How Much Money can a UX/UI Designer Make?

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With technology evolving increasingly, user experience UX and user interface UI designers are on high demand. With this demand comes a higher pay for those pursuing a career in this industry.

Sometimes, there is a confusion on whether to learn UX or UI. Some say they are the same, while others say there are either minor or major differences.

A knowledge of the career paths will help you decide on what to do. We will address that issue here and see how much you are likely to earn if you pursue a career in this field.

What is User Experience Design (UX)?
What is User Interface Design (UI)?
What are Some Differences Between UX and UI?
How Much can you Earn as a UX/UI Designer?
How can you Increase Your Earnings?
Is UI/UX Design a Good Career?
Is Graphic Design a Dying Career?
What Skills do you Need to be a UI Designer?
How to get Started as a UX/UI Designer
How Much do UI/UX Designers Charge?
How Much Should I Pay a UX Designer?
How Much do UX Designers Charge Per Hour?
How do I Charge UI UX Freelance?

What is User Experience Design (UX)?

User experience design is the process of building relationships between a company, its products, and its customers.

User experience design is the process of researching, developing, and improving all aspects of user interaction with a company ’s product to satisfy its users.

The goal is to improve the user’s experience with the product through test results, ultimately creating a product that is useful and valuable, as well as easy to obtain, pleasing to use.

UX design contributes to a product that provides an effective user experience. It includes different disciplines, such as visual design, interaction design, usability, and more.

UX Designer Skills and Responsibilities

Content/Strategy: Customer Analysis, Competitor Analysis, Product Structure/Strategy
Prototyping and Wireframing: Prototyping, Testing/Iteration, Development, Planning, Wireframing
Analytics and Execution: Coordination with Developer(s), Coordination with UI Designer(s), Analysis and Iteration, Tracking Goals and Integration

So, the User Experience Designer is not only responsible for preplanning and preparing the technology behind the product. They are also responsible for how users interact online and offline, including customer service and analytics.

What is User Interface Design (UI)?

The user interface is the visual appearance of a product, and UI designers decide how to visually design the product for effective user experience. A good UI design helps attract users and ensures a pleasant product experience.

The elements of UI design include content such as documents, text, images, videos; forms including buttons, tags, text fields, checkboxes, drop-down lists, graphic designs; and behaviors like what will happen when the user’s click/drag/enter.

It requires UI designers to have a good sense of aesthetics and technical skill. A creative role, the goal of the UI designer is to create a compelling, beautiful user interface that elicits an emotional response from the user.

Simply put, if you first saw a website and marveled at it its visual appeal, it was mainly due to a UI designer.

UI Designer Skills and Responsibilities

Look and Feel: Branding and Graphic Development, User Guides/Storyline, Customer Analysis, Design Research

Responsiveness and Interactivity: Adaptation to All Device Screen Sizes, Interactivity, and Animation, Implementation with Developer, UI Prototyping, Implementation with Developer

UI design creates the skin and appearance of a product. It forms the personality and the brand. It connects the product to the user, building trust, and transferring of the brand concept.

The role of UI designer requires collaboration with other team members, such as developers and the UX designer.

What are Some Differences Between UX and UI?

UI design and UX design always overlap, but are you really clear about their differences?

Simply, UX design refers to user experience design, and UI design refers to the user interface design. They have a close relationship in product design but serve different roles.

In terms of functionality, UI is how things look, UX is how things work.UX is a process, while UI is a deliverable. But people easily confuse the two since they tend to have a symbiotic relationship. As Rahul Varshney, co-creator of Foster.fm puts it:

“User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are some of the most confused and misused terms in our field. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper match on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success.”

So the obvious differences between UI design and UX design result in different roles.

1. The tools they use

Since there are so many differences in the roles between UI and UX designers, the tools they use must be different. For UI designers, designing images is of prime importance. Hence, tools like Flinto and Principle, which are bounded to Sketch, have an advantage.

Mockplus iDoc is also an option and the team collaboration and handoff function with automatic markups, specs, assets and code snippets makes it a competitive option.

UX designers will favor a wireframe as it saves time and makes designing more efficient. There are lots of qualified prototyping tools.

Mockplus with its easy and transparent to operate, Balsamiq with sketch style, and Axure with comprehensive functions. What’s more, there’s a unique advantage to using Mockplus; it has 8 ways to test and preview projects. This is especially helpful during testing.

