How much does video production cost in 2026?

The honest answer: it depends on what you’re asking the film to do. A social cutdown and a Clearcast-approved TV commercial are different animals with different price tags. But “it depends” isn’t a budget line, so here are real numbers.

What video production costs in 2026

• Social content package — from £3,000 to £15,000+ per month, depending on volume, formats and whether we’re shooting new or cutting from existing assets.
• Brand or corporate film — £15,000 to £60,000. Crew days, locations and contributors move the needle most.
• Animation and explainers — £8,000 to £30,000 per finished minute, driven by style complexity and revisions.
• TV commercial — £50,000 to £250,000+ including clearance, excluding media spend. DRTV formats sit at the lower end; talent-led brand spots at the upper.
• Performance creative programme — from £10,000 per month for concepting, testing matrices and iteration against live data.

What actually moves the price

Five things, in order of impact: shoot days (crew and kit are day-rated), talent and usage rights (a recognisable face costs more, and so does running the ad for longer), locations and set builds, clearance and compliance (TV means Clearcast — we’re accredited, which keeps this painless), and the deliverables matrix.

That last one is where budgets are won. For Yankee Candle we delivered 130+ assets from a single production — one shoot, an entire campaign’s worth of content. Plan the matrix before the shoot and your cost per asset falls off a cliff.

Think returns, not costs

One of our clients won a £2m contract from a single view by the right person. Samaritans’ Christmas TVC generated £500k — their highest-ever TV appeal income. LoftZone’s first commercial drove a 296% uplift in website users. The question isn’t what the video costs. It’s what the job is worth.

How to set your budget

Work backwards from the job the film has to do. Awareness, leads, donations, recruitment — each points to a format, and the format points to a number. Then brief properly: our free video brief template gets you there in half an hour.

Or skip ahead. Tell us what you’re trying to move and we’ll tell you what it should cost — with a proper quote, not a range.