London Studio Hire Price Index 2026

What it actually costs to hire a photography, film or music studio in London · 134 studios, entry-level published hourly rates, every figure sourced and dated.

Edition: Q3 2026  ·  Data captured: 12 September 2026  ·  Studios: 134  ·  Next update: December 2026  ·  Compiled by: STU 22, Wapping

Studio pricing in London is unusually opaque. Most studios publish a single "from" rate, many publish nothing at all, and the gap between the cheapest and most expensive room in the same city runs to more than seventy times. This index exists because there was no single place to see the real spread.

Every rate below is the entry-level published hourly hire fee for that studio's cheapest bookable room, as listed publicly on 12 September 2026. Nothing here is a quote, an estimate or a negotiated price.

The headline numbers

Across all 134 studios the median is £50 an hour, and that single figure hides a seventy-five-fold spread. The cheapest room in London is £12 an hour and the most expensive is £900, and both are sold under the same word. What separates them is scale rather than quality: a spare room with a backdrop and a twelve-thousand-square-foot drive-on film compound are both, in the vendor's own description, a studio.

The distribution matters more than the midpoint. Photo studios cluster tightly, with half of London between £31 and £60 an hour. Film is both the most expensive category and the most stretched: the middle half runs £49 to £178, and the top of the market is an order of magnitude above that. Music is the most sharply split of the three: a large rehearsal and production tier around £20–£30, then a premium podcast and live-room tier above £100, with comparatively little in between.

The hourly rate is not the price. Of the 104 studios here that publish a minimum booking, 85% will not take a one-hour job and roughly a quarter require four hours or more. A £20 room with a four-hour minimum costs £80 to walk into; a £45 room with no minimum costs £45. Compare minimum spend, not headline rate: the Min hrs column exists for that reason.

The index

Click any column heading to sort. "-" means the source did not state an area, a capacity or a minimum; we do not guess. Capacity is the maximum stated for the entry-level room, not the studio's largest space. "Min hrs" is the shortest booking the studio will accept, where published.

What the market looks like by category

Photography. 48 studios, £12 to £125 per hour, median £42.50. This is the most competitive and most tightly packed category in London: half the market sits between £31 and £60, and 56% of it is under £50. The cheap end is dominated by small daylight rooms in Hackney, Leyton and Bow taking four to twelve people, several of them run out of converted domestic space. Rooms with a built cyclorama, twelve-foot ceilings and crew space start around £60 and run to £125. Platform averages for London photo studios are £53 per hour on Peerspace and £50 on Tagvenue, both of which sit above our median - averages are pulled upward by the expensive tail, which is why this index reports medians.

Film and video. 41 studios, £30 to £900 per hour, median £90 · the most expensive category by a wide margin and the one with the highest floor. There is no £12 film studio in London the way there is a £12 photo room; the cheapest is £30 and only a quarter of the category is under £50. It is also the most stretched: the middle half runs £49 to £178, and above that sit the drive-on compounds, stages and broadcast floors that reach £250, £400 and £900 an hour. Peerspace's own platform average for London film studios is £78 per hour; Tagvenue's is £60.

Music, podcast and recording. 45 studios, £15 to £350 per hour, median £45. This is the most sharply divided category and the most misleading to shop on price alone. A large tier of rehearsal, production and booth rooms sits at £15 to £35, and a premium tier of design-led live rooms and fully crewed multi-camera podcast sets runs from £100 to £350, with relatively little between them. The hourly figure rarely tells you which you are getting, and whether an engineer is included is usually the difference. Peerspace's platform average is £78 per hour; Tagvenue's is £55.

How to read a studio quote

Where STU 22 sits in this index

We compile this index as a working studio, so our own rates belong inside it rather than above it. STU 22 is an independent photography and music studio at 8–10 Sampson Street in Wapping, East London, and our entry rate is £35 an hour against an all-category London median of £50. The three rooms map onto the three categories in the table above.

• Infinity cove hire in East London — a white cyclorama at £120 an hour, £450 a half day or £850 a full day, with lighting included. That sits above the £42.50 photo median because a cove is a built room rather than a backdrop, and well below the large cove complexes in Park Royal and King's Cross.
• Blackout studio hire in London — a fully light-sealed room for cinematic video, portraiture and anything needing total control of the light. It belongs in the film category, where the median is £90 an hour.
• Music and DJ studio hire in Wapping — £35 to £70 an hour for recording, production and DJ sessions, against a £45 music median.

Every figure above is all-inclusive, which is the comparison this index argues you should be making. To price a specific shoot you can check live availability and book online, or see all three rooms on the studios page.

The guides behind these numbers

Each category in the index has a longer guide explaining what drives the rate and what to ask before you book.

• The 5 best infinity cove studios in London — an honest comparison of the city's cyclorama rooms, with real rates and the extras that are never in the headline price.
• Photography studio hire in East London — what the eastern half of the city costs, and why it undercuts the west.
• The best music studios in London — recording, production and rehearsal rooms compared.
• What DJ studio hire costs in London — hourly rates, kit lists and the usual hidden charges.
• Podcast studio hire in London — how podcast rooms are priced and what a full-service day includes.
• What is a blackout studio? — why light-sealed rooms carry a premium, and when you actually need one.
• Renting a creative studio in East London — the practical guide to hiring space in E1 and beyond.

Methodology

134 London studios were included. For each, we recorded the entry-level published hourly hire fee for its cheapest bookable room, the maximum stated capacity of that room, the minimum booking length where the source stated one, and the area where the source stated one. Figures were captured on 12 September 2026 from public category listings on Tagvenue and Peerspace, and every row links to the page it came from so any figure can be checked independently.

Each row is one publicly bookable listing. Where an operator publishes several rooms separately (and a number in this index do), each appears as its own row, because that is how a buyer encounters them and because the sources do not reliably disclose common ownership. The index therefore measures the distribution of bookable rooms rather than of companies, and operators with several rooms carry slightly more weight in the medians than single-room studios do. Listings appearing in more than one category, or the same studio appearing on both platforms, were merged into a single row by identity, and where two sources disagreed the lower published rate was used · this is a "from" index, so the lowest genuine entry point is the correct figure. Both sources are cited on merged rows. One listing marked temporarily closed at the time of capture was excluded. Rates are hire fees only and exclude equipment, crew, catering and add-ons. Minimum booking is shown where published; "-" means the source did not state one, not that there is none. We record what operators publish; we do not verify that a published rate is honoured at the point of booking.

Studio names are reproduced as the operator lists them, shortened where a listing title ran to a full sentence of marketing copy. Where two rows carry the same operator name in different categories, they are different rooms.

Corrections are welcome and acted on. If your studio is listed with a rate that is wrong or out of date, or you would like to be added to the December 2026 edition, email hello@stu22.io and we will update it. Inclusion is free and is not connected to any commercial relationship with STU 22.

Cite this index