2. Different focus

The most important difference between UI and UX designers is that they have a different use for prototyping. Many UI designers believe a prototype should be a hi-fi model.

However, for the UX designer, fidelity is an afterthought; they care more about logic. Simply speaking: when you’re going to meet your customers, show them the design made by the UI designer.

When you’re going to meet the programmers, take the prototype made by the UX designer. The reason is really simple too. UI designers pay more attention to the interface- the front end, while UX designers focus on the back end

3. The colors they use

UI designers tend to design prototypes in full color. Conversely, UX designers generally use only three colors in prototype design: black, white and gray.

This difference can be seen commonly in designing and using icons. For example, when you need to create a bottom navigation bar, UI designers will spend lots of energy making it as realistic as possible, including the button color before and after clicking.

On the contrary, UX designers would insert the button in the right place, then leave a note: Gray after clicking.

Theoretically, UX design includes wireframing/prototyping, interaction design, and user testing. UI design includes visual design and interaction design.

Note that both UI design and UX design requires interaction design. Interaction design guides the user’s feelings and behavior.

UX is not UI, but they do complement each other:
UX makes interfaces useful, UI makes interfaces beautiful.
UX helps users accomplish goals, UI makes emotional connections.
UX design precedes UI design.
UX design occurs throughout products, interfaces, and services; UI only pertains to interfaces.

How Much can you Earn as a UX/UI Designer?

To give you an idea of your earning potential, we’ve done some research into the average UX/UI designer salaries in various parts of the world, using data provided by Glassdoor, Indeed and PayScale.

For ease of comparison, we’ve listed these averages in both the local currency and in US dollars.

UX

United States

Low: $59,000 USD
Average: $85,000 USD
High: $128,000 USD

The United States has a variety of flourishing tech hubs within its borders. Cities like New York, Seattle, and San Francisco are quite popular for their highly regarded design schools and the presence of industry leading companies like IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Canada

Low: CA$51,000 ($37,000 USD)
Average: CA$72,000 ($52,000 USD)
High: CA$96,000 ($69,000 USD)

Canada offers a wide range of UX design positions with the most being concentrated in Toronto and Vancouver. This country also hosts numerous notable design agencies and branches including Net Solutions—a 20-year old agency with previous big-name clients like Yahoo, PayPal, and Microsoft.

Australia

Low: A$69,000 ($44,000 USD)
Average: A$90,000 ($57,000 USD)
High: A$125,000 ($80,000 USD)

UX designers may find the highest pay rates in Sydney and Melbourne, but there are many other blossoming tech communities as well. Adelaide is a city where the UX industry is rapidly growing, meaning a lot of opportunity for designers to put their efforts towards meaningful and impactful projects.

Germany

Low: €36,000 ($39,000 USD)
Average: €51,000 ($56,000 USD)
High: €76,000 ($83,000 USD)

Munich boasts the highest cluster of UX job opportunities, but Berlin is also an attractive option for UXers. Berlin hosts offices for many big-name corporations (ie. Mozilla, Google, etc.) looking to hire. It is even host to The MOBX Conference, Europe’s annual mobile UX summit.

China

Low:¥96,000 ($14,000 USD)
Average: ¥204,000 ($30,000 USD)
High: ¥396,000 ($56,000 USD)

Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai are some obvious heavy hitters in the UX industry. However, UX designers should keep their eyes on Shenzhen, an exponentially growing city that has been named China’s supreme design hotspot. Shenzhen is projected to play a big role in the UX field within the next two decades.

United Kingdom

Low: €28,000 ($33,000 USD)
Average: €40,000 ($46,000 USD)
High: €56,000 ($66,000 USD)

There are loads of tech jobs throughout the UK, but with London’s reputation as Europe’s startup capital, many entrepreneurs are calling on UX designers for help. The largest city in the UK, London has its own Silicon Roundabout, where the demand for UX designers is at its highest.

UX designer salaries by company

You may have your sights set on working in a particular location or for a particular organization during your UX career.

UX designer salaries can vary greatly from country to country and company to company, so it’s always best to research your own desired position.

To give you an idea of what UX designers at some well-known companies are making, we’ve put together this list of salary ranges for some popular organizations.

Microsoft

$86,000-$154,000 USD

Microsoft UX designers are constantly creating innovative digital products that influence the globe, and Microsoft is leading the way for inclusive design. Get ready—the interview process can be quite extensive as they require a high level of motivation and design skill from their team.

