How much does a video for a car dealership cost?
The useful number is cost per car, because inventory turns over and each car needs its own video. A videographer is priced per shoot or per day and works out to tens or hundreds of dollars per car; a person on staff with a phone costs their hours; a listing-to-video tool such as VroomVideo is $9 per car with no filming.
Four ways to get a per-car video, and what each costs
| Route | What you pay | Per car, roughly | Time to a posted video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Videographer | Per day or per shoot, plus editing | Tens to a few hundred dollars, depending on batch size | Days |
| Staff with a phone | Their hours | Twenty to forty minutes of someone’s day | Same day, if someone has the time |
| DIY in an editor (Canva, CapCut) | A subscription plus an hour per car | The hour | Same day |
| Listing-to-video (VroomVideo) | $9 per car, first video free | $9 | About three minutes |
The ranges for the first three are wide because they depend on where you are and how many cars you batch. The last one is a fixed price.
The cost that matters is per car listed
A dealership that lists 40 cars a month needs 40 videos a month. That is what makes the videographer route hard: even a good per-car rate on a batch shoot only works if the cars are all on the lot on shoot day, and they are not. The listing-to-video route scales with listings because the input is the listing.
What you give up with the cheapest route
A generated video is made from the listing photos, so it shows what the photos show. It cannot show the engine running, a walk around the car, or a salesperson’s face. If those matter for your brand, keep the videographer for the flagship cars and use the per-listing route for the rest of the lot.
Questions
Is a walkaround video by a salesperson free?
It costs their time — typically twenty to forty minutes per car including the edit — and the result depends on the person, the light and the lot. It is free the way anything done by staff is free.
Does a cheaper video perform worse?
What performs is a video that exists for every car, posted the day it is listed, with the price on screen. A polished video for one in twenty cars loses to a decent one for all twenty.
Try it
Make a video from a car you are selling right now.
Year, make, model, mileage and price in one line. You can fix the details on the next page.