Photography Pricing & Cost-of-Doing-Business Calculator
Stop guessing your prices. Work out the day rate and hourly rate you truly need from your Cost of Doing Business, build a defensible price for any session or package from time and costs, and see exactly how many bookings it takes to break even. Built for photographers by Nakada Design — the numbers a studio should run before it quotes.
Why Your Day Rate Is Higher Than a Salary
The most common way photographers underprice themselves is to reason from a salary: "I'd be happy earning $60,000, and there are about 250 working days, so $240 a day." That math quietly bankrupts studios. It ignores the tens of thousands in overhead — gear, insurance, software, studio, marketing — that come out before you earn a cent. It ignores self-employment tax and benefits an employer would otherwise cover. And it assumes every working day is billable, when in reality shooting is a fraction of the week and editing, admin and marketing fill the rest.
The Cost of Doing Business method fixes all three. It adds real overhead to a loaded salary, builds in profit, then divides by the days you can actually bill. The number it returns is not greedy — it is the floor that keeps the lights on. Charge below it and you are paying clients to work.
Price the Session, Not Just the Shutter
A "two-hour" shoot is rarely two hours. Culling, editing, retouching, correspondence, contracts, travel and delivery routinely triple the time on the calendar — and every one of those hours costs you the same day rate. The Session Price Builder prices the whole job: your labour across shoot, edit and admin at your true hourly rate, plus pass-through costs billed at cost and any products marked up the way a lab-to-client resale should be. It turns "what should I charge for a family session?" into a defensible number you can stand behind.
Know Your Break-Even Before You Discount
Every session earns a contribution — its price minus the variable cost of delivering it. Your fixed costs divided by that contribution is the number of bookings you must land each year simply to break even; beyond it, each session is profit. The Break-Even tab makes the trade-off visible, so when a prospect asks for a discount you know precisely how many more shoots that lower price forces you to chase. It is the difference between a business and an expensive hobby.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Cost of Doing Business (CODB)?
The total to run your business for a year plus the salary you want to pay yourself — insurance, gear, software, marketing, your take-home, taxes and profit. Divided by your billable days, it is the day rate you must charge to stay in business. A floor, not a target.
How much should a photographer charge per day or hour?
It depends on your own costs, not a competitor's list. Enter your real expenses and desired salary in the CODB tab and the tool returns the exact day and hourly rate that keep you solvent — usually higher than photographers expect, because so little of the year is billable.
How do I calculate my photography day rate?
Add annual expenses to a tax-loaded salary, add profit, then divide the required revenue by billable days — weeks worked times shoot days per week. That quotient is your true day rate.
How many billable days does a photographer really have?
Usually just two to three shoot days a week for 44–48 weeks — about 90–140 a year — because editing, admin and marketing fill the rest. That is why the hourly rate has to be high.
What profit margin should a photography business make?
Around 10–25% on top of overhead and your salary funds gear, slow months and growth. Marking albums and prints up 2–3× their lab cost is a separate profit stream handled in the price builder.