Adobe

$65,000 – $163,000 USD

Being a UX designer for Adobe is a bit like being a designer for other designers. As an Adobe UXer, you would be creating seamless and efficient products for others in the field to use on their own projects.

BBC

$38,000 – $50,000 USD

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is an award-winning production company and public broadcasting service based in London. The BBC design team creates engaging and easy-to-navigate experiences for all the BBC products.

Alibaba

$32,000 – $61,000 USD

Alibaba is one of the world’s largest e-commerce corporations with millions of international users and merchants. This large UX team (70 members!) is consistently implementing evidence-based solutions for businesses to distribute their products to Alibaba users all over the world.

IBM

$71,000 – $144,000 USD

This major research organization is one of the biggest producers and sellers of computer hardware, middleware, software, and consulting services. As a UX designer for IBM, you would be working for the world’s biggest tech company.

Adidas

$54,000 – $60,000 USD

This multinational sporting lifestyle company is one of the biggest contributors to the design, distribution, and marketing of athletic products worldwide. The Adidas design team is driven to design products with the potential to redefine the sports and games their users are passionate about.

UI

Australia: 83,348 AUD ($57,180)
Canada: C$69,000 ($52,809)
Germany: €77,076 ($85,645)
India: Rs 1,108,000 ($15,567)
UK: £44,155 ($57,618)
USA: $76,115

This is just a snapshot: exact salary information is somewhat hard to come by within the industry, and your actual salary may fall below or above these figures depending on what stage you’re at in your career and the exact skills you bring to the table. However, this serves as a great benchmark — especially if you’re new to the field.

How can you Increase Your Earnings?

Being new to the UX/UI design industry may leave you wondering what sort of compensation to expect when applying for your very first position. You might not want to set your expectations too high, but be wary of asking for too little.

Your skills are valuable at all stages of your design career, so before your first interviews, be sure to do some research, consider your auxiliary skills, and talk to others in the field.

Do your research

The best way to make sure you’re asking for a fair wage is to do some research into what other designers with similar skill levels are making.

You’ll want to look for the average salaries within the companies you are applying for, in the city the position is located in, and for how many years of experience you have. Glassdoor, PayScale, and UX Designer Salaries are some easy search engine tools you can use to find information about UX designer pay rates.

Develop your skillset

If you still feel like you’re finding your sea legs in the world of UX/UI, look into a certification course or bootcamp that will give you the skills (and the portfolio!) you need. The best UX/UI design programs will help you develop a professional-grade portfolio and help you on your job search.

If you’d like to dip your toes in the water before you make the investment of money and time that a good program can require, check out a free UX/UI short course or start reading as many UX-related books as you can get your hands on.

Consider your auxiliary skills

Auxiliary skills are the other qualities and attributes you bring to the table besides your UX/UI design expertise. These are often skills that enhance or go hand-in-hand with your design knowledge.

UX/UI designers that have some base knowledge in coding, analytics, team building, or psychology and research can often negotiate higher salaries as these assets make them a more well-rounded and attractive candidate for the job. So look for opportunities to cultivate a more diverse skillset.

Consider upskilling with a specialization in UI design, voice user interface design, or even frontend development.

Ask around

If you have the opportunity, ask other designers in the field for a rough estimate of what sort of salary to expect. It may feel strange to ask your colleagues about salaries and pay rates, but you may be surprised at how quick they’ll be to offer some guidance.

Friends, recent classmates, and former teachers or mentors are also great people to ask when gauging what sort of compensation you can plan to receive.

Is UI/UX Design a Good Career?

There’s no simple “yes” or “no” answer to this question; it all depends on your personal interests and career goals. So what can you expect from a career in UI? Let’s take a look:

A creative career path: As a UI designer, you’ll put your creativity to good use. You’ll become an expert in visual design, delving into the wonderful world of color, typography, spacing, iconography, and more. Not only that: you’ll also master the art of interaction design, ensuring that each screen or page flows seamlessly to the next.
The chance to make an impact: Websites, apps, and software make the world go round, and UI designers have a crucial part to play in shaping these products. As a UI designer, you’re not “just” an artist: you’ll ensure that the web is inclusive and accessible, you’ll help give your company or client a competitive edge, and you’ll be responsible for defining and communicating the entire brand behind a product or service.
Flexibility and variety: UI designers can work on a freelance, remote, or in-house basis for all different kinds of companies. As the world goes digital, you’ll find that UI designers are needed across all industries—from banking, healthcare, and education to ecommerce, fashion, and travel. You’ll be able to apply your digital design skills to practically any product or sector that you’re passionate about.
Plenty of collaboration: If you’re considering a career in UI design, it’s important to know that you won’t be operating as a lone wolf. UI design is a highly collaborative role; you’ll work closely with UX designers, content writers, developers, and product owners on a day-to-day basis.
The opportunity to diversify: We often talk about UI design in the context of apps, websites, and software, but that’s really just the beginning. With the rise of voice technology and virtual reality in particular, a career in UI design will give you plenty of opportunity to branch out into different areas and get involved in some of the most exciting new technologies.

