
Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer? - cronjobma
What are you averaging per year, as a freelance app developer?
======
throwawaytree
I make $7 US dollars an hour designing and developing apps as a full-time
employee. I’m paying off a new car, pay rent, and live quite a good life
compared to others in my country (third-world country).

Compared to other countries salaries, mine is awful. Compared to local
salaries, it’s actually about 4x the minimum wage. The cost of living here is
quite low (I pay 150$ per month for a single bedroom with bathroom). Where
this kind of salary hurts is when:

\- traveling

\- buying online

\- saving for the future (maybe I will want to move overseas, and I also need
savings for emergencies)

\- paying for study (courses, uni overseas)

\- buying work computers or phones

\- buying software or services (e.g. Photoshop, Sketch)

~~~
gargarplex
My friend Jay El-Kaake and I wrote two books on freelance consulting. We would
be happy to send you both copies for free. It is a shame, for a variety of
reasons, that someone intelligent and competent is earning $7 USD hourly.
Email zack@codefor.cash

~~~
drchaim
I'm so much interested in that book to improve my business skills. Any
reference?

~~~
gargarplex
If you're interested in my book, the link is in my profile; it has practical
tips specifically for freelance
programmers/developers/consultants/coders/software engineering people. But if
you are purely interested in improving your business skills, then I recommend
reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

Also, I'm a developer but my father is a Silicon Valley business lawyer. He
wrote a chapter of "The Software Engineer's Guide to Freelance Consulting"
that is available for free.
[https://codefor.cash/legalideas](https://codefor.cash/legalideas)

------
amingilani
I don't want to share my exact rate, but I easily make a month what a Silicon
Valley engineer at a seed startup can.. and since I live in a developing
country it's an order of magnitude more than most people my age.

If you're a brilliant engineer and are looking to work for a freelance app
developer, I recommend Toptal[1].

While I now work at Toptal, I first joined the company through their freelance
network, got a project with one of their clients, and eventually was onboarded
onto the company itself. My experience with them started as someone that
"wanted to work for international clients out of Pakistan" and it was
brilliant. I whole-heartedly recommend joining Toptal for freelancers looking
to get something going on the side. You can choose your own rate, so you can
go as low as $10, or go as crazy as, jeez, I dunno, $500.. although the higher
you are, the more difficult it is to land a client.

[1]: Toptal Referral link: [https://www.toptal.com/#contract-just-respected-
software-arc...](https://www.toptal.com/#contract-just-respected-software-
architects)

~~~
simon83
From their website[1]:

The Top 3%

"Everyone at Toptal has a proven track record and elite industry experience.
There are Toptalers from Wharton, MIT, CERN, and Google, as well as Django
committers, Top 100 Rails contributors, leading global designers and art
directors, professors, founders and more."

Holy crap man I'm not even going to bother, I'm none of that.

 _Impostor syndrome intesifies_

[1]
[https://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent](https://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent)

~~~
amingilani
Don't let that get to you, they have an intense screening process but after
you pass it, that's just it.

I'm 25, I have a degree in Economics and Finance, and no formal computer
education. All I have is my self-taught experience.

The first time I tried, for all my confidence, I flunked it really bad, which
came as a shock to me. I mean, I _knew_ I was good. The recruiter gave me a
timeout and said I could reapply later. The next time I'd studied my butt off,
solved advanced level coding exercises and reached 4 Kyu on codewars.com

At that point, I breezed through the exercises, and when I was asked to build
a live project, I had fun learning and creating my first React web app.. I'd
been meaning to learn React, but never had time before.

Of the dozens (dozens!) of people I've referred to Toptal none have passed the
screening process. However, I strongly believe it's because they didn't push
through it. I know the screening process itself can be beat if you take the
time to improve yourself.

Besides, on the other side of the screening process is the greatest community
of Ninja developers I've ever seen in my life! Anything I have trouble with, I
can discuss on our community chat. I've never been part of a community like
this before. And the clients are absolutely brilliant, since Toptal screens
clients too!

~~~
simon83
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. You are working purely remote, I
assume? I'd be curious to see how I'd fare in their screening process.

Can you tell me roughly how many hours in total the screening process takes?
(excluding the time you took to study) And how many hours did you spend on the
live project? Was it an actual project, or just a dummy one?

