Video editors charge from $6 to $25 an hour on Upwork, which is the range Upwork itself says its video editors "typically cost." Editing services that publish prices charge by the video instead: about $85 to $265 a finished video on a monthly plan, or $495 to $2,749 a month. The US median wage for an employed film and video editor was $75,420 a year in May 2025.
So the honest answer to "how much should I charge" is that hourly freelancing sits at the bottom of the market, and the money is in selling finished videos on a monthly plan.
How much do video editors charge per hour?
On Upwork, video editors "typically cost $6 - $25 per hour, though rates vary with project scope," in Upwork's own words. For comparison, the BLS median wage for employed film and video editors was $75,420 a year in May 2025, which is about $36 an hour over a 2,080-hour working year.
The gap between those two numbers is the first thing to understand. Upwork's marketplace is global, and Upwork notes that "a video editor’s location can influence freelance rates." An editor in the US competing on hourly price is competing with editors everywhere.
The employed wage is the useful floor. If a freelance rate cannot beat about $36 an hour after the unpaid hours of finding clients and fixing files, the freelance business is paying less than a job. Our free freelance hourly rate calculator works out a rate from the income you need.
How much do video editors charge per video?
Editing services that publish prices charge about $85 to $265 a finished video when a monthly plan is divided by the videos it includes. Vidchops charges $495 a month for 4 long-form videos, $123.75 each. Video Husky's plans promise 6 to 10 videos a month for $849 or $1,590.
| Service and plan | Monthly price | What it includes | Price per video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vidchops Weekly | $495 | 4 long-form videos (5 to 60 minutes) or 16 short-form | $123.75 long, $30.94 short |
| Vidchops Pro | $995 | Up to 8 long-form or up to 32 short-form | $124.38 long, $31.09 short |
| Video Husky Eskimo | $849 | "6-10 simple videos" a month, exported under 20 minutes | $84.90 to $141.50 |
| Video Husky Siberian | $1,590 | "6-10 4K videos" a month, exported under 30 minutes | $159 to $265 |
| Video Husky St. Bernard | $2,749 | A dedicated editor for "100% of their daily time" | Not per video |
| Employed editor (BLS median) | $6,285 | Annual median $75,420 divided by 12 | Not per video |
Prices from each service's own pricing page, 12 October 2026. US dollars. Price per video is our arithmetic: the monthly price divided by the videos included, at the fewest and the most. The BLS row is the May 2025 median wage, before employer costs.
The per-video price is what a client compares. A YouTube creator posting one video a week knows what four edited videos a month are worth to them; they do not know, or care, how many hours each took.
How much should you charge for editing short-form videos?
About $31 a short is the published benchmark: Vidchops counts four short-form videos (TikToks, Reels, Shorts) as one credit, so its $495 plan buys 16 shorts at $30.94 each, and its $995 plan up to 32 at $31.09.
Short-form editing is priced lower per piece because each one is short, but it is sold in volume. Sixteen shorts a month is four a week, which is a normal posting rhythm for a creator.
The better-paid version of short-form work is cutting clips from someone else's long video, where the skill is finding the moment rather than the edit. That is the business in how to start a podcast clipping business, and it prices the same way: by the clip, sold monthly.
How much should a beginner video editor charge?
Start per video, not per hour, and price near the bottom of the published per-video range: around $85 to $125 for a long-form YouTube video, at the levels Video Husky's Eskimo and Vidchops Weekly plans work out to. Then sell it as four videos a month.
The reason is arithmetic. A beginner charging $20 an hour who takes eight hours on a video earns $160 for it; once they get faster and take four hours, they earn $80. Charged at $120 a video, the same editor earns more as they get faster, which is what should happen.
Setting a first price without a portfolio is the hard part, and it is covered in how to price a service with no track record. If the work is podcasts rather than YouTube, how much to charge for podcast editing has that market's published prices.
Is video editing still worth it as a business?
Yes, sold as a monthly plan: the services here charge $495 to $2,749 a month, and Video Husky's top plan, a dedicated editor full time, costs a client $2,749 a month. An employed editor's median salary works out to $6,285 a month. A solo editor with three clients at $849 a month brings in $2,547; at $1,590 each, $4,770.
What makes it work is the same thing in every published price list: the client pays for a number of finished videos each month, not for time. Vidchops sells "No Contract (cancel anytime)" plans and still describes itself as a "flat rate, subscription video editing service."
What makes it hard is competition on the low end. Upwork's typical $6 to $25 an hour is the price a client sees first, and an editor who quotes hourly is compared against it.
The honest hard part
The published prices are the easy part. The hard part is that most editors do not publish prices at all, so these two services and one marketplace are the visible part of a market where most deals are quoted privately.
The second hard part is scope. "One video" means a 5-minute vlog on one plan and a 60-minute podcast on another, and Video Husky's plans are defined by export length, footage size and running time. Two editors charging the same price per video can be doing very different amounts of work.
The third is revisions. Vidchops' $495 plan includes "3 revisions per video" and its $995 plan "Unlimited revisions per video." A price without a revision limit is a price without an upper limit on your hours.
