The Zoom Magician is a virtual magician that can be booked via the web. This service offers lots of different packages and prices for your event needs, so you’ll never have to worry about not being able to find something in your budget or time frame! If you’re looking for an interactive experience with a little more magic, then this may be the perfect solution. Jon Finch will work with you one-on-one to make sure he understands what type of event yours is, as well as give you transparent pricing — no guessing games.

If you’re happy with a half-baked, hiccupping, hot-dog struttin’, a perfectly mediocre magician who smells like cigarettes practicing card tricks at your child’s birthday party, then $140 to $200 can get you that (in the Midwest). You may be better off getting a fun and easy magic kit.

For an in-person event, you’ll need a seasoned magical entertainer for your event. That can be hard to find. It can be all the more daunting if it’s your first time hiring a magician. You can’t put a price on premium entertainment, but you can discover rates if you do some digging.

But suppose you want a high-caliber and seasoned close-up magician to add value to the 30th anniversary, an open house, a wedding reception, an awards ceremony, or a client appreciation event. In that case, you can find a magician for a corporate event for anywhere between $500 per hour and $4,000+ per event.

There are outliers, though. Some restaurant or hospitality suite magicians can be secured on a residency basis for as low as $100 an hour, and outliers such as trade show magicians will be at the least $1,000-day rate for an entry-level, 1st-year trade show magician, and up to $38,000 per weekend for a seasoned trade show magician like Anton Zellman or Danny Orleans.

Bottom Line

A magician—like a singer, a speaker, or a comedian-will charge a personal rate. This rate varies depending on the performer and the event.

Suppose you’ve got your heart set on one magician. Asking the magician, “How much do magicians charge?” is like asking your doctor, “How much do doctors charge?”

Because of the enormous scope of event needs, the rates you’ll see below vary according to the demands of the event.

How Much Do Magicians Charge?

The answer to “How much does a magician cost?” is the answer to “How much does an actor cost?”

It depends.

“it depends” is not a cop-out answer, given the question. A vague question yields an ambiguous answer.

Once you have a magician in mind, the rate can vary according to various show factors:

• The Magician: You’ll pay more for David Blaine than for Oz Pearlman, and you’ll pay more for Oz than your greenhorn with “-ini” at the end of his name.

• Size of the audience: Just as singing a lullaby to one person is different from singing on stage in front of hundreds, entertaining five people versus 500 takes a different skill set.

• Some magicians are outstanding on stage but are reduced to tinker toys for three people, and vice versa.

• Other magicians are stellar close-up magicians but fall apart on stage.

• If your party has a small guest count, such as 10 to 20 people, and if you’re fortunate enough to live within proximity to a magician, you might get the chance to snatch a seasoned, professional magician for $450 to $800.

• Type of show: Expect a higher investment for a stage show than a close-up show. if all other things are equal, a professional mentalist typically commands a higher price than a professional magician.

• Location of the venue: A magician within your city may charge a lower rate than a magician of the same caliber who is two states away.

• Duration of performance: Some magicians charge by the hour, other magicians charge a set fee by appearance, and still others have an hourly rate with a base minimum fee of $1500.

• The day of the week and the time of the year: The busiest days of the week for magicians are, unsurprisingly, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

• The busiest months of the year are March and September (for when the events get booked, not the event dates).

• Miscellaneous factors: Games included, giveaways included, the sound system provided, mentalism included stage show or close-up, age of guests, generic show or customized act, live animals involved, etc.

But I’m not gonna leave you hanging on that.

A stellar actor like Michael Caine commands a higher rate than a lesser-known or less proficient actor.

And is the actor is doing a feature film or a 15-second voice-over commercial?

In the real world, a professional magician may receive half a dozen requests a week and each will be unique.

• Not all magicians handle all types of work, and if you see one advertised as “for all occasions,” you have reason to be wary.

Criss Angel may seem cool to watch on a TV show, but you may not want him in your home for your kid’s birthday party. But if your child loves Criss Angel, then you can get a Criss Angel magic set.

• In the same way, a magician who is experienced in managing a room full of sugar-filled children may not be ideal for an adult birthday party or a corporate holiday party.

