Copywriting Rates: Copywriting Prices, Copywriting Fees and Freelance Copywriter Rates
Price from what it takes to earn a US writer's wage, not from a marketplace band built on every country. Put in the hours a deliverable takes, your rate and the length, and the builder prices the job, shows the per-word equivalent, and what you keep after the platform's cut.
BLS May 2025 wages, EFA 2026 rate chart, Upwork's own tiers.
A US copywriter needs about $101 an hour billed on an 8% platform to take home the $76,910 federal median for writers. You keep per hour on this job.
The short answer
Copywriting rates on Upwork run $20 to $30 an hour at entry level, $30 to $50 at intermediate and $50 to $150 for experts, around a worldwide median band of $19 to $45. Employed US writers and authors, the federal occupation that includes copywriters, earn a median of $76,910 a year, $36.98 an hour (BLS, May 2025). A US freelancer who wants to take that home has to bill about $101 an hour on an 8% platform, or $116 on Fiverr. Sold as projects, that is about $1,010 for a five-email sequence and $1,414 for a researched sales landing page.
Copywriting rates per hour
Copywriter rates, by source and sample
Every row names where the number came from. Federal figures are employed wages, the EFA rows are what its members report charging, and the Upwork rows are what clients paid freelancers on that platform, across every country.
| Source | Rate | What it measures | Sample and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| BLS, lowest 10% (writers and authors) | Under $21.30/hr | Employed, under $44,310 a year | Federal survey, May 2025 |
| BLS, median (writers and authors, incl. copywriters) | $36.98/hr | Employed, $76,910 a year | Federal survey, 140,300 jobs |
| BLS, highest 10% (writers and authors) | Over $67.25/hr | Employed, over $139,870 a year | Federal survey, May 2025 |
| EFA, business and marketing writing | $65 to $75/hr | Work for hire, 32 to 87.5 cents a word | Member survey, 2025 work |
| EFA, ghostwritten business and marketing | $87.50 to $125/hr | Unbylined, 50 cents to $1.00 a word | Member survey, 2025 work |
| Upwork, median band | $19 to $45/hr | Historical contracts, all countries | Upwork cost page, Apr 2026 |
| Upwork, entry level | $20 to $30/hr | Upwork's own tier guidance | Upwork cost page, Apr 2026 |
| Upwork, intermediate | $30 to $50/hr | Upwork's own tier guidance | Upwork cost page, Apr 2026 |
| Upwork, expert | $50 to $150/hr | Upwork's own tier guidance | Upwork cost page, Apr 2026 |
BLS hourly figures are annual wages divided by 2,080 hours. The Bureau folds copywriters into writers and authors (27-3043) and publishes no separate copywriter wage, so every federal row covers the whole occupation. BLS counts 65% of writers and authors as self-employed and projects little or no change in the number of jobs through 2035. The EFA figures come from a survey of more than 1,100 of its members about work billed in 2025.
Hourly rate for a copywriter
What you have to charge to earn a US writer's wage
The employed median is a salary. As a freelancer you pay both halves of payroll tax, your own health cover and your software, and you only bill part of the hours you work. These are the rates that close that gap.
$64 / hour at 8%
On Fiverr, where 20% comes off every order: $73 an hour.
$101 / hour at 8%
On Fiverr, where 20% comes off every order: $116 an hour.
$173 / hour at 8%
On Fiverr, where 20% comes off every order: $199 an hour.
How those numbers are built
A 40-hour week with six weeks off is 1,840 working hours. At 60% billable, once you count discovery calls, proposals, pitching, admin and invoicing, that is 1,104 hours you can charge for. Add $6,000 of expenses (software, research tools, a laptop, accounting) and $7,200 of health cover, then self-employment tax at 15.3% on 92.35% of profit, and gross up for the platform fee. Change any input on the freelance rate calculator.
Upwork's median band ends below the federal floor
The top of Upwork's median band for copywriters is $45 an hour. A US freelancer needs $64 just to match the lowest-paid tenth of employed writers, and $101 to match the median. The band is a worldwide figure, set in part by supply from countries with a fraction of US living costs. Upwork's own expert tier, $50 to $150, is where a US copywriter's break-even actually sits, and so does the EFA's ghostwriting range.
