What does a DP cost in SF?$1,450 a day.
Here's the rest of the list. Every rate I pay, from the shoot to the edit, in one calculator. So you know what every job is worth and charge like a pro.
Use it on your next quote. Don't love it? Every dollar back. No questions.
Built for you, if you send your own quote.
DPs and camera
Your day rate, your kit fee, your prep and travel days. One clean quote, sent the same day.
Editors
Your edit days, revision rounds and delivery. You stop doing round four for free.
Directors
Your creative fee, your crew and your gear, priced the same way every time.
Producers
You price the whole crew in minutes, with real day rates for your city. Meals, payroll and insurance included.
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You're great at the work. The money is the problem.
You can light a room. Cut a story. Run a set. Clients love what you make.
Then they ask, "What's your rate?" And your stomach drops.
You throw out a number. They say yes in four seconds. Now you know it was too low.
Next time you go higher. They go quiet for a week. Now you think it was too high.
Your gut was right both times. It just had nothing to back it up.
So you take a little off. Just to get the job. Then you take a little off the next one too.
That's how good filmmakers like you stay broke.
Here's what it looks like when it all goes to hell.
It's Thursday. Your shoot wrapped two days ago. It went great.
Then the bills land. Tax on the rental you didn't price. Payroll fees you didn't price. Lunch for eight on your own card.
You open your bank app and do the math twice. You made less than your PA.
Your client pays in 60 days. Your rent is due Friday.
At 1am you're scrolling job posts. "Video producer. Full time. Benefits." You tell yourself you're just looking.
That's how most filmmakers quit. Not because they weren't good. Because the math never worked.
Three ways it ends… you've lived at least one.
You took two days to send a number. Someone else took two hours.
Great shoot. Happy client. You paid $1,712 to do it.
The camera goes in the closet. The reel stops getting updated.
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Do card two on 10 shoot days a year and it's $27,120. That's not a mistake. That's a salary you gave away.
Skip prep and travel as a DP and you give away two days a job. Quote three rounds of notes as an editor and you do the fourth for free. Same leak.
You've felt it. Your business can't run on guesses.
Build your next quote in under 5 minutes.
Meet the Dayrate Calculator.
This is what you're buying. Price any job, from just you and your kit to a full crew or an edit.
- Pick your market. NYC, SF, LA, mid-size, small market or your own city. Real rates fill in.
- Let your AI fill it in. ChatGPT or Claude asks you about the shoot, then builds the budget.
- Price it the way you work. You run the job, you produce and direct, another company hired you, or you charge one flat price.
- Every crew role, already priced. DP to PA, each with a plain note on what they do.
- Nothing gets forgotten. Meals, payroll, insurance and tax go in on their own. Rush jobs get flagged.
- See what you keep. Your fee and your take-home, before you send a thing.
- One click to the client view. A clean estimate. Your fee math stays hidden.
- Saved to your login. Any laptop, any browser. Open an old job, change it, send it again.
Here's the fix.
You know how to build a budget. What you're missing is the real numbers. Dayrate turns every job into a number you can say out loud, and defend. Three things change on your next quote.
Know what it costs before you quote.
You're texting friends to ask what they charge, digging through old invoices and guessing at the rest. By the time you have a number, the client's asked twice.
- Real day rates for crew, gear and locations in SF and NYC, plus typical rates everywhere else.
- Pick your city and the calculator fills itself in.
- Your rate is different? Change it once and move on.
Stop paying for what you forgot.
Your quote looked fine. Then payroll hit, the edit ran two days long and the rental house added tax. Your client never knew. You paid for it.
- Meals, payroll, insurance and tax go in on their own.
- Your prep and travel days, kit fees and revision rounds get priced, not given away.
- Anything you haven't priced gets flagged before you send.
Send a price you can defend.
Your client asks “what's this line?” and you start explaining, then discounting. A clean estimate answers the question before they ask it.
- One click turns your build into the estimate your client sees.
- They see where the money goes. Your fee and what you keep stay with you.
