Most equipment owners price their gear by looking at a few Sharegrid listings and picking a number that feels right. That's not pricing. That's guessing. And guessing usually means leaving money on the table or sitting with gear that never books.
The reality is that rental pricing is a math problem with a few key inputs: what you paid, how fast you want to earn it back, how often the gear actually books, and what the market will bear. Get these inputs right and you have a daily rate that is defensible, profitable, and competitive. Get them wrong and you'll either undercut yourself for years or wonder why nobody is booking.
Why most owners underprice their gear
Underpricing is far more common than overpricing. New owners look at the competition, see rates that seem low, and list even lower to "get started." They think volume will make up for thin margins. It usually doesn't.
A Canon R5 C that should rent for $200 per day gets listed at $140. The owner thinks they're being competitive, but they've just added 40% more time to their payback period. If the camera cost $4,500 and books 8 days per month, that $60 per day difference means an extra 7 months before the gear pays for itself.
The opposite problem, overpricing, is self-correcting. You don't get bookings, so you lower the price. But underpricing is invisible. You still get bookings. You think things are going well. The damage only shows up when you run the ROI numbers and realize your camera took 30 months to pay back instead of 18.
The pricing formula
Here is a straightforward formula that gives you a starting daily rate based on your own financial targets:
Daily Rate = Purchase Cost / (Target Payback Months x Expected Booking Days per Month x Net Payout Percentage)
Let's break each variable down.
Purchase cost is what you actually paid, including tax and any essential accessories that are part of the rental package (batteries, chargers, media cards you include). If you bought a Sony FX6 for $5,998 plus tax and $400 in accessories, your purchase cost is roughly $6,800.
Target payback months is how many months you want to take to earn back the full purchase price through rental income alone. For most production equipment, 12 to 18 months is a reasonable target. Faster than 12 usually means very high utilization. Slower than 24 means the gear might depreciate faster than you're earning.
Expected booking days per month is a realistic estimate of how many days per month the gear will actually be out on rental. For active Sharegrid markets like Los Angeles, 8 to 12 days per month is achievable for in-demand gear. For smaller markets, 4 to 6 days is more realistic. Be honest here. Optimism kills rental businesses.
Net payout percentage accounts for platform fees and discounts. On Sharegrid, after the 15% service fee and multi-day discounts, most owners see about 65% to 75% of their listed daily rate as actual take-home on average. Use 0.70 as a starting number.
Running the numbers with real gear
Let's apply this to three different pieces of equipment.
Sony FX6 body at $6,800 purchase cost. You want payback in 15 months. You expect 10 booking days per month in LA. Your net payout percentage is 70%.
Daily Rate = $6,800 / (15 x 10 x 0.70) = $6,800 / 105 = $65 per day
That seems low, and it is. The market rate for an FX6 on Sharegrid in LA is $200 to $275 per day. This tells you the FX6 is an excellent rental investment because the market supports rates far above your minimum.
Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 at $800 purchase cost. Payback target of 12 months. Expected 6 booking days per month. Net payout of 70%.
Daily Rate = $800 / (12 x 6 x 0.70) = $800 / 50.4 = $16 per day
Market rate on Sharegrid: $25 to $40 per day. Again, the market supports a healthy rate above your minimum. Good investment.
DJI Ronin 4D at $7,200 purchase cost. Payback target of 18 months. Expected 5 booking days per month (niche item). Net payout of 70%.
Daily Rate = $7,200 / (18 x 5 x 0.70) = $7,200 / 63 = $114 per day
Market rate: $250 to $350 per day. Still viable, though the lower booking frequency for specialized gear means you need those higher rates to make the math work.
How to research market rates on Sharegrid
The formula gives you your minimum viable rate. The market determines your maximum. You need both numbers.
Search Sharegrid for your exact gear in your city. Look at 8 to 10 comparable listings. Ignore the highest and lowest outlier. The middle cluster is your market rate range. Note whether owners with more reviews are priced higher. They usually are, because renters pay a premium for reliability.
