The going freelance rate and how to find it
Peer discussions and professional-association surveys provide reference points for setting freelance rates. Each figure belongs to a particular service, market, population and date, and its meaning depends on whether it describes an invoiced rate, an effective hourly return or a buyer’s budget.
Finding a benchmark
Writers can ask established freelances about rates and consult published surveys to position their own fees within the industry. AMWA compensation surveys distinguish employees from freelances, and EMWA publishes freelance business and compensation surveys. A 2022 discussion also identified Paramount Recruitment’s annual salary survey as another source. Surveys can provide a reference range for particular services, including separate ranges for regulatory and medical communications writing.
A UK writer’s soundings around the publication of the 2015 EMWA survey suggested roughly £60 an hour for medical communications and £70 for regulatory writing, with offers both above and below those figures; the writer considered an offered £50 low for UK regulatory work. These figures described that writer’s contacts rather than a published market distribution.
Rates vary with service, product and client. A survey of general editorial freelances may therefore produce different figures from a medical-communications survey: in the 2015 AMWA report, the EFA medical-writing range of US$60–70 an hour was US$35–45 below AMWA’s full-time freelance median of US$105. EFA’s general editing ranges, US$30–40 for basic copyediting and US$40–60 for substantive or line editing, were also below AMWA’s medical editing median of US$67. A 2019 practitioner recommendation was to use the EFA chart only as a rough starting guide because it spans industries; its medical-writing entry then gave US$60–70 an hour or US$0.80–0.95 a word.
A 2015 Australian account placed general writing fees at AUD$50–250 an hour, with medical content towards the upper end, particularly for medically or doctorate-qualified writers, and higher fees associated with relevant experience and strong prior client work.
In France in 2013, medical English teaching was described at about €40 an hour for universities, €65 for research teams and €150 for industry workshops, negotiable hourly or within a broader writing or editing package.
An invoiced rate differs from the return across all working hours: in the 2005 Canadian survey, annual gross income divided by annual billable hours gave C$54.91 an hour, while including nonbillable hours gave C$42.08. The comparable employee rate was C$34.25.
A buyer’s budget is another kind of figure. One medical-writing company reported generally paying freelances about €80 an hour, had seen rates of roughly €60–100 and could not afford some more expensive writers. That range described the company’s purchasing experience.
Canadian rates by service, product and client
The 2005 AMWA-Canada survey, with 33 respondents, found different freelance rates for services, products and client types, in Canadian dollars. Mean hourly rates were approximately C$86 for writing, C$68 for editing and C$59 for proofreading. Reported rates for teaching, research and data management averaged C$86.7, C$89.4 and C$65 respectively.
Product-specific writing rates included C$160 for a product monograph, C$121.70 for an investigator’s brochure, C$120 for a disease overview, C$111.30 for a clinical study report, C$106 for a protocol, C$103.60 for a research paper, C$90 for a drug or disease monograph and C$89.30 for a slide kit. Other rates were C$84.30 for a sales-training manual; C$84 for a detail aid or drug-information brochure; C$82.50 for a journal advertisement or integrated efficacy/safety summary; C$81.70 for a newsletter or white paper; C$81 for an abstract; C$79 for a website; C$72.50 for proceedings or a grant proposal; C$71.70 for a lay journal article or press release; and C$66.30 for a book chapter. Single respondents reported C$150 an hour for a clinical efficacy/safety summary and C$80 for an advisory-board summary, while per-1,000-word fees included C$800 for a newsletter, advisory-board summary or proceedings, C$600 for a mainstream newspaper or media article and C$700 for a lay journal article.
Editing means ranged from C$95 for newsletters to C$33.50 for proceedings; intermediate means were C$75 for drug-information brochures, C$72.50 for white papers, C$70 for detail aids or advertisements, C$68.30 for grant proposals, C$67.50 for press releases, C$67.40 for research papers, C$65 for protocols, abstracts or posters, C$62.50 for book chapters and C$58.70 for websites. Proofreading means were C$65 for protocols, abstracts and posters, C$62.50 for research papers, C$60 for websites, C$58.30 for detail aids, C$57.50 for drug-information brochures, C$52.50 for grant proposals or advertisements, C$50 for press releases and C$46.70 for book chapters. Single respondents reported C$60 for a lay journal article and C$45 for proceedings, a white paper, clinical study report, investigator’s brochure or integrated efficacy/safety summary.
