How to Price Video Production: Shoot Days, Kit, Edit Hours

Most "video production cost" tables online quote day rates and per-video ranges without saying where the numbers came from, and the range for a "corporate video" can run from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This guide doesn't add another table. It shows how to calculate a price from your own costs and time, so you can explain every line to a client. Once the client says yes, how to invoice as a videographer covers deposits, phase invoices and the usage licence line.

How do you set a video shoot day rate?

Count every hour the shoot day consumes, multiply by your hourly floor, and add a kit charge. A 10-hour day on location is rarely 10 hours of work: batteries, cards and lights are prepared the day before, and footage has to be offloaded and backed up afterwards.

The hourly floor is the lowest rate that covers the pay you want, the benefits and taxes you now pay yourself, and business costs, over the hours you can actually bill. Our freelance rate floor guide works one out at about $97 an hour; this guide uses that figure.

Worked example, owner-operator, full day: 10 hours on location + 2 hours prep and offload = 12 hours × $97 = $1,164 for labour. Add the kit charge below ($87), and the day is $1,251, quoted as $1,250 a shoot day. A half day on the same basis (5 hours on site + 1.5 hours prep and offload = 6.5 hours) is $630.50 plus $87, so $717.50; quoting a half day at half the full-day price would lose you $92.50 because the prep doesn't halve.

As wage context only: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay of employed camera operators and editors at $36.10 an hour ($75,100 a year) in May 2025, about the same for camera operators ($74,990) and film and video editors ($75,420) (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Film and Video Editors and Camera Operators, modified August 27, 2026). The figures exclude self-employed workers, who are 35% of both occupations, and an employer supplies the equipment, so they are not a freelance day rate.

How should you charge for your own camera gear?

Recover what the kit costs you over the days it actually works. Owned gear isn't free: it loses value, needs insurance and repairs, and is replaced every few years.

Worked example; every input is an assumption:

Two things follow. First, the kit charge doubles when you shoot half as often, so it belongs in your price whether you show it as a line or not. Second, compare your figure with what a local rental house charges for a similar package. If your kit costs you much more per day than renting would, you own more gear than your bookings justify, and renting specialist items (a cinema lens set, a gimbal, a drone) per job is cheaper. Rented items go on the quote at cost, or at cost plus a stated handling percentage.

How do you estimate editing time?

Deliverable by deliverable, from your own logs, then add a contingency. Post-production is usually where video pricing goes wrong, because a client sees a 60-second clip and imagines an hour's work.

Break the edit into the stages you actually go through: ingest, sync and logging; assembly and rough cut; revisions; colour; audio; graphics; exports. Track the hours on your next few projects by stage and by deliverable type, and you will have your own numbers instead of a rule of thumb. If a client changes the deliverables after the quote, the change in edit hours tells you the change in price.

Worked example: quoting a gala event video

A nonprofit asks for coverage of its annual gala: a 2-minute recap film, three 60-second speaker clips and six 15-second vertical clips for social media. One evening on site, two camera operators. Every hour below is an estimate for illustration, not a market rate.

The 32 edit hours were estimated per deliverable:

Post-production is $3,569.60 of the $5,212.60, or 68%. A quote that led with "one evening's filming" would have anchored the client on the cheapest part of the job.

The quote should also say what is not included: usage beyond the nonprofit's own channels, a third revision round (priced at $97 an hour), raw footage delivery, and licensed music if the client wants a track beyond your stock library. Usage rights deserve their own decision; the videographer invoicing guide explains how to write the licence line (media, territory, term) and why footage ownership belongs on the invoice.

Why is pricing per finished minute misleading?

Because effort per minute varies too much between deliverables. In the gala example, the recap took 10 hours for 2 minutes (5 hours per finished minute), each speaker clip 2 hours for 1 minute (2 hours per minute), and each vertical 0.5 hours for 15 seconds (2 hours per minute). A single per-minute price would have overcharged the clips or undercharged the recap.

Per-minute or per-asset prices can work as a published starting point for repeat formats you have already timed, such as "interview clip from supplied footage". Build them from your logged hours, and keep the right to re-quote when the footage, graphics or revision count change.

How should you price a monthly video content retainer?

From the same parts, for a fixed monthly scope. Worked example: one half-day shoot a month ($717.50 from the day-rate section) plus four short social videos at an estimated 3 edit hours each (12 h × $97 = $1,164) comes to $1,881.50 a month.

Write down what the month includes (shoot length, number and length of videos, revision rounds), what happens to unused shoots (expire or roll over once), and the price of extras. Our guide to invoicing retainer agreements covers billing the fee in advance. Review the retainer price when the client's requests drift, using your edit logs as evidence.

When this pricing approach is not the right fit

• Union or broadcast productions. Crew rates on many professional productions are set by union agreements and the producer's budget, not by your own calculation.
• Weddings. Wedding films are usually sold as fixed packages with retainers and different cancellation terms; build the package from the same hours, but the commercial terms differ.
• Agency subcontracting. If an agency hires you for shoot days at its own rate, this method tells you whether to accept, not what to charge.
• Large productions with talent, locations and permits. Budgeting those needs a line-item production budget with fringes and contingency, beyond a freelancer's quote.

Quoting and invoicing video work in InvoiceQuickly

InvoiceQuickly does not suggest prices. Once you have a quote, you can type or say it ("Quote Riverside Food Bank: gala video, pre-production 3 hours at $97, shoot 8 hours at $97, kit $87, second shooter $414, mic rental $75, post-production 36.8 hours at $97") and it drafts an editable estimate or invoice with the lines for you to check before saving.

• Every plan: line items (quantity × unit price, up to 100 lines), one discount percentage and one tax percentage per invoice, notes and terms for usage, revisions and exclusions, PDF download, and recording full or partial payments, which is how you track a deposit against the full invoice.
• Pro ($9/month): estimates the client can accept in a private portal and convert to an invoice, email delivery, scheduled reminders, payment links through your own Stripe or PayPal account (their fees apply), credit notes and CSV export. Pro also tracks time with a timer or manual entries (up to 24 hours per entry), so edit hours can be logged against a project and billed into a draft invoice.
• Not available: no project budgets, no file delivery, and no separate deposit feature; record a deposit as a partial payment or send it as its own invoice. Free covers 5 invoices, 5 clients and 3 AI drafts in total. See pricing.

The video production invoice template is a downloadable reference layout, and the videography invoice example annotates a finished invoice.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate a video production day rate?

Add the hours on location to the prep and offload time, multiply by your hourly floor, and add a kit charge. In this guide's example, 12 hours at $97 plus an $87 kit charge gives $1,251, quoted as $1,250.

How much should I charge for using my own equipment?

Divide what the kit costs you (purchase price over its useful life, plus insurance and repairs) by the shoot days it works in a year. A $12,000 kit over 3 years with $1,200 a year of insurance and repairs costs about $87 a day at 60 shoot days and $173 at 30.

How long does it take to edit a video?

It depends on the footage, the deliverable and the revisions, so log your own hours by stage. In the worked gala example the estimate was 32 hours for a 2-minute recap, three 1-minute clips and six 15-second verticals, including ingest, colour, audio and two revision rounds.

Should I charge per finished minute of video?

Usually not as your main method. In the worked example, effort ran from 2 hours per finished minute for short clips to 5 hours for the recap, so one per-minute price would be wrong for both. Use per-asset prices only for repeat formats you have timed.

How should I price revisions on a video edit?

Include a stated number of revision rounds in the quote, and price additional rounds at your hourly rate. In the gala example, two rounds were estimated at 4 hours and a third round is priced at $97 an hour.

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More on pricing: freelance rate floor, raising your rates, the freelance invoicing guide and the InvoiceQuickly blog.