Ask HN: How much do you earn on average through software freelancing?

I used to charge $50 USD per hour, but I kept upping my rates. Soon I charged $100 per hour, and then $125 hour. The highest I ever got for programming&#x2F;consulting was $150 USD per hour, but I don&#x27;t charge that anymore. I&#x27;ve moved on to day rates.<p>Now I bill around $800 per day, but I only work about 6 super-focused hours, and I use the Pomodoro method every day. My clients are happy because I get a lot of work done, and I&#x27;m happy because I have to work less.<p>This is just doing general PHP dev work (Codeigniter and Laravel frameworks), and if I specialized, and if I focused on the ecommerce or finance industry I could probably make more. Most my clients are in the Rocky Mountain West, and so far I have more work than I can finish.<p>So if you want to increase your earning potential you should:<p><pre><code> 1. Specialize and master a niche. 2. Network like your business depends on it. 3. Give free seminars and teach everywhere you go. 4. Label yourself as a consultant. 5. Don&#x27;t be just a programmer. Work with businesses and fix their problems. 6. Know your worth, and don&#x27;t be afraid to charge what you&#x27;re worth. 7. Anchor your costs against how much value you&#x27;ll make your clients. 8. Keep raising your rates until you can&#x27;t get any work. 9. Work half as much as you used to. 10. And finally, spend time on things that matter like family, learning, and having fun. </code></pre> Or you can keep competing against bottom-barrel programmers on upwork, and spend the rest of your life working for peanuts. Totally up to you.

We&#x27;re a YC company that put together a visualizer for freelance engineering and design rates. It draws on a few thousand data points from our freelance invoice and contract product.<p>You can filter by location, type of work, and experience: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hellobonsai.com&#x2F;rates" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hellobonsai.com&#x2F;rates</a>

Back when I was freelancing, I charged around $150-200&#x2F;hr for fullstack development.<p>I know this is on the higher end, but it is definitely possible to find clients that can afford this higher price point. I routinely took work from clients that had hired a cheaper team and weren&#x27;t satisfied with the final product, needed someone to fix numerous bugs, or to optimize the performance of their technology.<p>Also, if you are interested in this higher price point, you need to be ready to truly partner with your client and help them solve problems, vs just writing code. This means embedding yourself in their team as much as possible (which can be done remotely; I always worked remote) and understanding the actual problems they had, rather than just building what they asked for.<p>On top of that, you&#x27;ll need to own your solution all the way through. If your client doesn&#x27;t see you as a lot of overhead, and you can act autonomously, then they&#x27;ll be even more satisfied with your work and rates.

I charge $120&#x2F;hour for development work. I specialize in low-level, performance critical stuff, lock-free algorithms, C&#x2F;C++, assembly, SIMD code. But most of the work I get is typical full-stack web application development, with a little mobile stuff sometimes.<p>I charge half rate to startups in top accelerators, like YC, that haven&#x27;t closed an A round yet. The idea is to build relationships with future customers that have lots of growth potential - but who can&#x27;t afford $120&#x2F;hour.<p>dan&quot;at&quot;closetothemetal.com<p>I made more when I was working full-time though.

I quit my 120K job for a long-term $75&#x2F;hr gig. Turns out I&#x27;m making way less than I used to. Taxes are way higher and take too long, no benefits or vacation, have to spend more time on non-billable work. Client is a startup that&#x27;s now running into financial issues of its own, so a raise is unlikely. This is in Kalamazoo. I have young kids and so can&#x27;t put in a ton of hours to make up the difference.<p>Haven&#x27;t spent enough time marketing, or really just don&#x27;t know how to go about it. Living in small-town midwest it seems hard to make contacts. Everyone I&#x27;ve talked to wants to offer like $5000 flat fee for a week of work they need done (and we all know &quot;a week of work&quot; always turns into a month). Nothing long-term and nothing very profitable, so I&#x27;ve turned everything down.<p>In all likelihood I&#x27;ll be back on the job market soon.

Before reading patio11: 75usd&#x2F;hr<p>After reading patio11: 200 &lt; x &lt; 500<p>Then again, I don&#x27;t only do software consulting, I ship (or fix, or optimize) solutions on time to help my clients make way more than I cost them.

I&#x27;m a 21 year-old who has recently gotten into contracting to supplement my primary income (a Software Engineering Apprentice for a Defence contractor).<p>I earn £12 an hour for my contract work, which I&#x27;m quite happy with at the moment because 10 hours a week means I get an extra £500 per month (which is considerable at my age, it pays my rent and bills and some).<p>I know it doesn&#x27;t seem much, but I think I&#x27;m actually quite lucky to be able to get a gig at my age with my experience.

