Tool 1 of the Get Paid Kit · For podcast producers

Podcast Producer hourly rate calculator

This free calculator works out the hourly rate a freelance podcast producer should charge, starting from the income you need — not from an editor’s per-episode price. A producer sells the running of the show: planning the series, booking the guests, briefing the editor, chasing the deadlines and publishing the episode. This calculator counts those hours alongside the edit oversight, divides by the hours you can actually bill, and converts the result into the per-episode and monthly terms shows actually buy.

Runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, sent to a server or stored anywhere except this device.

The pricing reality for freelance podcast producers

Production is the layer around the recording. Before anyone presses record there is a series to plan, guests to research and book, questions to prepare and a schedule to hold. After it, there is an edit to brief and review, show notes to write or check, assets to prepare and an episode to publish on the day it was promised. The recorded hour is the visible tip of a much longer week.

One distinction matters before any numbers: the producer is not the editor. The podcast editor presets price the cutting of the audio itself; this page prices the person who runs the show around the edit. Some producers do both — in which case both layers belong in the price, not one of them donated.

That is why the preset below starts billable time at 55%. Pitching new shows, chasing guests who have gone quiet and the admin of running several productions at once are real hours that never reach an invoice. The numbers below are starting presets, not a survey: a $58,000 target income, $3,400 a year of expenses — hosting and transcription tools, storage and your own software are the shape of it — and 55% billable time. With those starting numbers the calculator lands near $85 an hour. Change any figure to match your own books; the point is that the running of the show gets counted before the episode price is quoted.

Your numbers — podcast producer presets

Your recommended rate

$0 / hour
$0Day rate (8 hours)
0Billable hours per year
Income + expenses needed$0
Grossed up for tax$0
With profit margin$0
Working weeks0
Total working hours0
Billable hours0

Your rate is saved on this device only, so the Proposal Generator can show it when you price a project.

Easy to miss

Costs podcast producers forget to put in the rate

  • Guest research and booking. Finding the right guests, pitching them and surviving the reschedules happens before a single billable episode exists. On a running show it never stops.
  • Hosting, transcription and asset tools. The platforms and software that move a show from recording to published — seats and subscriptions that renew whether episodes ship or not.
  • File wrangling and storage. Raw audio and video are heavy. Transfers, backups and archive storage for every show you run are a real, growing cost.
  • Keeping current with platforms. Podcast apps and video platforms change their rules, formats and analytics constantly, and a producer is expected to know before the client asks.
  • The schedule tax. A weekly show is a deadline that never moves. Holding slots for recordings, edits and approvals compresses the rest of your week in ways an hourly count flatters.
The maths

How this calculator works

Start with the hours you can genuinely sell. Take 52 weeks, subtract your vacation weeks, multiply by your hours per week, then multiply by your billable percentage. With the podcast producer presets — four weeks off, 40 hours a week, 55% billable — that is 1,056 billable hours a year, well under the 2,080 hours a salaried job is counted on. That gap is why dividing a target salary by 2,080 always underprices show production.

Next, work out what those hours must bring in. Add your desired income and your annual business expenses together — $61,400 on the presets — gross the total up for tax by dividing by one minus your tax rate — at a 25% estimate, divide by 0.75 to get $81,867 — then add your profit margin to reach $90,053 and divide by your billable hours. That final number, $85, is the rate below which the year stops adding up.

Now convert it into the units shows buy. A day at the preset rate is $682. If producing one episode — booking, brief, edit oversight, notes, publishing — takes about six hours of your time, the episode carries $510 of production at the preset rate, before the editor’s or host’s time is counted. A weekly show on that shape is $2,040 a month of production. Price per-episode and monthly deals from those numbers, and the format’s growth gets priced when it happens, not absorbed.

Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate, not tax advice. Tax rates, deductions and allowances vary by country, state and business structure. Enter the rate you expect to pay, and check significant decisions with a qualified accountant.
Next: build a proposal with this rate Use the general rate calculator
Questions

Podcast Producer rate questions

The editor cuts the audio. The producer runs everything around the cut: planning the series, researching and booking guests, preparing briefs and questions, scheduling recordings, briefing the edit, reviewing it, and publishing the finished episode with its notes and assets. They are different jobs with different presets on this site — and when one person does both, both layers belong in the price.
Per episode or as a monthly show fee, both priced from the hours an episode actually takes. At the preset rate, an episode carrying about six hours of production work is $510, and a weekly show is $2,040 a month. The per-episode shape suits a stable format; the monthly shape suits a show with planning, strategy and guest pipelines running between episodes. Either way, the hourly maths underneath is what keeps the number honest.
Per episode is fine — often better for the client relationship — as long as the episode price is built from the rate and the real hours, and rebuilt when the format grows. A show that adds video, a second weekly episode or a guest-heavy format has changed the hours, and the price has to change with it. The failure mode is a per-episode fee quoted once, from optimism, and never revisited.

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