Across services, industry and government were the highest-paying client groups, while academia and journal publishers were the lowest. For editing, means were C$95 for government, C$80 for research or education organisations, C$78.30 for healthcare organisations, C$71.70 for industry, C$66.70 for academia, C$57.50 for communications agencies and C$51.70 for journal publishers. Proofreading means were C$63.30 for industry, C$60 for government, C$55 for academia and C$50 for journal publishers. Single respondents reported editing at C$55 for a patient association and proofreading at C$60 for a healthcare organisation, C$55 for a patient association and C$45 for a research or education organisation.
Four respondents charged US clients an average 29% above their Canadian rate, and two charged UK clients 60% more; single respondents reported premiums of 30% for continental European clients and 300% for Japanese clients. Of the specific products listed, 60% of writing products, 63.6% of editing products and 64.7% of proofreading products were priced below the service’s overall hourly average. The survey suggested that some writers might be undercharging, without identifying why, and advised considering product, client, market and possibly education and experience when reviewing rates.
US rates by work and experience
AMWA’s 2007 survey reported mean hourly rates in 2006 US dollars of US$97 for full-time writing, US$84 for part-time writing, US$80 for full-time editing and US$64 for part-time editing. Freelances with advanced degrees charged higher writing and editing rates than those with less education.
In AMWA’s 2011 survey, full-time freelance writing averaged US$105 an hour and editing US$79, compared with US$97 and US$80 in 2007. Across all freelances, including those also employed, writing averaged US$95 and editing US$69; part-time freelances employed elsewhere averaged US$86 and US$55 respectively. Full-time regulatory writing averaged US$120 and regulatory editing US$116. Respondents could report rates for both writing and editing.
In the 2015 survey, the mean across freelances was US$111 for writing, with a median of US$105, and US$73 for editing, with a median of US$67. The report’s comparison with 2011 described a US$6 rise for full-time writing and a US$6 fall for full-time editing. A later executive summary gave the 2015 editing mean as US$71 and median as US$65.
For rates at 31 December 2018, AMWA’s 2019 survey reported means across all freelances of US$113 for writing, US$93 for editing and US$103 for quality control. Full-time means were US$116, US$97 and US$103 respectively; part-time means, including employees who also freelanced, were US$109, US$89 and US$100.
The 2019 sample included 47% aged 55 or older and 73% with more than ten years’ medical-communications experience.
The median rates were US$110 for writing, US$85 for editing and US$100 for quality control, identical for all freelances and the full-time subgroup. For full-time freelances, the interquartile ranges were US$90–140 for writing (160 respondents), US$60–123.75 for editing (120) and US$63.75–136.25 for quality control (86). Project-fee respondents estimated an hourly rate from the time normally required for a project.
Experience, education, client and work role were associated with different rates. Full-time freelances with more than ten years in medical communication had median rates of US$120 for writing, US$95 for editing and US$108 for quality control; those with five years or less reported US$90, US$70 and US$50, and those with six to ten years US$80, US$65 and US$80. Doctorates or other advanced degrees were associated with US$20–40 more for writing than bachelor’s degrees and US$65 more for quality control, but only US$5 separated editing rates for doctorates from master’s or bachelor’s degrees. English-background freelances reported a writing median of US$100 (28 respondents), compared with US$105 for science-background freelances (57); the editing difference was US$10 and the quality-control difference US$29. A proposed explanation for the larger quality-control gap is its technical detail.
Full-time freelances mainly serving biotechnology companies reported writing, editing and quality-control medians of US$160, US$150 and US$150; those serving pharmaceutical companies reported US$140, US$145 and US$135. Medical-communications agency medians were US$120 for writing and US$85 for both editing and quality control. Primarily writing freelances charged more than primarily editing freelances even for editing: their writing medians were US$120 versus US$83, editing medians US$103 versus US$65, and quality-control medians US$115 versus US$65. This may reflect writers entering negotiations from a higher fee base and charging a similar rate across tasks. Team leaders’ mean writing rate was US$135, compared with US$114 for writers or editors working with some client guidance.
