What should you actually charge for this shoot? Includes the editing hours nobody counts. Free, no signup.
Estimates for planning only, not financial advice. Presets are starting points, adjust to your real numbers. Prices should rise with experience, demand, and market.
Photographers undercharge for one simple reason: they price the hours they can see and forget the rest. This calculator forces the invisible work into the price. Start in the Your business card: pick the preset closest to your stage (Solo, Growing, or Established) to load a starting take-home income, yearly business costs, and the number of shoots you can realistically book. Every field is editable; presets are starting points, not rules. Next, describe This shoot: choose the shoot type (portrait, wedding, event, real estate, or mini) to load its typical shooting hours, editing hours per shooting hour, travel plus admin hours, and direct costs. Adjust the editing ratio honestly, because editing is where most photographers quietly lose money. The tool totals your real hours per shoot, computes the annual revenue you need, divides it by your bookable shoots, and adds direct costs to show your minimum price, plus your true hourly rate across every hour. Then use the Reality check card: enter what you charge today and it tells you whether you are priced to profit, barely covering costs, or losing money on every booking. No signup, runs on your phone, and your numbers never leave the device.
Example only, not typical earnings. Take the Growing preset: $60,000 take-home plus $8,000 in costs means you need $68,000 a year. Over 40 bookable shoots, that is $1,700 each before shoot-specific costs. A wedding preset carries $500 in direct costs, so your floor is $2,200. The real hours: 8 shooting plus 24 editing (8 x 3) plus 4 admin = 36 hours, which works out to about $61 per hour. If you currently charge $1,800 for that wedding, you are $400 short every time you book it.