Costs & budget
Freelance Videographer or Video Production Company? An Honest Comparison
You need a video. You search for someone to make it, and you get two very different kinds of result. Freelance videographers quoting a day rate. Production companies quoting a price for the finished video, often three or four times the freelancer’s number.
So which one is right? If you pick the freelancer and the video needed more than a camera operator, you end up producing it yourself, or paying twice. If you pick the production company for a job a freelancer could have done in an afternoon, you’ve overpaid.
We’re a production company, so weigh our view accordingly. But we’ve also hired a lot of freelancers ourselves over the years, and plenty of the time a freelancer is the right answer. Here’s how to tell which one you need, what each costs, and the cost that never appears on either quote.
The short answer
Hire a freelance videographer when you already know exactly what the video is, and someone on your side will plan it, script it and run the shoot. Hire a production company when the video has a job to do, like winning work, pre-selling your service or recruiting, and you want someone else to work out what it should say and make sure it says it.
| Question | Freelance videographer | Video production company |
|---|---|---|
| Who plans and scripts it | Usually you | They do |
| Who’s there on the day | One person, sometimes two | A crew sized to the shoot |
| If someone’s ill on shoot day | Usually no plan B | Usually someone else can step in |
| Editing | Often extra days on top | Included in the price |
| How it’s priced | By the day | By the finished video |
| Best for | Simple, well-defined jobs | Videos with a commercial job to do |
What a freelance videographer costs in the UK
The freelance videographers we’ve hired usually charged between £350 and £650 a day. That lines up with outside data: YunoJuno, a freelancer marketplace, puts the average videographer day rate at £427, based on its own booking data. Where someone sits in that range comes down to experience, the kit they bring, and how in demand they are.
What a day rate usually buys is a day of filming. The things that tend to sit outside it:
- Editing. Most freelancers bill edit days separately, so a video that takes a day to film and two to edit is three days on the invoice, not one.
- Sound. Some freelancers record good audio themselves. Others expect you to book a sound recordist, or to live with whatever the on-camera mic catches.
- Planning and scripting. A videographer films what’s in front of the camera. Deciding what should be in front of it is normally your job.
- Travel, if they’re coming from further afield.
So the fair comparison isn’t a day rate against a production company’s price. It’s the day rate, plus the edit days, plus the planning time on your side, against the price of a finished video. Ours start from £1,500 + VAT for a single finished film, and you can see every package on our pricing page. If you want the bigger picture of what agencies charge by type of video, our video production cost guide has the full breakdown.
The cost nobody puts on the quote: your time
With a freelancer, you become the producer. That’s the part of the comparison every quote leaves out.
Somebody has to do the work a production company’s producer and director would normally do, and with a freelancer, that somebody is you:
- Writing the brief, and deciding what the video is actually for
- Writing the script, or the interview questions
- Finding the customers or staff who’ll appear, and getting them to say yes
- Booking the room, the date and the timings
- Telling the videographer what shots you need
- Directing people on the day, including the nervous ones
- Watching the edit, giving feedback, and going round again
None of that is hard if you’ve done it before. If you’ve got a marketing person who has, a freelancer can be a great fit, because you’re only buying the part you can’t do in-house. But if nobody on your team has run a shoot, it’s usually a good few days of someone’s time, and it’s the part that decides whether the video works.
When a freelancer is genuinely the better choice
More often than production companies tend to admit. A freelancer is a sensible call when:
- You need an event captured. Speeches, a panel, some atmosphere for social. One skilled person can cover it well.
- The plan already exists. You’ve got the script, the people lined up and someone to run the day. You need hands and a camera.
- You have an in-house editor. If you just want good raw footage, hire someone to shoot it and keep the edit in the building.
- The video is simple and the budget is small. A single talking-head clip for social doesn’t need a crew.
- You need lots of quick social content. Where speed matters more than polish, a regular freelancer you trust can be the right set-up. If it’s every week, weigh up what an in-house hire really costs.
Before you book one, look at work they’ve done that’s like yours, not just their showreel highlights. Ask whether they record sound themselves, and agree in writing who owns the footage. Our guide to choosing a video production company has more questions worth asking, and most of them apply to freelancers too.
When a production company earns its fee
When the video has a commercial job, and getting it wrong would cost you more than the fee.
The camera work is rarely what decides whether a business video works. The plan is. What should the video say, to whom, and in what order? Who’s the right person to say it? What does the viewer need to believe by the end, and what do you want them to do next? That’s the work a production company does before anyone picks up a camera, and it’s where the money goes.
It’s worth paying for when:
- Nobody on your side has time to plan and script it. Or nobody has done it before.
- People need directing, not just filming. Customers and staff who’ve never been on camera need someone who can get a natural answer out of them.
- Several people have to sign it off. A producer manages the feedback, so the edit doesn’t stall in someone’s inbox.
- You need several videos. Filming three or four in one batch day brings the cost per video down sharply. See the batch day on our pricing page.
- The date can’t move. A company can put someone else on the shoot if a crew member is ill.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. For National Private Investigators, we made a homepage video introducing the founder, plus videos for their service pages. Within three months, their monthly revenue had doubled from £15,000 to £30,000 (read the full case study). A videographer could have filmed those videos. The result came from working out what their prospects needed to hear before they’d pick up the phone.
Not sure which one you need?
Send us the brief. We’ll tell you honestly whether it needs a production company, and if a freelancer would do the job, we’ll say so. Get an honest answer, or see our prices first.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a videographer cost per day in the UK?
The freelance videographers we’ve hired usually charged £350 to £650 a day, and YunoJuno’s booking data puts the average at £427. That’s normally for filming only, with editing billed on top.
Is a freelance videographer cheaper than a production company?
Per day, yes. Per finished video, the gap is often smaller than it looks once you add the edit days and the time your own team spends planning and running the shoot.
Do freelance videographers edit the video too?
Many do, but it’s usually charged as extra days on top of the filming day. Ask for the edit to be quoted up front, along with how many rounds of changes are included.
Who owns the footage?
Whoever you agree owns it, so agree it in writing before the shoot. That goes for freelancers and production companies alike.
