How much does it cost
to install cameras?

Our home packages start from €149 as a guide price, and the exact quote is agreed after a free on-site assessment. What moves the final figure isn't the cameras themselves, but two things: the number of points that need covering and how hard it is to run cable to each of them. A home with a suspended ceiling and power sockets near each camera works out much cheaper than one with thick stone walls or the recorder at the other end of the house, even if the number of cameras is identical. That is why the starting price is useful as a reference to tell whether the range you are looking at makes sense, but not as a final figure: any serious quote needs to see the site before settling on a number, because it is the installation, not the equipment, that really decides the total.

Because the most variable item in this work isn't the equipment, it is the installation, and that varies enormously from one site to another. The same camera fitted on an accessible wall with a socket nearby costs a fraction of what that same camera costs under eaves six metres up, with the cable having to cross the whole house to the recorder. Giving a fixed price without seeing the site almost always means that price only covers the equipment and the real labour will appear later as an extra, or that it has been lowballed to close the sale. A professional who visits the site before quoting can see in five minutes where the cable will go, what height they will be working at and whether anything special is needed, and that is precisely what a phone quote can't know.

Installation disguised as equipment. It is the most common trap because it is the hardest to spot without technical knowledge: a quote that only shows a total per «installed camera» makes it impossible to know how much is for the kit and how much is for labour, and without that split you can't compare one offer with another or spot whether you are being overcharged for work that is actually simple. The practical consequence comes later, when you want to add a camera and have no idea how much installing that one unit alone should cost. Always ask for the two lines separately, equipment on one and labour on the other, even if the provider would rather give you a single figure; it is the question that most unsettles a badly worked-out quote and the one that best protects your wallet in the medium term.

The equipment, yes: it almost always works out cheaper to buy online than through an installer. The problem comes after the purchase: the cable has to be run, the recorder set up, remote access left working securely and, above all, someone has to respond when something fails six months or a year later. Many of the quotes we review come from people who bought a kit themselves, installed it as best they could and called a month later because the cameras couldn't be seen properly from their phone, the drive filled up too early or a camera stopped recording without anyone noticing for weeks. The real saving from buying online only exists if you also count your own set-up time and the risk of being left without support on the day something stops working, which is exactly when you need it most.

It depends on how the system is set up. With local recording on your own recorder inside the home or premises, there is no monthly fee: you pay for the equipment once and the footage stays on your drive. With cameras that send footage to the manufacturer's cloud instead of a local recorder, there is almost always a monthly or annual fee to keep more than a few days of video, and it is worth asking explicitly what happens to the footage if you stop paying one month: some manufacturers delete the history, others simply stop recording until payment resumes. Before choosing between one system and the other, add up the fee over several years and compare it with the extra cost of your own recorder, because beyond a certain point the one-off investment usually works out cheaper than paying every month.

The question to ask isn't so much the price as what exactly that maintenance includes, because two contracts for the same amount can cover very different things. Check whether it includes periodic checks of focus and drive health, because a camera that has gone out of focus or a drive about to fail gives no warning until it is too late; whether it includes help when you change your phone or router, which is the most common reason people suddenly can't see their cameras; and whether it includes replacing a unit that fails within the warranty period with no extra call-out charge. Cheap maintenance that covers none of these three things ends up costing more than slightly pricier maintenance that does, because every one-off visit ends up being billed separately.

Not to record: a local recorder keeps working and saving video even if the internet connection drops, because the cameras talk to it by cable or over the home's internal network. To watch them live from your phone and get alerts when they detect motion, you do need a connection, both at the site where they are installed and on the phone you check them from. One technical detail matters here: if the site's connection sits behind CG-NAT, which is common with some fibre operators and almost universal on 4G or 5G, viewing the cameras from outside the home may not work with the default settings and may need a specific solution. It is best to sort this out at installation time, checking the type of connection before fitting anything, rather than discovering it later when you try unsuccessfully to log in from your phone.

Yes, and it is actually what we recommend when the budget is tight, with one condition that makes it work well: the recorder and cabling must be sized from the first installation for the cameras you are likely to want later, not just the first two. A recorder with spare channels and an empty conduit run to the future points cost very little to add during the initial installation, and avoid redoing building work on the day you decide to expand. Without that foresight, expanding is expensive because the whole recorder has to be replaced and walls opened up again to run new cable. Starting with fewer cameras well placed at the points that really matter, with the installation ready to grow, usually gives a better result than trying to cover everything from day one on an insufficient budget.