I charge $115-130 an hour. All work is 100% remote. I customize Salesforce.<p>I think my rate is pretty good, but am wondering if I should charge more or if there is other tech I should specialize in that could get me a higher rate.
I have three rates.<p>You are a charity, or other worthy cause, or someone I really want to work with - 50% - 100% discount.<p>You are a normal client - 100%.<p>You are either an arsehole or have asked for something <i>very</i> last minute - 150%-200% depending on the mood I'm in.<p>The last one, colloquially known as the fuck-off rate, is probably the best bit of contracting advice I ever got from a colleague. He hated the gig we were doing, utterly despised the boss, and walked away smiling every day because he was one week closer to retirement. It's only really sustainable for your mental health in short runs.<p>Oh, and never charge per hour. It isn't like you can do an hour for client X and then the next one on client Y. You're not a bloody lawyer - you're a professional!<p>I sometimes split jobs into half-days, if the client prefers it. Although that's more like 66% for each half.<p>Oh, and finally, you <i>don't</i> customise Salesforce. You help your clients solve a problem. That may usually involve Salesforce, but most of your potential clients probably don't know what SF can do. So what you're actually selling is a way to optimise the client funnel (or whatever).
It used to be $225/hr. But I don’t have an hourly rate anymore and I basically never will.<p>You need to understand that as a contractor clients value more than just your time and the work you do. They value flexibility in staffing, getting an outsider’s opinion, their own time, working with a true expert, and making progress on projects which they can show off to their boss.<p>That’s why for all my work I scope project fees plus monthly retainers. The retainers are use it or lose it. Then I focus on delivering the best possible experience for my clients.<p>By switching to this model I do about 3x my previous earnings. And my clients are happy (I haven’t lost one yet).<p>It doesn’t make sense to become a contractor just to remain a wage slave.<p>(Before all the “I can’t do this because my situation is different”: You are full of it. Anyone can do this.)
My rate is 165 USD/hr, but I’ll drop it as low as 135 for a long contract (6 months+). I do custom software for the refrigeration industry (mostly simulations, sensor data logging, a lot of web apps, etc.). But yeah like another poster mentioned, I just raise it every time I work with a new customer.<p>Imo hourly rates are kind of bogus because not every hour is the same and hours can’t determine value. Generally I negotiate a weekly rate @ 35 hrs / week and try to deliver something valuable every week. The amount of hours I actually work in a week varies.
A few years back, 2013 through early 2016, my day rate was $1,600 USD, I frequently worked on-site so my travel rate was $75/hr to discourage people from calling me in unncessarily. If I was doing that work today, I'd be probably upping those day rates to $2,000 or $2,400 with zero travel.<p>Right now I charge $1,000/day. I do precisely 8 hours. Zero travel. No out of normal work hours. No weekends. No unreasonable demands. No arseholes. No toxicity. No guilting me into delivering something. No awkward conversations about "well why isn't X done yet?" No high stress. No "we must deliver this by Tuesday at all costs." No "we need you to go hard on this problem." No "we need you to come in to the office for this."<p>I tend to work with young start-ups who have interesting problems to solve. The downside is that this frequently involves working with first-time founders who lack boundaries or start-ups who think because they paid "for a day" that a "day" involves 20 hours of work. I'm getting better about stating that "I start at 9AM local time and stop at 6PM local time."<p>I could get more if I worked for BigCorp, or even a regular job quite possibly, but this way I get to pick and choose what I work on, and when I want to work. If I want to shift my days or hours around to take an afternoon off, I do, and I don't have to explain myself to anyone.
OT, but important: don't bill hourly. Do a day rate.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103417" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103417</a><p>You can benchmark day rates by your hourly rate, if that's easier for you to think or talk about. Your benchmark hourly rate should probably <i>start</i> at 150%-200% of your salary (backed out to hourly). It can reasonably go much higher. It can't reasonably go much lower.
The best advice I ever got about freelancing was to increase my rate for every job and keep on doing that until people refused to hire me. How else can you figure out what you're worth?
I am located in germany, work as a fullstack dev with frontend focus (react/vue). I have about 6 years of total dev experience[1].<p>For full time projects I charge 90-100€/h (+19% VAT) and I exclusively take on remote projects. When I started out at as a freelancer at the beginning of 2020 my rate was 80€/h.<p>If I was approached with short term projects(as in less than 160h of work) I would charge significantly more but that hasn't happened yet, usually I get booked 3-12 months.<p>As it turns out my yearly net income is significantly higher than that of my employed peers in
every single project I have worked so far since the market is so starved for devs and I never had any downtime between projects. Sometimes I wonder if I could ask for even more given the market situation but I also feel somewhat overpaid tbh.<p>[1] I learned programming on the side during my bachelor's in physics. During my master's I started working for a consultancy at night doing webdev while researching quantum computing and machine learning for my master's thesis. After I got a job as a full stack engineer after I finished my degree but I quit that job after about a year to go freelance.
