not worth the hassle. Most large consumer apps you've heard of 'just using UGC to scale' are leveraging Meta and TikTok ads to drive more traffic. This is honestly the secret not many people mention, so there you go, now you know.

The plan for UGC is to find what content resonates with your audience, which means you release a few videos with the same style hook which all do pretty well (not mega viral, but well, >100k views each), and then you run those as Meta or TikTok ad creatives.

This not only adds more power behind your distribution machine, but it also lets you accurately track cost per install (CPI), cost per trial (CPT), and cost per purchase or subscription (CPP or CPS). This gives you actual KPIs you can now track and plan around. Having these KPIs measured is invaluable if you want to sell your app in the future; all businesses will want to see these numbers so that they can understand what it is that they're buying.

Do I need an Agency?

This is a very circumstantial question; for some app founders, I'd say yes, and for some, I'd say no. Generally I lean towards no, unless you are absolutely swamped and you have run this UGC game before.

Agencies help a lot with speed. If you pick the right agency, they are professionals at what they do, and can very quickly get a UGC content machine running for your app. It's incredible to watch. However, all of the creators they hire are their creators, not yours, so as soon as you stop paying the agency, you've lost all of your creators. This might not matter to you. Agencies also help a lot with removing overhead of managing creators, they keep their touch points low, and let you focus on other aspects of your business, for a fee.

If you are early on in your mobile app or UGC journey, I'd say it's better for you to manage your own UGC distribution channel. This will give you an intuitive feel over what content resonates with your audience firsthand, and it'll give you a lot of experience dealing with creators, which is a lesson on it's own. You are also closer to the action and can identify what works and what doesn't a lot faster. That's invaluable for making good product decisions or pivoting to your next idea.