Copywriting prices per project
Copywriting prices, by the hours a deliverable takes
The project price is the hourly floor times your real hours. The examples show scale only: time your last few jobs of each type and use those.
| Hours | For example | At $101, the median break-even | At $45, top of Upwork's median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 hours | A set of Google and Meta ad variations | $303 | $135 |
| 5 hours | Product descriptions for 10 SKUs | $505 | $225 |
| 10 hours | A five-email welcome sequence | $1,010 | $450 |
| 14 hours | A 1,500-word sales landing page with research | $1,414 | $630 |
| 25 hours | Copy for a five-page small business website | $2,525 | $1,125 |
| 40 hours | A long-form sales letter or VSL script | $4,040 | $1,800 |
Per word is a check, not a price
The $1,414 landing page above works out to about 94 cents a word. That sits inside the EFA's 50 cents to $1.00 range for ghostwritten marketing copy and just above its work for hire ceiling of 87.5 cents, which is a useful sanity check that the hours are realistic. It is a bad way to set the price, though. A 12-word headline and a 2,000-word article can take the same afternoon, and per-word pricing pays you almost nothing for the first one.
Use per word for long, predictable formats where the client knows the length: blog posts, knowledge base articles, product description batches. Quote by the project everywhere else.
Website copywriting rates run per page, priced per hour
Clients ask for website copy by the page, so quote it that way, but build each page price from hours. A home page and a sales page carry the positioning and the offer and take the longest. About, Services and Contact pages are faster once the messaging is settled. A five-page small business site at around 25 hours is $2,525 at the median break-even.
Charge for the brief and research as part of the job, not as a free discovery call. It is often a third of the hours, and it is the part a client cannot get from a cheaper writer.
Freelance copywriter income
What a full year at each rate actually keeps
1,104 billable hours at each hourly rate, sold on Upwork with a 10% talent fee, after $13,200 of overhead and self-employment tax, before income tax.
| Hourly rate | Where it sits | Billed a year | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| $20 | Bottom of Upwork entry level | $22,080 | $5,729 |
| $30 | Top of entry, start of intermediate | $33,120 | $14,261 |
| $45 | Top of Upwork's median band | $49,680 | $27,059 |
| $75 | Top of the EFA work-for-hire range | $82,800 | $52,656 |
| $100 | Near the median break-even | $110,400 | $73,986 |
| $150 | Top of Upwork's expert tier | $165,600 | $116,646 |
The gap between the $45 row and the $100 row is the whole business. Both copywriters work the same 1,104 hours; one keeps $27,059 and the other $73,986. The way across it is not more output. It is copy tied to a number the client can measure (sign-ups, sales, booked calls), sold to buyers who can see that number: SaaS, ecommerce, professional services and direct-response offers.
How to price
Set your copywriting rates in four steps
Find your floor
Work out the hourly rate that clears the take-home you need. For the US median it is about $101 on an 8% platform. It is a floor you keep to yourself, not a number you quote.
Time your deliverables
Log the hours on your last few jobs of each type, from brief to final draft, including the revision round. Emails, landing pages and ad sets each get their own figure.
Set terms in writing
Fix the revision limit, a rush definition and surcharge, who supplies research and product access, and a deposit, usually half up front.
Publish as packages
Turn the list into fixed offers a client can order: an ad set, a welcome sequence, a landing page. Business buyers order faster from a price than from a quote form.
For the tier structure itself, the guide to packaging a service into Basic, Standard and Premium walks through what goes in each level and how far apart to price them. If you also sell grant proposals, the grant writing rates page does the same math for flat-fee proposals, and the translator rates page covers per-word pricing in more depth.
What the platform keeps
One $1,414 landing page, seven places to sell it
Fourteen hours at the $101 median break-even. Spread is the platform's total cut from both sides as a share of what the client paid, so a platform that charges the buyer cannot hide half of it.
| Platform | Copywriter keeps | Client pays | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contra, free plan | $1,414.00 | $1,443.00 | 2.0% |
| FreelanceNation Studio | $1,371.58 | $1,414.00 | 3.0% |
| FreelanceNation Pro | $1,343.30 | $1,414.00 | 5.0% |
| FreelanceNation Starter | $1,300.88 | $1,414.00 | 8.0% |
| Guru, Basic plan | $1,286.74 | $1,414.00 | 9.0% |
| Upwork, 10% talent fee | $1,272.60 | $1,484.70 | 14.3% |
| Fiverr | $1,131.20 | $1,491.77 | 24.2% |
The honest read: Contra charges the copywriter nothing and adds a flat $29 to the client's bill, so on a job this size it has the smallest spread, as long as you bring the client yourself. Fiverr takes $247 more than an 8% plan on the same page, most of it out of the writer's side. Where a gig page here earns its fee is with the client you have not met yet: published packages a business can order and pay for without a quote request, no buyer fee at checkout, and a page built to be found in search. You can run any job size through every platform with the freelance fee calculator, or see how the writing marketplaces compare in the best platforms to sell writing services.