Pay attention to what is included. An ARRI Alexa Mini listed at $500 per day with no accessories is a different proposition than one at $600 with batteries, media, and a shoulder rig. If you include more in your kit, you can price higher. If you're listing a bare body, price at the lower end of the range.
Check rates for your gear in Los Angeles even if you're not based there. LA sets the benchmark for production rental pricing, and most other markets discount from that baseline. If your gear rents for $200 per day in LA, expect $120 to $160 in mid-tier markets like Atlanta or Austin, and $80 to $120 in smaller markets.
Adjusting for your market
Geography is probably the single biggest factor in rental pricing outside of the gear itself. The same Canon C70 that rents for $175 per day in Los Angeles might top out at $100 in Minneapolis. This isn't because Minneapolis owners are underpricing. There is simply less demand, fewer productions, and a smaller renter pool.
If you're in a smaller market, resist the urge to match LA pricing. You'll get zero bookings. Instead, use the formula above with realistic booking days for your area. If gear only books 4 days per month in your city, that's your planning number. Pricing higher won't magically create demand. For a broader look at realistic earnings across markets, see how much you can actually make renting camera gear.
For markets with very low utilization, consider whether the gear is worth listing at all. If a $3,000 lens can only book 2 days per month at $40 per day after fees, that's $56 per month in net revenue. It would take over 4 years to pay back. At that point, selling the lens and buying something with higher local demand is the better move.
When to offer multi-day discounts versus holding firm
Sharegrid's built-in multi-day discount structure already reduces your effective daily rate on longer bookings. The question is whether you should add additional discounts on top of that to attract multi-day rentals, or let the platform's structure handle it.
For high-demand gear that books regularly at single-day and weekend rates, don't add extra discounts. You're already getting steady revenue, and additional discounts just reduce your margin without increasing utilization.
For gear that sits idle more than it rents, offering a small additional discount on week-long bookings can help. One week at a 10% discount on top of the standard Sharegrid multi-day structure is still better than zero days booked. But limit these discounts to longer bookings (5 or more calendar days) where the convenience factor for you is real. One handoff, one inspection, one booking's worth of admin time.
Never discount below your formula minimum. If your math says you need $65 per day to hit your payback target and the discounted rate drops to $50, you're extending your payback timeline every time someone books. That's a slow bleed that compounds.
How depreciation changes the calculation over time
Equipment loses value whether or not it's being rented. A camera that cost $5,000 today might be worth $3,000 in two years regardless of condition. This is the depreciation clock, and it runs whether the gear is in a Pelican case or on a shoot.
The pricing implication is straightforward: your rates should cover the cost of ownership, not just the purchase price divided by time. If a camera depreciates $2,000 in its first two years, that's roughly $83 per month in value loss that your rental income needs to offset in addition to earning back the purchase price.
For fast-depreciating gear like camera bodies, this means aggressive pricing and high utilization in the first 12 to 18 months after purchase. For slow-depreciating items like cinema lenses, you have more runway. A set of Zeiss CP.3 primes bought for $10,000 might still be worth $7,000 in three years. The depreciation pressure is lower, so you can be more patient with pricing.
Revisit your rates every 6 months. As gear ages and new models come out, the market rate for your equipment drops. If you're still listing at the price you set 18 months ago, you're probably overpriced relative to newer competitors.
The relationship between pricing and payback tracking
The formula above is only useful if you're actually tracking whether reality matches your plan. You set a target of 15 months for payback. Three months in, is the gear booking at the rate you expected? Is the net payout percentage where you estimated?
Most owners set a price and forget it. They have no idea whether their gear is on track to pay back in 15 months or 30 months, because they never built the feedback loop between their pricing assumptions and their actual results.
Rental IQ tracks payback progress for every piece of gear in your inventory. It shows you exactly how much net revenue each item has generated, what your effective daily rate actually is after all fees and discounts, and how many more booking days you need to reach full payback. When reality diverges from your pricing plan, you see it immediately and can adjust.
Pricing is not a one-time decision. It's an ongoing process of setting targets, measuring results, and adjusting. The formula gives you a rational starting point. Tracking gives you the feedback to refine it. Together, they turn pricing from guesswork into a system.
