Is this event priced right, and how fast does the booth pay for itself? Free, no signup.
Presets are example starting points only. Edit everything to match your market.
Photo booth owners lose money two ways: underpricing events and never learning how long the equipment takes to pay for itself. This calculator checks both. Start with your bar, the minimum dollars per hour you will work for, and your monthly take-home goal. Pick a setup preset: Standard booth ($6,500 equipment, $200 per month fixed), 360 booth ($4,500, $180), or Glam booth ($8,000, $220), all editable starting points. Enter the event: price charged, on-site hours, setup plus teardown minutes, round-trip miles, prints included, print cost each, extra attendant hours and pay, and your card or booking fee percent. Results show a line-item breakdown of print cost, travel, attendant, and fees, the event profit, and your true hourly rate against your bar, with PRICED RIGHT, CLOSE BUT LEAKING, UNDERPRICED, or LOSING MONEY verdicts and the exact price needed to hit your rate. The payback card turns equipment cost into events to payoff, months at your booking pace, monthly profit after fixed costs, and events per month to hit your goal. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. Standard booth: $6,500 equipment, $200 per month fixed costs. An event at $950: 4 on-site hours + 90 setup and teardown minutes = 5.5 committed hours. Costs: 150 prints x $0.20 = $30.00, 60 miles x $0.76 = $45.60, card fee 2.9 percent = $27.55, for $103.15 total. Profit = 950 - 103.15 = $846.85. True rate = 846.85 / 5.5 = $153.97 per hour against a $100 bar, so the verdict is PRICED RIGHT. Payback: 6,500 / 846.85 = 7.7, rounded up to 8 events; at 4 events per month that is 2.0 months. Monthly profit after fixed costs = 4 x 846.85 - 200 = $3,187.40. A $4,000 goal needs (4,000 + 200) / 846.85 = 4.96, rounded up to 5 events per month.
It depends on your market and setup. Enter your bar and the tool computes the price from your real hours plus print, travel, attendant, and fee costs. The raise math tells you the exact number that clears your rate.
It depends on equipment cost and booking pace. In the example above, a $6,500 booth paying $846.85 per event breaks even in 8 events, which is 2 months at 4 events per month. Enter your own pace to see yours.
Either way, count the cost. Unlimited prints at $0.20 each is $30 per event here, which is small but real. Digital-only setups trade print cost for software and sharing costs, so price those instead.
Solo works for many booths. If you hire help, enter the attendant hours and hourly pay, and the tool subtracts it before measuring your rate. Your own on-site hours are always counted either way.
The percent comes off the top of the price before anything else. The raise math grosses the price up for the fee, so the recommended number still clears your bar after the processor takes its cut.