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.
Annual business expenses (overhead)
You & your time
Your time on the job
Costs
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 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.
Have clients discover you before your competitors do
This tool is built by Nakada Design, a Los Angeles marketing agency that specializes in photographers. The same care that went into it goes into your visibility: the search presence and advertising that gets clients finding and booking you first. Tell us about your work below.
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