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The 5-hour wedding is an 8-hour job — at $85/hr plus rig and mileage the honest quote is $775, and the $500 competitor is working for $35/hr.
The most common DJ pricing mistake is quoting only the hours the client sees. A five-hour wedding is playlist prep, client calls, a venue walkthrough, load-in, five hours of performance, teardown, and an hour of driving — eight hours of work, plus an $8,000 rig that dies on a four-year cycle whether you charge for it or not. This calculator builds the quote the way a full-time pro does: all hours at your target rate, equipment amortized per gig, mileage as a line item, rounded up to a clean number. At standard inputs the honest wedding quote is $775 — and the competitor quoting $500 flat is either at $35 an hour or bleeding equipment money.
DJs use it before quoting the wedding: the 5-hour gig is an 8-hour job plus a $50/gig rig line — the honest quote is $775, and the $500 competitor is working for $35/hr.
Because the rig is consumed whether you charge for it or not. Speakers, controller, lights, cables, and backup gear on a four-year replacement cycle at 40 gigs a year means every gig must carry $50 toward the next rig — a gig that pays nothing toward equipment is borrowing from next year’s replacement fund, and the bill arrives as a dead speaker the morning of a wedding. The same logic covers insurance (liability and gear coverage, $300–600/yr), music licensing and subscription pools, and software — add them to the rig value so the per-gig line is honest. Backup gear is not optional at weddings: the contract promises music, and “my controller died” is a refund plus a ruined reputation. Price the backup into the amortization and it stops being charity.
The date is your inventory — a canceled Saturday cannot be resold — so the booking terms matter as much as the number. Standard terms that work: 50% non-refundable deposit to hold the date (non-refundable inside 90 days), balance due before you unload, and an overtime clause in every contract — a per-hour rate for running long, agreed in advance, so the 8-hour job that becomes 10 hours is paid work, not a donation extracted by a crowd chanting one more song. For out-of-territory gigs, quote travel separately: mileage at $0.70/mi plus your hourly rate for drive time, and lodging when the load-out ends after midnight more than 90 minutes from home. Clients respect itemized quotes more than padded flat ones — the itemization is proof you have done this before.
No — they are different products wearing the same name. Weddings carry the most prep (timeline coordination, MC duties, ceremony audio, first-dance precision) and the highest stakes, so they price highest; this calculator’s defaults ARE the wedding case. Corporate events pay best per hour with the least drama — clean playlists, professional MC work, reliable invoicing — and repeat clients make them the margin backbone. Bar and club nights are volume at low rates: worth it while building a name or filling dead Saturdays, but they burn the rig and the voice at $40/hr effective — keep them only until the profitable calendar is full. Add-ons are the margin in every category: ceremony rig, uplighting, photo booth, and extra hours priced separately raise the ticket 20–40% without touching base-quote sticker shock.