How Much to Charge for Video Editing (Per Minute, Per Hour, Per Job)
To work out how much to charge for video editing, price the hours the job takes, not the length of the finished video. Those hours are a fixed block of setup (ingest, sync, color, export, delivery) plus the time it takes to review and cut the raw footage. Multiply by an hourly floor rate built from your own year. In the illustrative example below, that floor is $72.96 an hour, and a 2-minute edit comes to $162.45 - while a per-finished-minute rate set on a 30-minute job would have quoted it at $39.88.
The video editing price formula
floor rate = (take-home target / (1 - tax rate) + overhead) / billable hours
job hours = setup hours + (finished minutes x footage ratio x edit speed) / 60
job price = job hours x floor rate
The footage ratio is raw minutes per finished minute. The edit speed is minutes of editing per minute of raw footage. Neither is in the client’s request for “a five-minute video”, and both decide the work.
Step 1: your hourly floor
These inputs are illustrative, chosen to show the method. They are not a market rate or a typical figure for anyone.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Take-home income target, after tax | $58,000 |
| Annual overhead (workstation, software, music licenses, backup, accountant) | $4,960 |
| Tax rate on profit (placeholder) | 25% |
| Weeks off a year | 5 |
| Hours at the desk per working week | 40 |
| Share of desk hours that are billable | 60% |
Ingesting, transcoding, chasing badly shot footage, uploading and the emails about which cut is the latest are work no client is billed for, which is why the billable share is well under 100%. That leaves 1,128 billable hours to carry $82,293 of revenue: a floor of $72.96 an hour. The 25% is a placeholder, not a real rate; use the one your accountant gives you.
Step 2: hours per job, from the footage
Take a 5-minute finished video. The illustrative assumptions here are 1.8 hours of fixed setup per project and 1.6 minutes of editing per minute of raw footage. The footage ratios are example values for each job type, not measurements of your projects.
| Job type | Raw : finished | Hours | Price at the floor | Per finished minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scripted talking head | 3:1 | 2.2 | $160.50 | $32.10 |
| Tutorial / explainer | 5:1 | 2.5 | $179.96 | $35.99 |
| Interview, two camera | 8:1 | 2.9 | $209.14 | $41.83 |
| Vlog / lifestyle | 12:1 | 3.4 | $248.05 | $49.61 |
| Event or wedding | 20:1 | 4.5 | $325.87 | $65.17 |
| Documentary | 25:1 | 5.1 | $374.50 | $74.90 |
The same 5-minute deliverable runs from $160.50 to $374.50, a factor of 2.3, depending only on how much raw footage it has to be found in. “How long is the video?” is the wrong first question. “How much footage is there?” is the right one.
How much to charge for video editing per minute
Per-minute pricing is easy to quote, so here is what it looks like when you derive it honestly. Same interview-style ratio of 8:1, same floor, only the finished length changes:
| Finished length | Hours | Price | Per finished minute | Fixed setup share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 min | 2.0 | $146.88 | $146.88 | 89% |
| 2 min | 2.2 | $162.45 | $81.22 | 81% |
| 5 min | 2.9 | $209.14 | $41.83 | 63% |
| 10 min | 3.9 | $286.96 | $28.70 | 46% |
| 30 min | 8.2 | $598.23 | $19.94 | 22% |
| 60 min | 14.6 | $1,065.14 | $17.75 | 12% |
The honest per-finished-minute price falls from $146.88 on a one-minute edit to $17.75 on a sixty-minute one - about 8 times lower. There is no single per-minute rate in that table. The reason is the last column: on a short edit, the fixed setup is most of the job.