Who uses this
Three copywriters who need a rate sheet this week
Leaving an agency or in-house role
You earned near the $36.98 median on staff. Quoting that per hour as a freelancer is a pay cut of well over half once tax, health cover and unbilled hours are counted. Start at $101 and adjust from your timed hours.
Moving from content writing to conversion copy
Blog posts sell by the word to buyers who compare word prices. Landing pages, emails and ads sell on results. Build a separate list priced per deliverable, and stop quoting cents a word for them.
Pricing a SaaS or ecommerce launch
A client wants a sales page, a welcome sequence and ad variations in three weeks. Quote each from timed hours, add a rush surcharge if the dates are tight, and take half up front.
The sell freelance writing page shows what a tiered copywriting gig looks like once the list is published, and the buyer-side cost to hire a copywriter guide shows the same market from the client's chair, which is worth reading before your next pricing conversation.
Questions copywriters ask
Copywriting rates: common questions
The questions copywriters type before they set a price, answered first sentence first.
How much do copywriters charge?
On Upwork, copywriters bill $20 to $30 an hour at entry level, $30 to $50 at intermediate and $50 to $150 at expert, with a worldwide median band of $19 to $45. A US freelancer who wants to take home the $76,910 median that employed writers and authors earn (BLS, May 2025) has to bill about $101 an hour on an 8% platform, or $116 on Fiverr.
How much should I charge for copywriting?
Time the deliverable, multiply by your floor rate, and quote the total as a flat project fee. At the $101 median break-even, a five-email welcome sequence that takes 10 hours is $1,010 and a researched 1,500-word landing page that takes 14 hours is $1,414. Add a rush fee for short deadlines and write the revision limit into the quote.
What is the hourly rate for a freelance copywriter?
Employed US writers and authors, the federal occupation that includes copywriters, earn a median $36.98 an hour. As a freelancer you pay both halves of payroll tax, your own health cover and bill only part of your hours, so matching that wage takes about $101 an hour. EFA members report $65 to $75 for work-for-hire marketing copy and $87.50 to $125 ghostwritten.
How much do copywriters charge per word?
EFA members report 32 to 87.5 cents a word for work-for-hire business and marketing writing, and 50 cents to $1.00 when it is ghostwritten. Per-word pricing suits long copy with a known length. For short, high-stakes copy such as a headline or an ad set, it underprices the work, because the thinking takes longer than the typing. Quote those by the project.
How much does website copywriting cost?
Price it from the hours: copy for a five-page small business website, including a brief, research and one revision round, takes around 25 hours and comes to $2,525 at the $101 median break-even, or $1,125 at the $45 top of Upwork's median band. A single long sales landing page usually costs more per page than a standard About or Services page.
How much should I charge for a sales page?
Quote a sales page as a flat fee built from research, drafting and revision hours. A 1,500-word page that takes 14 hours is $1,414 at $101 an hour, which works out to about 94 cents a word, inside the EFA ghostwriting range for marketing copy. Long-form sales letters and video sales scripts run longer, often 40 hours or more.
Should copywriters charge hourly or per project?
Per project, almost always, with the hourly rate kept as your private floor. Clients buy an outcome such as a landing page or an email sequence, not your time, and a flat price lets you keep the gain when you get faster. Use hourly billing only for open-ended work like editing an existing site or ongoing consulting, and cap it with an estimate.
Do copywriters charge for revisions?
Include a set number of revision rounds in the project price, usually one or two, and charge for anything beyond that at your hourly rate. Write the limit into the quote before you start. Unlimited revisions turn a fixed fee into an open hourly contract with no hourly rate, which is how a $1,000 project quietly becomes a $30 an hour one.
How much does a freelance copywriter make?
It comes down to the rate. Over 1,104 billable hours a year on Upwork with a 10% fee, $30 an hour keeps about $14,260 after overhead and self-employment tax, $45 keeps about $27,060, $100 keeps about $73,990 and $150 keeps about $116,650. BLS counts 65% of writers and authors as self-employed, so most people doing this work set their own price.
Do platform fees change what I should charge for copywriting?
Yes. On a $1,414 landing page, Fiverr leaves the copywriter $1,131.20 while the client pays $1,491.77, Upwork leaves $1,272.60 with the client paying $1,484.70, and an 8% plan leaves $1,300.88 with the client paying $1,414. To clear the median you need about $101 an hour on an 8% platform and $116 on a 20% one.
Put your copywriting packages where clients can order them
Turn your rate sheet into an ad set, an email sequence and a landing page package on a shareable gig page. Clients see the price, order and pay without a quote request, pay no buyer fee, and you keep 92% on Starter, 95% on Pro and 97% on Studio.
Keep reading