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This calculator vs. a flat per-camera price
“$900 a camera, installed” is not a price for a security system — it is a price for one construction type and one camera wattage, quietly applied to every drop that gets called in.
What a flat per-camera price is
A flat per-camera price is the fastest way to quote a camera install over the phone: multiply the camera count by a number and read it back. Customers shop it because it is easy to compare between bids, and it is the number a customer holding a competitor's quote will ask you to match.
The number behind it was set for one kind of job — usually fixed-dome or bullet cameras through an accessible attic, on a switch with headroom — and then reused for every site afterward, whether or not the next one is masonry, needs a lift, or is specifying PTZ cameras that need PoE+.
What this calculator is
This page keeps no account and sends nothing to a server. You enter the camera count, resolution, codec, and recording mode, the retention days quoted and the drives you actually plan to buy, the PoE switch budget and each camera's draw, the construction type and cable run, whether a lift is required, and your camera, NVR, and switch hardware costs, plus your own wage, payroll burden, overhead, permit fee, and target margin. It prices the drops by construction type, checks the PoE budget and cable run against real limits, and returns the bid price, the cost floor, and the price per camera — for this job and this site, not a flat number for every install.
| What a flat per-camera price does | What this calculator does instead |
|---|---|
| Charges the same fee whether the drop is through an open attic or through masonry that takes twice the hours — and has no line for a lift day at all. | Prices labour hours per drop by construction type (open, attic, finished, masonry, soffit), and adds a lift's hours only when the job needs one. |
| Has no line for the switch or hardware a PTZ or heated camera needs over a fixed dome, regardless of the extra draw or the pricier unit. | Prices each camera's watts against the switch's PoE budget and flags when the load is over budget or over an 80% planning ceiling, before you commit to a switch. |
| Quotes the same cable allowance for a short interior run and a long exterior one, with no check against the 328 ft Ethernet limit. | Prices cable footage with a waste allowance and flags any run past the Ethernet limit, so a mid-span switch or extender is in the scope, not a surprise. |
| Has no separate line for camera, NVR, or switch hardware — the count is the whole quote. | Prices camera, NVR, switch, drive, and cable materials as their own lines, so a heavier hardware spec is never quoted at the light spec's invoice. |
| Gives the estimator a number to quote, not a number to check a quote against. | Reports the walk-away price and the dollar gap against what a flat per-camera price would have quoted the same job, so a shopped price can be scored against real cost before you commit to it. |
Two eight-camera jobs, one flat price
Using this calculator's own shipped starting example:
Eight fixed-dome cameras through an accessible attic, on a 120 W switch budget with headroom, prices at $7,440.38, on a job that costs $4,836.25 to run.
Take the same eight cameras and make them PTZ units through masonry instead — a lift for the runs, a PoE+ switch to carry the heavier draw, and longer cable to the exterior mounts — and the job costs $9,422.96 to run before a dollar of profit, and this calculator bids it at $14,496.86: 1.95 times the easy job, on the identical camera count. Quoting the masonry-and-lift job at the easy job's flat $7,440.38 price prices it $1,982.58 below its own break-even cost — before counting the $7,056.48 it falls short of this calculator's own bid price at a 35% target margin. Same camera count, same flat price, one site that pays and one that loses money the moment the lift shows up.
Common questions
Why does a flat per-camera price get a security camera install wrong?
Because the cost driver is the drop and the hardware, not the camera count. Eight fixed-dome cameras through an accessible attic need a straightforward pull and a light PoE budget. Eight PTZ cameras through masonry, with a lift for the runs and a PoE+ switch to carry the heavier draw, need roughly twice the labour hours and a materially larger hardware bill, on the same camera count. A flat per-camera price charges both the same because it was priced on the count, not the drop.
What does a flat per-camera price usually leave out entirely?
Construction type, a lift, and camera wattage. A flat price has no line for masonry drops that take twice the hours of an accessible attic, no line for a lift day when a run cannot be reached from a ladder, and no line for the heavier PoE+ switch and pricier hardware a PTZ or heated camera needs over a fixed dome. It also has no line for the longer cable runs an exterior or masonry job usually carries.
How big is the pricing gap in practice?
On this calculator's own shipped starting example: eight fixed-dome cameras through an accessible attic, on a light PoE budget, prices at $7,440.38. The same eight cameras as PTZ units through masonry, with a lift, a PoE+ switch, and longer runs, cost $9,422.96 to complete and this calculator bids the job at $14,496.86 -- 1.95 times the easy job. Quoting the masonry-and-lift job at the easy job's $7,440.38 flat per-camera price prices it $1,982.58 below its own break-even cost, before a dollar of profit or the crew's time is covered, and $7,056.48 below this calculator's own bid.
Is a flat per-camera price ever the right way to quote?
For a narrow band of similar jobs -- interior fixed-dome or bullet cameras through an accessible attic, on a switch with headroom -- a flat per-camera number can land close, because that is probably the job the price was set on. The risk is quoting a masonry job, a lift job, or a PTZ job the same way sight unseen, because the price does not know the construction type, the run length, or the camera wattage until someone walks the site, and by then the flat number has often already been quoted.
Does this calculator know my local labor rates or hardware costs?
No. It has no data on your local labor market, your distributor's camera and switch pricing, or your permit fees. It takes the camera count, resolution, codec, construction type, cable run, camera wattage, drive and switch hardware, and your own wage, burden, overhead, and target margin, and turns that into a price for this job -- the arithmetic a flat per-camera price skips, not a market survey.
Open the Security Camera Bid Calculator to price your own job, or read the pricing walkthrough.