Hiring a quizmaster, or hosting it yourself

What a freelance quizmaster costs, what you get for it, what to agree before the first night, and when running the quiz with your own staff is the better deal.

Last reviewed 4 November 2026

What you are actually paying for

A hired quizmaster sells you two things, and it helps to price them separately.

The first is the work: writing or buying the questions, printing the sheets, marking them, keeping the scores. It is two or three hours a week and it is the reason most in-house quiz nights stop.

The second is the person: someone who can stand up in front of forty people, keep the room on side, rule on a disputed answer without a row, and make the same Tuesday feel different every week. In a room that comes for the host, that is the product and nothing replaces it.

The question to ask before you hire anyone is which of the two you are short of. Most pubs are short of the first and have the second behind the bar already.

What a quizmaster costs

There is no published going rate, and anyone who quotes you one is guessing. Prices depend on the town, the size of the room, whether the host brings a PA, and whether they write their own questions.

One firm publishes what it pays hosts: Question One, a booking company that supplies ready-made quizzes and the people to run them, pays its hosts from £45 an event plus 50p for each player beyond the first twenty. The firm's own margin sits on top of that, so a venue booking through a company pays more than the host receives. An independent local host sets their own price.

Ask three hosts for a quote and ask each one the same questions, listed further down. The spread will tell you more than any average.

Do the yearly sum before you agree

A weekly fee is easy to say yes to and adds up quickly. At £75 a week, a fee that sounds small, a weekly quiz costs £3,900 a year before the prize.

Hold that against what the night makes: the extra tables, what they spend, and the entry money if you charge it. The quiz night profit calculator does that sum with your own numbers. A host who fills the room is cheap at that price. A host who runs a nice quiz for the same six tables you had anyway is not.

Who takes the entry money

There are three common arrangements, and the one you pick changes what the host is motivated to do.

The pub pays a flat fee: Entry money goes to the prize or to the pub. Simple and predictable, and the host is paid the same whether ten tables come or two.
The host keeps the entry money: No fee from the pub. The host has every reason to fill the room, and the pub's cost is zero, but you have handed over the one number that tells you how the night is doing.
A smaller fee plus a share of the entry: The compromise most people end up on. The host is paid enough to turn up on a quiet week and rewarded for building it.

What to agree before the first night

Most disagreements between a pub and its quizmaster are about things nobody wrote down. Settle these in a short email both of you keep.

The fee, and when it is paid: Cash on the night, or monthly by transfer. Say which.
Cancellation, both ways: What happens if the host is ill, and what happens if you cancel because of a private booking or a big match. Some firms pay their hosts a fee when an event is cancelled on the night, which is a fair arrangement to copy.
Who owns the rollover: If the jackpot is sitting at £300 and the host leaves, whose money is it? Decide while it is at £20.
Whose night it is: Is this the pub's quiz with a hired host, or the host's quiz held at the pub? If the host moves to the pub down the road, the regulars may go with them. You cannot stop that, but you can decide early whether the quiz has the pub's name on it.
Questions: Written fresh each week, bought in, or repeated on a cycle. Regulars notice repeats faster than you would expect.
Equipment and music: Who brings the microphone, the speaker and the screen. If the host plays music clips, check that your music licence covers it before the first music round.
Notice: Four weeks either way is reasonable, and it stops a quiz night ending on a text message.

When hiring is the right call

Hire when nobody on your staff will stand up and talk to a room, when the room is big enough that it needs a performer rather than a host, or when the night is sold on a name people already know locally.

Hire, too, when you want the quiz to be somebody else's problem entirely. That is a legitimate thing to pay for, as long as you know that is what you are buying.

When running it yourself is better

Run it in-house when the room is small, when a manager or a regular already knows everyone in it, or when the yearly cost of a host is more than the night is likely to make.

The hours are the part that kills in-house quiz nights, and the hours are also the part that can be taken away. Ready-made question packs remove the writing, and phones remove the answer sheets and the marking. What is left is reading the questions out and talking to the room, which is the part your staff can probably already do.

Finding a good one

Ask other landlords first, because a host who has kept a quiz going at a pub nearby for three years is the best reference there is. Local Facebook groups, quiz leagues and booking firms are the next places to look.

Then go and watch them run a quiz somewhere else before you book them. Twenty minutes in the room tells you whether people like them, and that is the only thing that matters.

Or host it with your own staff

Thirteen question packs are built in, and players answer and get scored on their own phones, so the person behind the bar only has to read out the questions. The first session is free.

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