- Save it as a PDF and send it.
And I'm throwing in the rest of my toolbox.
Four more things I use on every job. Yours free.
The Rate Book
What I pay for crew, gear and locations in SF and NYC, plus typical rates everywhere else. So you stop texting around.
The Pricing Guide
How I build a price, plus the five questions I ask first. So you say your number without flinching.
The Budget Sheet
What you quoted next to what you spent. Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. So you know what you actually made.
The Quote Checklist and Change Form
Fine print for any estimate, and a form for the day your client asks for more. So extra work gets paid.
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Tired of Net 60? Get paid faster.
Deposit invoices, your logo on every quote and a Pay button, so clients pay you the day they get the invoice. Explore it once you're inside.
Use it on your next quote. Don't love it? Every dollar back. Or keep reading.
Starving artist… or the one they can't replace?
Clients don't pay you more for talent. They pay you more for confidence.
You've seen it happen. Someone with a weaker reel and a cleaner quote gets the job you wanted.
Send one number in an email and they haggle with you. They ask for "your best price." They treat you like a vendor.
Send a clean estimate with a reason behind every line and they treat you like a pro. They don't ask for a discount. They ask when you're free.
Same work. Same you. Higher rate.
That's what Dayrate does for you. Not better math. A better business.
Or your next quote goes like this…
The inquiry hits at 4pm. You have a real number by 4:10.
Every line is there. Your day rate, your gear, the crew, the edit days. Your fee goes in first.
They ask for less. You don't flinch and you don't touch your fee. You drop the B-cam or a revision round and tell them exactly what changes.
They say yes. You know what you're keeping before you hang up. That's who gets the next call.
Do that for a year. Your rate goes up. Your clients send you their friends. The job alerts stop showing up in your inbox, because you turned them off.
You're not hoping for work anymore. You're choosing it.
I'm Jordan. These are the rates I pay.
I've produced shoots for 10+ years. I made the launch videos for Circle and SamCart, platforms thousands of creators use to sell online. I've seen what gets you paid and what has you chasing an invoice for 60 days.
Thousands of filmmakers have taken my course, Million Dollar Edit, to turn their skills into a real business.
Tell me if this is you. The work is good. The quote is a mess. The invoice goes out late. The money shows up later.
So I took the system I use to price my own jobs and opened it up to filmmakers like you.
Get all of it for $49.
The calculator, the Rate Book and the templates. Your login link hits your inbox the moment you pay.
- The Dayrate CalculatorPrice any shoot or edit in under 5 minutes. Clean client estimate.$500
- Bonus: The Rate BookReal crew, gear and location rates.$600
- Bonus: The Pricing GuideHow I build a price.$150
- Bonus: The Budget SheetQuoted next to spent.$100
- Bonus: Quote Checklist and Change FormFine print and the extras form.$75
The Next Quote Guarantee. Use Dayrate on your next quote. If you don't love it, email me "refund" within 30 days. Every dollar back. No questions. You take zero risk.
Questions before you buy? Text me.(434) 770-8594
What happens next?
Check your inbox.
Your login link is there in seconds. It's on the next screen too.
Log in with Google or email.
Your budgets save to that login. Any laptop, any browser.
Pick your market.
Real rates load in. You're pricing a real shoot two minutes later.
FAQs
1. Is it really worth $49?
On one SF shoot day, the costs most people leave off come to $2,712: meals, payroll and insurance. Miss one of those once and you've lost more than Dayrate costs. And if you don't love it, email me "refund" within 30 days. Every dollar back. No questions.
2. Where do these numbers come from?
My own shoots. 10+ years of real invoices: what I paid DPs, sound mixers, gear houses and locations on real jobs. Not a survey. Not a guess.
3. Who are you to tell me what to charge?
Fair question. I'm not telling you what to charge. I'm showing you what the shoot costs, so the number you pick isn't a guess. I'm a producer. I run shoots for startups and agencies in San Francisco, New York and Boston, and this is how I price my own.
