Photography pricing calculator
What you actually need to charge — worked backwards from the salary you want, the costs you carry and the hours a session really takes.
No signup, no email. Everything is worked out in your browser and nothing is sent to us.
What the year has to pay you
Start from what you need, not from what everyone else charges.
The money that actually reaches your bank account for the year — not revenue.
Gear replacement, insurance, software, website, accountant, marketing, education. Everything you pay whether or not you shoot.
Income plus self-employment tax combined. If you don't know, 25–30% is a common starting estimate in the US — ask your accountant for yours.
How you plan to work
Enquiry emails, the consult, travel, the shoot, culling, editing, delivery. Most photographers guess low here — count a real one once.
Prints, albums, gallery delivery, second shooter, card processing.
Nothing you type here is sent anywhere. The maths runs in your browser — no account, no email, no copy kept.
Charge at least
$1,240
per session, to take home $45,000 after tax across 60 sessions.
- Profit needed before tax
- $60,000
- Revenue the year has to produce
- $74,400
- Hours of work, all in
- 540 hrs
- Working hours per week
- 11.3 hrs
- What you keep, per hour worked
- $83
Fewer sessions, higher price
Same take-home, same costs — only the number of sessions moves.
45 sessions
$1,640
each
60 sessions · yours
$1,240
each
75 sessions
$1,000
each
This is a floor, not a price list.
It tells you what your own plan requires — it doesn’t know your market, your experience, or what clients near you will pay. It also isn’t tax advice: the rate is a single blended estimate and real tax has brackets, deductions and quarterly payments in it. Talk to an accountant about the tax line.
Your numbers, in a sentence
To take home $45,000 after tax across 60 sessions a year, I need to charge $1,240 per session — that's $74,400 of revenue and 540 hours of work. Worked out at signshoot.com/photography-pricing-calculator
Charging it is the other half
A price only counts once it’s on a contract someone signed. Sign&Shoot puts your price, your contract and your retainer behind one link — the client books, e-signs and pays without you chasing any of it. Free for two bookings a month, no card.
Try it freeWhy “what does everyone else charge?” is the wrong question
It’s the natural first question and it produces a number with no information in it. The photographer down the road might be shooting eighty sessions a year with a second income and no studio rent, or twenty with a mortgage riding on it. Their price answers their problem. Copying it just imports their constraints and hides yours.
Working backwards is uncomfortable because it produces a bigger number than most people expect, and it produces it before you get to decide whether the market will pay it. That’s the useful part. If the floor comes out above what your market pays, you have a real problem to solve — a different market, a different offering, fewer sessions with more in them — and it’s far better to find that in a calculator than three years into underpricing.
The other thing this makes visible is that your business costs don’t care how many sessions you shoot. Insurance, software, your website and your gear cost the same at thirty sessions as at sixty. So cutting your session count barely cuts your costs — it just raises the price each remaining session has to carry. Which is the whole argument for fewer, better-paid work: the money can come out the same, and the hours don’t.
Common questions
Backwards from what the year has to produce, not forwards from what other photographers charge. Add the take-home you need, the tax on it, and every business cost you carry whether or not you shoot — then divide by the number of sessions you can realistically deliver. That gives you a floor. Anything below it means the business is being subsidised by you, usually without you noticing until a slow season.
Everything you'd still pay in a year with no bookings: gear replacement and repair, camera insurance, liability insurance, editing software, gallery hosting, your website and domain, accounting, marketing, education, mileage, and any studio or storage rent. It's usually a bigger number than photographers expect — adding it up honestly once is the most useful hour in this whole exercise.
Because the shoot is the small part. A two-hour session commonly carries six to ten hours once you count the enquiry emails, the consult, travel, culling, editing, delivery and the admin around payment. The hourly figure it produces is what you're really earning, and it's usually the number that changes someone's mind about their price.
Yes — tax comes out of profit, so the price has to be high enough to survive it. The calculator grosses your target take-home up by the rate you enter. Treat that rate as an estimate: real tax has brackets, deductions and quarterly payments in it, and your accountant's number will be better than any calculator's. This is a planning tool, not tax advice.
Almost always charge more, and the comparison on this page shows why. Cutting your session count doesn't cut your business costs — insurance, software and your website cost the same at thirty sessions as at sixty — so the price has to rise to cover them either way. What falls is the hours. Fewer, better-paid sessions get you the same take-home with more of your life back, and they leave room to do the work well.
Free, no signup, no email. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — it all runs in your browser, which is the only honest way to ask someone what they earn.
Running mini sessions? The mini-session profit calculator works the same day out in detail. Need the paperwork? Build a free contract.