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Poll: Freelance developers in London, how much do you charge per hour?
100 points by basicallydan on Oct 18, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 83 comments
We've had this for the US freelancers quite a few times but I'm interested in what my fellow Londoners are charging so I can figure out what the market expects.

If you charge by the day, assume an 8-hour working day and divide your fee by 8.

If you'd like to post a comment about what you charge and why you feel it's a fair fee, that would be helpful.

Thanks very much.

£100+
44 points
£50-£59
34 points
£40-£49
19 points
£60-£69
19 points
£70-£79
16 points
£30-£39
15 points
Less than £30
11 points
£90-£99
7 points
£80-£89
3 points



Shameless plug - visualize this or any other hacker news polls using HN Charts http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=6573796


I appreciate your desire for humility, but I hate the "shameless plug" thing. Let's all try to avoid it - showing people something you built that, in any imaginable way, could be useful isn't shameful - it's awesome. If the person doesn't understand it, they can ask you - it's the best way to ever get intro'd to anything.

Great stuff!


> I appreciate your desire for humility, but I hate the "shameless plug" thing.

Though I don't hate it myself, I see your point. I think affiliation should always be mentioned though, e.g. by "(full disclosure: I made this)".


Doesn't shameless plug mean that he is in fact unashamed? Or does it have an implied meaning opposite of the literal meaning? Or perhaps somewhere in between, that he believes he should be ashamed but is not? I've always been a bit confused about this particular idiom.


Good point - it means he's being shameless, but being aware of it implies he's somewhat ashamed.


The term comes from people who would shamefully post their content, posing as someone else unassociated with their product/idea/etc.


He or she, I mean


He. I looked him up before I wrote my comment.


Or it.


I used shameless plug more as a means to imply I am associated with the project. The phrase probably roots from the general tendency of hackers to feel ashamed of promoting their own work?


Yeah, hackers use it more than some because they're a bit more ashamed. The community makes you feel that way sometimes though - I don't think you have any reason to. Thanks for sharing!


The phrase doesn't come from hackers--everyone uses it.


I've seen a few cases of people posting their own projects on HN without a disclaimer and receiving some really rude comments. Saying "disclaimer: I made this" instead of "shameless plug" sounds better IMO, but that doesn't seem to make people respond in a better way.

All of this seems a little funny and counterintuitive. We are a community of people who love coding for fun and developing these types of side projects, yet in comments, where the majority of us are heard, sharing your own relevant projects isn't exactly welcomed.

Yes, there are "ShowHN" posts, which are great, but it's more difficult to be heard through this avenue unless you're lucky enough to make it to the front page.


Nice, thanks! I didn't find one on your page, so I made a quick bookmarklet to open the chart:

  javascript:id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];document.location='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id
Edit: rewritten to open it in a new tab:

  javascript:(function(){var id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];url='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id;var w=window.open(url, '_blank'); w.focus();})()


Awesome. You should feel no shame.


This thread appears to be mixing up 'contracting' and 'freelancing'.

Contracting - generally on site, fixed term contract, paid by the day, working alongside the team.

Freelancing - generally off site, project based, paid by the hour, working more autonomously.

You do find exceptions such as a work from home contract or a freelancer who bills by the day, but this distinction definetly hold true in the mind of companies and agencies.

Making the good rates in the poll is relatively easy as a contractor, but fiendishly difficult as a freelancer.

I suspect freelancing is more appealing to the HN crowd for the autonomy and location independence. I know I would swap £100+ hr of what I call 'contracting' for a consistent stream of £50 hr 'freelancing' in a heartbeat, but the work is difficult to source reliably.

(As an aside, I'm glad to see we have the same rate inflation on the London polls. At the time of writing approx 30% of respondents are on £100 + hr. There's no way the London market supports that at volume.)


There's no way the London market supports that at volume.

It's sort of a dangerous thing to assume that one's view of the market is the totality of it. Not to say that you're wrong, because I have never sold a gig in London, but I have heard the same about geographies/specialities with which I'm intimately familiar, and usually the claim comes from someone who has sort of fallen into a particular style of customer/acquisition channel/work and is not aware that large parts of the market exist in such a way that they'd never hear of them.

For example, rather frequently on HN we'll have people quote the going rate on Craiglist or RentACodeMonkey.com quoted as the maximum available for (without loss of generality) Rails programmers in Chicago, despite it being at an 80%+ discount to rates routinely charged by people whose clients wouldn't be caught dead on Craigslist.


There's only 27 people saying that. I only know the Java market and mostly outside of London at that, but £750/day for a reasonable Java developer doesn't seem outrageous in London to me.


I probably know at least 27 people earning that or more as contractors in the City.


Im an average PHP developer, im good at what i do but im nothing special, my client list is excellent however.

I charge £400 a day and am constantly in demand and turning down work. I am however moving into something totally different business wise and will be retiring from contracting because ive plateaued rate wise using my skills in this way.


I might be confused, but doesn't the fact that you're turning down work mean that you haven't yet plateaued rate wise? I mean, if you're turning down work doesn't that mean that you can increase your rate and still be doing the same amount of work?


It would be intuitive to imagine that the rates companies are willing to pay vs demand would form some continuous curve. i.e., as you increase your rate, the demand would steadily decrease allowing you to find the optimal balance point.

However, my experience, though limited, has offered a very different picture. The vast majority of companies have a number in mind that they consider to be the standard rate for development work in their city. It looks like in London that's about £50/hour. Once you attempt to exceed this rate, regardless of qualification, the number of companies willing to hire you drops significantly to the point where you would have trouble finding steady work.

There are exceptions to this rule on both sides but most freelance developers will face this ceiling until they master the skills to overcome it (which, as you can probably guess, are sales-related, not technical).


Agree - conversions dropped by approx 50% when I increased my rate from £50ph up to £55-60ph.

It seems to be a super-sticky price point.


This is because you are dealing with clients for whom £50 is the upper bound rate of the developers they deal with.

If you want to increase your rates and have a skillset for it, try doubling your rate and going after clients that are used to paying double your rate.


I have the problem in reverse. I get well paid for my part time remote gig when it's on (say around £80ph - I'm not london based). Local gigs want to pay around £45-50, and given my current situation I'm reluctant to commit to full time at that rate. So I quote higher and they lose interest.


If only you two could join forces during his transition away, eh..


you're gonna love learning this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand


On average, how much work are you requested to do for each project?

Also, do you only develop the backend, or do you have to do the entire frontend as well?

I would love to have a job that's just freelance backend (application logic and database setup) web development.


Find a partner :-)

It's much easier when two people can look for work, and on getting the jobs, you know that you can split it based on the bits you like doing.

Especially good if you both have an understanding of backend and frontend.


Thanks for your honesty and frankness. Good luck with your totally different business :)


Rates are mostly meaningless without knowing sector and technology. There are vast differences in what, say, education and finance can pay. There are vast differences between what a PHP developer and a Scala developer can expect.

For context, here are some of my experiences:

- Finance jobs as a long-term contractor seem to start at about £600 per day for Java developers, with £700pd being more typical. For Scala you can probably get a £50-100 more. For short term work or a good candidate you can easily get >£800.

- Ruby / PHP and other commoditised work of the like seems to top out at around £400-500 pd. iOS might get you a bit higher, but I think the shine is coming off app development.

As always, the key to a high rate is differentiating your offering. Update: This doesn't have to be by offering rarer skills, though this is an easy to a higher rate. Being better known in your community, by writing blog posts, speaking at conferences, and so on, will allow you to command a higher rate as well.


Do you have any advice on how a Java developer without public profile could try to get 700pd in the City?


