There is no single answer, and every site that prints one is either quoting a survey it will not name or inventing a number. What does exist is a small set of variables that decide the figure, and once you can see them you can read any offer that lands in your inbox and work out whether it is good.
The four things that move the number
1. Usage, which is usually the biggest one
A shoot fee pays for your time on the day. A usage licence pays for what the client is allowed to do with the images afterwards, and for how long, and where. Those are two different products and they are priced separately in every professional market. The same eight hours in the same studio can be worth a modest fee if the images go on one brand's website for a year, and several times that if they run as paid advertising across a continent for three years with a competitor exclusivity attached.
This is why "what is your day rate" is an incomplete question. The honest answer is a rate plus a licence, and how to quote one is a whole subject of its own.
2. The length and shape of the day
A half day is not half a day rate in most markets, because the setup cost is the same. Overtime beyond the agreed hours is usually charged pro rata with an uplift. Travel days, fittings and wardrobe calls are normally billed at a reduced rate rather than free, and if nobody mentions them they end up free by default, which is a quiet way to lose money on a booking that looked well paid.
3. The market and the category
Commercial and catalogue work in a large city pays differently from editorial work at a magazine, and editorial is famously the category where the fee is low and the point is the tearsheet. Fitness, parts, hostess and promotional work each have their own conventions. A useful sanity check is to compare like for like inside one category and one city rather than across the whole industry, which is why the directory filters are category and city first.
4. Whether anyone is taking a commission
A traditional agency typically takes around twenty percent from the talent side, and frequently charges the client a fee on top. That is not a scandal: an agency chases the invoice, carries the risk on rates and sells you to clients you would never reach. It does mean that two identical bookings can be worth materially different amounts to you depending on how they were arranged. On a direct booking the arithmetic is simple, and our own pricing page runs it with your numbers.
How to research a rate without guessing
- Ask the client what the usage is before you quote. Territory, term, media, and whether exclusivity is being asked for. Four questions, one email, and the answer changes the number.
- Read published union rate cards. For commercial work in the United States, the performer unions publish scale rates for their agreements. You may not be working under one, but they are a real, checkable floor for what organised buyers pay.
- Ask other freelancers in your category and city. Not on a public forum, where numbers get performative, but directly. Most working models will tell you.
- Watch what a repeat client accepts. A quote that is accepted instantly, twice, was too low. That is the only piece of market research nobody can take away from you.
What a good offer looks like
It names the client, not just an agency initial. It states the hours, the location and the call time. It states the usage in specific terms rather than "for marketing purposes". It comes with a release you can read before the day rather than one pushed at you on set. It has a payment term, in writing, with a number of days on it. If those five things are present you can price the job. If they are absent, the first job is to get them, and a client who refuses to put them in writing has told you something useful.
What we will not tell you
Maxgirls does not publish an earnings claim, does not average the rates on the site into a headline figure, and takes no share of anything you book, so we never see what you were actually paid. What we do is make your own published range visible to a brand before they contact you, which moves the money conversation to the start of the relationship instead of the end of it.
Next: how a print rate is built, how to quote a day rate you can defend, and what a Maxgirls profile publishes.
Where this applies on Maxgirls
Your day-rate range, your categories, your city and your availability sit on your own profile, visible to a brand before they contact you, and Maxgirls takes no share of anything you book.