Freelance video editors usually quote per project or per minute and absorb revisions, renders, and asset management as invisible unpaid time. This calculator works backward from your target take-home to the hourly rate your project quotes have to beat.
| Billable hours per year | — |
| Gross revenue you must bill | — |
| Estimated tax at your rate | — |
| Business expenses recovered | — |
| Resulting take-home (check) | — |
This tool does math on the numbers you enter. It is not tax or financial advice and contains no built-in tax tables — enter your own effective rate (a tax professional can help you estimate it). Figures are estimates for planning only.
| Typical low | $25/hr |
| Common average | $50/hr |
| Specialized / certified high | $120/hr |
Benchmarks are gathered from public salary and marketplace data and refreshed periodically. Treat them as orientation — your required rate from the calculator above is the number that matters for your situation.
The most common pricing mistake is dividing a target salary by 2,080 hours. That ignores three things every freelancer carries: self-employment tax, business expenses (editing software and plugins, fast storage and backups, a capable workstation, stock footage/music subscriptions, color and audio tools), and the large share of the week that is never billable. This calculator builds all three in, then solves for the rate that leaves you with the take-home you entered.
US freelance video editors commonly bill $25–$120/hour — entry-level near $25–$45, senior editors above $85. Project pricing is more common, but set the hourly floor here first so per-minute and per-project quotes don't drop below cost.
Unlimited revisions destroy editing margins. Cap rounds in your contract, or lower the billable percentage above so your rate absorbs the extra passes. For a single project, use a cost-plus quote with an explicit revision buffer.
Clients prefer predictable per-project or per-finished-minute pricing. Compute your hourly floor here, estimate total hours including renders and revisions, then convert to whichever unit the client wants while staying above the floor.