Apply for finance jobs. If you can't get them, make yourself more attractive in future. How to do this? Some suggestions:

- Do you interview well? If not, improve this. Take interviews to practice.

- Banks prefer people with experience in finance. If you don't have any, join a consultancy or a company like LMAX that can get you that experience and which are more open to outsiders.

- Go to meetups. Make connections.

- Learn Scala.


I'd agree with all this, and if you don't have financial experience I'd suggest doing some Coursera courses that cover the relevant areas and putting those on your CV. At the very least it would show willing.


Thank you. Any chance you have a meetup in mind?


I would probably start with the Java meetup. I'm more in the Scala community, so my recommendations might not be relevant to you.

Drop me an email (see my profile) if you want to continue this conversation. It's easier than continually checking the comments.


Difficult to say, as I work from home in Devon (South West England, out in the sticks), and charge by a hybrid value/daily/hourly rate depending on the client and the job, but the last job I did for a London company worked out at about £100 / hour.

My standard hourly is actually a fair bit lower than that, but then that's on-going projects and/or not for clients in London (so I voted £100+)

Edit: And of course to UK companies that's excluding VAT - If you're a UK freelancer and you're not VAT registered, do it now.

A lot of people think you have to turn over £79k / year before you can be VAT registered, but that's not true, £79k / year is when you have to become VAT registered. My first ever business had a turnover of exactly £0.00 when I VAT registered it.

If you're selling to other businesses (and not the general public) it's always better to be VAT registered :)


What's the advantage of being VAT registered out of curiosity?


If you register for vat and go on the flat rate scheme you charge 20% and only have to pay 14.5% to the vat man. If you charge £50 an hour, you get an extra £110 a week for simply being registered. Also, it makes you look like youre big enough that you need to be vat regged.

Also you get an extra 1% in your first year.


Flat rate is calculated on your total revenue including VAT, so for £2000/week your gains would be £52/week (£2000 * 1.20 * 0.855)


20% and 14.5% are not comparable percentages here:

You charge 20% VAT but then you pay 14.5% of the 120% total (i.e. 17.4%).

This may be a good deal if you have relatively few VATable expeneses, and you are charging customers who are insensitive to VAT (you are paying their VAT for them). At best, you're making £52pw rather than £110pw.


Make sure that all your clients are VAT registered business, otherwise you work out 20% more expensive.


You claim the VAT back on all your business purchases - essentially a 20% discount :)


Also, if you don't have that much external expenditure; then you can sign up for the flat rate scheme, which for tech essentially gives your income a boost of 4% for free.


But at the cost of having to raise your rates by 20% without seeing any of that.


Profitable corporations would see VAT as adding 0 cost, since they would otherwise have to pay the same amount directly to HMRC.

It depends who your customers are.


You mean a 16.6% discount ;)


Man that's depressing! I've been working as a freelance iOS & ruby dev in London for a year (experienced iOS dev, 10 moderately complex apps in the store) but really struggle to get above £50/hour whilst still attracting interesting work. Mostly the startups apologetically can't afford more than £40-50/hr.

Those earning £100+, any tips?


> Mostly the startups apologetically can't afford more than £40-50/hr

Ha! That's what they tell you. To the right kind of startup, time is everything and they will pay good money for someone they think of as an asset who will demonstrably help them execute.

I am guessing here - but it simply sounds like you are coming to the table with the wrong attitude. "Please sir, give me some dev work". Well, under these circumstances you will of course be treated as "just" another outsourced programmer.

Don't be like that. Be a partner. Turn up in a suit. Show your business savvy, list your successes, and matter-of-factly tell them that they are excited about their plans, you can likely help them achieve their execution goals, and your rate is £600/day (or more). Give them your business card and tell them to call you when they're ready to start. You're a pro, you can and will manage yourself, and you will deliver - you're not a teenager looking for a part-time job.