Short videos are overhead jobs; long videos are footage jobs
Now hold the length fixed and swing the footage ratio from the lightest job type (3:1) to the heaviest (25:1):
| Finished length | Hours at 3:1 | Hours at 25:1 | Footage ratio multiplies the work by | Setup share at 3:1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 min | 2.0 | 3.1 | 1.60x | 92% |
| 5 min | 2.2 | 5.1 | 2.33x | 82% |
| 10 min | 2.6 | 8.5 | 3.26x | 69% |
| 30 min | 4.2 | 21.8 | 5.19x | 43% |
| 60 min | 6.6 | 41.8 | 6.33x | 27% |
On a two-minute edit, setup is 92% of the work and the footage ratio moves the hours only 1.60x. On a sixty-minute edit, setup is 27% and the ratio moves the hours 6.33x. These behave like two different businesses. A short edit is priced by its setup; a long edit is priced by its footage. One number cannot do both.
The per-minute trap, worked
Suppose you set a per-minute rate from a 30-minute job that was correctly priced at $598.23. That is $19.94 per finished minute. Then a client asks for a 2-minute cut with the same kind of footage.
- Per-minute quote: $19.94 x 2 = $39.88
- What the job actually takes: 2.2 hours, or $162.45 at the floor
- Shortfall: $122.56. You recover 25% of the cost and earn $17.91 an hour against a floor of $72.96.
The per-minute rate charges for the editing and gives away the setup - and on a short job the setup is the job. Applied across lengths:
| Job length | Quote at $19.94/min | Actual cost | Share recovered | Effective hourly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 min | $19.94 | $146.88 | 14% | $9.90 |
| 2 min | $39.88 | $162.45 | 25% | $17.91 |
| 5 min | $99.71 | $209.14 | 48% | $34.78 |
| 10 min | $199.41 | $286.96 | 69% | $50.70 |
| 30 min | $598.23 | $598.23 | 100% | $72.96 |
The rate is only right on the job it was set from. Every shorter job loses money, and the shorter it is, the worse.
The fix: a project fee plus a footage rate
Price the two parts separately:
- Project fee covering the setup: 1.8 hours x $72.96 = $131.32 on every job.
- Footage rate per hour of raw footage reviewed: 1.6 hours of editing per raw hour x $72.96 = $116.73.
The 2-minute job has 16 raw minutes and comes out at $162.45. The 30-minute job has 240 raw minutes and comes out at $598.23. Both match the hours exactly, so neither job subsidizes the other. If a client insists on a per-minute number, quote it per project from this structure rather than reusing one from a different length.
How much to charge for video editing as a beginner
A beginner’s floor rate is built the same way: it comes from your income target, costs and billable share, not from your experience. What changes is the edit speed. If cutting takes you 1.5 times as long - 2.4 minutes per raw minute instead of 1.6 - the 5-minute interview edit takes 3.4 hours instead of 2.9, and the full price at your floor is $248.05 rather than $209.14. That is a rise of 19%, less than the slowdown, because the setup block does not get slower.
If you quote the faster figure ($209.14) while working at the slower speed, you earn $61.51 an hour, below the $72.96 floor. That gap is a speed problem, not a rate problem, and it closes as your edit speed improves. Time your own projects - raw minutes in, hours out - so the edit speed in your quotes is measured rather than hoped for.
None of this says what clients in your market will pay. If your computed price is above what they accept, the inputs or the market have to change; quietly working below it is the option that does not last.
How these were calculated
The floor rate is (take-home target / (1 - tax rate) + overhead) divided by billable hours, where billable hours are (52 - weeks off) x hours a week x billable share. Job hours are fixed setup hours plus finished minutes x footage ratio x edit speed / 60, and the price is hours x floor. Every figure on this page was computed twice: once by the code behind the product below, and once by an independent program that finds the floor by running the year forward at trial rates and searching for the one that leaves exactly the target, then counts every job in minutes. The two agree to the cent. All inputs, footage ratios and edit speeds are illustrative, the tax rate is a placeholder, and none of this is financial, legal or tax advice.
To run this on your own footage ratios, edit speed and income target, the kit below includes a live workbook for the same arithmetic plus scripts for quoting before you have seen the footage.