How to Price Freelance Services When You Are Just Starting Out

By ADMIN

On November 2, 2026

At 1:19 am

In Blog

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Short answer: To price freelance services, start with a cost floor: the lowest figure that covers business costs, the income you need, money set aside for tax, and hours you cannot bill. Check what similar public offers include, then sell a defined package instead of open-ended time. Figures in this guide are illustrations of the maths. They are not market rates, and they are not a promise of what you will earn.

Why a polite fee fails

New freelancers often choose a fee because it feels polite, because another profile looks cheap, or because they divide an old salary by every hour in the week. Those shortcuts skip the real costs of working for yourself: tools, fees, quiet weeks, records and tax.

GOV.UK’s guide to working for yourself is the official starting point for registering as self-employed and for tax and National Insurance. What applies to you depends on your circumstances. A fee with no room for tax, or for admin nobody pays for, is not a clever opening offer. It is a gap you cover later.

If the wider business is still unformed, use Entrepreneurship 101: Your Complete Guide to Starting a Business for the setup around this decision. The job of this article is narrower: a method you can reuse each time you price freelance services.

Set your cost floor

A cost floor is the lowest price at which the work is viable for you. It is not the fee to aim for. It is the line you stop crossing. Above it, margin is a choice. Below it, you are subsidising the client, usually with hours you never invoice.

Sort a normal month into three pots.

Business costs. Software, a domain, kit you will replace, insurance if the work needs it, travel, licences you are allowed to buy, and card or platform fees. For a bill shared with home life, count a fair share, not the whole cost and not zero.
Personal income. What this work must contribute to living costs. A side hustle beside a job can use a smaller figure than a practice that pays the rent. Write the figure you actually need.
Tax. Money you do not treat as spendable. Income Tax and National Insurance depend on profit, and allowances change, so do not lock one percentage in for life. Keep records from the first invoice. If a homemade percentage worries you, check current official guidance or ask an accountant before you rely on it.

Then count only time a client will pay for. Proposals, email, chasing payment and learning are real work, and they are rarely billed as such. If you assume every weekday is fully sold, the floor will look tidy and still be too low.

The sums are plain:

Minimum monthly revenue equals business costs, plus personal income this work must cover, plus money set aside for tax.
Floor day rate equals that revenue divided by the billable days you expect to sell.
Floor project price equals honest hours times an hourly floor, including admin and one limited revision.

Add a margin for profit and for quiet months. There is no universal margin. Start modest, then change it when real invoices show real costs.

This table is an illustration so the arithmetic is visible. The amounts are invented. They are not a recommended price and not a picture of the UK market.

Item	Illustrated amount (invented)
Business costs	£150
Personal income this work must cover	£1,200
Money set aside for tax	£350
Minimum monthly revenue	£1,700
Billable days expected	10
Floor day rate	£170

Hold those invented costs still and change only the days. At £1,700 and 8 sold days, the floor is about £213 a day, not £170. The same bills need a higher rate when fewer days sell. A rate borrowed from a busier freelancer, or from the diary you hope to have, is not your floor.

Check the market

An honest floor can still be a poor fit for buyers. Look at offers people have already published: freelance profiles, agency service pages, adverts that state a budget, and rate cards. Note the fee, the country and what is included. One concept at a low fee is not the same product as several options, the right files, and two rounds of comments.

Ranges vary by skill, place, speed and how specialised the brief is. A short private note is not a market study. Do not treat the lowest figure as the real price, and do not present other people’s fees as if you had surveyed the country.

If your floor sits well above the offers you see for that scope, narrow the package or reconsider the niche. If it sits well below, you have likely missed unpaid time, tax or margin. If nobody publishes fees, do not invent a going rate. Ask what done looks like, what similar work cost them before, and which parts are optional. You are clarifying scope, not collecting a dataset.

Frame the outcome

Buyers agree more readily to a finished outcome than to a pile of hours: a live page, usable files, a completed month of books, or a task taken off their list. Keep hours as your private calculator, unless the client is booking your time on purpose.

Write four lines before you name a fee:

What does done look like?
What is the deadline, and what slips if you miss it?
Who will comment, and will those comments arrive as one set?
What is outside the job?

A page tied to a launch date is not the same job as a page with no date. You still must not promise sales, rankings or new enquiries. You can commit to the agreed pages, one agreed revision, and a handover on an agreed day.

Say it so a stranger could check it. “This will transform your business” is not a scope. “Homepage, two service pages, one revision, handover notes, three weeks” is.

If the service uses AI tools, state what the client receives and what you still do yourself. How to Start an AI Services Side Hustle With No Coding Skill covers setting up that kind of offer. The pricing steps do not change because the tool is new: floor, scope, then a package.

Package the work

Packages are how you price freelance services in a way a client can compare. Each package needs a plain name, deliverables, a revision limit, a timeline, exclusions and a price.

Fixed project. Use this when the job has an end, such as a set of pages, a block of product descriptions, or a one-off design.
Day or half-day. Use this when the client needs you present and the detail may move, such as a workshop or an on-site admin day. Cap the hours in writing.
Monthly package. Use this for repeating work with a stated cap, such as a set number of graphics or bookkeeping hours. Past the cap, send a new quote.

