Travel Fee Calculator: What Should I Charge to Drive to This Shoot?

What the calculator counts

• What the drive costs you: the whole trip, there and back. Miles times your cost per mile, plus drive hours times your hourly value, plus tolls, parking and ferries.
• Beyond your free radius: the miles past the radius, counted twice because you drive them out and back, and the share of the drive time they take at this trip's pace, plus any tolls, parking and ferry fares. That's the part your base price doesn't pay for.
• Rate per mile beyond the radius: what one more mile of distance costs you, out and back: twice your cost per mile, plus twice the minutes a mile takes at your hourly value. Rounded up to the next 10¢.
• Distance bands: four bands starting at your radius, each priced at its far edge and rounded up to the next $5, so no shoot inside a band costs you more than its fee. Past the last band, quote the job.
• Suggested trip fee: what your chosen rule charges for this trip, plus tolls, parking and ferries at cost.

Setting a trip fee

A workable trip fee has three parts: a free radius, a charge for distance past it, and pass-through costs. The radius is measured one way from where you start, by road, because that's what an agent can check in a maps app. Inside it, the drive is part of the base price. Past it, the fee grows with the distance, and tolls, parking and ferry fares go on the invoice at cost.

There are two ways to charge for the distance:

• Flat fees by distance band. "Up to 25 miles included, over 25 to 40 miles $X, over 40 to 55 miles $Y." An agent finds the listing's distance and sees one price before booking. Each band has to be priced for its farthest shoot, so a shoot just past a band's near edge pays for up to one band width more driving, out and back, than its trip takes. Narrower bands close that gap, at the cost of a longer list.
• A rate per mile past the radius. "$Z a mile beyond 25 miles." It's exact, but the agent has to measure the distance to know the price, and you have to say whether the miles are counted one way or both ways. The calculator's rate is per mile one way, with the drive home already in it, and its price list line says "counted one way" so nobody has to guess.

Whichever you pick, put it on your price list and your booking form, so the fee is agreed before the shoot, and show it as its own line on the invoice. The invoice generator takes it as a line of your own.

The free radius isn't free

Driving inside the radius still costs you. It's paid for by the base price, which is why the radius should match what the base price assumes. The pricing calculator counts driving twice: in its vehicle cost line, which is the business share of your car for the year, and in its hours per shoot, which are door to door. If those numbers assume about an hour on the road for an ordinary shoot, a radius you can cover in about half an hour each way fits them. Look at where your last few months of shoots were: a radius that takes in most of your regular agents means the fee only shows up on the occasional far listing, and the agents you see every week never meet it.

The calculator shows the part of each trip inside the radius as well, so you can see what your base price is carrying.

The car and your time are separate costs

The IRS says its business mileage rate "is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile" (IR-2025-128). That makes it a fair benchmark for what a mile costs you in fuel, wear, insurance and the car losing value, which is why it's the starting value here. It doesn't pay for your time. A trip fee that only covers mileage leaves the drive itself unpaid. At 50 mph a mile takes 1.2 minutes, which is $1.76 of time at $88 an hour, against 76¢ for the car.

How much of your hourly rate to bill for driving is a business decision. You can bill drive time at your full rate, at a lower one, or bill mileage only and accept the rest as the cost of a wider service area. Change the hourly field and the fee and bands follow. Whatever you don't bill comes out of your base price or your take-home.

For your taxes, the IRS rate is a common benchmark for vehicle cost, and the IRS also lets you use actual costs instead. Which you should use, and what records you need, is a question for your accountant.

Trips that need more than a distance fee

• Twilight. When twilight means a second trip at dusk (the pricing calculator prices the add-on at about 1.5 hours for that reason), the second drive to a listing past your radius is past it too: say on your price list that the trip fee applies to each visit. More in our twilight guide.
• Several listings on one trip. If an agent books two homes in the same far town on the same day, you drive there once. Charge the trip fee once and say so; it's a reason for the agent to batch listings.
• Long or overnight trips. Past your last band, the drive starts to replace a shoot you could have booked closer to home, and there may be a hotel. Quote those jobs one by one.
• A wasted trip. A trip fee for a locked or unready house is a different fee, set in your booking terms. See the cancellation section of our contracts guide.

Where the starting values come from

The cost per mile is the IRS business standard mileage rate: 76¢ a mile for July 1 to December 31, 2026 (IR-2026-29), after 72.5¢ for January 1 to June 30 (IR-2025-128), read on irs.gov on November 4, 2026. It changes, sometimes mid-year as it did in 2026, so check it each January. The $88 hourly value is what the pricing calculator works out at its defaults ($60,000 take-home, a 25% tax set-aside and $8,300 of yearly costs over 288 shoots of 3.5 hours). The trip, the radius and the band width have no starting value: they depend on where you work.

Setting the rest of your prices? The pricing calculator works out your minimum price per shoot and the hourly rate used here, and our guide to how much to charge for real estate photography covers packages and add-ons.