 Event Types

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the types of shows a magician might be requested for.

An illusionist or a mentalist charges more than the numbers above. Briefly, an illusionist is one type of magician who uses big boxes and tigers on stage. A mentalist is a magician who does mind tricks.

The cruise market allows the magician to entertain in more traditional performing venues like theaters with outstanding technical support. Still, the magician needs to have at least an hour straight of various materials. The magician may also need to be away from home for long periods.

Most magicians regard kids’ magic shows as a lower-value market with less-than-ideal performing conditions. As a trade-off, the higher volume of magic shows within a tight radius compensates the magician.

A good kid’s magician has a room full of ripe prospects at each magic show and a fresh crop of birthdays each year.

From one event to the next, both the costs to the magician and the needs of the client change. The price of a magician could be as dynamic as his act.

Factors such as the distance between the magician and the venue, duration of performance, needs of the client, event type, and experience of the magician all affect your investment.

“You get what you pay for,” is no less accurate for magicians than for any other professional.

You Get What You Pay For

As a rule, bargain-basement prices mean bargain-basement talent, but there are exceptions to that rule.

There are a few hobbyist magicians who never perform professionally (for money) and are more skilled and entertaining than some working magicians.

That said, entertainment can make or break an event. Guests remember the show long after they’ve forgotten the flowers, the favors, the centerpiece, the decor, the ceremony, or even the food (food ranks second). 

Professional live entertainment brings energy, interaction, and fun to the event.

For your event, you want everything to be perfect.

But remember what your guests will most remember.

If you’re operating on a shoestring budget when it’s an important corporate function or private event, you’ll be safer to skimp on the decorations rather than the entertainment.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Depending on the factors laid out in this guide, you can expect to budget between $10 to $55 per guest.

• Some magicians require the balance paid in full 30 days before the event to secure the date.

Discounts

• It is sometimes possible to get a discounted rate if you book well enough in advance.

• If your event is on a non-peak day (Monday through Thursday), if this applies to your situation, you can use it as a negotiation chip if your budget can’t cover the performer’s quoted rate. The odds are that the magician won’t have a booking on a weekday.

• Many magicians offer a discount of up to 50% for each additional hour after the first hour.

• Such a discount is a win/win since you get more magical entertainment at a lower price, and from the magician’s perspective, most of the cost to him is front-loaded.

• He is holding the show date, preparing his props, getting ready for the show, traveling to the venue, etc, not to mention the decade or more of honing his craft.

• The magician has already made most of his investment upfront. The wise magician should be happy to stay and perform for another hour at a discounted price.

• If you do intend to negotiate, remember that it is courteous (though not customary) to issue a counteroffer rather than merely asking the performer to give you a second offer.

There are three popular event booking services. These websites host profiles of magicians.

Two of the best ones are Thumbtack (which doesn’t specialize in magicians or even entertainers) and Gigmasters (now called The Bash…which also does not specialize in magicians, but does specialize in entertainers).

Walmart is to widgets as Gigmasters is to magicians.
These sites offer a lot of conveniences. 

But there’s a catch.

The main problem is that the person needing a magician selects some items from a restrictive drop-down menu, then the person may or may not write a sentence or two describing their needs, and then wait for ten blind magicians to send them quotes.

The entertainer is often unaware of the specifics of the event. You’ll get the best deal and the best experience, and no unpleasant surprises if you give the professional what he needs (details of your event) to work out the best quote for you.

When you find a magician through Thumbtack, each magician pays Thumbtack at least $12 whenever you engage with them. Even when he receives a rejection message, “You seem great, but we can’t afford your fee.” Thumbtack still treats that as a lead, so the magician pays for it.

When you book the magician through Gigmasters, Gigmasters takes a minimum of $20 for each booking or 5% of the fee—whichever is greater. In addition to that, magicians pay annually to be on the site.

Since entertainers need to inflate their rates when booking through such sites, you will get the best deal by contacting the magician directly instead of going through such a booking service. How do you contact the magician directly? Find their website and contact him via the website, email, or phone.

Simple.

The above sites advertise on Google with headlines like “The 10 Best Magicians in Indianapolis” or “The Top Ten Magicians in Chicago.”

