How much should I charge for a 3D virtual tour?

For US residential work, typical ranges are roughly $150–300 for a small home (under 2,000 sqft), $250–500 for a mid-size home (2,000–3,500 sqft), and $400–800+ for a large home (3,500–6,000 sqft). Commercial is often priced per square foot or custom-quoted. These are ballparks — your real price should be built from your own cost basis and local market, not copied from a range.

What's the best pricing model for a 3D tour photographer?

There's no single best model — it depends on how your costs behave. Use margin pricing if your costs vary a lot job-to-job and you want a steady profit percentage. Use a multiplier if you want the simplest possible rule. Use target hourly if your costs are mostly your time and you have a firm wage floor you won't go below.

Should I charge the client for hosting?

That's your call, and the calculator supports all three approaches: absorb it (you eat the cost), pass it through at cost, or mark it up. Many photographers pass hosting through or mark it up, since it's a recurring cost tied directly to that client's tour staying live. Whatever you choose, make sure hosting is in your cost basis so it doesn't quietly erode your margin.

How do I price travel for a 3D tour shoot?

Set a comfortable included radius that's free, then charge for distance beyond it — round-trip — at a per-mile or per-kilometer rate (the IRS standard mileage rate is a common default). Separately, count round-trip drive time toward the job's total hours so a long commute raises the price through your hourly rate, not just mileage.

Why is my effective hourly lower than my quoted rate?

Because your quoted labor rate only covers on-site time, while your effective hourly spreads the whole client price across every hour the job consumes — including unpaid drive time and setup. If the gap is large, you're losing money to travel and overhead. Raise the price, tighten your service radius, or shoot faster.

How to Price a 3D Virtual Tour

The most common question new 3D tour photographers ask — and the one most of them get wrong — is what to charge. The honest answer is that there's no flat rate: the right price is built from your cost basis, your market, and the scope of the shoot. This guide walks through the method — the three pricing models, the costs photographers routinely forget, the mistakes that quietly lose money, and a worked example you can follow.

Last updated 2026-05-14. Written by Tom Sparks, Publisher of the We Get Around Network.

What does a 3D virtual tour cost?

As a rough orientation, here are typical US residential ranges. Treat them as a sanity check on a price you've built from your own costs — not as a price list to copy:

Small home — under 2,000 sqft: roughly $150–300
Mid-size home — 2,000–3,500 sqft: roughly $250–500
Large home — 3,500–6,000 sqft: roughly $400–800+
Commercial / hospitality: usually per-square-foot or custom-quoted

Ranges this wide aren't very useful on their own — that's the point. A photographer driving 90 minutes each way with a $69/month hosting plan has a very different floor than one shooting three tours a day in their own neighborhood. The number that matters is yours.

Shooting residential? The residential Matterport pricing guide breaks the ranges above into a per-square-footage table, walks the five cost factors, and gives a fully worked example for a 2,800 sqft suburban listing.

How do I price a shoot, step by step?

Five steps take you from “what does this cost me” to a client-ready quote:

1
Add up your true cost basis. Total what the shoot actually costs you: your labor time (scanning + setup + drive time) at your rate, the amortized share of your monthly hosting plan, any per-tour publishing fees, travel distance, and add-on processing like floor plans or drone panos. This is your floor — price below it and you lose money.
2
Choose a pricing model. Pick how you convert cost into price: a target margin percentage, a flat multiplier, or a target hourly rate. Each behaves differently as job scope changes — covered in detail below.
3
Apply the model to get your client price. Run your cost basis through the model. Margin: price = cost ÷ (1 − margin%). Multiplier: price = cost × X. Target hourly: price = (total hours × your floor rate) + pass-through costs.
4
Sanity-check the effective hourly. Divide the client price by your total hours on the job — including unpaid drive time. If that blended rate is below what your time is worth, raise the price, shorten travel, or use a faster scanner before you send the quote.
5
Present the quote. Give the client a clean, itemized estimate — not a raw cost breakdown. Bundle your labor and hosting into one services line; list add-ons separately. A professional-looking quote justifies a professional price.

The WGAN 3D Tour Price Calculator runs all five of these for you — enter the shoot details and it builds the cost basis, applies your chosen model, and shows the effective hourly so you can sanity-check before you send.

What are the three pricing models?

Every pricing approach is a way of turning your cost basis into a client price. Three cover almost everyone:

Margin: price = cost ÷ (1 − margin%)
You set a target profit margin — say 60% — and the price floats with your cost. A more expensive job automatically prices higher and still keeps the same 60% margin. Best when your costs vary job-to-job and you want profit percentage to stay steady. A 60% margin is mathematically the same as a 2.5× multiplier.
Multiplier: price = cost × X
You multiply your cost basis by a fixed number — 2×, 2.5×, 3×. The simplest model to explain and run. The catch: on a low-cost job the multiplier can leave you underpriced for the value delivered, and on a high-cost job it can overshoot. Good for photographers who want one dead-simple rule.
Target hourly: price = (total hours × floor rate) + pass-through costs
You set a non-negotiable hourly rate — "I won't work for less than $150/hr" — multiply it by every hour the job takes (scanning, setup, AND drive time), then add pass-through costs at face value. Protects your wage when scope varies. Best when your costs are mostly time, not materials.

