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# What a fact-check costs
- URL: https://freelance-desk.peachfin.site/what-a-fact-check-costs/
- Published: 2025-11-12T14:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T21:27:33.000Z
- Description: An honest breakdown of the hours behind a checked feature, with the sources in the footnotes.
- Author: Clara Weiss
- Tags: Editing, #Import 2026-10-13 14:19

Editors ask what a fact-check costs. The honest answer is the time it takes to call everyone back.

A 3,000-word feature has, on average, about sixty checkable claims.[\[1\]](#fn1) Each one takes between two minutes and two days. The slow ones are the quotes: people remember saying something softer than they said.[\[2\]](#fn2)

I budget one hour per thousand words for the easy claims, and a separate day for the quotes.[\[3\]](#fn3)

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1. My count across twelve features filed in 2024 and 2025: between 41 and 83 claims each. [↩︎](#fnref1)
2. I record every interview, with permission, and send quotes back for accuracy, never for approval. [↩︎](#fnref2)
3. For guidebook chapters the ratio is different: every listing is a claim, and every claim is a visit. [↩︎](#fnref3)

## Who pays for it

On a commission, the publication does: the fee includes the check. On a book, the publisher should, and the contract should say so.