The above sites have no way of ranking “best magicians” aside from the bookings the website processed for the performer. Moreover, the top magicians tend not to use such sites anymore, which means you see only a part of the picture.

Let’s dig deeper

In 2018, I decided to have a conversation with one of the highest-ranking agents at Gigmasters.

According to my recon, within a 100-mile radius of Indianapolis, Gigmasters received 250 requests per year for a magician (keep in mind that Gigmasters is only one of many paths a party host may follow when searching for a magician). The average duration of a magic show was 1.5 hours. The average magician quote was $350 per hour, and the minimum quote was $140 per hour  (the “lowest quote ever,” as she put it).

This average included bookings through only Gigmasters. It does not include Thumbtack, Gigsalad, Yelp, Yellowpages, and all the other platforms online, let alone all the requests that went directly through a magician’s website.

If you’ve read this far, you’re savvy enough to understand that this does not mean most magicians charge $350 per hour. It’s just the average, a number that is not that informative since there are far more kids’ birthday parties (happening every day of the year) than there are corporate holiday parties.

It would be like giving the “average” doctor’s salary—including brain surgeons, dentists, and anyone who has a doctoral degree in any field.

The “magician” title is a broad one: it comprises trade show magicians who are working with budgets of $10,000+ per weekend (at the national level), and kid’s birthday party magicians who are working with $200 budgets (and supply and demand).

• Those throwing a kid’s birthday party are more likely to use a site like Gigmasters than someone seeking a magician for a client appreciation event or awards ceremony, so from the perspective of Gigmasters, the volume of kid’s party requests dramatically exceeds the amount of adult party magician requests.

when booking through Gigmasters, the magician gets the customer’s email and phone number as soon as the magician sends a quote.

Many magicians who charge $1,500 or more may bypass the booking process through Gigmasters to avoid the cost of Gigmasters’ booking fee (the booking fee is 5% of the magician’s rate rather than a fixed amount).

Location

On Gigmasters, there are 5% more magicians in Chicago than in Indianapolis, yet 300% more requests for a magician in Chicago than in Indianapolis.

The above figures are from only one website, but going by the numbers on this website, an Indianapolis magician would do well to move to Chicago.

In terms of requests for a magician, Chicago dwarfs every other Midwest city. Chicago has triple the number of requests, no matter which Midwest city you look at.

Midwest cities ordered by number of requests for a magician:

2017

1. Chicago

2. St Louis

3. Cincinnati

4. Naperville (basically Chicago)

5. Indianapolis

6. Louisville

7. Lexington

2020

1. Chicago

2. St Louis

3. Indianapolis (almost tied with STL in 2020)

4. Naperville (basically Chicago)

5. Cincinnati

6. Louisville

7. Lexington

Those are Gigmasters figures. According to Google search volume, there are more requests for “Indianapolis magician” than “Cincinnati magician,” and no search volume for Louisville (though I’ve booked several shows in Louisville, so maybe it’s just that Gigmasters doesn’t rank in Google as well in Louisville).

More Cincy people searching for a magician go through Gigmasters than Indy people, but that may be because Gigmasters ranks higher in Cincy than in Indy (on Google).

Gigmasters has a reputation for presenting many “discount magicians” (quality of service varies). Keep that in mind when looking at the following figures.

According to Gigmasters, the average fee for a magician (booked through Gigmasters) in all the Midwest is close to $350 for an event — most bookings through Gigmasters are for a kid’s birthday party.

In Monon, Indiana, the lowest booked fee in 2019 was $250, and the highest in Monon was $1600.

For a magician in Cincinnati, the average was $250 for 1.5 hours.

In St Louis, the average booking was $450 for 1.5 hours. The max was $900 per hour, and the minimum was $250 through Gigmasters.

In Louisville, the average for 1 hour was $415, the max booking was $1,000, and the minimum booking was $125.

In Chicago, the highest fee booked through Gigmasters was $1,000.

In Indianapolis, through Gigmasters, the lowest fee for a magician was $240. In 2019, the highest cost in Indianapolis was $500 per hour.

