It’s okay to ask for a budget. For the same reason I get asked that question all the time when producing, what’s your budget to produce this film or that commercial, its a very common question in some industries, that way you know what resources you can pull
together and create something they would like. Some people have the talent and resources to produce something that looks exactly the same as the higher priced case study but at a lower rate.
If a customer wants a bunch of b-roll stock footage or some stock pictures included in as part of the web video I produce for them, and you know the cost of these such pictures and licenses, and the time you are going to take to work on these projects, you can have a rough estimate of how much its going to cost, lets say $150 dollars, if the buyer says he only has $50 dollars, then you have to find an alternative way to get those types of pictures or stock clips either at a free stock footage site and let them know the quality will suffer because the clips are of lesser quality to get what they want at the price they can afford or tell them that they can’t get what they want because the starting price for the stock pictures or clips they are using is set at at least 80 dollars… or whatever which doesn’t include MY time or payment so they are looking at something unrealistic, its part of my process on Fiverr and as a professional producer.
There is nothing wrong with asking for a budget depending on your industry. People in Hollywood get asked that question ALL the time.
I ask for budgets 75% of the time, I also tell them I’m not going to blindly bid on a project in which I don’t know the exact details. Did that in the beginning but I know better now!