Photo booth pricing and profit calculator
A three-hour photo booth hire is rarely three hours of work. Enquiry emails, template design, loading, travel, setup, attending, dismantling, cleaning and reprint fixes all belong in the cost of the booking.
Enter your hire price and the real costs below. The calculator returns your true cost per hire, your effective hourly rate, the price you need to charge, and how quickly the booth pays for itself.
The package price on the invoice, before add-ons.
Guestbook, extra hour, backdrop upgrade — a typical booking, not the best one.
Unloading, building, testing, lighting.
Print template design, props prep, media loading, cleaning.
Quoting, contracts, invoicing, chasing balances.
Media and ribbon cost across a realistic print volume, not the minimum.
Props wear out and walk off; allow for it per hire.
As a percentage of the purchase price.
- Direct costs£81.00
- Crew£84.00
- Travel£37.00
- Payment fees£7.85
- Overheads£79.00
- Equipment£42.00
- Your time£250.00
This hire covers its direct costs but does not pay you your target rate of £25.00 an hour — you are effectively earning £17.92 an hour across 10.0 hours.
To pay yourself properly and hit a 20% net margin, price this from £670.19. Adding £220.19 would raise annual profit by roughly £8,807.64 at your current volume.
A 3.0-hour booking actually takes you 10.0 hours once setup, prep, admin and travel are counted — 3.3× the on-site time.
Overheads add £79.00 to every hire at 40 bookings a year. Fewer bookings raise this figure, so a quiet year needs a higher price, not a lower one.
At 4 bookings a month, this kit pays for itself after about 28 bookings — roughly month 7.
You need about 168 bookings a year to take home £30,000.00 from this service — currently you are planning 40.
A 10% discount (£45.00) would cut this hire’s profit to -£115.85.
- Overhead per booking = annual overheads ÷ (bookings per month × months trading)
- Equipment per booking = (purchase price ÷ lifespan + maintenance allowance) ÷ bookings per year
- True cost = direct costs + crew + travel + payment fees + overhead per booking + equipment per booking + (your hours × your target rate)
- Effective hourly rate = (revenue − cash costs) ÷ every hour the booking takes you
- Break-even price = cash costs ÷ (1 − payment fee %) − add-on revenue
- Recommended price = (cash costs + your time) ÷ (1 − payment fee % − target margin %) − add-on revenue
- Equipment payback = purchase price ÷ (revenue − variable costs − overhead per booking)
Results are planning estimates, not financial or tax advice.
Print volume rises with guest count. Cost the media at the volume a busy wedding actually produces.
An attendant is usually paid from load-in to load-out, not just the hire window.
If you charge nothing for an idle-hour gap between drinks and dancing, it still occupies the booth and the attendant.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I include my own time as a cost?
- Yes. Valuing your hours at a target rate is the only way to see whether a hire pays you or simply keeps you busy. The calculator reports both figures: cash left before your time is paid, and profit once it is.
- How do I cost booth depreciation?
- Divide the purchase price by its expected life in years, add a maintenance allowance, then divide by the bookings you expect in a year. That is the equipment cost carried by each hire.