Do Our Outdoor Rates Differ by City? The Auto and Van Cards Side by Side (2026)

It is the question we are asked most often by anyone booking in more than one city: does an auto hood cost more in Mumbai than in Lucknow, and should the Bangalore quote look different from the Kolkata one? We read all ten of our own published city pages side by side to answer it properly, and the honest answer is blunter than expected. For auto branding the rate does not change at all. For mobile vans it does, but only in two specific places, and one of them is not the day rate everyone argues about.

Do auto branding rates change from city to city?

No. We read the auto branding page for Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Lucknow, and every one of them publishes the same four numbers. There is no metro premium, no tier-two discount and no city loading. A hood in Lucknow costs exactly what a hood in Mumbai costs.

That means a 300-auto hood campaign is Rs.1,95,000 before tax whether you brief it for Ahmedabad or for Chennai, and 500 back panel stickers in the 24x6 size are Rs.85,000 in either. If a quote you are holding prices the same format differently in two cities, the difference is not coming from the rate card.

Where do the city rate cards actually differ?

On mobile vans, and that is the whole list. A van is the only format on this site priced per city, because it is the only one where you are hiring a vehicle, a driver and a daily route rather than buying a printed surface. Here is every city card next to the others.

Two things jump out of that table. The T-Shape and L-Shape day rates are the same in eight of the ten cities, so the format most campaigns actually book barely moves at all. The LED truck is where the money is: Rs.7,000 a day in Kolkata against Rs.9,500 in Delhi is a 36 percent gap for the same vehicle. Six of the ten cities also publish a 10-day discount that takes the day rates to Rs.2,700, Rs.3,000 and Rs.7,000.

The ten-day discount is the third thing worth checking, and it is not published everywhere either. Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Lucknow all state that bookings of ten days or more bring the day rates down to Rs.2,700, Rs.3,000 and Rs.7,000. Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata publish no equivalent discount. That does not mean none is available on a long brief, only that we have not printed one, so ask for it rather than assuming it.

What does the same ten-day booking cost in each city?

Day rates are the wrong thing to compare, because the fabrication line changes the answer. Below is one identical brief, a single T-Shape van for ten days, costed from each card. We have used the 10-day discounted rate wherever the city publishes one.

Same van, same ten days, same brief, and the totals run from Rs.22,000 to Rs.35,000 across the real city cards. That is 59 percent more in Hyderabad than in Kolkata, and almost none of it comes from the day rate everyone negotiates over. Rs.8,000 of it is a fabrication line that four cities do not charge at all. Landed with 18 percent GST those two totals become Rs.25,960 and Rs.41,300.

Run the identical comparison over thirty days and the ranking changes. Kolkata at Rs.2,200 with no fabrication is Rs.66,000. Chennai is Rs.75,000. Delhi and Bangalore are Rs.90,000. The six cities that charge fabrication come to Rs.8,000 plus thirty days at the discounted Rs.2,700, which is Rs.89,000, and that now sits below both Delhi and Bangalore. Hyderabad goes from 59 percent more expensive than Kolkata on a ten-day brief to 35 percent more on a thirty-day one, and overtakes two cities that never charged fabrication but never published a long-booking discount either. The longer the campaign, the more the day rate decides it and the less the fabrication line does.

What about boards, inserts and shop signage?

Same answer as autos: one national price. The no-parking board rate is Rs.45 per board for 1,000 to 4,999 boards and Rs.35 from 5,000, with a 1,000-board minimum, and we checked that against all ten city pages. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Lucknow publish those two figures without variation. Newspaper insertion is priced per copy nationally at Rs.1.25 for an A5 leaflet, Rs.1.70 for an A4 and Rs.2.20 for an A2, with a 50,000-copy minimum per format. Shop name boards are quoted per square foot at Rs.690 for ACP, Rs.260 for GSB LED and Rs.85 for non-lit, and the city pages that repeat those rates carry the same numbers.

That puts the scoreboard at four formats priced nationally and one priced by city. If you are budgeting a campaign across several cities, the van line is the only one you have to rebuild per city. Everything else you can cost once and multiply, which is a considerably less painful planning exercise than most buyers expect.

Which page do you book from when the national and city cards disagree?

The city page, every time. We are naming our own inconsistency here rather than quietly averaging it: the national mobile van page publishes a one-time setup of Rs.12,000 for a T-Shape, Rs.15,000 for an L-Shape and Rs.20,000 for an LED truck, and not one of those three figures appears on any of the ten city pages, which publish Rs.8,000, Rs.20,000 and Rs.10,000 instead. The hub page also prices an LED truck at Rs.9,000 a day, which sits between the real Kolkata rate of Rs.7,000 and the real Delhi rate of Rs.9,500 without matching either.

The honest reading is that the hub page describes the format nationally and the city page is what we actually quote against. Until the two are reconciled, ask for the city page rate in writing and ignore the hub setup figures. If you are comparing us with another vendor, ask them the same question: which of your published pages is the one you will invoice from.

Why does van pricing move by city when auto pricing does not?

The two products have different cost structures, and the rate cards reflect that rather than any city loading policy. An auto hood is a printed cover fitted once to a rickshaw that is already working its own routes. What you buy is design, print and installation, and none of those three change much between Jaipur and Kolkata, which is why the number does not either.

A van is the opposite. You are hiring a vehicle, a driver and fuel for a 40 to 45 kilometre route every day, plus the municipal permission to run a moving advertisement, and the permitting body is different in every city: BBMP in Bangalore, MCGM in Mumbai, MCD in Delhi, KMDA in Kolkata, the Corporation in Chennai. That local operating cost is what the day rate carries, and it is also why Kolkata, where our card is cheapest, and Delhi, where the LED rate is highest, sit at opposite ends of the same table.

What is the one auto branding cost that does differ by city?

The auto-union fee. Every one of the ten city pages mentions it, every one says the same thing, and none of them publishes a number: it is billed through at actuals. That is deliberate rather than evasive. The fee is set by the local union for the area your autos work in, it is not our margin, and quoting a national average for it would be inventing a figure. What we do commit to on those pages is quoting it upfront and billing it at cost rather than burying it in the per-auto rate.

So if your Hyderabad auto quote and your Jaipur auto quote come out different, the per-auto rate is not the reason. Ask for the union fee as a separate line on both, and compare the two campaigns on rate card plus union fee plus tax.

Our verdict: how should you compare two city quotes?

Stop comparing day rates and start comparing the ten-day landed total. For auto branding there is nothing to compare, because the card is national, so put your energy into the union fee line and the quantity tier instead. For vans, ask three questions of every quote: what is the day rate, is fabrication inside it or on top, and does a 10-day discount apply. Those three answers explain the entire Rs.22,000 to Rs.35,000 spread in the table above, and the third one is the question buyers forget to ask. Send us the cities you are considering and the number of days, and we will quote the landed total per city rather than the day rate, so you are comparing the same thing twice.

Your quote comparison checklist

Six questions to put to any outdoor quote, ours included, before you sign it.

• Is this rate from the city page or a national page? Ask which one the invoice will follow.
• For a van, is one-time fabrication inside the day rate or billed separately, and at what figure per format?
• Does a 10-day or longer booking trigger a lower day rate, and is that written into the quote?
• For autos, has the union fee been quoted as a separate line, and is it at actuals?
• Are the quantity tiers right? 300 and 500 autos for hoods, 500 and 800 for back panel stickers.
• Are your dates anywhere near 1 to 15 October in Kolkata, where a 25 percent Puja premium is published?