Three bids land in your inbox for the same project. Forty-five thousand. Sixty-two. Eighty. Same deliverable, same runtime, same "one shoot day." On paper they're the same job at three different prices, and there is no obvious reason for the spread.
Most people pick the middle one and hope. That's understandable, and it's also how projects go over budget — because the number on the front page of a bid is the least informative thing in it.
I've been writing production bids for two decades, and losing plenty of them. Here's what actually separates three bids that look identical.
1. Count the prep days, not the shoot days
Everyone quotes the shoot. Look at what surrounds it. A bid with one shoot day and almost no prep is telling you something specific: they intend to figure it out on the day.
Prep is the cheapest hour in production. It's a producer in a room making decisions that cost nothing to change. The same decision made on set costs a full crew standing still, and the same decision made in the edit costs a reshoot. When you compare two bids and one has meaningfully more prep, that isn't padding — it's the part that protects the rest of your money.
2. Find the contingency line
If a bid has no contingency, the contingency hasn't been removed. It's simply been moved to your side of the table.
Weather turns. A location falls through. Talent runs late. A serious bid carries roughly ten percent for this, states it plainly, and returns what isn't spent. A bid without one is quoting you a perfect day — and then coming back mid-project with a change order, at which point you have no leverage because the crew is already booked.
3. Read the deliverables line like a lawyer
This is where most of the price spread actually lives, and it's the easiest thing to skim.
"One 60-second video" is not the same job as "one 60-second master, four cutdowns, three aspect ratios, open captions, and a stills select." The second bid might look more expensive until you realize the first one will invoice you separately for everything you assumed was included.
Before you compare anything, write down your real deliverable list — every cut, every ratio, every platform — and normalize all three bids against it. Half the time the ranking flips.
4. Check who is actually on set
You met a director in the pitch. Find their name in the crew line.
The gap between the person who wins the job and the person who shows up to shoot it is the most common disappointment in this business, and it's completely avoidable — you just have to ask the question before you sign. Same for the DP, the producer, and the editor. Ask who's confirmed and who's "to be booked."
5. Ask what's excluded
Five things come back as surprise invoices more often than everything else combined: music licensing, talent buyouts and usage, insurance, color grade, and audio mix.
Usage is the sharpest one. A talent buyout for six months of paid social is a different price than perpetual worldwide, and if nobody scoped the usage, nobody priced it. You will find out when you want to run the spot again next year.
How to actually do the comparison
Put the three bids in one spreadsheet, side by side, with your deliverable list down the left. Add rows for prep days, shoot days, post weeks, contingency, and each of the five exclusions above. Fill in every cell — and where a bid is silent, write "not stated" rather than assuming it's included.
By the time that grid is filled in, the decision usually makes itself. Often the cheapest bid is cheapest because it's quoting a smaller job, and the expensive one is expensive because it's the only one being honest about what you asked for.
The cheapest bid isn't the one with the smallest number. It's the one with the fewest surprises.
If you're weighing bids right now and want a second read on them, we're happy to look — even if none of them are ours.