I usually charge per day or per week. If it's a few hours, I just tell them it's not worth my time.<p>The locality of the customer matters a lot. Usually, I will factor what it would cost for them to hire a full-time engineer (not just salary, but also overhead). A $120k salary will cost the company $200k, or $90 per hour. Then I'll add a % on top since I'm not getting days off, paid vacation, long-term security, etc.<p>That kind of reasoning helps with stingy customers. Otherwise, I just give a flat rate to solve their problem.<p>For customers that need me long term, I also ask for a monthly retainer to keep availability for them, for meetings, emergency bug fixes, etc. Otherwise, you're giving them the perks of an employee without them properly compensating you.
Hey fellow consultants in here, can someone just please make a glassdoor for us?<p>I’m tired of holding this idea in my head would love to see it out there so we can just get to the good part (knowing what to charge).<p>If you need more explanation:
<a href="https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io/editions/012" rel="nofollow">https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io/editions/012</a>
In Canada contractors who work for the recruiters who supply resources to the Canadian government can expect these kind of rates:
Experienced DBA ~$80/hour
System Analyst/Platform Analyst ~100/hour
Security Assessor or Practitioner from $115 to $125/hour<p>Front end developers who know a JavaScript framework, Power BI developers and anyone with cloud experience are in demand at top rates.<p>Then there are the gold ring jobs that pay over $200/hour. An example might be a subject matter expert on deploying Splunk, CyberArc or Sailpoint at an enterprise level. Usually you are working for a name brand consulting firm.<p>The recruiters add 30% to your rate and pay you net 30. Direct contracts with the government are possible but tend to be more short term
My wife handles NetSuite and some Salesfoce outside developers as part of her role. She says they pay agencies $180-$230/hr for devs, depending on the person, seniority level, task, etc. I know that many times the developers are in India, or other countries with lower wages, and often they need a lot of oversight.<p>IMO your rates are too low, assuming that you are talking about US-based customers and you are US-based as well. $150-$175/hr would probably be palatable to your customers.
While this may be somewhat tongue in cheek, I often think of this post from Anil Dash:<p>"I talk to a lot of consultants, freelancers, and small businesses who do web work, and I used to be a freelancer myself, so sometimes I get asked for advice on how to price one’s goods and services.<p>I think I came up with my best suggestion today, and it involves only two simple steps:<p><pre><code> Slap the client in face.
Tell the client your hourly rate.
</code></pre>
If the person looked more shocked, horrified, offended, hurt, saddened, or wounded by the slap in the face, then you are still pricing yourself too low.
Your mileage may vary, this is not to be construed as legal advice, eye-poking may be substituted for slapping in some states."<p><a href="https://anildash.com/2005/05/12/pay_by_the_hour/" rel="nofollow">https://anildash.com/2005/05/12/pay_by_the_hour/</a>
Highly recommend this book (discusses rate/value a lot) for anyone doing software consulting: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Successfully/dp/0932633013" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...</a>
When I started out as a freelancer n10 years ago, I was aiming for € 70 per hour. My first gig was € 55, the next € 60, then € 67.5. And then suddenly it jumped to € 75, € 82, € 85, and I'm currently making € 95 per hour.<p>I just keep slowly increasing the rate until they stop hiring me.<p>Note, this is mostly for long in-house projects, where I'm part of a team working on a single project. I'm working roughly 32 hours a week.
I'm both a lawyer and a software engineer, so I have two different rates depending on the work I'm doing. My legal fee is $495 an hour, and my engineering fee is $395 an hour. I expect to increase both of those next year.<p>I offer a blended rate for companies that are in need of both legal and software services; these are usually early stage startups, non-profits, and small family offices.
Germany, freelancer in "devops" we call it these days (infra automation, container, k8s etc..) with about 7 years of experience in linux and 10 years overall in consulting.<p>i charge around 100€-125€/h (+19% VAT) depending if onsite or remote.
i have seen people go for 150€ but these are the ones kicked out first if there is an issue or company needs to save money.
I don't charge by the hour.<p>I charge fixed prices only for project work.<p>For advisory retainers, I charge a flat rate per month.<p>All upfront (or 50% up front and 50% in X number of days).<p>Billing by the hour misaligns incentives.<p>(Obligatory link to Hourly Billing is Nuts: <a href="https://jonathanstark.com/hbin" rel="nofollow">https://jonathanstark.com/hbin</a> )
I would be particularly interested in hearing what "Full Stack Developers" charge in the UK. I recently started doing freelance/contract work but I'm not really sure what others similar to me change.<p>(I'm particularly experienced (15 years) in Python/Django, JS/Vue, UI/UX)
Follow Jonathan Stark and listen to ditching hourly. At the time I triple my income instantly following his advice. He will change the way you think.<p>The tech doesn't matter, you need to solve your client's problem. If it is painful and you have the right clients you can get a lot of money.
