The costs side by side
| Option | Monthly cost | Time to start | What you get | What you still do |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time video editor | About $6,285 in salary, about $8,980 with benefits | About six weeks to hire, plus onboarding | A person who edits, plans and adapts to feedback; can work with filmed footage | Direction, footage, approvals, management |
| Freelance editor (per clip) | $360–$1,800 for 12 clips | Days; simple gigs deliver in 1–2 days | Edited clips from your brief and assets | Ideas, scripts, footage or photos, feedback rounds |
| Freelance editor (hourly) | About $700 for 20 hours at the $35 median | Days | Flexible editing time | Same as above |
| Framewright | $29 (8 videos), $79 (20) or $199 (50) | Same day: paste your store URL | A planned week of scripts and finished product videos from your catalog | Approving scripts, writing captions, publishing |
What a full-time editor really costs
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for film and video editors at $75,420 as of May 2025[1], which is about $36.26 an hour, or $6,285 a month. Salary sites that track job listings land lower for general video editors: ZipRecruiter reports an average of $65,728 a year, with most between $44,500 and $82,500[5], and Indeed reports $35.99 an hour from about 1,300 salaries[6].
Salary isn't the whole cost. In June 2026, benefits made up 30% of private-industry employer compensation costs: $14.07 of $46.89 an hour[2]. Applying that average to the BLS median gives roughly $107,700 a year in total, or about $8,980 a month. That 30% is an average across all private-industry jobs, so your real figure depends on the benefits you offer.
Then there is the hire itself. SHRM's 2025 benchmarking puts the median time to fill a non-executive role at about a month and a half, at a median cost of $1,200 per hire, and cites SHRM's 2025 Talent Trends research finding that 69% of organisations had difficulty recruiting for full-time roles[3].
What a freelancer costs
Freelancers remove the hiring overhead and the fixed salary. Upwork lists a median hourly rate of $35 for video editors[4]. At 20 hours a month, that is about $700. Priced per clip, Hirevire estimates $30 to $150 per short-form clip and $800 to $3,000 a month for retainers of 20 to 40 clips[7]; those are the vendor's own estimates. At 12 clips a month, per-clip pricing comes to $360 to $1,800.
Turnaround can be quick for simple work. On Fiverr, individual sellers list basic short-form edits from $10–$15 with one- to two-day delivery[8][9], though those are single listings rather than platform averages, and quality varies widely. A freelancer still needs you to supply the footage or photos, the idea and the script for each clip.
What Framewright costs
Framewright's plans are $29 a month for 8 videos, $79 for 20 and $199 for 50, which works out to $3.63, $3.95 and $3.98 per video at full use, plus a free tier with 3 credits and no card. You paste your store URL; it reads your catalog and brand colors, writes a week of scripts in your voice, and renders the ones you approve as 1080×1920 videos with AI narration and word-synced captions, sent to your TikTok inbox as drafts. At the Agency plan's $199, it costs about 2% of a full-time editor's monthly cost with benefits.
Cost isn't the only difference
Comparing an editor with software on price alone misses what each one is for.
| Need | Video editor | Framewright |
|---|---|---|
| Editing filmed footage (founder videos, UGC, events) | Yes | No; it builds videos from catalog photos |
| Creative direction and brand storytelling | Yes, with experience | Scripts in your voice; you approve and steer |
| Long-form, ads and other formats | Yes | Vertical short-form product video only |
| A steady weekly cadence at low cost | Costly for a small store | Yes: built for this |
| Time to the first video | Weeks to hire; days for a freelancer | Same day |
| Multiple brands without mixing assets | Depends on the person and process | Up to 10 brands, each with its own colors, catalog and account |
When to hire an editor instead
- You film regularly. If you record founder videos, events, behind-the-scenes or creator footage, an editor turns it into finished content; Framewright does not edit footage.
- Video is a core part of your brand. If storytelling, art direction or campaign films drive sales, a skilled editor's judgment is worth the cost.
- You need many formats. Long-form YouTube, ads in several sizes, product launch films: an editor covers all of them.
Many stores do both: a freelancer for occasional filmed content or ads, and a tool like Framewright for the weekly product videos that keep the account active. For a wider comparison that includes UGC creators and agencies, see the real cost of TikTok content for Shopify stores, and for other tools, our roundup of the best AI TikTok video tools for Shopify stores.