Free tool · for wedding photographers

Wedding photography pricing calculator

Stop guessing from a competitor's Instagram. Enter your real hours, the wage you want, and your costs — this works out the price floor you can defend, then builds three package tiers on top of it. Every number here is yours; nothing is a market average.

Your numbers

Pre-filled with clearly-labelled examples — overwrite every field with your own reality.

A "one-day" wedding is rarely one day of work. Count all three.
h
h
h
What you want your own time to earn — before costs and profit.
/ hour
Be honest — season is short.
Added on top of cost.
%
Gear & replacement, insurance, software, hosting, marketing, accountant — the cost of the business existing for a year.
/ year
Your price floor · per wedding
€0
Break-even at your target wage. Below this, you're paying to shoot.
Real hours per wedding0 h
Your time (0 h × 0)€0
Overhead per wedding€0
Cost floor€0
Suggested package tiers
Essential€0
Your protected floor plus markup. The lowest you'd sell at.
SignatureMost pick this€0
The tier most couples choose — price it with confidence.
Full€0
Anchors the top and makes Signature feel sensible.

Tiers are spaced ~35% and ~45% above the one below — a common, adjustable shape, not a rule. Move them to fit what each package actually includes.

These figures are computed only from what you typed. quolby never fills in an invented average price.

Turn these three tiers into a live quote

Build these packages once, then send one branded link couples can pick, accept, and pay a deposit on — straight to your own Stripe.

Build your free quote link with quolby → Or preview the couple's view first in the free quote maker.

How the calculator works

The logic is deliberately simple and fully visible, so the number is one you can stand behind in front of a couple:

  1. Real hours per wedding = shooting + editing & culling + admin, travel and delivery. Editing is usually the biggest and most under-counted block.
  2. Your time = those hours × the hourly wage you want for yourself.
  3. Overhead per wedding = your annual fixed costs ÷ how many weddings you actually shoot in a year. Fewer weddings means each one has to carry more overhead.
  4. Cost floor = your time + overhead. This is break-even — the point where the wedding pays your wage and your bills, and nothing more.
  5. Tiers add your profit markup on top of the floor for the Essential package, then space Signature and Full above it.

Change any input and every figure updates instantly. Nothing here is pulled from a survey, a competitor, or a "national average" — the honesty of the number is the whole point, and it's what makes it defensible.

Why price from cost instead of the market

Copying whoever's nearby anchors you to their costs, tax situation and speed. A cost-plus floor is built from your own life, so it protects your time even in a slow month. Published local averages are still useful — but as a sanity check on the number your costs produce, never as the starting point. For the full reasoning behind this method, read how much to charge for wedding photography.

Turning tiers into a booking

Three tiers change the couple's question from "should we book?" to "which one?". But the price only becomes a booking when the couple can say yes and pay a deposit in the same moment — a confusing PDF or a "let me get back to you" loses momentum. That's the gap an interactive quote is built to close, and where a deposit collected on the spot turns a maybe into a reserved date.

Questions

How is the price floor calculated?

The floor is your break-even per wedding: total real hours × your target hourly wage, plus your annual fixed costs ÷ weddings per year. Selling below it means paying to work. Every figure comes only from your inputs.

Does this use average market prices?

No. The calculator never uses market averages, survey data or competitor prices. The pre-filled numbers are clearly-labelled examples for you to overwrite — the output is entirely your own math.

Why three tiers instead of one price?

A single price invites haggling; three tiers change the question from whether to book to which package. The middle tier is the one most couples pick, and the top tier anchors the range so the middle feels reasonable.

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