Since my most recent booking in Indianapolis through Gigmasters was a four-figure booking (where the first figure wasn’t a “1”), I take the $500 number with a grain of salt. Reportedly, more than ten shows had been booked at that fee ($500/hr) through Gigmasters in 2019.

I was puzzled when I learned that the highest-rate booking in Chicago was $1,500, yet in Indianapolis, it was $500.

Most higher-end magicians I’ve talked to bypass the Gigmasters booking process altogether and choose to book directly with the party host or event planner.

• Thumbtack is a similar website. From the Thumbtack website, after Googling “cost of a magician,” we can see this old 2017 infographic below showing the hourly quote for an event with <70 guests:

But beware:

The phrase “average cost of a magician” is almost meaningless due to the ambiguous term “magician.”

Gigmasters and Thumbtack got that average figure from kid’s magicians.

More than double the data points (all the shows Thumbtack has access to) are for kids’ birthday parties, so around $300 may be the average price for a local 30-minute kids’ birthday party magic show.

If you’re looking for a professional magician for a wedding or a corporate event, then looking at the average “cost of a magician” is misleading.

I said, “partly due to the ambiguous term magician.” There’s an even more significant factor at play here.

Most people searching for magicians click on the first link in Google (which may be the Bash, Thumbtack, or GigSalad) and are the same people who have never booked a magician before.

They haven’t experienced the horror of lousy entertainment, so they are likely to pick the cheapest entertainer available. They don’t have much else to go on (like a friend’s recommendation or having seen a good magician at a previous event).

This Gigmasters and Thumbtack data excludes seasoned event planners and meeting planners who already know the perils of picking a professional magician from the list provided by the event entertainment bureaus.

Though there are good magicians listed on such websites, the bad ones outnumber the good and rise to the top because more first-timers book them. The tip-off of a “first-timer booker” is their first (and only) question, “What’s your price?” They aren’t bad people; they just hadn’t yet been stuck with an inexperienced magician.

The data Gigmasters and Thumbtack present to you (via this article) is not only an average of an extensive pool of different types of performers. They are entertaining at a range of other event types. But, also, Gigmasters itself has access only to the fraction of people whose first thought was to google ‘magician + city’ and click the first and most visible link in the results (often a directory like Yelp, Expertise, Gigmasters, or Thumbtack).

Gigmasters does not have access to the magicians who proactively contacted a company about its annual employee appreciation event. They then established a relationship with that company and sold the company on having something special for its employees. After this, the company booked him for $5,000 for a two-hour performance of close-up magic and has continued hiring the same magician for over a decade.

When Thumbtack presented “The 10 Best Magicians in St Louis,” nobody at Thumbtack had seen any of the St Louis magicians before or even scoured the websites of magicians and watched videos to decide who was the best. Their algorithm just picked the ones most frequently booked (through only its website), which are often not the best but the cheapest.

Keep that in mind when looking at the numbers presented below. The numbers don’t describe all magicians. And even the average number displayed does not represent what you might expect to pay for YOUR event.

The average is just that. If in Thumbtack, 100 magicians charged $300 for a kid’s birthday party (totaling $30,000). Ten magicians charged $3,000 for a wedding, a corporate holiday party, or a fundraiser (also totaling $30,000), Thumbtack would tell you the average price of a magician is $545 ($60,000 divided by 110 magicians = $545).

Even if every person on the planet looking for a magician requested one through Thumbtack, that average number still doesn’t help you.

• That’s why I’m digging deeper. I’m telling you the real price of a magician for a show—not an average of hundreds of bookings from hundreds of magicians for dozens of various events.

Strictly speaking, a “professional” magician earns most of his living from performing magic. Still, we’ll use the “professional” term here to differentiate between a magician and a kid’s magician. Just sounds more professional than “adult entertainer.”

I’m sure you’ll agree.

It can be confusing trying to get an average number since the blanket title “magician” covers the close-up magicians (not even remotely famous to the general public) who charge $5,000 or more for a strolling performance. The same title includes the kid’s birthday party magician performing a $200 half-hour show for a room full of 5-year-olds.

An adult birthday party magician is a different story.

