Freelance Rate Calculator for UK Journalists — What to Charge by Assignment and Outlet
Nobody publishes what they pay, so a freelance pricing a commission is usually guessing against a market they cannot see. This tool puts a starting range on the table, but it is a stored table of figures rather than a calculation from your own numbers.
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Freelance Rate Calculator
Estimate what to charge based on assignment type, publication tier and your experience level.
Select all three options above to see your estimated rate.
How it works
- Three dropdowns and nothing else: assignment type (news ~500 words, feature ~1,500 words, comment ~800 words, investigation day rate, photography half day, sub-editing shift, news shift of 8 hours, podcast episode, video package per minute), publication tier (national, regional, trade/B2B, digital-only) and experience (junior 0-3 years, mid 3-7, senior 7+).
- It performs no arithmetic. Your three selections index into a hardcoded 9 x 4 x 3 table of 108 low-high pairs and the matching pair is printed. Change one dropdown and you get a different stored figure, not a recomputed one.
- Sample cells so you can judge the table: a senior national feature returns £800-£1,200; a junior regional news story returns £60-£100; a senior national video package returns £700-£1,000.
- The result panel carries its own caveat, describing the rates as illustrative and based on NUJ guidance and industry surveys.
When to use it
- Before you name a number to a commissioning editor for an outlet tier you have not worked with.
- Sanity-checking a fee you have been offered against a rough band for the same work elsewhere.
- Moving between tiers — from regional to national, or from writing into podcast and video — where your instinct for the going rate has not caught up.
- Building a rate card, as one input alongside your own billing history.
What it does not do
- Every figure is hardcoded in the component. There is no live data source, no survey feed and no date on the table, so it will drift out of date silently. Treat it as a starting point and check current NUJ guidance and your own recent invoices.
- It does not ask for your target income, your business costs or how many days a year you can actually bill, so it cannot tell you whether these rates sustain you. Work that out from your own numbers, not from this table.
- No adjustment for specialism, exclusivity, rights, urgency, expenses or VAT. Two commissions with identical selections can be worth very different money once rights are priced.
- These are illustrative ranges, not offers, and not a floor anyone is obliged to meet. This is not financial or tax advice.
More tools
This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.