These are just some of the highlights of working in the UI design field—we haven’t even touched upon job security and salary yet! So without further ado, let’s get to that all-important question: Are UI designers in demand?

If you’re considering a career in UI design, you want to know what kind of job security the industry can offer. While it’s difficult to put an exact number on it, you’ll be pleased to know that “UI designer” ranks third on this list of the 19 most in-demand digital creative talent for 2019.

Interestingly, the top spot on the list is occupied by “digital product designer”—a role that also incorporates user interface design. So what does this look like in terms of job openings?

At the time of writing, there are around 5,900 job listings associated with the search term “user interface designer” on indeed.com (in the US). A similar search on Glassdoor and LinkedIn brings up around 5,500 and 1,500 job ads respectively.

Is Graphic Design a Dying Career?

Graphic design — or at least what graphic design used to be — is becoming obsolete. We can all acknowledge the fact that the internet has changed everything, including the role of graphic designers.

Growing professions such as digital marketing, user interface design(UI), and user experience design (UX) have become essential components to successful design strategies. The question is, outside of the most fundamental design principles and proper branding, what role does graphic design play now?

In today’s modern era, the internet and mobile devices have changed everything. Gone are the days of needing visually compelling advertisements and appealing campaigns to achieve business goals. Instead, we can hit target audiences through advanced digital marketing and technology-related strategies.

Techniques such as search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) have become standard practice for successful brands and campaigns. Digital marketing, combined with good content and UI/UX design, makes for some of the best user experiences imaginable. And let’s not forget to mention the invaluable data every user interaction produces — something print cannot provide.

An area that has exploded recently is “do-it-yourself” design, popularized by companies like Wix and Canva. These are businesses that provide pre-made templates of websites, social media ads, logos, and the list goes on. The value of a graphic designer is slowly being erased by turning what was once considered a unique personalized experience into a cookie-cutter service.

Of course, website templates and UI elements have to be created by graphic designers initially. The need to develop reusable system elements such as templates, buttons, and interfaces has significant importance in the development and execution of a project. This area is where core graphic design principles will shine.

What Skills do you Need to be a UI Designer?

Learning to be a UI designer is not easy. There are specific skills and traits that will make your journey into this career go more smoothly and I’ve listed a few of them for you below. Take a look and see if this describes you:

You have drive

The most important thing to succeed as a UI designer is attitude. If you don’t have a personal drive to learn and grow then you won’t get very far!

You enjoy learning

Being a UI designer means staying up to date on the latest design trends and changes in the industry. Things change fast! If you don’t keep up it’s easy to fall behind and become less relevant.

You’re a team player

UI designers often work as part of a team. This team could consist of other designers, programmers, marketers, salespeople, you name it! So it’s important to be comfortable working with others and communicating with colleagues of all levels. If you find it difficult to take constructive criticism, you might find you have trouble in this field.

You care about people

User Interface design is all about people. After all, they’re the ones who will be using the interfaces you design! If you don’t care about their needs and wants, you won’t get very far in this industry.

When hiring a UI designer, employers will want to see that you’ve mastered the following:

Interaction design principles
Branding, typography and color theory
Wireframing and prototyping
Style guides
User research and personas
Teamwork and communication skills
Key industry tools, including Sketch

More often than not, employers will be more interested in your portfolio than your formal qualifications. As long as you can demonstrate your understanding of core UI design principles, there’s nothing to stop you from marketing yourself as a UI designer.

How to get Started as a UX/UI Designer

1. Understand all the design directions

First of all the most important thing for you now is understanding of what exactly you want to do. Many people ask: “I want to draw illustrations” and the person himself does not know what kind of illustrations? Cartoons or icons or animations? You have to choose for yourself what do you want. No one will do it better than you.