Two packages are enough at the start: a smaller scope and a fuller one. Do not invent a crossed-out price, and do not add a third option that is the same work with a louder label. Name the package after the outcome. “Launch page copy” tells the buyer more than “8 hours of writing”.

Put exclusions beside the fee. Typical exclusions are extra revision rounds, rush delivery, extra meetings, extra pages, ad spend, printing, and tools you do not already pay for. If it is not listed, it is not included. One revision means one collected set of comments, not a new brief spread over two weeks.

Worked examples

The next three sketches show the method only. Every pound figure is made up. None of them is a market rate, a quote to copy, or a hint of what you will earn.

An illustrated support package

Suppose a side hustle must contribute £600 toward personal costs, tools cost £40, and you set aside £120 for tax. The illustrated minimum is £760. You can sell 20 hours a month beside a job, so the hourly floor is £38. You do not advertise raw hours. You sell “inbox and diary support, up to 5 hours a month, one weekly update, no evening cover” at £220. Five hours times £38 is £190, so £220 sits just above that floor. If the client always needs 8 hours, requote. Do not keep the label and absorb the time.

An illustrated copy project

The job is a homepage plus two service pages. You expect 8 hours of writing, 2 hours of calls and edits, and 1 hour of admin: 11 hours. At an illustrated hourly floor of £35, the project floor is £385. You quote a fixed £450 with one revision, delivered in 10 working days. A second revision is a separate quote. The fee pays for the agreed pages. It does not pay for a rise in sales, and you should not imply that it does.

An illustrated rise in a day rate

The floor is £180 and the quoted day rate is £220, leaving a small margin. After several paid jobs, costs have risen and a fresh floor works out at £200, so new clients are quoted £260. Current clients keep £220 until a date you put in writing, then move to £260 for the same stated scope. You do not apologise for the change, and you do not claim the higher fee will bring more work.

How to send a quote

Send the price in writing while the conversation is still clear. Include:

The outcome in one sentence
The deliverables
How many revisions, and how quickly you will reply
What is excluded
The timeline, and what you need from the client before you start
The fee, when it is payable, and how long the quote stands
What a change of brief does to the fee and the date

Some freelancers ask for part of a project fee before work starts and the rest on delivery. Half and half is an example of a split you can explain. It is a choice, not a rule. Do not add VAT to a client quote unless you are registered to charge it. Thresholds change, so check current official guidance rather than an old figure you remember.

If the client wants a lower fee, remove scope before you cut the price. Drop a page, a meeting or a revision. If the full scope only works by going under your floor, decline, or offer the smaller package that still clears it.

How to raise prices later

Review the fee twice a year, and also when costs jump, when you are fully booked, or when the work has become more specialised. Recalculate the floor first. A rise based only on confidence, and a freeze based only on nerves, both drift away from the costs.

Put the new fee on new enquiries straight away. For clients on a monthly package, name a date a few weeks ahead, restate what is included, and keep the old fee until that date. On a fixed quote you have already sent, honour the price until the quote expires.

If a large jump is hard to explain, raise a smaller amount and tighten the written scope at the same time. Do not announce the change as a story about your income. Say what the package contains and when the new fee applies.

Mistakes to avoid

These habits keep an early fee under the floor:

Pricing from an old employed hourly wage, as if holiday, kit and unsold hours were still provided for you.
Saying yes to a quick extra with no change to the fee or the scope.
Promising unlimited revisions.
Cutting a public price to chase praise you have not earned. A smaller package is cleaner than a pretend discount.
Copying a fee from another country without the inclusions, or hiding your number until late in the thread.

FAQ

Should I charge by the hour or by the project?

Use hours to build the floor and to sense-check a package. Quote a project or a package when you can list the scope. Quote booked time when the client wants you available and the detail may move. Plenty of new freelancers do both: hours in the spreadsheet, packages in the proposal.

What if a client says the fee is too high?

Ask which part of the scope they can drop, then offer that smaller package. If they want the full scope under your floor, decline. A lower fee with the same deliverables is a pay cut.

Do I need to register before I set a fee?

You can draft fees while you sort the admin. Do not ignore registration, records, tax and National Insurance. Working for yourself on GOV.UK is the starting point, and the detail depends on your situation.

Should I publish my prices?

Publish them when the package is specific enough that the number makes sense. If the work varies a lot, a starting figure is fair only next to a description of what it includes. A bare “from” price attracts briefs you cannot deliver at that fee.

How do I price a first job when I have no portfolio?

Reduce the scope before you abandon the hourly floor. A single page, a short audit or a capped trial month can be a real offer. Describe it as a smaller piece of work. Do not promise that the trial will lead to further income.

Does a side hustle use a different method?

No. The personal income line may be lower because a job covers some living costs. Business costs, tax set-aside and a hard limit on billable hours still count. Side hustle hours are scarce, so underpricing them costs you twice.

Sources

GOV.UK: Working for yourself. Official starting point for self-employment, including registration, tax and National Insurance. Rules depend on individual circumstances.