How much can I charge as a freelancer?

Hey folks,

I’m a 3D Artist with over 10 years of experience using Blender. I started when I was 14, so a lot of that time was during school. However, I’ve also spent 1 ½ years in the VFX industry as a Junior Modeling Artist before being laid off during the writer’s strikes.

Currently, I’ve been working as a freelance generalist for about 8 months. I mainly work for small animation studios, YouTube channels similar to Ferns (in terms of size and content style, though not Fern itself), and occasionally individuals.

From the start, I’ve struggled to determine my daily rate. I come from a family with limited financial resources, and, like many artists, I often feel that my skills aren’t quite up to par.

When I Google the typical rates for freelance 3D artists, I often find myself far below the numbers I come across. However, I understand that rates can vary greatly depending on the companies you work with. For instance, I don’t work in advertising or on big-budget productions. Instead, I focus on game trailers (when small animation studios hire me) or educational content for medium-sized YouTube channels (500k–3M subscribers). A typical project for a YouTube channel might take around 10 workdays. My work on game trailers has been longer, lasting 1–2 months (including weekends). These games aren’t AAA titles, but they are also not complete indie games—more like studios with 50–200 people.

Given my skill level and the type of work I do, what would be a typical daily rate I could charge?

Here’s my Website and Artstation to give you a sense of my skill level:

https://malteullrich.artstation.com/

I live in Europe, but work with clients from all over the world, including the US.

Thanks for your insights!

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Have you spoken to others in the industry? I’m sure they’re much better placed than many of the people here to give you a more definitive answer.

It’s an impressive portfolio, for sure.

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your goal should be 100€ an hour. if that works with clients all over the world… :man_shrugging:

Well, I was kinda hoping to reach some people in the Industry here. To be honest, I’m so new to it, and a lot of the projects I’m doing are so different to what other people do, that I’m not sure how they compare.

sorry, wrong reply

Well, I was kinda hoping to reach some people in the Industry here. To be honest, I’m so new to it, and a lot of the projects I’m doing are so different to what other people do, that I’m not sure how they compare.

100€ or $ an hour is what I hard quite a lot online. Currently I’m quite a bit off with 160€ a day. For some I went up to 180 or even 200.

I like to charge per day, since I like to work in fewer more focused hours.

So, to answer the question, I have to ask you a question: what expenses do you have? Do you have rent/a mortgage? Have a car/need to maintain the car? Etc. You need to figure out what’s the minimum you need to survive and be comfortable, add in income taxes, sales/service taxes, etc. That’s the minimum you can charge. Anything less and you’re shooting yourself in the foot. If you’re charging people €100-€200 per day, and you’re spending 4 hours (assuming that you only work 4 hours per day, based on what you said), you’re only making roughly €2,000 per month.

In my opinion, €100/hour is a good starting point. Even if you only work 4 hours a day, then you’re probably going to be financially okay. This should also help filter the bad/cheap clients from the good ones as well. Remember, you’re also competing against generative AI. You can’t prove yourself lower than that, so you need to elevate yourself to a premium service.

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I live in Germany, where the cost of living isnt that high compared to something like the US. I also dont have a car and I’ve never had an expensive lifestyle. 1000€ a month is like the minimum I need for the most important stuff. 1500€ would be a pretty comfortable life, but I would not be able to really save any money for some bigger things.
I’m not asking, because I desperatly need the money. I’m more interested in finding the typical average clients expect to pay for services like mine.
So that I feel more comfortable in increasing my daily rate.

I normally work 5-6 hours a day on client work. So you would say 500€ a day would be a rate I could ask right now? Or one I should work up to?

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Couple things- most clients don’t charge by day, but by hour or by project. There’s also many threads where industry professionals have already talked about this, I think there’s a few recent ones in Off-topic Chat that may be worth reading over and gaining some existing insights :slight_smile:

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This may be very industry-related, but in my experience hourly pay is rare (and indicative of a bad project), and you’d usually see day-rates

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Well, my experience is mostly with bad projects, so that tracks :sweat_smile:

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Man, that sounds pretty familiar.
Same country, no car, no luxuries. I am also kind of insecure / have trouble coming up with justified pricing (bipolar-adhs-imposter-syndrome or maybe it’s just some vitamine missing idk)

I don’t really have any numbers to give you, sorry. But what I always found very rewarding was working with or for people who were good at negotiating and wouldn’t undersell themselves just to get the job. So maybe you could team up with somebody who would complement your skills? (and happens to be a good haggler :smiley: )

For me a big factor is the nature and quality of the project. Do you love it, hate it, so-so? Is it stupid assembly line stuff that will drive you mad / that you can do in your sleep?

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When I was in web design I always made a list, to a potential client, of what they will get and how much it’ll cost.

So you say you’d like at least 1000€ a month. Offer a month of work for 4000€. If you think it’s take 2 months then 8000€ and so on. As you have to pay taxes and jobs won’t come regularly.

Edit: The list should have arbitrary numbers of cost and hours spent to make the job. Example
“Video editing and composting: 8 hours - 900€”
“Character animation: 8 hours - 1000€”
“Diverse Animation: 12 hour - 900€”
“Extra work outside contract: 1 hour - 100€”
And so on.

The more details of your work you put on that list the better it looks for the client but also you get a sense how much you actually know and won’t feel the impostor syndrome creeping in.

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Thanks! Unfortunately, right now, I’m still a bit off with my estimations. In my mind I can complete it much faster, or should complete it much faster. So I end up estimating far to little.
But I’m getting better at it.
I will definately keep that in mind, thanks!!

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If you’re a very fast worker, I recommend charging by project. I don’t personally charge by time because I get things done faster than I’m worth, and I don’t like the hassle of tracking hours and then having to fudge those numbers to actually get enough

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If you make something in 2 hours and someone else makes the same thing in 4 hours, should that person get twice the pay for the same thing?

The numbers are made up. You give hours because people/clients like to see numbers. Imagine a scenario where the clients want an inner city scene. You present a time of 5 hours and the competitor presents a time of 20 hours. You’re cheaper but the other guy will work 4 times as much, thinks the client.

Interesting- I’ve had the opposite experience, clients I’ve found get mad when my hour count is high and want it to be lower. I’ve had much better experience not telling them how long it will take and just charging for the project

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Whether I’m billing on per-project, hourly, or giving a day rate - it ALL starts with an hourly figure as the base.

So $2K for a project. Or a project that takes 2 days. Or 20 hours. Define it on the invoice however you want.

(Obviously the charges may vary to pad or discount for various reasons, but the starting point for the math is the same.)

Also, $160/day? That’s about what a cashier at Walmart in America makes, so don’t underprice yourself.

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but don’t be discouraged! 200€/day is a start and now you should try to raise your rates more and more.

it can be kind of tricky though to raise the rates with a customer you started out with very cheaply. :slight_smile: