How much to charge for videography, worked out properly.
To work out how much to charge for videography, count every hour the job takes, multiply by an hourly rate built from the income you need, and add the job’s direct costs. This guide walks through each step with a worked example: £36,000 a year of income and costs, 880 billable hours, about £41 an hour, and a one day brand film that comes to about £1,450.
Price the hours, not the shoot day
Most videography pricing mistakes come from pricing the day you film. The filming is often a quarter of the job. The rest is planning, travel, editing, changes, exporting and the emails about the exporting.
So the honest way to answer “how much should I charge for videography?” is a sum: every hour the job takes × your hourly rate + the direct costs of the job. The rate comes from what you need to earn, not from what someone else charges.
Find your hourly rate
Add the income you want before tax to your yearly business costs: kit, software, insurance, storage, music licences, website, accounting. Divide by the hours you can actually bill, not the hours you are awake.
Example only: you want £30,000 before tax and your business costs £6,000 a year, so the business needs £36,000. If you bill 20 hours a week for 44 weeks, that is 880 hours. £36,000 ÷ 880 = about £41 an hour. Your numbers will differ, which is the whole point.
Count every hour of the job
Write down every stage, including the boring ones. Editing is usually the biggest number, and changes are the one people forget.
| Stage | Hours |
|---|---|
| Pre production and planning | 2 |
| Filming | 8 |
| Travel | 2 |
| Editing | 16 |
| Two rounds of changes | 3 |
| Admin and delivery | 2 |
| Total hours | 33 |
At £41 an hour, 33 hours is £1,353. Add the direct costs of this job, say £100 for travel and a music licence in this example, and the quote is about £1,453, which you might round to £1,450. If that feels high, the fix is fewer hours or a smaller deliverable, not a lower rate. Underpricing does not make clients respect you more. It just makes January longer.
Turn hours into packages
Clients like choices. Build two or three packages from the same sum: a short edit, a short edit plus social cuts, and a full package with a longer film and raw footage. Each one is just a different number of hours.
Price the extras that eat time: extra rounds of changes per hour, raw footage, rush delivery, second shooters, drone work and commercial usage. Write them into your videographer contract so they are agreed before anyone says “oh, and could you also”.
The free pricing calculator does this sum for you. It was built for photographers, but it only asks for hours, costs and a margin, so put your edit hours in the editing box and it works just as well for video.
Remember VAT and the paperwork
Once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12 months, you must register for VAT and add 20% to your prices for most clients. Check where you stand with the UK VAT threshold checker, and send your quotes on a proper videographer invoice.
When you are ready to run quotes, contracts, invoices and film delivery in one place, the videographer CRM does it from £0.
Questions people ask
How much should I charge for videography in the UK?
Charge what covers every hour the job takes, your business costs and a profit, not what the cheapest videographer on Instagram charges. Count pre production, filming, travel, editing, changes and admin, multiply by an hourly rate built from your income goal, then add the direct costs of the job.
How do I work out my hourly rate as a videographer?
Add the income you want before tax to your yearly business costs, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill. If you want £30,000 and your costs are £6,000, and you can bill 880 hours a year, your rate is about £41 an hour.
Should I charge per hour or per project?
Quote per project so clients see one clear price, but build that price from hours. Clients buy the film, not your timesheet; you need the timesheet so the film pays.
How should I price edit changes?
Include a set number of rounds in the price, define a round in writing, and charge an hourly rate for anything beyond it. Put both in the contract before filming starts.