Do you like working on the visual part of design? — If the answer is yes, then you should become a visual designer (UI).
Do you like thinking through the concept of how the product works with the user, make the interface convenient, analyze, test? — then you should become a user experience designer (UX).
Do you like both the first one and the second, plus you like to deeply understand the product, be in charge of the product, know and improve it? — then you should become a product designer.
Like magazines, posters, flyers and other POS-materials, like working with company’s identity — then you should be a graphic designer.
and so on … Some people know a little bit about every design field. Start by finding out which specialization interests you the most. There are a lot of directions (!) Look for something that you will enjoy and can devote a lot of your time!

2. Study the tools for work

How can you succeed if you have not mastered the program you need yet? You are lucky if you are a beginner, then you will not have to switch from Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, you can go directly to Sketch or Figma.

Read about their differences and think about what you need to learn. If you have already chosen the design direction you want to follow, do not be lazy check out Headhunter, Linkedin or any other work finding platform and see what employers are looking for, what programs you should know and go from there.

Below you can find a list of the latest programs that can be useful to know:

Sketch for interface design
Figma for interface design with collaboration capability
Balsamiq for creating layouts
Adobe XD for interface design, prototyping
Invision Appfor prototyping and collaboration
RedPen for collaboration

3. Surround yourself with design

Our advice to you is to dive completely into design, start looking at other people’s work every day. There are millions of resources, below are the ones you can use:

Behance portfolio platform
Dribbble portfolio platform
Awwwards platform-awarded the title of the best in web design

This practice of viewing other people’s works and portfolios will help you enter the design track, see what others are doing (also in good projects there are job descriptions and decision making descriptions), you will become aware of fashion trends, and will get some inspiration.

4. Find mentors and become mentors

The professionals have very little free time, especially for beginners. Therefore, we do not advise you to find yourself a victim and bother that person to teach you design. It takes a lot of time, effort and nerves.

Subscribe to the top designers you like, watch what they read, what conferences they go to, what new programs they study, so without much effort you will be aware of all the popular design events and novelties.

If you are a beginner, you can still become a mentor yourself. For example, you can start writing your own blog about your first steps in the design industry. Or you can talk to your friend about interesting things you learned or found.

Repeating and talking to someone about your newly acquired knowledge will help you to deeper understand the subject and remember the material better.

5. Take course

Many people ask the question if the courses are really necessary. Everyone is different, some people are more interested in and more comfortable with digging into the new profession at home, watching YouTube videos, reading books and articles. Others need a design environment and atmosphere.

If you are the second type, plus you have some financial freedom and time to pass the courses, then take the course! — they will help. Just make sure you make the right choice, view the comments and reviews, and see how popular the school is. Below is the list of schools that I heard about recently:

General Assembly both on-campus and online
Coursera online
Lynda online
Udemy online
Another list, of course, can be found here

6. Create your portfolio and a resume

The last and the MOST IMPORTANT step when you are looking for a job. Many people ask: “Do I need to have a portfolio? Do the employers even look at it? “. Of course, they look and of course, you NEED the portfolio.

Some vacancies even have the note that candidates without a portfolio will not be considered. The portfolio is your business card; by looking at it the employer will decide whether to start the interview process with you or to choose another candidate.

The good news is that there is no need to have your own website (of course, if you have the time and opportunity to create your own site, then you are more than welcome). Therefore, we go to the following online platforms, register and submit our projects over here:

Behance portfolio platform
Dribbble portfolio platform

How Much do UI/UX Designers Charge?

According to salary.com, a UI/UX designer in the US earns between $38 and $53 per hour. Upwork, a global platform for freelancing, puts the average payment for a freelance UI/UX designer at $32 per hour. Payscale also puts the freelance UI/UX designer’s average rate at $38.5 per hour. To charge per week, simply calculate how many hours of work you will be putting in per week.

Arianna Shives, a freelance UX designer from West Virginia, says she charges per project. Before she charges, she takes into consideration the services needed, her current experience level, their timeline, etc., before she charges. Her packages start at $2500.

Ifeoluwa Olatunde from Nigeria says he prefers charging per month,as projects may drag from the client’s end, and he may spend more time than budgeted. His charges start at $1500 for a project of 10 to 15 screens.

Another freelance UI/UX designer from Puerto Rico who would rather be anonymous says she charges according to how simple or complex the project is. For a simple mobile app of about ten screens, she charges between $3000 and $4000. However, for more complex projects exceeding ten pages of design, she charges from $5000 to $15000. For redesigns or corrections, she charges $500 and above, depending on the rework required.