4. I can get a free budget template. Why pay for this?
You can. A free template gives you empty rows, and you know the rows were never the hard part. The hard part is knowing what a sound mixer costs in your city, and remembering payroll, insurance, meals and your own fee before you hit send. This fills the rows in for you.
5. Why not HoneyBook or QuickBooks?
They're good tools. They just weren't built for a shoot. They don't know a day rate from a kit fee, a half day from overtime, or what a gaffer costs in Austin. Dayrate does. Already on QuickBooks? Keep it. Use Dayrate to price and quote.
6. I don't shoot in SF or New York. And my crew charges different rates.
You're right, rates aren't the same everywhere. Pick the market closest to yours and the rates scale to match. Then swap in your crew's real numbers. Change a rate once and it's saved for every budget you build after that.
7. How fast can I use it on a real quote?
Tonight. Log in, answer six quick questions about the shoot and change what's different. You'll have a real number in under 5 minutes.
8. What if my number scares the client off?
Every filmmaker worries about this. A number you can explain line by line beats a cheap one you can't. The client sees where the money goes, so the talk is about the shoot, not whether you're padding it. That's the talk that wins you the job and keeps your margin.
9. What do I do when they ask me to come down?
Cut scope, not your fee. Every line shows its cost, so you drop a camera, a day, a crew role or a revision round and show them the new total right there. The Change Order Form covers you when they add things after you've said yes.
10. I'm a DP or an editor, not a producer. Is this for me?
Yes. Pick your role when you start. DPs price their day rate, kit, prep and travel. Editors price edit days, revision rounds and delivery. Directors price their creative fee and crew. Same calculator, built around how you work.
11. Is this a subscription?
No. You pay once and it's yours, updates included. Right after checkout you can try Pro free for a week: your logo on every quote and a Pay button on every invoice. It's $29 a month after that and you can cancel in one click. You never need it to use Dayrate.
12. What if it's not for me?
Email me "refund" within 30 days. Every dollar back. No questions.
Still not sure? Text me. (434) 770-8594. It's my cell.
Here's what you get today.
Everything in Dayrate
- The Dayrate CalculatorPrice any shoot or edit in under 5 minutes.$500
- Bonus: The Rate BookWhat I pay for crew, gear and locations.$600
- Bonus: The Pricing GuideHow I build a price.$150
- Bonus: The Budget SheetWhat you quoted next to what you spent.$100
- Bonus: Quote Checklist and Change FormSo extra work gets paid.$75
What changes for you
- You know your number before the client asks.
- You send a real quote the same day, not two days later.
- Meals, payroll, insurance and tax get priced, not paid by you.
- Your prep, travel, kit fee and revision rounds get paid.
- Your client sees a clean estimate, not one number in an email.
- When they ask for less, you cut scope, not your fee.
- You know what you keep before you say yes.
Or close this tab… here's what happens next.
You already know how this goes. Your next inquiry comes in and you guess again. You send it two days late, a little low, just to be safe.
The shoot goes great. Then payroll, meals and the fourth round of notes come out of your pocket. Again.
Your client pays in 60 days. Rent is due Friday. At 1am you're scrolling job posts, telling yourself you're just looking.
Then one day you're not just looking. The camera goes in the closet. You're making somebody else's videos, with two weeks off a year.
That's not a bad month. That's the next five years, unless your next quote changes.
Somebody in your city is sending a real number tonight. Make it you.
One price. Zero risk.
All of it, $1,425 in value. You pay $49 once and it's yours, updates included.
Use it on your next quote. If you don't love it, email me "refund" within 30 days. Every dollar back. No questions. You take zero risk.
The calculator, the Rate Book and the templates. Covered by the Next Quote Guarantee.
P.S. If you skipped to the bottom, here's the deal. Dayrate shows you what every job is worth, so you charge like a pro, get taken seriously and stay out of the 9-to-5. It prices any shoot or edit in under 5 minutes. It's $49. Use it on your next quote. If you don't love it, email me "refund" and get every dollar back. The only way to lose is to keep guessing.