I'm fixing some WordPress websites on the side for 60 Euro/hour for clients from earlier days. For new clients I'd look into 90 Euro/hour.<p>Your work is much more complex though, your rate should therefore be higher, I think, especially if this is your main job.<p>Would it make sense for you to switch to another billing model, like "per module" or does billing per hour work fine for you?<p>edit: Based in Germany
$150/hr USD OH/NC/TN<p>Small S-Corp of consultants/contractors. Software development team augmentation mostly but we often have multiple people in each client--often working together. We actually do consulting work in addition to contracting.<p>A few people have higher rates...which is client dependent. The big clients have asked for every person we can throw at them but we purposefully do not go all-in like that.<p>At my gig, a startup in Dayton, I work with two other developers from my company and we are responsible for a new product--soup to nuts. We handle project management, requirements definition (experts in finance/banking/payments), DevOps, and coding and meeting with a wide array of business ops people and management.<p>Honestly, we are working for a low rate in this instance but there are zero micromanagement or bullshit or dumbasses to deal with. We have outrun the business and spend our time on nice to have stuff while they catch up. We choose the tech stack.
Appsec/Network Pentesting, (freelance insured, bonded, "botique")<p>$275/hr, hours stated upfront per app/project. Change order issued if we have to go over. Nondelivery of access prior to testing period eats away at your time. We do a kickoff call 3d prior to make sure that this doesn't happen.<p>I'll work with them to deliver results in a format that you can import. I'll do an in-person kickoff & readout, otherwise fully remote. I'll deliver abstracts for you to give to your clients. I've been doing this for 7y now and turn down a lot of work based on scheduling.
Depends on the customer. The largest rate I used to take was $500/hour (for a 10 hours project, so it haven’t made me a millionaire). The smallest is of course free, but the actual commercial smallest was probably $80/hour (for a long-term project). (I live in Switzerland, which is quite expensive).<p>It goes without saying that there are times when I don’t have any projects in the pipeline, so I have to spend some time on finding another set of clients. The longest such interval has been about 6 months.
I do backend Java development as a mid-senior engineer (~10 years of experience). I have a good grasp of SQL, git, Spring, ...<p>I do 35€/hr in central/southern Europe, working for a local fintech company (2-3x what I'd get as wage). I plan on rising my rates later this year. I was in talks with a US company, and they balked when I requested 42$/hr as that was what they paid their employees from the US.
I charge around 75$/h for backend and devops work. I started at 42$/h two years ago. Increasing the rate at every contract. I usually only bill coding hours which is around 5h/day for me, but I realized that it is not a good strategy.
I created a poll version of this here [0]<p>to make it easier to vote and see a summary of responses.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606904" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606904</a>
I’m a Notion Consultant. I usually avoid hourly work but when I do some coaching/training sometimes. In that case, I charge between $300 and $1000 session (60 to 90 mins).
100 EUR/hour although I don’t bill per hour but per day. This is without VAT and for Germany, but I charge the same for clients from other countries as well.
I charge 400/h for consulting, specializing in high scale distributed systems. When I'm charging that much I'm not doing the work, companies bring me on for 2 or 3 hours a week to set directions and tech goals as well as solve the problems they've been trying too but can't
$124 AUD/pH. Contact usually renewed with same company each year.<p>DevOps admin/Microsoft stack
-SharePoint
-CRM
-DotNet<p>80% of my time is spent automating with PowerShell
My most recent bill rate was $177/hr for a LT gig, doing performance optimization and FE web arch. But I'm an outlier; $100/hr is a commonly-cited budget cap for similar contracts. Higher effective hourly rate is feasible w/ fixed-price / value-based projects (more "strategic consulting", less "contract worker"), but it entails risk.
I am in Cyprus, run a small agency, and charge $130 an hour but willing to go down to $100 for long term contracts. Also have one legacy $90 an hour project for which rate increase is simply not possible, but i won't take any new client at that rate. We specialise in video.
I think this might also depends on the duration and the nature of the contract work but perhaps you can consider increasing your rate as a way of filtering out jobs when you start getting more jobs than you can handle.
What's up with the Poll? <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606904" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606904</a> Won't load for me.
Had a part time gig in Aus $140ph for 5h per week of pure coding - which is prob more like 8-10h equivalent at a full-time job.<p>Fullstack RoR at a small startup.
It depends on the job. I prefer charging a flat fee over an hourly rate when possible, but in either case, the rate varies depending on the nature of the job and the company.