If you're buying architectural renders, a per-image price protects you better than an hourly rate in almost every case. You know the number before work starts, the studio carries the risk of its own slow modelling, and you can compare quotes like for like. Hourly billing only makes sense for work nobody can scope yet. I price per camera angle myself (interior renders from EUR 250, exteriors from EUR 450), so I'm not neutral here, but I've also paid other people by the hour and I know where that goes wrong.
What an hourly rate actually shifts onto you
An hourly rate looks honest. You pay for the time spent, nothing more. The trouble is that you can't see the time being spent, and you have no way to judge whether 14 hours on a living room was reasonable or whether 8 would have done it.
Rendering time is very uneven. A clean SketchUp or Revit model with materials already assigned can be in my scene, lit and test-rendered within a few hours. The same room delivered as a scanned PDF floor plan and three phone photos of a mood board takes far longer, because I'm building every wall, window reveal and skirting board from scratch. With hourly billing, the client with the messy brief pays for that. Fair enough, you might say. But they also pay for the visualiser's learning curve on a new plugin, the render that crashed overnight, and the hour spent hunting for the right oak texture.
None of that is dishonest. It's just risk, and hourly billing hands all of it to the person with the least control over it.
Why per-image pricing protects the buyer
A per-image price forces the studio to estimate properly before saying yes. If I quote EUR 250 for an interior view and then spend twice as long as I planned because I misjudged the kitchen joinery, that's my problem. You still pay EUR 250.
It also makes comparison possible. Three hourly quotes at different rates tell you almost nothing, since you don't know how fast each person works. Three quotes for "two interior views and one exterior, 4000 px, two revision rounds" are directly comparable, and you can see who's cheap, who's expensive and who's left something out.
And the scope is written down. My quotes list the camera angles, the resolution, the number of revision rounds and the delivery format before anything starts. That list is the contract. If you later want a fourth view, it's a new line, priced the same way, not an open meter.
Here's how that looks with the worked examples on my architectural rendering prices page:
| Job | What's in it | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Single interior | 1 camera angle | EUR 250 |
| Apartment set | 3 interior views, 10% off from 3 combined renders | EUR 675 |
| House launch set | 1 exterior + 3 interiors, 10% off | EUR 1,080 |
| Furniture plan | 60 m² flat, from EUR 5 per m² | EUR 300 |
Nobody has to guess what the bill will be.
Where hourly billing is the right call
There are honest exceptions, and I'd be lying if I pretended per-image always works.
Design development is one. If an architect wants a visualiser sitting alongside them for two weeks, testing five facade options and three cladding colours as the design moves, there's no fixed "image" to price. Every day the target changes. A day rate or hourly rate with a cap is fairer for both sides there.
Fixing someone else's file is another. Last year a developer sent me a 3ds Max scene another studio had abandoned halfway, with missing textures, broken proxies and lights nobody could explain. I couldn't price that per image until I'd spent a couple of hours finding out what was salvageable. I quoted that investigation as a small fixed block of time, then switched to a normal per-image quote once I knew what I was looking at.
Animation and virtual tours also sit a bit outside the per-image model, though even those can usually be priced per second of footage or per panorama once the scope is clear.
The mistakes I see buyers make with both models
The most common one with per-image quotes: not checking what counts as a revision.
Some studios include "unlimited revisions", which sounds generous and usually means slow, vague rounds that drag on for weeks. Others include one round and charge for every comment after. I include two consolidated revision rounds, which means you collect all your feedback (yours, your partner's, the agent's) into one list per round. That keeps it fast. Read the revision clause before you compare prices, because a cheaper render with one tight round can cost more in the end than a slightly dearer one with two.
With hourly work the mistake is having no cap. "Around 10 hours" turns into 19 surprisingly easily, especially when feedback arrives in drips. If you do agree to hourly, ask for a written ceiling and a heads-up at 75% of it.
And with either model: check the resolution and the usage rights. A 1920 px image is fine for a website and too small for a hoarding. If you'll print it, say so at the start.
Does per-image pricing make studios cut corners?
It's a fair worry. If the price is fixed, isn't the incentive to finish as fast as possible?
In theory, yes. In practice the incentive that matters more is repeat work. An estate agent or developer who's happy with a launch set comes back for the next block. One who gets rushed, flat images doesn't, and tells people. My portfolio is also the main way I win new clients, so a corner-cut render costs me far more than the extra hours it would have taken to do properly.
What does slip with fixed prices is scope creep in the other direction. A client asks for "just one small change" that is actually a new camera position, and the studio either eats it or has an awkward conversation. Writing down the camera angles at the start avoids that for both of us.
What I'd actually do as a buyer
Ask for a per-image quote, every time, unless the work is genuinely exploratory.
Send the same brief to every studio you're comparing: the drawings or model, the rooms or elevations you want, reference images for mood, final resolution, and how many revision rounds you expect. Then compare the line items, not just the totals. If one quote is much cheaper, look for what's missing. It's usually revisions, resolution or furnishing detail.
If you're doing a whole apartment or house, bundle the views. Combining three or more renders gets 10% off the render subtotal with me, and the views come out consistent because they share one scene, one lighting setup and one set of materials. For interiors that consistency matters a lot more than people expect (see the interior rendering services page for what a typical set looks like). Exteriors are similar, priced on the exterior rendering services page from EUR 450 per view.
And if the project is still moving, wait. Paying for renders of a layout that changes next week is the most expensive way to buy either kind.
When your drawings are ready, have a look at the price list and send them through the quote form. I'll come back with a fixed, non-binding quote per view, with the revision rounds and resolution written in.