How Much Does a Photo Booth Rental Cost? A 2026 Pricing Guide

You are quoting a client, or shopping around for a booth to hire, and the same question stops you cold: what is normal? Quote high and the room goes quiet. Quote low and you leave money on the table, or wonder if the cheap booth is cheap for a reason.

So here are real numbers. We looked at the booking data behind roughly 118,000 photo booth rentals on Check Cherry to see what these events actually cost, what the different booth types run, and how price moves with hours, travel, and season. No guesswork, just what people are really paying.

How much does a photo booth rental cost?

According to Check Cherry booking data from about 118,000 photo booth rentals, the typical event runs about $681. But the middle is not a target. Half of all rentals land between $452 and $1,022, and the top 10% clear $1,642. Booth type is the biggest lever: a classic open-air booth sits near $615 in the middle, while a glam or mirror booth sits near $950.

One number worth pulling out: the median (the middle of the pack) is $681, but the average is higher at about $867. That gap is normal, and it is the whole story. A large group of longer, premium, well-positioned events sits well above the middle and pulls the average up. The top 10% of photo booth rentals runs roughly double the median in every format we can measure. That is not a handful of outliers, it is thousands of bookings a year. And these numbers are current, not stale: the typical photo booth rental has held around $675 every year since 2024.

Which type of photo booth costs the most?

This is where the price really moves. An open-air booth and a mirror booth are both "photo booths" on paper, but they are not close on price. Here is what each format typically totals, using the classic open-air booth as the baseline everyone knows.

Read across a row, not down the median column. On a classic open-air booth the spread runs from $495 at the 25th percentile to $1,100 at the top 10%. That is the same booth, the same format, and more than double the price. The gap is not the equipment. It is hours, staffing, prints, market, lead time, and how the offer is presented. Every format shows the same pattern, and the premium formats show it wider: a 360 booth ranges from $500 to $1,577 across the same span.

What does a 360 photo booth cost?

The 360 booth is the format clients ask for by name right now. On Check Cherry, a single-service 360 rental typically totals about $750, but the spread is wide: the middle half runs $500 to $1,113 and the top 10% clear $1,577. The slow-motion video, the spinning arm, and the extra setup and staffing all justify the premium, and clients booking a 360 usually already expect to pay more for it. If you are building or scaling one, our stage-by-stage guide to growing a 360 photo booth business walks through pricing it as you go.

How much does a photo booth cost per hour?

Photo booths price by the hour, so the length of the rental is the second big lever after booth type. Here is what rentals typically total as the hours climb.

The jump from a short rental to a full evening roughly doubles the total. That is worth remembering when a client asks you to "just add an hour": each added hour carries real value, so price it, do not give it away. One caveat: this price-by-the-hour pattern applies to attended booths, where a staffer is on site the whole time. A drop-off (unattended) booth is priced closer to a flat day rate, which we break down below.

How much does a photo booth cost for a wedding vs. corporate vs. a party?

The occasion matters too, though occasion is recorded on only about a third of bookings, so this reflects the events where it was logged. Here is what each type typically totals.

Weddings and corporate bookings run about 45% to 48% above a birthday or personal party at the median, and they stretch much further at the top: the best-paid 10% of corporate bookings clear $2,100. Those clients book longer events, add more extras, and are the least price-sensitive segment in the data.

What drives the price?

Two levers do most of the work, and two more fill in the rest:

• Booth type. A 360, glam, or mirror booth commands $200 to $315 more than an open-air setup. This is the single biggest factor.
• Hours. More time on site means more value. A 5-hour rental runs roughly double a 2-hour one.
• Travel. About 1 in 5 rentals (18%) carry a travel fee for events outside the free zone. Where one is charged, the median is $50 and the top 10% clear $150.
• Add-ons. Prints, custom backdrops, scrapbooks, and props are the fastest way to lift a booking after the client has already said yes. Only 26% of rentals have a single add-on attached, so three in four bookings leave this on the table entirely.

On travel specifically: about 18% of rentals carry a travel fee, typically $50, so decide up front how far your price includes and what you charge past it. A booking tool that calculates the fee automatically saves you doing mileage math on every quote. For the full breakdown, see our beginner's guide to travel fees.

