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Work it out
What will your cameras cost over five years?
Sticker price is the smaller number for most people. Put your own figures in and see the total.
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What will your cameras cost over five years?
Sticker price is the smaller number for most people. Put your own figures in and see the total.
- Monthly
- $0 /mo
- Fees over the term
- $0 fees
- All-in
- $300 total
Pick a plan type to see what it does to the total.
Per-camera plans are modelled at $4.99 a month each and whole-home plans at $12.99 a month flat, which is the shape the major makers use. Your plan's real price is on the maker's own pricing page and is the number to trust; this works out the arithmetic, not the tariff.
The thing this makes visible is that the plan, not the camera, is usually the purchase. A $35 camera on a $5 monthly plan costs $335 across five years. A $90 camera with a card in it costs $90 and keeps its footage when you stop paying attention to it.
Plan prices move and vary by region, so put in the number from the maker's own pricing page rather than relying on the defaults here. The defaults are shaped like the market, not quoted from any one company.
Two costs the calculator deliberately leaves out, because they vary too much to model honestly. The first is installation: a wired system can add several hundred dollars if you are not doing the cable runs yourself, and that belongs in the comparison. The second is replacement: a camera that lasts three years and a camera that lasts eight have very different five-year costs, and nothing on a listing tells you which one you are buying.
What the calculator is good for is the question people skip, which is whether the cheap camera with the plan beats the dearer camera without one. Over any period longer than about eighteen months it usually does not.
Then look at
Updated October 27, 2026 by Henrik Halvorsen. Specifications were checked against the Amazon listings on that date. Prices are shown as bands because they change week to week; the listing shows today's.