I&#x27;m a full-stack developer and I was working full-time till last month and freelanced occasionally. After leaving my job I decided to take up freelancing and currently, I&#x27;m making $35 an hour working on CakePHP&#x2F;Laravel&#x2F;Angular project which is low considering my experience (11 years). I usually charge upwards of $50 but this time I made an exception because the company is looking to raise Series A (which means more work at a better rate in future).<p>Last month, I got paid pretty good money for a React+Redux project.<p>Mail me at mail+efl@vivekgupta.com<p>I&#x27;m currently free for 20-30 hours a week and looking for more work.

I freelance on .net projects for 70€ per hour, now I also doing e-commerce for myself which gets me excited now.<p>Also busy with GPS webapplications on asp.Net mvc (embedded device who track trucks and the refrigerator °), WordPress sites, NodeJS ( MVP&#x27;s),,..<p>I have a Cordova app before I go to clients, currently landing on too much work because of it ( it&#x27;s a great conversation starter and builds trust). Will up hourly rates soon, but have a lot of work the next months ( mostly creating webshops for clients). I also work full-time.<p>My webshop currently lands me 500€&#x2F; month without marketing, it&#x27;s something totally different than full-stack development.<p>I also did something with Pokemon Go to learn how Facebook worked. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12858993" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12858993</a> i had the #2 fb page in Belgium. We did events to earn some money with it, it&#x27;s the #1 rated comment ;)<p>Currently notified all me clients that i will probably have some delay, but nothing was planned for this month. I do put longer hours currently then i want for now, just to make sure everything will land on time... ( 16 hours per day at the moment, hope soon everything will be back to normal)<p>Also use a lot of jenkins and automation tools, i hate manual labor. My collegues use 4 tools i wrote for myselve every day. It just takes off a hell of time of lookup up usernames, passwords, phone numbers, logging hours, ... I guess you only need to use it in a &quot;ux friendly&quot; enough way, but just don&#x27;t sink too much time creating it ;)

I make $60&#x2F;hour through an agency. I do this for 20 hours a week.<p>This is in addition to my full-time gig.<p>Assuming I&#x27;m booked eight months of the year, that&#x27;s $38,400.<p>I could make more if I wasn&#x27;t going through the agency, but for now, I don&#x27;t have a name or connections, and I don&#x27;t have the time to market myself.<p>So I figure do the agency thing first, build a name, then start soliciting direct clients. Then eventually ditch the full-time gig.<p>Honestly just stumbling through this.

My actual rate is 100 €&#x2F;hr for developing work. I charge way less for skype calls, tests, discussions.<p>I am deeply embedded inside the small company I consult for, it is extremely nice because people trust me, are not in my way and are just looking for results.<p>Really happy, however since I don&#x27;t only bring coding experience but also business acume I would definitely increase my rate to 150 €&#x2F;hr .<p>People come to me with problems, I make sure they actually have that problem, I listen to the solution they propose, I actually make my own proposal about what should be done considering both business and technologies, we talk a bit, more problem or constraints arise, we tweak a bit whichever proposal is better and then I go ahead and I implement it.<p>Time spend talking between 10 and 30 minutes, client have its solution about ready the day after. We are both happy.

What&#x27;s the best way to start freelancing? A few years ago I used a few freelance sites such as upwork but the pay was fairly low and the work was just around building wordpress sites. Any recommendations? Specifically for backend or fullstack projects?

It depends. I work with clients and their budgets. Leaving money on the table doesn&#x27;t bother me because I want long term relationships. For example, I&#x27;m wrapping up a 2 year project this month. Built the MVP all the way to two profitable product lines for the client. Super happy about it. I like to see my clients succeed.<p>My focus is building solutions to business problems. I don&#x27;t look at it as software but solutions. When you approach it that way people are more receptive to what you have to say.<p>I don&#x27;t reveal amount earned but can&#x27;t complain. I bill monthly, weekly or per project and it works. Forget hourly. Either way, Im raising my rates for 2017. Best of luck.

I worked on top of my full time job doing web dev for Ad agencies, usually php, asp.net or CMS work. Billed at $80&#x2F;hr, probably netting 40-60k per year on the side. I had always hoped it would lead me to a career as an independent, but that rate is not enough to make a living with a family. I eventually made it to being an independent, but I had to switch to doing enterprise consulting in a niche market at a much higher rate.

I haven&#x27;t freelanced in ~5 years, but while I was based overseas in a _very_ inexpensive living situation, I scraped by on $35&#x2F;hour doing WP development (urk...) and infrastructure work (now &quot;devops&quot;, though we hadn&#x27;t come up with that moniker yet). I&#x27;m currently fulltime employed; if I were freelancing I&#x27;d charge &gt;5x that amount.

