UGC raw footage price: what brands pay for raw clips, and why no platform prints one number

Short answer: on a $200 UGC video, raw footage costs anywhere from $0 to $200 extra, and no UGC platform we checked publishes one platform-wide price for it. We read nine platforms and service sites on 21 September 2026. Insense says many creators include raw footage at no charge, Billo lets each creator price extra clips and adds 25 percent on top, one Collabstr creator lists raw footage at a flat $50, and UGC Shop sells it as a $150 product. The 30 to 50 percent figure you see everywhere comes from blogs, not from any platform.

That spread is the useful part. A range of $0 to $200 on the same video is not a market price, it is a sign that the price gets set in the conversation, and whoever defines the deliverable first sets it. A brand that writes "raw clips of every take, 1080p or higher, including the three alternate hooks and ten seconds of product b-roll" into the brief gets a quote against a known scope. A brand that asks "can we also get the raw files?" after delivery gets a number made up on the spot.

A disclosure before the tables. We sell a generator that writes UGC briefs and ad scripts, including the raw footage line and the shot list a creator quotes against. We do not sell creators, footage or editing, so there is no row for us below.

How much does raw footage cost for UGC?

Here is what each platform or service says on its own site, read first-party on 21 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, we say so rather than fill the cell from a blog.

Four of the nine publish nothing about raw footage, and a fifth shows a price field with no number in it. Of the four that do say something, only one (UGC Shop) prints a number that applies to every buyer, and it does not say what the $150 includes. Everyone else hands the price to the creator.

Where does the "30 to 50 percent" number come from?

From rate guides, most of them written for creators setting their own prices. We traced the figures you see quoted to their pages and recorded the date on each.

Two patterns are worth knowing before you negotiate. The newer, brand-facing sources cluster at 30 to 50 percent with 40 percent as the midpoint. The 50 to 100 percent range comes only from creator-side guides, one of them dated 2023 and the other quoting pounds sterling. If a US creator quotes you 100 percent of the video fee for raw clips and cites "the standard rate", the standard they are citing is a creator pricing tip, not a platform rule.

What does raw footage cost on one $200 video?

Putting every published figure onto the same $200 base video makes the spread concrete.

So the same unedited files cost between nothing and the full price of the video again. Nothing about the footage explains that gap. The part a buyer controls is the scope. Name raw footage as a deliverable before the shoot and it gets priced against a known list of clips. Ask after delivery and the creator names a number with the footage already in hand.

Is raw footage worth paying for?

Yes, if you will actually recut it. Raw footage earns its price when you have an editor, a testing budget and a plan for the extra cuts. It is wasted money when the files sit in a folder.

The case for it is simple arithmetic. If a creator delivers one edited 30 second ad plus raw clips of three alternate hooks, a second take of the demo and some product b-roll, an editor can build four or five versions from one shoot. At a 40 percent raw fee on a $200 video, that is $280 for material that becomes five ads, against $1,000 to order five separate videos at the same rate. The cost of the hooks themselves is covered in more detail in our breakdown of what extra UGC hook variations cost.

The case against it is just as simple. Raw footage is only as good as what was filmed. If the brief did not ask for alternate hooks, a clean product shot and a pause before the call to action, the raw files are the same single take with more mistakes in it. You paid 40 percent extra for outtakes.

What should raw footage include?

Everything you plan to recut, named in the brief before filming. A raw footage line that says only "raw files" invites a creator to send a single unedited take. A useful one reads like a shot list:

• Every take of the hook, plus two or three alternate opening lines written into the script so you can test them.
• The product on its own, five to ten seconds of clean b-roll: in hand, in use, packaging, the result.
• The call to action filmed separately, so you can swap offers without reshooting.
• A pause of a second or two at the start and end of each take, which gives an editor room to cut.
• File specs: vertical 9:16, 1080p or higher (Billo's own minimum for extra clips), original audio with no music burned in.
• The same usage rights as the edit. Billo states extras carry the same usage rights as the main order. Write that into your own terms too, because a raw file you cannot run as an ad is worth nothing.

That list is what turns the raw footage fee from a guess into a quote. Our UGC raw footage brief generator writes it for your product: the alternate hooks, the b-roll list, the file specs and the rights line, so the creator prices a known deliverable.

Do UGC creators give you raw footage for free?

Some do. Insense's help center says many of its creators do not charge for it, and several Collabstr creators list raw footage as available on request. But "free" usually means the creator included it in a price that already accounts for it, or the request was small. The reliable route is to ask for it in the brief and let the creator quote the video and the raw files as separate lines, so you can see what each costs.

Watch one platform detail. Billo's help center has two live articles that disagree: an October 2025 guideline tells brands raw footage requests are out of scope, while April 2026 articles sell extra clips with a 25 percent markup. If you order through Billo, buy the clips through the extras feature rather than asking the creator directly, and check which policy applies to your order.

Raw footage or more edited videos?

Pick raw footage when you have an in-house editor or a freelancer on retainer and you test creative weekly. Pick more edited videos when nobody on your side edits, because a folder of clips with no one to cut them is the most expensive way to buy UGC. If you are sizing the edited video price first, the rate ranges by creator tier are in our guide to UGC creator rates, and the same "nobody prints the price" pattern shows up again in UGC whitelisting fees.

If you are going the raw route, it helps to know which ad formats you are recutting toward before the shoot. Looking at the hooks and formats competitors are running as live ads tells you which alternate openings are worth writing into the shot list, so the raw files cover the tests you actually plan to run.

How to get raw footage quoted properly

1. Write the raw footage line into the brief, as a shot list with file specs, before you contact a creator.
2. Ask for the video and the raw files as two prices. Now you can compare creators on both and decide whether the raw line is worth it.
3. Tie the raw files to the same usage rights and term as the edit, in writing.
4. Benchmark the quote. Against today's published figures, 30 to 50 percent of the video fee is the common range. Anything above that should come with more than one take.

The first step is the one that moves the price, and it takes about a minute with the generator above: describe your product, choose where the ads will run, and the brief comes back with the hooks, the scenes and the raw footage list already written.