A separate 2018 survey of 175 freelances found effective hourly rates of US$51–100 for 67 of 174 respondents (39%), US$25–50 for 27 (16%) and more than US$150 for 15, while roughly 75% reported US$51–150. Another 37% reported US$101–150. More than 45% reported effective rates above US$100, and the authors suggested that those earning US$50 or less might have room to raise rates. A conference report of the survey had earlier described 114 responses and US$100–150 as the most common rate.
European rates by activity and client
EMWA’s 2012 freelance business survey had 123 respondents, of whom 93 provided hourly rates. Mean and median hourly rates in euros were as follows.
| Activity | Mean | Median | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Writing | 77 | 75 | 20–135 |
| Editing | 69 | 70 | 10–135 |
| Consultancy | 93 | 82 | 25–175 |
| Quality control | 70 | 68 | 20–135 |
| Proofreading | 64 | 60 | 5–135 |
| Translation | 63 | 60 | 10–125 |
Twelve percent of writing respondents and 6% of editing respondents reached €100 an hour or more. For training, 33 respondents supplied rates: the whole-day mean was €932, median €900 and range €400–2,040; the half-day mean was €437, median €338 and range €200–820; hourly training averaged €85, with a median of €80 and range €45–128; preparation averaged €84, with a median of €70 and range €70–120.
Most respondents charged their regular rate to most client groups, but among those serving academic clients, 56% charged below average, as did 62% serving non-profits. Pharmaceutical companies were most often charged more than average (38%), followed by other clients (25%), medical devices (21%) and biotechnology (20%).
The 2015 EMWA survey had 181 respondents, mostly in Europe. Its activity rates in euros were reported with quartiles as well as extremes.
| Activity | n | Minimum | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writing overall | 134 | 0 | 68 | 78 | 90 | 384 |
| Medical communications writing | 90 | 0 | 66 | 75 | 82 | 384 |
| Regulatory writing | 39 | 48 | 69 | 90 | 104 | 160 |
| Editing | 108 | 0 | 55 | 70 | 83 | 384 |
| Translation | 37 | 0 | 30 | 60 | 80 | 160 |
| Proofreading | 53 | 0 | 40 | 60 | 87 | 384 |
| Quality control | 51 | 0 | 50 | 70 | 83 | 139 |
| Consultancy | 63 | 0 | 66 | 83 | 110 | 186 |
| Electronic publishing | 21 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 79 | 139 |
| Other | 21 | 0 | 0 | 45 | 71 | 139 |
| Training | 16 | 50 | 70 | 84 | 125 | 150 |
| Training preparation | 12 | 55 | 68 | 95 | 115 | 150 |
| Training, half day | 14 | 200 | 280 | 385 | 500 | 800 |
| Training, whole day | 21 | 350 | 560 | 840 | 1,000 | 1,750 |
All entries are hourly except the half-day and whole-day training fees. Rates supplied in pounds were converted at £1 = €1.35 on 27 September 2015. Quartiles give a more useful overview than minimum and maximum values, which can mislead. Training’s higher daily fees may be offset by more sporadic opportunities. Research-based pharmaceutical companies were charged above the writer’s usual rate by 40 of 90 respondents serving them (44.4%); academic, non-profit and publishing clients were most often offered lower rates.
Median rates in the series remained broadly stable from 2003 to 2015, with consultancy consistently below its 2003 peak. The earlier 2012 comparison also found rates generally unchanged or slightly lower since 2003.
