pricing · production
Quotes for the same show can differ by ten times. Here's what the difference can and can't buy.
If you've collected a few quotes for a podcast, you've probably noticed something odd. They don't just differ. They differ by multiples. One is a few hundred a month. Another is several thousand. A third won't give you a number until you've been on a call.
And there's no obvious way to tell which one is better. So most people do the natural thing. They treat the price as a signal. The higher number must mean better work.
We'd like to complicate that, with a story from Bren's first year of freelancing, because it's the clearest way we know to explain what's going on. It's Bren's, so Bren tells it.
the twenty percent question
I was editing a podcast for a client. Short episodes, fifteen minutes, one voice. Each took about twenty minutes and I charged around fifty dollars. At the time I thought that was a good rate.
One day the client sent over an unedited recording with the chat before the interview still at the start. A guest was asking who edited the show, because he might need someone. The client said she had a guy in Ireland. That was me. Then she told him the price.
The guest said, "Is labour that cheap in Ireland?"
I hadn't expected that. He wasn't saying the work was bad. He had a picture in his head of what a service like this should cost, and my number didn't match it. It was the first time I realised the price I'd set was telling people something I hadn't intended.
A little later in the same recording, the client asked him whether paying more would make the podcast about twenty percent better. He said, "Sure."
Think about that exchange. Twenty percent better at what? Louder, cleaner, more engaging? It isn't something you can measure in audio, and I doubt anyone on that call could have said what the extra money would buy. They just knew that a higher price is supposed to mean higher quality.
what the market publishes
If you go looking for pricing guides, you'll find plenty. Most are written by agencies selling the service, so read them as positioning, not a neutral survey.
Rise25 puts basic audio editing at $500 to $1,500 an episode and a mid tier at $1,500 to $4,000. ThePod.fm says businesses spend $500 to $15,000 an episode, and that video adds 30 to 50% on top. Content Allies says an agency can run from $2,000 to $20,000 or more a month.
A range that wide isn't a price list. It tells you the market hasn't settled on what the work is worth, which is exactly why the number alone tells you so little.
It's also worth noticing what those guides say separates their tiers. It's mostly not the sound. It's things like guest booking, repurposing content, SEO and reporting. That's real work, and some businesses need it. But it's different work from editing, and it's worth knowing which one you're being quoted for.
what ours looks like
For comparison, and because nobody in this space likes publishing real numbers, here are ours. Three packages, priced per episode.
Look at what changes from one to the next, and what doesn't. The audio work is the same at every level. What the extra money buys is more of the surrounding work taken off your plate. Authority adds more clips, written content, someone talking to your guests and someone scheduling it all. Pipeline adds planning, booking, reporting and publishing, so your team only has to turn up and record.
That's the honest answer to what a higher price buys, and it's the one we'd want you to look for in any quote. A launch setup for Pipeline, covering things like branded intros and cover art, is scoped separately from the per episode price.
AEO stands for answer engine optimisation, which means making your expertise easier to find through AI led search. We build for it, but we can't promise leads or search visibility from any package. Nobody can. Scope, recording schedule and platforms are agreed before we start.
what a higher price doesn't buy
Sound. Or not much of it. Past a basic standard, most clients can't hear the difference between a good edit and a perfect one. The next bit is also from Bren's first year, so it's Bren's voice again.
I used to polish cheap jobs until they were technically flawless, the way I'd been trained to. Nobody noticed. It took me a long time to accept that.
I also found that price and skill drift apart more often than you'd think. Another client was about to refer me on and I'd quoted him one hundred and twenty euro for the audio edit. He said we'll make it one hundred and sixty, because I think you're too cheap. And at every level I reached afterwards, I found someone charging far more who was nowhere near as good. A higher number tells you what someone charges. It doesn't tell you what they can do.
what a higher price can actually buy
There are real reasons for a number to be higher. Here are the ones we think hold up.
More work. Video, clips, titles, thumbnails, show notes, someone managing the schedule. All of it takes time, and it's work you'd otherwise do yourself. If a quote is higher, you should be able to point at the extra things in it.
Judgment about your audience. What stays, what goes, how the episode opens, which thirty seconds becomes the clip. That takes experience and thought, and it's the part that decides whether the show works. It's also the hardest part to see from the outside.
Attention. A producer with fewer shows has room to notice that a guest was wrong for you or that an episode isn't ready. Attention costs money because there's only so much of it.
Someone who stays. Twelve weeks of episodes arriving on time is worth more than it sounds. A cheap producer who disappears in month two is the most expensive option you can pick.
how to read a quote
You don't need to know audio to do this. You need to ask what the number is made of.
Ask what exactly is included, line by line. Ask what would make the price go up. Ask who does the work, the person you met or someone you won't. Ask what happens if an episode isn't good enough.
And if two quotes are five times apart, ask what the extra money buys in terms of things you could point at. If the answer is that it's simply better, ask better at what. If nobody can say, you've found your twenty percent.
where keystone fits in
We publish our prices because we'd rather you compared us on what's in them. If you need something that isn't in one of the three, we'll tell you what moves the number and why, before you ask.
Book a call, bring the quotes you've already got, and we'll go through what each one is made of. Ours included.
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