Attended vs. drop-off (unattended) booths

Whether you staff the booth is a real price lever. An attended booth, where you or an attendant runs it all night, has a median around $656. A drop-off (unattended) booth you deliver, set up, and pick up later runs a median around $450, roughly a third cheaper, because there is no on-site attendant. Drop-off is the subset identifiable by name, so treat about $450 as the clean drop-off figure.

The interesting part is how each one scales with hours. Attended pricing climbs steeply as the event runs longer, from about $495 at 2 hours up to $993 at 5 or more, and the top 10% of long attended bookings clear $2,221. Drop-off is nearly flat, from about $370 at 2 hours to $480 at 5 or more. It is priced like a day rate, not by the hour.

The reason is cost. An unattended booth is committed to that one booking for the whole event no matter how long it runs, so extra hours cost you almost nothing. An attended booth means real staff hours, and a long event can block you from taking a second booking that day, so those hours have to be priced in.

Deposits and getting paid

How you collect matters as much as what you charge. Photo booth companies split almost evenly on method: about 47% of bookings use a flat deposit amount and about 44% use a percentage, with the rest taking no deposit at all. When a percentage is used, 50% is by far the most common, on half of all percentage-based bookings, followed by 25% on a quarter of them. Asking for half up front is the norm in this market, not an aggressive ask. Either way, take a deposit to hold the date. It is what turns an interested lead into a committed one.

When to charge more: your busiest months

Demand is not flat across the year, and your pricing does not have to be either. Photo booth events peak in May (about 14% of the year's events), then run hot through June (12%) before a summer lull. December comes back almost as strong (about 12%). That is when the parties actually happen, not when people book them. The December spike is unusual. Most event verticals go quiet in winter, but holiday parties are huge for photo booths. January is the floor at under 5%.

What to do with that: May, June, and December are your most valuable inventory, carrying 38% of the year between them, so they are the right place to hold firm on price and add a peak-date premium. When a Saturday in December is one of only a handful you can physically work, discounting it makes no sense. Save any flexibility for the slow January and February dates, where a lower price actually fills an otherwise empty calendar.

What separates the top 10%

The most useful number in this entire piece is not the median, it is the distance above it. In every format, the top 10% of bookings runs close to double the middle. Those operators are working the same formats in the same months for the same kinds of clients. Here is what the data says they are doing differently.

• They sell hours, not appearances. A five-hour attended rental runs roughly double a two-hour one. The single most common way to leave money behind is treating the extra hour as a courtesy.
• They staff the booth. Attended bookings sit near $700 at the median against $450 for drop-off. The attendant is not overhead, it is the product difference.
• They attach something. Only 26% of rentals include any add-on at all. When one is attached, the median add-on spend is $147 and the top 10% of attach spend clears $500. This is the cheapest lift available, and three quarters of the market is not touching it.
• They price the calendar. May and December carry 25% of the year's events between them. Holding rate on those dates, and adding a peak premium, is pure margin on inventory you cannot expand.
• They chase the right client. Corporate bookings run about 30% to 40% above personal parties, and they are the least price-sensitive segment in the data.

None of this is about being the cheapest booth in the market, and none of it requires better equipment. If you are reading these medians and thinking your prices are well above them, that is the point. The middle of the market and the top of it are not selling the same thing.

What established operators did with their prices

Market-wide, the price of a photo booth looks close to flat. Compare the first half of each year and the median rental runs $675 in 2024, $698 in 2025, and $700 in 2026. Read that on its own and you would conclude the going rate is stuck.

It is not. That figure blends in a growing share of newer operators who start lower, and they pull the middle down. Track the same businesses instead, photo booth companies that booked on Check Cherry in both 2024 and 2026, and the picture reverses. The typical operator raised the price of a rental by about 8%, or $50 at the median.

• About 55% raised their prices by more than 5%.
• About 26% held within 5% of where they were.
• About 19% came down.

This is not a booth-type illusion. Strip out the 360, glam, mirror, and roaming bookings and look only at the classic formats, and the same-business increase holds at about 8%, with 57% of operators raising. They did not simply sell more premium formats. They charged more for the same work.

Putting it together

If you are setting your first price, start where most of the market sits: a classic open-air booth for a few hours lands near $615, and the typical all-in rental runs about $681. Treat that as a floor to build from, not a target to hit. From there, price your premium formats higher, charge for every hour, attach at least one upsell to every quote, set a travel fee for events outside your free zone, and hold your rates on peak May and December dates. Then work your way up the range, because the top 10% of this market is earning double the middle for the same formats.