The ranges
Broad U.S. norms for independent freelancers billing clients directly (agency and platform-marketplace rates run lower; enterprise consulting runs higher). Treat these as sanity checks, not price tags:
| Specialty | Early career | Mid | Senior / specialist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web development (full-stack) | $40–75 | $75–125 | $125–200 |
| Mobile (iOS/Android) | $50–85 | $85–140 | $140–220 |
| DevOps / cloud / SRE | $60–95 | $95–160 | $160–250 |
| Data engineering / ML | $60–100 | $100–170 | $170–275 |
| Security / compliance engineering | $75–110 | $110–180 | $180–300 |
| Legacy rescue (old ERP, mainframe, VB6…) | — | $100–160 | $160–275 |
| UX / product design | $45–75 | $75–120 | $120–180 |
| Fractional CTO / architecture consulting | — | $150–225 | $225–400 |
Why the spread is 5x and what moves you up it
The columns aren't really seniority — they're proximity to money and scarcity of supply. "Builds websites" competes with the whole world. "Migrates medical practices off a dying EHR without losing a record" competes with a few hundred people and gets priced against the cost of the disaster they prevent. Every row's right-hand column is occupied by people who picked a narrower, scarier, more expensive problem — not people who wrote better code for twenty years.
Three rules for using these numbers
- Your floor comes first. Market ranges are irrelevant if they're below your personal break-even rate — that just means your current positioning can't fund your life, which is a different problem than pricing.
- Never price against the bottom of your band. Clients don't buy the cheapest serious option; they buy the least risky one they can afford. Mid-band with strong proof beats bottom-band with apologies.
- Raise rates on a schedule, not a feeling. New clients get the new rate immediately; existing clients get 60 days' notice annually. If nobody has pushed back in a year, you're underpriced.
find_your_floor_first
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