Startups aren't really interested in bargaining over your hourly rate. They want to execute! Frankly, they are bargaining you down only because you allow them to. That obviously means you are selling the wrong thing. Instead, make them understand that you are the guy who is going to take ownership of their mobile app and help them get it out by the end of next month. Now you're not an outsourced programmer, you're a partner consultant who takes ownership and has real commitment. Your rates double. Try it.

And of course, once you make that promise and gain those rates, you gotta deliver!


What about the competition from other developers that are willing to work for low rates ?


They will get positions where the key factor is price. Many purchasing decisions aren't based solely (or even chiefly) on price.

You have to decide where you fit and act (and charge) accordingly. There's an entire spectrum of rates, and there's no iron law that says one has to fit in at the bottom.


Exactly right. And spot on about choosing your place in the stack - to some extent, it is as simple as deciding to be a higher-value worker. Of course, you will need to have a convincing history to back you up.

For example, a friend of mine markets himself as basically a part-time CTO. He's been there, done that at a number of startups over the years, team lead the last few, a strong record of delivery. Management (who are not or only partially technical) does not hire him for his programming skills - that is not even a question at the (short, single) interview. He develops software, yes, but the main priority is giving management confidence that their software story is in safe, experienced hands, gives them someone to interface with, and frees up their bandwidth for other concerns. This guy makes well over six figures working part time.

It's no secret that many startup founders come from finance - and despite their bad rap here on HN, mostly they are very smart, decent people. But they don't know tech like we do. What are their needs? What are their fears?

They're not looking for the cheapest typist in town. They're looking for a credible partner to take co-ownership of the tech side of things. Maybe that's taking co-ownership of the mobile product, or something more inclusive, it doesn't matter - they just don't want to have to worry about it. So be that person who can take care of that for them.

And one more thing. There is a bizarre tendency in the software world to eschew anything that smells like management, and to almost revel in the fact that IT people can often get away with dressing down at work. Don't do that. Always wear a suit, or at least a shirt. Business has rules, and the dress code is one of them. Demonstrate at the very first impression that you understand this, and you will gain a lot of respect. Suddenly, you are not just another slob typing gibberish in his dirty t-shirt, you are a fellow manager, but with rare and valuable technical skills. Big, big difference.


take my money!


Don't work for a startup. At least, not as a "developer for hire" to work on whatever they need.

In my experience (albeit in U.S./ USD), those rates come to people with solid programming reputation, IN ADDITION TO a deep domain knowledge in a market with a lot of money.

(knowledge of the finance world like HFT algorithms, marketing skills like conversion optimization, high security clearance, etc.)


Why are you going after startups? That's the first problem. There are so many established companies in London. Many with deep pockets.

For example, here's an idea for you: look at minicab companies with their own apps; "everyone" wonders what companies like Hailo and Kabbee will do to their business, yet apart from the huge ones like Addison Lee, every single minicab company specific app I've seen looks like crap and most are horrible to use too. In this case, an app has a clear and direct monetisation for them, and as long as you do contracts right they can to a certain extent be "cookie cutter" if you manage to land multiple clients. If they think you quote too much, you focus on how few extra bookings it will take to earn it back - and you can even offer to take part of the payment based on performance (but then make sure to make that high enough that you are likely to make more, because you are taking risk).

Secondly, if you are going after startups, seek out networking opportunities for startups that are actively going after investment. Once a startup has closed a major financing round, there's a ton of pressure on to deliver and deliver quickly, and people understand that short, urgent jobs will cost a lot more. Many of them will also be a lot more willing to spend money on polishing things up right before they go out to seek investment - everyone wants to make a great impression.

If all else fails, there's the risky path of fixed price contracts. If you work quickly, and can estimate your effort well, price it out based on what you want to make per hour with a substantial buffer for risk, and give a delivery date consistent with a lower per hour price. Just be sure that exactly what you are offering is nailed down in excruciating detail, and that you know how much time you are actually spending on things - developers are notorious at under-estimating own effort.


