Guide · 2026-10-16

How to price your photography packages

A step-by-step way to work out what your photography business needs to earn, turn it into an hourly floor and check every package against it, with no guesswork about the market.

Pricing is one of the hardest parts of running a photography business. Charge too little and you work long hours for not much. Charge too much without clear value and inquiries go quiet. Many photographers start by looking at what other photographers charge, but that tells you very little about what you need to charge to keep your business healthy.

This guide takes a different route. It starts with your own costs and goals, turns them into a floor you shouldn't go below, and then lets you check any package against it. It does not give you market prices, because those vary by city, specialty and experience, and any number we invented would be a guess.

Step 1: Start with what you need to earn

Begin with a simple question: how much do you need your business to bring in over a year?

Add up three things:

Business costs: gear and repairs, insurance, software, website, editing tools, marketing, memberships, education, accounting, a studio or workspace if you have one, and anything else you pay for to operate.
Taxes and fees you need to cover: the portion of income you set aside for taxes and the payment-processing fees you'll pay. Ask your accountant what set-aside makes sense for you; we won't suggest a rate.
What you want to take home: your pay goal for the year.

The total is your revenue target. Everything else follows from it.

Step 2: Count the hours honestly

Next, work out how many hours you can actually bill. This is where many photographers go wrong, because a shoot is only a fraction of the work. A session might be two hours behind the camera, but think about everything around it:

Inquiries, emails and consultations
Planning, scouting and prep
Travel
Culling and editing
Delivering the gallery and following up
Admin, bookkeeping and marketing

Estimate the total hours a typical session takes from first message to delivered gallery. Then estimate how many working hours you have in a year after holidays, sick days, slow seasons and the time you spend on the business rather than on client work. Be realistic. Overestimating your available hours makes your price look lower than it needs to be.

Step 3: Find your hourly floor

Divide your revenue target by the number of hours you can realistically work on paid or business-related tasks. The result is your hourly floor: the amount every working hour needs to earn for the year to add up.

It is a floor, not a price. It tells you what to avoid, which is any package where the total you collect divided by the total hours you spend falls below it. It also gives you a clear answer to a common worry: if a client asks for a discount, you can see exactly how much room there is.

Step 4: Price each package from the bottom up

For each package, add up:

Time: the total hours from inquiry to delivery, multiplied by your floor.
Direct costs: anything you pay for this session specifically, such as a second shooter, prints or albums you supply, travel, location fees or a gallery hosting share.
Fees: the percentage the payment processor takes from what you collect.

The sum is the minimum price for that package. Anything above it is profit, buffer and room to invest in the business.

Do this for each package and compare. You might notice that your large package is priced well and your small mini session is below the floor once you count editing and delivery time. That is useful information. It doesn't mean you must raise the price; it means you can decide on purpose, for example by shortening editing for minis, capping delivered images, or making them a limited-time offer.

Once the minimums are clear, shape your packages so each step up offers something meaningful:

A starter option for clients who want the essentials.
A core option most clients choose, with the best balance of time and value.
A premium option for clients who want more coverage, more images or more products.

Use the differences, such as more hours, more edited images, a printed product or a faster turnaround, to explain the price gaps. Clients find it easier to choose when the reason for each step is clear.

Step 6: Handle add-ons and discounts deliberately

Add-ons like extra hours, additional locations or rush delivery should be priced from the same floor: what extra time and cost does this create? Write the add-on prices down so you aren't inventing them on the spot in an email.

For discounts, decide the rule before the question arrives. If you discount, check the new total against the package minimum first. A discount that takes you below your floor is a loss on that job, which might still be worth it for a particular reason, but should be a conscious choice.

Step 7: Review your prices at least once a year

Costs change, your skills grow and your calendar fills. Revisit your numbers every year, or whenever you notice you're booked out far in advance, which is often a sign your pricing is ready to move. Keep a note of the date and the reason for every change.

Real estate and other session types

If you shoot real estate, pricing often depends on property size and add-ons such as aerial or twilight photos. The same logic applies: work out time and costs per job type, then check against your floor. Keep separate price tiers for different session types so a quote is quick.

Doing the math in Google Sheets

You can build all of this in a spreadsheet: a cost section, an hours section, a floor calculation and a table of packages with a check against the floor. The risk with hand-built sheets is formulas breaking when you add rows or change a number, so test it with a simple example you can verify by hand.

A ready-made version saves the setup. The Photography Pricing Calculator turns your costs into a revenue target and an hourly floor, checks every package against it, and lets you price a shoot in seconds with a quote calculator that compares up to three options side by side. If you want pricing connected to your clients, jobs, payments and bookkeeping, the Photographer Business Command Center includes pricing along with everything else in a single file. See all the Photographers templates.

A note on limits

A spreadsheet can tell you what your numbers say; it cannot tell you what your market will pay. Use it alongside your own judgment, client feedback and what you learn from inquiries, and be willing to test. Google Sheets also won't update your costs by itself, so revisit the inputs whenever something changes.