How Much Should I Pay a UX Designer?

The salaries below are an average taken from Indeed, Payscale, and Glassdoor.

United States

Average Salary: US$91,225

The United States has a variety of flourishing tech hubs within its borders. Cities like New York, Seattle, and San Francisco are quite popular for their highly regarded design schools and the presence of industry-leading companies like IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Salaries also vary depending on where you are in the U.S. The following figures are taken from Indeed

San Francisco, CA: US$118,766
New York, NY: US$112,480
Seattle, WA: US$109,043
Los Angeles, CA: US$106,581
Chicago, IL: US$105,359
Denver, CO: US$103,518
Minneapolis, MN: US$102,690
Atlanta, GA: US$101,967
Boston, NY: US$102,023
Dallas, TX: US$101,151
Portland, OR: US$100,968

Canada

Average Salary: US$55,075 – Local Currency: CA$75,885

Canada offers a wide range of UX design positions with most being concentrated in Toronto and Vancouver. This country also hosts numerous notable design agencies and branches including Net Solutions—a 20-year-old agency with previous big-name clients like Yahoo, PayPal, and Microsoft.

Germany

Average Salary: US$53,065
Local Currency: €54,246

United Kingdom

Average Salary: US$49,449 – Local Currency: £43,939

Australia

Average Salary: US$58,598
Local Currency: AU$93,154

UX designers may find the highest pay rates in Sydney and Melbourne, but there are many other blossoming tech communities as well. Adelaide is a city where the UX industry is rapidly growing, meaning a lot of opportunities for designers to put their efforts toward meaningful and impactful projects.

New Zealand

Average Salary: US$49,745 – Local Currency: NZ$87,678

Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand’s largest city Auckland is unsurprisingly a large tech hub boasting the highest UX designer salaries in the region, however, it has a high cost of living to match.

France

Average Salary: US$41,693 – Local Currency: €42,619

It doesn’t take a skilled detective to guess which French city commands the highest salaries for UX design—the capital, Paris. Outside of the City of Love, salaries drop slightly, but so would the cost of living. Cities like Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse could be more attractive options.

South Africa

Average Salary: US$26,883 – Local Currency: R490,579

The range of salary a UX designer can expect to earn varies quite widely in South Africa, with larger cities like Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Cape Town commanding the largest.

China

Average Salary: US$30,752 – Local Currency: ¥222,281

How Much do UX Designers Charge Per Hour?

UI UX Designers typically charge between $75 and $175 per hour, depending on the level of experience and expertise of the designer. Many designers also offer a range of pricing options, such as discounted rates for longer consultations. Overall, UI UX Designers are highly skilled professionals who can help improve the user experience of any website or app.

Project Type	Average Price (per hour)
Interface Layout/Design	$30-$125
Visual Design	$40-$90
Interaction Design	$35-105

How do I Charge UI UX Freelance?

There are 3 ways to charge for your freelance user experience design services: by the hour, by the week, and by the project.

Each of them can be useful pricing methods, but choosing the right one will largely depend on the job. And, once you decide how you’ll charge, you’ll need to determine how much you’ll charge. Let’s look at the different pricing strategies and some ways you can get a clearer idea of what your work is worth.

Per Hour vs. Per Week vs. Per Project Rates

Overall, you will likely make more by charging per project or per week.

But, an hourly rate can be useful too. Someone may come to you and say they have a project that will take X number of hours. In this case, giving an hourly rate makes sense. In other cases, you’ll earn more by choosing a weekly or per project rate.

Freelance Product Designer Jared Erondu shares how he went from charging hourly to charging weekly in a YouTube interview with Dann Petty, creator of the documentary “FREELANCED.”

“What I quickly found is that when you’re working on an hourly basis and as your skill improves over time, you start making the same decisions a lot faster,” Jared said. “In the beginning, you probably spent a lot of time thinking about that onboard flow. And fast forward 12 to 18 months, you’re like, ‘I’ve seen this 10 times. I can do this in 1/10 of the time.’ If you’re charging hourly, you’re making 1/10 the money for providing the exact same values at the company. So I quickly realized I was actually losing money by charging hourly.”

Jared’s story is one that many freelancers can relate to at one point or another in their UX career. And, it illustrates a key component of freelancing: flexibility. Once Jared realized he was not making as much money as he could be, he adjusted his rates and earned more.

Once you’ve considered the scope of the client’s request, you can make an informed decision on whether you want to charge per hour, per week, or per project.