The 2023 freelance business survey included 223 respondents and compared them with 142 respondents in 2018–2019. Its service-rate table labelled the figures “median ± standard deviation,” as shown below, although the accompanying prose called them averages.
| Service | 2023 n | 2023 reported rate ± SD (€) | 2023 range (€) | 2018 n | 2018 reported rate ± SD (€) | 2018 range (€) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consultancy | 57 | 109 ± 67.6 | 15–500 | 67 | 98 ± 47.6 | 13–275 |
| Training | 39 | 99.9 ± 75.4 | 15–500 | 44 | 100.2 ± 47.6 | 13–275 |
| Regulatory writing | 17 | 95 ± 59.4 | 17–500 | 67 | 88.0 ± 32.1 | 13–190 |
| Non-regulatory writing | 120 | 80.0 ± 28.1 | 15–220 | 109 | 77.5 ± 32.6 | 10–190 |
| Editing | 73 | 69.9 ± 25.1 | 20–120 | 140 | 44.7 ± 28.6 | 10–180 |
| Quality control | 46 | 69.8 ± 26.8 | 20–160 | 63 | 72.7 ± 31.7 | 12–190 |
| Proofreading | 59 | 65.7 ± 25.9 | 10–120 | 75 | 61.6 ± 29.0 | 10–180 |
| Translation | 27 | 64.7 ± 27.3 | 25–110 | 44 | 55.5 ± 26.6 | 13–134 |
The table reported 70 respondents without service rates in 2023 and ten in 2018. The prose described increases of €2–10 in all services except quality control; the table instead showed editing about €25 higher, consultancy €11 higher and training fractionally lower.
Country averages where more than ten respondents were recorded were €92.5 in France, €82.5 in Germany, €79.0 in the UK and €63.8 in Italy. Portugal averaged €57.9 and India €23.0 among those supplying a rate; 33.3% and 72% respectively supplied none.
European rates by experience and working profile
In EMWA’s 2017 survey, 75 evaluable freelances reported mean hourly income of €81, median €80, standard deviation €35.1 and range €15–200. Seventeen men averaged €102 and 56 women €75, a statistically significant difference. Average rates were €56 for up to two years’ experience, €67 at more than two to five years, €113 at more than five to ten years, €93 at more than ten to fifteen years and €85 beyond fifteen. Women with more than ten years averaged €87 versus €66 for those with ten or fewer, while men averaged €94 beyond ten years versus €111 at ten or fewer.
Supervisory responsibility made little difference (€82 versus €81), while the few freelances with line management charged less (€68 versus €83). A master’s degree was associated with €91, compared with €79 for either advanced or bachelor’s degrees; an EMWA Professional Development Programme certificate with €91 versus €77 without it. Scandinavian rates averaged €103, compared with €87 in France, €79 in Germany and the UK, and €77 in other regions. More than 35 working hours a week was associated with €92, compared with €74 at 35 or fewer. Those working mostly on submission dossiers averaged €99, development documents €87 and scientific articles €81. Higher rates were associated with more than five years’ experience and an EMWA certificate, while geography and responsibility played less of a role than for employees.
EMWA’s 2021 survey included 103 freelances and reported an overall hourly mean of €78. Median rates were €30 at two years’ experience or less, €90 at three to five years, €63 at six to ten, €110 at eleven to fifteen and €80 beyond fifteen. Among countries included in the analysis, the UK median was highest at €100 and Spain lowest at €70.
In the 2023 freelance business survey, the overall median was €82.2, with each respondent’s rate calculated as the mean of the service rates they supplied. Among 195 classifiable respondents, 149 supplied rates; their overall range was €17–500. Median rates increased from €73 at under one year of experience to €78 at one to five years, €80 at six to ten and eleven to fifteen, and €100 beyond fifteen. Rates were omitted by 13 of 28 writers with under one year of experience (46.4%) and four of 41 at six to ten years (9.8%).
Writers classified by delivered documents as medical communications, regulatory or hybrid had different median rates. Of those supplying rates, 75 medical communications writers had a median of €77.0 (range €17–250), 21 regulatory writers €100.0 (€17.5–206.7) and 53 hybrids €83.8 (€18.6–167.5). Across experience bands of under one year, one to five, six to ten, eleven to fifteen and over fifteen years, medical communications medians were €73.0, €77.0, €77.0, €72.8 and €115.0; regulatory medians €75.0, €74.7, €100.0, €105.0 and €124.0; and hybrid medians €67.5, €80.0, €83.8, €107.5 and €100.0. Some groups contained only three or four respondents.
The 2023 median of €82.2 and the 2021 mean of €78 describe different statistics from questionnaires with different questions.