Day rate or fixed price?

Fixed price where the scope is genuinely known and stable — it gives the client certainty and rewards you for efficiency. Day rate where it is not, because a fixed price on unknown work is just an estimate you are now contractually liable for. The deciding question is whether a statement of work with real acceptance criteria could be written today.

Should I publish my rate?

Publishing filters enquiries before they cost either side time, which is worth a great deal when most enquiries are mismatches. The cost is losing room to price by value on larger engagements. A common compromise is publishing a "from" figure, which filters the clearly-too-small without anchoring the genuinely large.

Day rates — pricing time instead of outcomes

Day Rate

Also: daily rate, per diem rate, hourly rate, time-based pricing

A day rate prices a supplier's time rather than a delivered outcome, which makes it honest about uncertainty and structurally unable to reward anyone for finishing faster.

What time-based pricing actually trades

Selling days transfers the risk of the unknown to the client: if the work takes longer, they pay more. That is the correct arrangement when nobody can size the job in advance — discovery, debugging, exploratory work — and it removes the incentive to pad an estimate defensively.

It also caps the supplier's income at hours available, and quietly penalises expertise. Someone who solves in a day what another would take a week over earns a fifth as much for the same result. This is the standard argument for value-based pricing, and it is a real effect — though it assumes clients will pay for outcomes they cannot verify, which many reasonably will not.

Set the rate from utilisation, not from a salary

Converting a target salary into a day rate by dividing by 220 working days produces a number that will not cover the year. Non-billable time — sales, admin, invoicing, learning — routinely takes 30–40% of a freelance week, and holiday, sick leave, pension and equipment come out of what is left. Divide by realistic billable days, not calendar ones.

Key takeaways

→Time-based pricing is the honest structure when the work genuinely cannot be sized in advance.
→It caps income at available hours and pays a fast expert less than a slow one for identical results.

FAQ

Day rate or fixed price?: Fixed price where the scope is genuinely known and stable — it gives the client certainty and rewards you for efficiency. Day rate where it is not, because a fixed price on unknown work is just an estimate you are now contractually liable for. The deciding question is whether a statement of work with real acceptance criteria could be written today.
Should I publish my rate?: Publishing filters enquiries before they cost either side time, which is worth a great deal when most enquiries are mismatches. The cost is losing room to price by value on larger engagements. A common compromise is publishing a "from" figure, which filters the clearly-too-small without anchoring the genuinely large.