Learn Java, work for a big company. Give it 5 years and then go and do your own ruby startup.


Shame you clipped the distribution at the top with your ranges. More experienced developers, with financial markets expertise, who are reasonably good at negotiation are making £100+ an hour. More if they have some specialist technical skill (which might only be knowledge of some third party software).


£20. I'm a student, and I work part time, remotely, for a company in SF. It's good experience, which is added value, but I still think it's a bit low.


Good on you. Getting experience is so important; I see too many compsci grads with little experience and little actual programming exposure on their degrees that they're almost unemployable.


Same situation here, just I'm in Manchester now.


I would kill to earn £20/hr when I was a student in London (finished last year, now at a full time job)


Yeah, it's great to be earning money, but I put a lot of work into it, and I feel like there's a huge opportunity cost. I don't have time to socialise. I don't mean "oh, I can't go to the SU pub every night", I mean I haven't had any time for any recreational activity in the past 7 weeks, apart from one hackathon. I don't have time to go to the gym, I barely have the opportunity to go shopping (which has led to me putting on weight because of takeaway meals and fast food).

So yeah, it is great to have an income as a student, particularly in London. I wouldn't be able to pay my rent otherwise, the student loan is totally insufficient for even rent alone, let alone other expenses on top of that. But there is a major downside as well.


Well I disagree here, I managed to pull through 4 years without maintenance loan, income, or much support from my parents. You can live on £2 or even £1 a day if you organise well and eat things way worse than takeaway.

Back on topic, it depends what year are you in. If youre going for an internship between 2nd and 3rd year (and you should), you can easily spend most of 1st and 2nd year socialising and intern/3rd working hard and still get a solid 1st degree


I'm in second year, and I'm getting solid first marks. You probably could spend most of first and second year socialising if you don't have a job, but I do. Living on £1 a day in London including rent? That's not possible, even with very cheap place to live, £400pm for arguments sake, although that's probably not realistic you're already at nearly £13 a day. Even cheap halls at £99pw are more expensive than that. To live on £1 a day just covering rent with no extra costs, your rent would have to be at a maximum £28 p/m. You certainly can't socialise on that kind of money.

If you meant excluding rent and bills, say they cost £15/day (which is still unrealistically cheap), plus your £1 for living expenses, that's a monthly cost of £480. Per academic year, that costs about £3840. While this is well within the threshold of the maximum student maintenance loan, remember you'll still have to pay travel costs (you can't really stay within walking distance of your house for the entire time you're in London), buy books (which can get very expensive), pay for other materials for coursework. At a minimum. University, and living in London generally is very expensive...

Mostly, I'm just thinking, how do you even eat on £1 a day? That's pretty much one tin of baked beans plus a slice or two of bread per day. Or maybe some rice. Luckily nobody has to pay medical costs here...

Also, I'm interested as to whether or not you think a gap year internship is still really important if I'm already working? I've had two jobs so far, that's quite a lot of experience for someone who's only in second year, and a lot more than many graduates I know...


first of all yes, i think internship is worth it for a) experience in a company/corporate environment, which you cant get on your own, and b) a famous company's name on your cv. i was at O2, would never work there, hate corporations, but it helped me massively in getting a job and taught me a lot of things.

plus youll earn some money which you can spend in the 3rd year (typical intern pay for programmers is £15-20k)

and yeah that was without the bills. i lived in houses close to uni to avoid commuting and the £400 was common if not a bit steep, but i suppose my uni wasnt in central (it was brunel in uxbridge). also i lived in pretty shitty houses, because hey, im only there for a year, but on the upside met lots of cool people.

a key to eating cheap is buying in bulk and cooking large amounts of food. say you buy 10 or even 20kg bag of rice (i used to do it on indian holidays for better discounts), that will cost less than £10 and last a few good months. get some canned veg, maybe micne. big tescos in poorer areas are your friend. its hard to calculate but for around £7 (and certainly for £10) you can stir up enough to last you a week. shits not gonna be gourmet but it works.

there are other ways too... freeganism, putting stuff through self checkout as onions, etc.