When you’re looking for a magician to entertain a sophisticated, discerning adult audience (or just an ordinary adult audience), looking up an “average” cost of hiring a magician on lead generation websites like Thumbtack or Gigmasters can be misleading.

The magician performing high-end close-up magic or strolling mentalism for a corporate banquet, a wedding reception, or a private party typically charges a fee four to ten times higher than the rate for a kid’s magician for a birthday party.

Now consider that there are 2.5 times as many magician requests for kid’s birthday parties as there are for the following non-exhaustive list of general markets that magicians can serve:

• Corporate Banquets

• After Dinner Entertainment

• Wedding Receptions

• Adult Private Parties

• Company Picnics

• Trade shows

• Product Launches

• Sales Meetings

• Graduation parties

• After Prom Entertainment

• Holiday Parties

• Association Events

• Cabarets

• Casinos

• Colleges

• Clubs

• Country Clubs

• Open Houses

• Fundraisers

                        …combined.

Each market has different potentials for scalability, and the entertainer must approach each differently. The needs and expectations of each market are different. The challenges and rewards vary for each market.

• The 2.5* increases even more when you include requests for elementary school assemblies.

The above pie chart shows you the number of requests that filter into those sites. You begin to see now how such a surplus of cheap babysitter magicians deflates the “average.”

You’re looking for the dark blue.

This pie chart is even simpler. When a site like Gigmasters, Gigsalad, or Thumbtack spit out an “average price of a magician,” remember that fully 3/4ths of the requests they receive are for all those kid’s birthday parties.

Sites like the above will show you a distorted figure like $250 to $350. The distortion arises because the number of requests for kid’s magicians performing a 30-minute show for children—more than double the number of requests for adult magicians—pulls down the average.

On the other side of the coin, there are economy magicians who charge $200 per hour for practicing their tricks on your audience. If you’re on a tight budget, you may feel tempted to get a gutter magician or a magician who performs kid’s tricks and hands out balloon animals (that tend to pop on the drive home).

You may not want such a crackpot magician performing for your distinguished guests. No one except your guests will hold that against you.

When you pay bargain-basement prices, you risk getting bargain-basement entertainment. Or even worse, you bring someone to entertain your prominent guests and receive complaints about “that weirdo magician in every wedding party photo.”

When I was a DJ in St Louis, there was a cautionary tale of just such an uncouth wedding DJ — he photobombed as often as he could.

Your party does not center on the entertainment—the entertainment centers on your celebration.

The success of your event depends on budgeting the necessary funds to get top-shelf entertainment.

Better Safe than Sorry

One last cost that both party hosts and magicians often overlook is the minimal but real risk of property damage or injury during any performance of entertainment.

Just like anything in life, magic can be tragic.

Some magicians use fire in their effects. Many mentalists, blindfolded, slam their hand down on five inverted lunch bags, avoiding the one lunch bag concealing a rusty spike. Other mentalists—including Jon Finch a long time ago-drive a car blindfolded (relax, I’m a magician).

Gusts of Gravity

Several years ago, I’d have a card selected, signed, returned, and shuffled into the deck, then I precariously secured the pack (lost card and all) in a rubber band and threw the deck up at the ceiling.

A gust of gravity would grab the deck and pull it back down (always), and I’d catch it (almost always).

There, nailed into the ceiling, was the signed playing card staring down at everyone like a ghost.

I had performed this trick hundreds of times.

But then one time, there was a 30-degree slant to the ceiling.

The card stuck, but the angular impact dislodged all the playing cards from their rubber band wrap, and they showered down over many spectators. Fortunately, the falling playing card injured no one.

In life, accidents indeed happen. Fortunately, in my 18 years of performing professionally, no one has ever been hurt.

• Whatever magician you find, you want to be sure that the magician has performer’s liability insurance. Such a policy is specialty insurance that any professional magician who cares about their audience ought to have.

There are many types of magicians and many kinds of events. So the prices vary widely. To get a better idea, fill out our online form, which will ask you for some details about what type of event it is and how much money you would like to spend on your magician.

95% of Jon Finch’s shows are corporate, and his virtual shows have an average price tag of around $1,800.

On the other end of the spectrum, Finch does magic at adult Zoom birthday parties for as little as USD 700.

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