Which costs do photographers forget?

A price built on an incomplete cost basis is a price that loses money. These are the costs that most often get left out:

Recurring hosting: Matterport, iGUIDE, and other platforms charge monthly — that cost is spread across every tour you shoot, forever. Amortize it into each job's cost basis.
Drive time and mileage: The hour you spend driving is an hour you can't bill elsewhere. Count round-trip drive time toward the job's hours, and charge for distance beyond a comfortable free radius.
Editing and processing time: Uploading, tagging, requesting floor plans, QA — the desk work after the shoot is real labor that rarely makes it into the quote.
Equipment depreciation: Your camera wears out and gets superseded. A few dollars per tour set aside means the next camera is already paid for when you need it.
Software, insurance, and overhead: Editing software, cloud storage, liability insurance, your website — fixed monthly costs that every job has to help carry.
Revisions and reshoots: Without a revision policy, "can you just re-do that room" is unpaid work. Price in a buffer or set clear revision terms up front.

What are the most common pricing mistakes?

Pricing the camera, not the time: Clients aren't paying for your scanner — they're paying for the hours, skill, and finished deliverable. Two photographers with the same camera should not necessarily charge the same.
Forgetting hosting eats margin forever: A $69/month hosting plan isn't a one-time cost — it's a tax on every tour you'll ever shoot. If it's not in your cost basis, your real margin is lower than you think.
Undercharging to "build a portfolio": Cheap intro pricing anchors clients low and is brutally hard to raise later. Charge what the work is worth from the start; discount deliberately, not by default.
Copying a competitor's price: You can see their price but not their cost basis, volume, or market. Their number might be losing them money. Build your price from your costs, then check it against the market.
Ignoring unpaid time: Travel, admin, marketing, invoicing — the hours around the shoot are part of the real cost of doing business. If only on-site time is billed, your effective hourly is lower than your quoted rate.

A worked example

Say you're shooting a 2,500 sqft residential home with a Matterport Pro 2, you bill your labor at $200/hour, and the job works out to about 1.5 hours on site. Your hosting plan is $69/month and you average roughly 10 tours a month, so each tour carries about $7 of hosting. The home is a 20-mile round trip.

Labor: ~1.5 hrs × $200 = $300
Hosting: ~$7 amortized per tour
Travel: 20 mi × $0.70 ≈ $14
Cost basis: ≈ $321

Run that through each model: a 60% margin prices the job around $810; a 2.5× multiplier lands close to the same place; a $150/hr target hourly on the total job time produces a different number again, because it ignores your labor rate entirely and bills your floor rate on every hour. None is “correct” — they're different tools. Plug your real numbers into the calculator and compare all three side by side.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for a 3D virtual tour?: For US residential work, typical ranges are roughly $150–300 for a small home (under 2,000 sqft), $250–500 for a mid-size home (2,000–3,500 sqft), and $400–800+ for a large home (3,500–6,000 sqft). Commercial is often priced per square foot or custom-quoted. These are ballparks — your real price should be built from your own cost basis and local market, not copied from a range.
What's the best pricing model for a 3D tour photographer?: There's no single best model — it depends on how your costs behave. Use margin pricing if your costs vary a lot job-to-job and you want a steady profit percentage. Use a multiplier if you want the simplest possible rule. Use target hourly if your costs are mostly your time and you have a firm wage floor you won't go below.
Should I charge the client for hosting?: That's your call, and the calculator supports all three approaches: absorb it (you eat the cost), pass it through at cost, or mark it up. Many photographers pass hosting through or mark it up, since it's a recurring cost tied directly to that client's tour staying live. Whatever you choose, make sure hosting is in your cost basis so it doesn't quietly erode your margin.
How do I price travel for a 3D tour shoot?: Set a comfortable included radius that's free, then charge for distance beyond it — round-trip — at a per-mile or per-kilometer rate (the IRS standard mileage rate is a common default). Separately, count round-trip drive time toward the job's total hours so a long commute raises the price through your hourly rate, not just mileage.
Why is my effective hourly lower than my quoted rate?: Because your quoted labor rate only covers on-site time, while your effective hourly spreads the whole client price across every hour the job consumes — including unpaid drive time and setup. If the gap is large, you're losing money to travel and overhead. Raise the price, tighten your service radius, or shoot faster.

Put the method to work

The WGAN 3D Tour Price Calculator builds your cost basis, runs all three pricing models, and shows your effective hourly — free, no signup. Running this as a business? See the Matterport Service Partner pricing guide. Comparing recurring hosting costs? Deciding which camera to buy first? See the scanner comparison and the break-even calculator. Once you're quoting work, the free Matterport contract template covers scope, payment, IP, and reshoot terms — send it with every quote.