This is not a survey. 2026 market ranges — compiled from public rate surveys, marketplace data, and Aleksandar Simov’s own 54+ client projects. Reviewed quarterly. No sample size is quoted anywhere in it, because there is no panel to size — and a rate report that asks you to trust an n you cannot check is asking for something it has not earned.
The findings below are market observations with the reasoning shown, so you can disagree with the argument rather than the arithmetic. The methodology page sets out the limitations in full.
The five findings
The bottom of every market has gone, and only the bottom
Template installs, commodity blog posts, assembly-cut video, data entry. Each was a real product a few years ago and is now done by software. What did not collapse is everything requiring judgement, accountability or a conversation — and in several professions that work is being priced higher than before, because the people who used to compete on volume have left it.
Why we think so: Observed across all six professions in this report. The clearest case is web design: the $100 theme install that started this author's career no longer exists as a paid job, while custom builds for businesses with real revenue have not moved down.
AI raised rates for the people who adopted it fastest
The prediction was that AI would compress freelance rates. What appears to have happened is a split: rates fell where the deliverable was the typing, and rose where the deliverable was the outcome. Freelancers with AI in their toolchain deliver in days what used to take weeks, and are charging for the speed rather than passing it on.
Why we think so: This is the author's own experience — the rate on an anchor client retainer is currently being doubled on exactly this basis — and it is consistent with rescue and integration work being the fastest-growing category in developer freelancing.
Retainers are the difference between an income and a scramble
Across every profession here, the freelancers with predictable income are not the ones with the highest hourly rate. They are the ones who converted some portion of project work into a monthly commitment: care plans, content retainers, editing slots, monthly bookkeeping.
Why we think so: Structural rather than statistical: retainer income arrives whether or not you pitched that month, so it removes its annual value from the amount the pipeline has to produce. The income planner shows the effect for any specific set of numbers.
Positioning moves a rate further than experience does
The spread inside a single experience band is wider than the gap between bands. A mid-career web designer can sit anywhere between $60 and $110 an hour, and very little of where they land is explained by how long they have been working.
Why we think so: Visible directly in the table below: every profession's bands overlap substantially. What separates the top of a band from the bottom is what the freelancer is understood to be selling — "e-commerce sites that convert" prices differently from "web designer" at identical skill.
The deposit is still the single highest-return habit in freelancing
Nothing in this report has a better ratio of effort to money retained than asking for 50% before starting. It costs one sentence and it removes the entire category of clients who were never going to pay.
Why we think so: The author finished two full websites in 2018–19 on the promise of future work and collected nothing for either. Since moving to 50% up front, no project has gone unpaid. One person's experience, stated as such — but the mechanism is not subtle.
The 2026 ranges
Hourly ranges and median project values across six professions and three experience levels. The full per-profession breakdown, and the form that will make the 2027 edition first-party, are on the benchmarks page.
| Profession | 0–2 yrs | 3–7 yrs | 8+ yrs | Median project |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web design | $35 – $60 /hr | $60 – $110 /hr | $95 – $165 /hr | $3,400 |
| Development | $45 – $75 /hr | $75 – $140 /hr | $120 – $210 /hr | $5,600 |
| Writing & content | $30 – $50 /hr | $50 – $95 /hr | $85 – $150 /hr | $1,900 |
| Video editing | $30 – $55 /hr | $55 – $95 /hr | $85 – $145 /hr | $2,400 |
| Marketing | $35 – $60 /hr | $65 – $120 /hr | $100 – $180 /hr | $3,000 |
| Bookkeeping | $30 – $45 /hr | $45 – $80 /hr | $70 – $120 /hr | $1,100 /mo |
2026 market ranges · public surveys, marketplace data, and 54+ client projects · reviewed July 2026. Freelancer pricing for US and EU clients, not agency pricing. Methodology →
What the 2027 report will be
Different, and better. The submission form below has been collecting anonymous, real invoiced amounts since this report was published — profession, experience, region, engagement type, amount. When there is enough of it to mean something, the 2027 edition will be built from that instead, and it will carry a sample size because there will finally be one to carry.
That is a year of runway, which is why the form ships now rather than when it is needed.
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Add your rate to the 2027 report
One real invoiced number, from you. Nothing is published individually and nothing here identifies you.