YouTube editing prices at a glance
| Option | Published price | What you get | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upwork freelancer | Typically $6–$25/hr; tier medians $10, $40 and $100/hr | Anything you can brief and manage yourself | Upwork, “How much does hiring a video editor cost?” |
| Fiverr gig | Set by each seller, plus a 5.5% service fee (and $3.50 on orders under $200) | Fixed packages; quality varies by seller | Fiverr Help Center, “Paying for orders, extras, or custom offers” |
| Per-video agency (Tasty Edits) | $327 per horizontal video; $305 each in a 4-pack | Managed editor and video manager | Tasty Edits pricing |
| Subscription (VidChops Weekly) | $495/month for 4 credits (1 credit = 1 long-form video) | Dedicated editor, 1–2 day turnaround, 3 revisions | VidChops pricing |
| Subscription (beCreatives Scale) | $999/month, billed quarterly | Editing team, thumbnail with every video | beCreatives YouTube editing plans |
| Subscription (Black Bulb Media Growth) | $1,699/month | Dedicated editor, 2–3 videos a week, thumbnails | Black Bulb Media video editing plans |
| DoneEdit (our service) | $27 per video founding price (first 20 customers), then $67 | Human-checked AI edit of a talking-head video in 48 hours, 2 revisions | doneedit.com |
DoneEdit is our own service, so read that row with that in mind. Everything else is quoted from the provider's public page on November 9, 2026; prices change, so check before you buy.
What actually drives the price
- Finished length and raw footage. More footage means more watching and cutting. Veedyou Media, an editing agency, says it plans on roughly one hour of post-production per finished minute for vlog-style videos (Veedyou Media, “Video editing rates”).
- Style. A clean talking-head cut with captions is far cheaper than retention editing with custom motion graphics, sound design and animation.
- Turnaround. 24–48 hour delivery usually costs more than “sometime this week”.
- Revisions. Fixed-price gigs often include one or two rounds; extra rounds cost more or slow things down.
- Fees and add-ons. Marketplace service fees, subtitles (VidChops lists subtitles at $95/month extra for long-form), thumbnails and resizing for Shorts all add up.
Hourly vs per-video vs monthly: which is cheaper?
Hourly is cheapest on paper but puts the risk of a slow editor on you, and you spend time writing briefs and reviewing drafts. Per-video pricing is predictable and suits creators who post irregularly. Monthly subscriptions only beat per-video pricing when you publish on a steady schedule, roughly four or more long videos a month, because unused credits are money spent for nothing.
The hidden cost: your time
Whoever edits, someone has to brief them, upload footage, review drafts and request changes. With a new freelancer that can take longer than the edit itself for the first few videos. Count that time when you compare a $15/hr editor with a fixed-price service.
Where DoneEdit fits
DoneEdit is a done-for-you service for simple talking-head videos: one person speaking English, up to 10 minutes of raw footage and up to 5 minutes finished. AI tools do the first pass (cuts, captions, zooms, b-roll, music), a person checks every video, and it comes back within 48 hours with 2 revision rounds. It is not built for multi-speaker podcasts or heavy cinematic edits; for those, an experienced freelancer or a subscription agency is the better fit.
Worked example: budgeting for one video a week
Here is how to turn the published rates above into a monthly number for your own channel. The inputs are examples, so swap in your own.
Say you post one 10-minute talking-head video a week and your raw footage is about 25 minutes. The question to ask any editor is how many hours that takes them, because hourly rates mean nothing without it.
- Ask for an hours estimate on a sample. Send one real raw file and ask for a quote in hours, not just a total.
- Multiply by the rate. At the Upwork-reported typical range of $6–$25 an hour, every extra hour an editor needs adds that much to each video.
- Multiply by four or five. A month has four or five upload weeks, so budget for five.
- Add the extras. Thumbnails, Shorts cut from the main video and revisions beyond the first round are often priced separately.
- Compare against a fixed price. A subscription such as VidChops at $495 a month for 4 credits or a per-video agency such as Tasty Edits at $327 per video gives you a known number to compare with.
The cheapest option on paper is often not the cheapest once you count revisions and the time you spend reviewing.
A quick checklist before you accept a quote
- Is the price per finished video, per hour, or per minute of footage?
- How many revision rounds are included, and what counts as a revision?
- Are captions, music licensing, b-roll and thumbnails included?
- What is the turnaround, and is it guaranteed?
- Who owns the project files, and how long are your raw files kept?
- What happens if the first edit misses the brief?
If a provider can't answer these in writing, the low price is a guess, not a quote.