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The Best Way to Set Your Hourly Rate

Set a competitive rate based on data from thousands of Gun.io freelancers.

Whether you’re determining which new framework to pick up, considering shifting to freelance rather than FTE work, or have been a freelancer for years, it’s important to keep track of market-clearing rates in the industry. 

 

Of course, rates are a function of location, years of experience, technologies required, and the nature of the role. For most freelancers, rates are fluid and responsive to the opportunity at hand. Still, it’s important to have a well-reasoned base rate from which to start those negotiations.

Setting your base rate

The most basic math for setting an hourly rate involves dividing your target yearly salary by the number of hours you intend to work in a year. Many professionals move to freelance or contract work to open up more time in their schedule, so be wary of using the standard 40 hours per week as a proxy. 

 

Be sure your target yearly salary covers for taxes (30% is usually a safe target), insurance, retirement savings, plus the cost of any additional overhead (like subscriptions to development tools). Gun.io partners with Catch benefits to make these deductions easy for freelancers. 

 

Keep in mind: if you’re working on a platform to win client gigs, that platform will likely handle contracts, billing, marketing, and payments on your behalf in exchange for a fee (unless you’re working with Gun.io, of course). Be sure to take those fees into account as you determine the best rate for yourself. 

 

Here at Gun.io, though, you get the rate you set for yourself. Period.

What the market says

 

We surveyed 1,000 of our most active freelancers to see which developers earn the most, and help you stay competitive. Here’s what we found:

 

Germany $88
United States $80
France $77
Poland $76
Spain $66
Great Britain $66
Australia $61
Canada $61
Netherlands $60
Ireland $59
Italy $55
Israel $52
Bulgaria $52
Croatia $51
Portugal $51
Brazil $48
Ukraine $47
Romania $45
Hungary $45
Vietnam $44
Nigeria $44
Hong kong $44
Belarus $44
Argentina $41
Indonesia $39
China $37
Bangladesh $36
Singapore $36
Serbia $36
Turkey $35
India $35
Kenya $34
Philippines $20

 

 

Global

DevOps $65
AWS $64
Angular $60
Go $59
iOS $59
Machine Learning $59
C# $57
JavaScript $56
React Native $55
Node.js $55
Python $54
React $53
Android $53
Swift $51
WordPress $49
MySQL $49
Django $49
PHP $48
Laravel $41

 

US Only

DevOps $125
Machine Learning $110
AWS $102
MySQL $93
Android $90
C# $89
Django $85
Node.js $83
React Native $83
Go $83
Python $81
JavaScript $81
Angular $80
iOS $80
Laravel $80
React $80
Swift $76
PHP $73
WordPress $66

 

 

Global

Less Than a Year $29
1-3 Years $34
4-9 Years $51
10-14 Years $58
15-19 Years $64
20+ Years $84

 

US Only

Less Than a Year $47
1-3 Years $54
4-9 Years $82
10-14 Years $77
15-19 Years $89
20+ Years $98