I am willing to work for 10$ an hour for full stack development (React&#x2F;redux and go or firebase, SQL, sometimes node), or Cordova app development, or programming embedded devices (C or proprietary languages).<p>But no clients so far except for some friends who have promised to pay in the future if their startup gets successful or gets funded :)<p>I have tried the usual freelance sites but no one really bids on me. The reason is that I am from India and don&#x27;t have much to show in terms of projects&#x2F;experience - my previous company had a very strict non disclosure policy, and haven&#x27;t worked on anything open source yet, don&#x27;t have a blog, etc.<p>I am not very serious though and more focussed on a project&#x2F;&quot;startup&quot; of my own but still looking for pocket money of 20-40$ a day to sustain myself without having to do a job. I am trying at fiverr now. Somehow I just haven&#x27;t cracked the money nut yet.

I earn about $150,000 for 50% of my time. The other 50% I spend on my own projects.

I charge USD 35&#x2F;hr and offer full stack services for Java&#x2F;Scala, AngularJS&#x2F;JS platforms. I have about 8 years of experience now.<p>I like to keep myself occupied for 6 hours on long term projects and keep 2-3 hours for short term projects. It helps me maintain my diversification across clients.<p>I am a bit of tech nerd and offer discounts for exciting ideas based projects, specially for startup. I think such projects are win-win for me as tech nerd and client as low cost delivery.<p>Feel free to reach me out at naveensky(.at.)gmail(.dot.)com. I always keep looking for new exciting projects :)

For a couple of longer term customers I charge $145&#x2F;hr.<p>I&#x27;m working a full time gig now and haven&#x27;t taken on any additional work in ages, but depending on contract length I would start at $170 and up.<p>As I&#x27;ve seen posted here and elsewhere if you&#x27;re experienced and charge less than yearly salary&#x2F;2080 * 3 you are giving money back.<p>(My wife worked as a buyer at one of the national labs and had to purchase contractors, should used to have to tell them what to ask for because more often than not it would be too low for her to quote them out.)

Where do you get clients, if networking is not available for you? I mean, you are not based in the US, so you can&#x27;t meet these people.<p>I used to work a bit in Upwork (I am doing complex SPA in React&#x2F;Redux, though I can do it in other stacks as well), and charged 35–50$ (depend on a project).<p>Also, my question is, how you raise the bar? Like, I know I can double my rates and offer &quot;solution&quot; rather just code, but how you find such contracts (people tend to not trust you there), and how do you present yourself?

I come from the other side. I hire programers for my side projects and i have seen it all. As an entrepreneur the only thing i care about is that i have a working software. Some programers think they should be paid a lot of money but have very poor skills. If you are good at what you do, people will recognize that and you will be paid a higher wage. Just be good at your job and everything will workout.

I generally charge 80&#x2F;hr to do ReactJS &#x2F; React Native work. I have been doing this for the last 6 months on and off.

I charge $30AUD an hour for freelance WordPress development. Billing monthly an average of 8 hours ($240) for maintenance and support for an agency which isn&#x27;t much but nice extra income on the side and the occasional from scratch projects (charges depending on requirement). Main job is a front end developer (angularjs).

$100&#x2F;hr, albeit writing about&#x2F;for software, not writing the software itself. Copywriting is a super great gig.

I earn approx $150K &#x2F; year for 50% of my working time on client projects. The rest I spend on my own projects

Do others working in this industry differentiate between freelancing (project-based) vs independent contracting?

I freelance <i>part-time</i> in addition to my 9-5. Mostly doing WordPress sites, with the occasional ASP.NET app for projects that need something totally custom. Some other web&#x2F;mobile work as well. I&#x27;ve been averaging $40k&#x2F;year the past 3 years in a row.

I do web development for $25&#x2F;hour, HTML&#x2F;CSS, JavaScript, and some basic things on server, Apache, MySQL, Python. I&#x27;m in China, so it&#x27;s good for me. If you have any project needs help, feel free to contact me, tarvos21 at gmail.com

Don&#x27;t really freelance anymore, but when I did, $75&#x2F;hour (mostly in Rails and ColdFusion) was typical. I do some mentoring (codementor.io) at $80-120&#x2F;hour (they take 20%). (My rates would be higher if it was my fulltime gig)

I am doing Java (mostly), 10 years of experience, in New Zealand (not much work to do here, unfortunately), 80-100 NZD per hour.<p>I&#x27;m currently free for about 20-30 hours per week, looking for more work.<p>Feel free to contact me: kovrik0 at gmail.com

PHP&#x2F;Node&#x2F;Phonegap Development in South Africa - R600&#x2F;hour (about $50) for local customers, $70&#x2F;hour for US based and 50 euro&#x2F;hour for European based customers. I think I need to up my rates.

$125-175&#x2F;hr for contract iOS development in NYC.

I earned a bit less than €10k since August 3rd with French clients (I&#x27;m still ramping up my prices).

Hourly? Yearly? Fulltime? Part-time?

I usually charge $100&#x2F;hr for native mobile development on the side.