The booth is three hours. The booking isn’t. Put in what you charge and every hour the job really takes, and see what you actually earn per hour of your time — then what you’d need to charge to hit the rate you want.
Before tax. One event.
$681 is the Check Cherry median from ~118,000 bookings. Replace it with your own number.
All of them, not just the ones on the invoice. Defaults are illustrative — edit every line.
Money that leaves your account because this event happened.
What this booking pays you
$681 minus $0 in hard costs, across 11 hours of your time.
Kept after costs
$681
Unpaid hours
8
What is an hour of your time worth to you?
To pay yourself that, charge
$1,100
That is $419 more than you charge now.
Your numbers stay in your browser; nothing is sent or saved. This is your own arithmetic, not a market rate. For what other operators charge, see the benchmarks.
Most operators quote the hours the booth is open and quietly donate the rest: the inquiry emails, the template revisions, the drive, the load-in, the gallery delivery. Chris Meyer of BoothCamp Create calls the fix return on attention. On the August 19, 2026 Show & Tell he worked a $681 booking out loud and landed at roughly $20 to $23 an hour once every hour was counted, then asked the room: “Why would you be self-employed and work for minimum wage?”
That is your real rate today, and it is the one to raise. Three levers, in the order the session recommended:
Check it against the hourly rate you would accept from an employer for the same stress, then run it backwards with that number in the target box. Most people find the price they should be charging is higher than the one they would have guessed.
The full conversation, with the room’s own survey of what sixteen operators charge, is in the recap: $681 Is Below the Floor: How to Price Your Photo Booth Services.
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