Footage calculator
Multiply the hours of footage you could license by 60, then by $1 and by $4: that is the range Bloomberg reported AI companies paying per minute in January 2025. One hundred cleared hours comes to $6,000 to $24,000 on that basis, and real deals frequently land well below it.
Work out a range for your footage
Worked examples
| Cleared hours | Minutes | Low ($1 a minute) | High ($4 a minute) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 600 | $600 | $2,400 |
| 100 | 6,000 | $6,000 | $24,000 |
| 1,000 | 60,000 | $60,000 | $240,000 |
| 10,000 | 600,000 | $600,000 | $2,400,000 |
What moves the real price up or down?
- Rights. Footage with gaps is worth nothing until they are fixed. That is why the calculator counts the cleared share only.
- Quality. Camera originals in 4K and above are easier to sell than compressed exports.
- Variety. Many places, subjects and lighting conditions beat many hours of one view.
- Exclusivity. An exclusive license takes the footage off the market for others; expect it to be part of the price talk.
- Metadata. Dates, locations, camera data and existing logs save the buyer work.
Prices for whole datasets are published by some marketplaces rather than per minute; see the video buyers comparison.
Questions
Where does the $1 to $4 per minute come from?
From a Bloomberg report of 10 January 2025, which said AI companies were paying between $1 and $4 per minute of footage. It is a reported range, not a rate any company publishes.
Why does the calculator ask how much is cleared?
Because footage you cannot license (commercial music, people without releases, client-owned shoots) is worth nothing to a buyer until it is fixed. Counting only the cleared share gives a more honest range.
Is the result what I will be paid?
No. Duplicate clips, low resolution, a narrow range of subjects and exclusivity terms all shift the figure, and pricing is the buyer's call once it has seen the library. Real deals frequently land well below this range.
Does any buyer publish a per-hour rate?
None of the companies in our video buyers comparison publishes one. Labelbox Prism publishes ranges per dataset instead, from around $50K for smaller targeted datasets.
Get a quote
Your ZIP, an address for our reply, then six or seven taps describing the library. Two minutes, roughly.
A person here reads the description, holds it up against what each video buyer says it accepts, and replies naming the ones that match. No buyer hears about you before you agree.
Describe the footage here; never attach it. No clips, sample links, drive shares or passwords, please.
Plain disclosure: this site makes introductions, and a buyer may pay us once one turns into a license.
Received. Thanks for the description.
- Someone here compares it with the rules each video buyer publishes.
- You get an email naming any buyer that matches, with our reasoning.
- A buyer only hears from us after you reply yes. Footage never comes to us at any point.