I should contextualise why I feel this is a bit low - I met a 16yo iOS developer last week who was telling me how he had to turn down a £50,000 3 month contract because he wanted to focus on his A Levels.


not trying to hijack this thread but how many folks find their work through recruitment agencies as opposed to old Collegue networks, direct sales, inbound marketing etc?

In short, how many freelancers are a business vs a well remunerated job?

edit: apologies for steering you off course - have added a seperate poll - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6574752, of course at the perfect time of day for London !


I have a startup now that's consuming all my time but over the last year I've done a few different contracts. I actually charge differently depending on the work I'm doing. Want me to build a python app that scraps and aggregates gambling data feeds? I'll charge more for that than a responsive Wordpress site. I guess it comes down to a rough estimate of the (percieved) value I provide.


Will this not vary wildly depending on skill level/niche/region?


You're right. I've changed it to London, since that is what I am interested in.

Sorry, non-Londoners!


You didn't mention any speciality so the rates will vary depending on the skillset but I would expect the median to be at least around 50 GBP - this is why we started an organized company providing solid software development services at more competitive rates (see codedose.com)


What type of freelancer, because the rates can differ by a large margin for different roles? Web designer, technical writer, developer, architect, SAP, Oracle DBA, etc.

I also find that generally, in Europe, today's rates are daily. With the assumption that the working hours are at a least the same as those of an employee; but, often expected to be one or two hours more (banks, I'm looking at you).


If you are looking for someone to work with collaboratively and are a Symfony 2 / PHP dev, I would be really interested in hearing from you.

For reference I am a php contractor specialising in Symfony 2, working predominantly remotely (where possible, seeing my family is very important to me!) and am based in the NW of the UK.

You can find me at mossco.co.uk, or christopherdmoss at googles mail. Thanks :)


Polls should always include a honeypot for trolls. Especially ones that only seek response from a small percentage of the community.


I did the same study for French ruby on rails developer on Monday. Here is my report (in french): http://sebastien.saunier.me/blog/2013/10/17/realite-financie...


I'd be interested to hear who's getting genuine "freelance" jobs, as in remote, charging per hour and where you're getting them from. I I think a lot of these votes are from contract devs working on site.


I am wondering, where do you find clients?


At least 50% of my gigs come from London but I don't live in London. I have to give a discount for the fact that I will not be visiting any time soon. But then again, if someone who does live in London feels like partnering up, I am definitely willing to hand over half of the physical-presence premium to that person. You can seriously charge extra for putting up a good dog-and-pony-show ...


If you have to ask, then you can't afford me.


Even with the stack from your bio!: Working on server software that uses Apache, MySQL, and PHP on Windows


Shhhh nobody has mentioned this won't be statistically significant, nobody jinx it!


actually it's will be statistically significant (you can already see the bimodal distribution). The problem is with sampling bias, and the fact that the data is a self report measure (unknown reliability). Could adjust using recruiter supplied stats in an attempt to correct the self report. The self selection however is insurmountable. Personally I find these things interesting because I assume the data is at least somewhat reliable for the sample that choose to reply to the poll.


Looks about right to me. Thing is with stats you want to tell a story and ideally create testable hypothesis based on it.It might be a wrong story but mouthing off "Correlation does not imply causation or the plural of anecdote is not data"(statistical tourettes anyone?) adds no useful insights and qualifies as not even wrong(adds no new information and is intrinsically untestable) . We see price stickiness around the £50 mark with some very high paying jobs for some clients with deep pockets who aren't so price sensitive (London finance most probably),even if we assume half of the +100 people are lying it still represents an interesting view of the market.

Im in the 50 an hour band myself,would be interested in scaling up a bit.




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