How much does a game trailer cost?
1 min read
By Eduardo Orellana ·
Cutting your own trailer costs only time and a music licence. A freelance trailer editor commonly charges from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for an indie gameplay trailer, depending on length, revisions and whether they capture footage. Specialist trailer studios charge well beyond that. What the money buys is judgement about structure and pacing; what it cannot buy is footage your game does not have yet.
What drives the price
- Length and number of versions (store, teaser, ad cuts, vertical).
- Who captures the footage: you, or the editor with a debug build.
- Music: library licence or custom.
- Revision rounds, motion graphics and localisation.
Three ways to get one
- Yourself: OBS and DaVinci Resolve are free; a licensed track costs little.
- A freelancer: ask for a reel of game trailers, not general video, and agree on revisions up front.
- A trailer studio: for big announcements and publishers' slots, rarely an indie's first trailer.
Spend on capture first
The cheapest improvement is better footage: a debug camera, staged moments, clean HUD. A great editor cannot fix footage that shows nothing.
Where Flockbay fits
Flockbay's Video studio cuts trailers, ad cuts and shorts from your real gameplay, free in beta until 1 December 2026.