Stock footage cost per second: A breakdown.
Stock footage is normally priced per clip, not per second. For a typical 21-second landscape clip at Sacraw Studios, the cost ranges from about $1.86 to $14.24 per second depending on the licence.
Why per-second pricing exists
Per-second pricing is a historical convention of archive and news footage licensing. In those specific fields, rates are often quoted based on the exact seconds used in the final edit. Post-production facilities calculate the fee by measuring the time code of the requested material. This model makes sense when dealing with historical 16mm reels or exclusive news broadcasts where every individual frame carries significant weight. Modern stock footage libraries operate differently. Today, you buy whole clips for a flat rate. You pay the exact same price whether you use one single second for a rapid transition or let the entire file play out completely under a documentary interview. This flat-rate model simplifies budgeting for the modern video editor. You can learn more about standard file delivery in our guide to ProRes vs. H.264 stock footage.
The actual cost per second
Sacraw Studios sells original ProRes masters shot on location across Japan and in Toronto. We price our work by the clip. We never use AI generation, and nothing is ever composited or staged. When calculating project costs, editors often divide the total flat rate by the clip duration to compare asset value. To help you budget your current project, we calculated the per-second arithmetic for our average clip lengths. Our landscape library files run between 8 and 40 seconds, with the typical clip lasting about 21 seconds. Our vertical library files run between 5 and 39 seconds, typically lasting about 18 seconds. All prices listed below are in Canadian dollars.
Landscape clips (average 21 seconds)
- Social & Personal ($39 CAD): About $1.86 per second.
- Commercial ($99 CAD): About $4.71 per second.
- Broadcast ($299 CAD): About $14.24 per second.
Vertical clips (average 18 seconds)
- Social & Personal ($29 CAD): About $1.61 per second.
- Commercial ($79 CAD): About $4.39 per second.
- Broadcast ($199 CAD): About $11.06 per second.
What changes the price
The cost of a clip depends entirely on three concrete factors. The first is the licence tier. We structure our tiers to match the scale of your distribution and the size of your audience. The Social & Personal tier covers personal projects, student work, and YouTube channels under 100,000 subscribers. The Commercial tier covers client work, advertising agencies, corporate brands, monetized YouTube channels of any size, and paid social media advertisements under $50,000 in total ad spend. The Broadcast tier clears the file for national television broadcasts, streaming platform originals, theatrical film releases, and major commercial campaigns with unlimited ad spend. You only buy the tier your specific project requires. The second factor altering the price is the aspect ratio and orientation. Vertical files cost slightly less than landscape files. The third factor is the volume of your order. Buying a single clip costs the standard flat rate, but grouping your purchases lowers the individual cost of every file.
How to lower the cost
You lower the cost per second by purchasing multiple clips at once. Sacraw Studios offers transparent volume pricing directly at checkout. Buying three or more clips in one single order automatically takes 15% off the total. Buying ten or more clips takes 30% off the total when you apply the code COLLECTION30. We also offer curated bundles of clips. These are carefully assembled packs of footage that share a specific location, aesthetic, or lighting condition. Bundles start from $99 CAD and provide a much lower cost per clip compared to buying each master file individually. This is highly efficient for editors building an extensive sequence. If you want to test the files in your editing timeline before committing your project budget, you can download a free sample pack of full-resolution ProRes clips. These test files are strictly cleared for personal and portfolio use only.