The ratio is the whole calculation
Every other line on this page is a fixed cost that you can estimate reasonably well after two or three episodes. Prep is prep, publishing is publishing, and neither varies much. Editing does not behave that way: it scales with the recorded length, and the multiplier is set by how much work the audio needs and how fussy you are about it.
At a ratio of one, a seventy-five minute recording is seventy-five minutes of editing — one pass, top and tail, a fade, export. At three it is nearly four hours, which is a whole evening. At eight, which is entirely normal for a tightly cut narrative show with music and archive, it is ten hours and the recording length has become the dominant fact of your week. The same show at each of those ratios is three completely different commitments, and only one of them is sustainable alongside a job.
| Editing ratio | What that usually means | 75 min episode |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 to 1 | Live-to-tape, trimmed ends, no internal cuts | 38 to 75 min |
| 1 to 3 | Interview cleanup: pauses, restarts, some restructuring | 75 min to 3 h 45 |
| 3 to 6 | Tight conversational edit with music and levels | 3 h 45 to 7 h 30 |
| 6 to 15 | Scripted or narrative with archive, sound design, multiple passes | 7 h 30 to 18 h 45 |
Those bands are descriptions of common practice, not targets. Your own figure is the only one worth using, and getting it takes a timer and two episodes rather than any research.
Recording less is the only lever that pulls twice
Trimming twenty minutes off the recording saves those twenty minutes and it saves twenty times the ratio in editing on top. At a ratio of three that is eighty minutes off the episode, from one decision made before the microphones were switched on. Nothing else on the list comes close, because everything else is a fixed cost measured in tens of minutes.
This is unpopular advice because the recording is the enjoyable part and the editing is not, so the temptation is always to keep rolling and sort it out later. Later is where the ratio lives. A show that plans for fifty minutes and records fifty-five is doing more for its own survival than one that plans for fifty, records ninety, and cuts it back — even though both publish the same episode, and even though the second one is often better.
The second lever is the ratio itself, and it moves mostly through process rather than through effort. Recording each participant on a separate track makes cleanup faster and gives you the option of fixing one voice without touching the other. Taking a note of the timecode when something needs cutting, during the recording, removes the search pass entirely. Deciding the structure before recording rather than discovering it during the edit is worth more than any plugin.
What the hourly figure is for
Costing your own hours does not put money in or take it out. What it does is make one specific decision answerable: whether to pay somebody else to edit. If the editing line comes to six hours and your hour is worth more than an editor charges for six hours of the same work, the arithmetic favours handing it over, and it will keep favouring it every single week.
The part that does not transfer is judgement. An editor can remove the ums and level the tracks; deciding which eight minutes of a good conversation to lose is the show, and it stays with whoever makes the show. In practice the split that works is handing over the mechanical pass and keeping the structural one, which reduces the ratio you carry without giving away the thing that makes the episode yours.
If the hourly figure you are using is a guess, work it out properly first. The freelance rate calculator derives it from target income and genuinely billable hours, which almost always produces a higher number than the one people carry in their heads.
The schedule is a consequence, not a decision
Weekly publishing is the default because it is the pattern audiences expect, and it is the reason most shows stop. The arithmetic is unforgiving: episode hours multiplied by episodes per month, converted to a weekly average, against the hours that genuinely exist in a normal week rather than an unusually free one. The calculator reports the number of episodes per month the available time actually supports, which is often two when the plan said four.
Fortnightly publishing halves the load and costs less audience than people fear, particularly against the alternative of a weekly show that misses weeks. Seasons are the other structure that works, because they concentrate the load into a period where it can be planned for and leave the rest of the year clear, at the cost of a gap the audience has to be told about.
One thing worth protecting when the schedule is trimmed: promotion and the clips that come out of an episode are usually the first things cut and usually the wrong ones, because they are the only lines on the list that bring anybody new to the show. Cutting the recording length is nearly always the better trade, and the calculator shows both so the comparison is in front of you rather than implied.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to edit a podcast episode?
The honest answer is a multiple of the recorded length rather than a fixed figure, and the multiple depends entirely on how much work the audio needs. Trimming the ends of a clean live-to-tape recording can be under one to one. A conversational show cleaned of restarts and pauses and restructured a little commonly runs three to one or more. A scripted show with music, archive and several passes can run past ten to one. Timing yourself over two episodes gives a number worth more than any of these ranges.
How many hours a week does a weekly podcast take?
Multiply the per-episode total by 52 and divide by the weeks you publish, which for a weekly show is the per-episode total itself. A seventy-five minute recording at a three to one edit ratio, with normal prep, notes, publishing and promotion, comes to a bit over seven and a half hours per episode, so a weekly show is seven and a half hours a week every week without exception. That is the figure to check against the time that actually exists, because it is the one that decides whether the show is still publishing in a year.
Should I record shorter episodes or edit less?
Recording shorter pulls twice. Twenty minutes less recorded time removes those twenty minutes and removes twenty minutes multiplied by the editing ratio on top, so at three to one it saves eighty minutes from one decision made before you start. Editing less only saves the editing. That said, the two are related: a show that plans its structure before recording tends to record shorter and edit faster at the same time, which is why preparation is undervalued relative to how much time it returns.
When is it worth paying someone to edit?
When the value of the hours the editing consumes exceeds what an editor charges for the same work, which is a comparison you can only make once you have both numbers. Enter your own hourly figure and the calculator gives the editing line separately from everything else, which is the number to hold a quote against. What does not transfer well is the structural judgement about what to cut, so the arrangement that usually works is handing over the mechanical pass and keeping the editorial one.
Why does my episode take longer than the calculation says?
Usually one of three things the estimate did not include. The editing ratio was optimistic, which is the most common by a distance and the reason to measure it rather than assume it. The work is not continuous — restarting a session after an interruption costs real time that never appears in a task list. Or the tasks around the edit have grown quietly: transcripts, chapter markers, clips for three platforms and a newsletter are each small and collectively large. Add them as their own lines and the total stops being a surprise.