I'm asking because I'm working full time, and the whole screening process
sounds very time intensive. Not sure if all of this could be done after work
hours, or if I'd have to take a couple of days of vacation.

~~~
amingilani
Yes, I work purely remotely.

The screening process shouldn't be that tough. It's broken into multiple
stages. The first three are short sessions. The longest of which was around (I
think, don't hold me to it) an hour.

The project is a confidential project you make according to specifications,
but they give you enough time to pull it off, even with a full-time job.

~~~
simon83
Thanks! Maybe I'll give it a shot...

------
mthomasb
Hey all, Matt from Bonsai (YC W16) here. We provide contracts, proposals,
invoices, and other tools to freelancers, mostly developers and designers.

We used our anonymized data to break out what freelancers earn with different
experience levels, skill sets, locations, etc:
[https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates](https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates)

~~~
stingraycharles
Why is Europe excluded ?

~~~
mthomasb
When we first launched we didn't have enough data for Europe, but we do now
and will update it soon with rates for most European countries and a few
others.

------
seibelj
I know a guy making $10-15k a month from his apps. He's a full time employee
now, but when he had kids, he stayed home, taught himself android, and made
apps for 5 years while his wife worked full time. Now they are in maintenance
mode and print cash.

~~~
aerovistae
What apps did he make? How did he make money off of them?

~~~
seibelj
I don't want to reveal anything that might jeopardize his apps with
competition (and therefore hurt his family's income). He made games (more like
word games and puzzles than real-time) and monetized them with ads. One trick
he did was to rebrand his existing games with different titles, graphics, etc.
to create his own competition, so sometimes he owns multiple apps in the top
results for the same game category. Very impressive.

~~~
sbov
Re-branding has always been an interesting thing to me, and the companies I
work at (imho) underutilize it. I have friends who work in manufacturing, and
all of their "competition" is made by their company, it's just branded towards
different market segments.

------
defarobot
I'm 1/3 of a three person dev. shop — does that count? We charge 250/person/hr
and have been doing 40+ hr weeks for the last few years. We'll also make some
margin if we need to sub out occasionally as client needs increase. This
stability is really shaky though as all this work was from a single client.

~~~
k__
How do consulting shops charge so much?

I mean, yes they got higher overhead than a single dev, but that's their own
problem and not the problem of the client, so what's the difference fro a
single dev here?

~~~
lojack
You're asking a few questions here. I can answer from my experience working at
a consulting shop that charged a lot of money...

> Are they charging more because of overhead?

Partially. There's overhead you wouldn't get with a single developer like
office space and administrative overhead. A big overlooked piece of overhead
is sales overhead. It's much easier to find 40 hours of consulting work a week
than 120 hours of work. If its a premium development shop, the developer
salaries are probably higher as well. This all may cut into the margins, but
it doesn't really explain why they charge so much.

> Why do they charge so much?

Because they have clients who are willing to pay that much. Plain and simple.

> What does the client get that they wouldn't with a single developer?

Some companies are bad at finding and retaining talent. This includes
contractors. They also might not know how to manage a project. For a lot of
companies, they need something done, but this simply isn't their area of
expertise. Some single developers can manage their own projects, but sometimes
they need more than just a single developer. The workload may be much higher
than what a single person could manage, and hiring 3 individual developers can
be much less efficient than hiring a team of 3 developers who already work
well together. Perhaps they need a designer as well, or they're looking for a
project manager who is really good at communicating business needs with them.

~~~
k__
So you're saying it's a team factor and a single dev can't get into that
200€/person/hour range?

~~~
lojack
I'd never attach a number to anything I said because its all relative, and I'd
just be asking to be proven wrong. Like all things its pretty relative.
There's teams that can charge more than developers and developers that can
charge more as teams.

The number you threw out doesn't seem unreasonable though.

~~~
k__
I don't want to question your knowledge :)

I'm just trying to understand what is needed to get ahead of the game :)

------
dmilicic
I'm an Android and Ruby on Rails dev and I've been working as a freelance for
a couple of years now.

I am making quadruple the amount my peers are making in Eastern Europe while
working less hours and remotely.

Most clients I get is through networks such as Toptal, which I would
wholeheartedly recommend. I'm also a member of Gigster, which I can't quite
recommend at the moment, and there is CodeControl and Povio labs which I would
also recommend.

I think the best approach is to sign up for a number of these networks. It
will definitely kickstart your freelance career and will help you have a
constant stream of potential projects and offers.

However, do avoid websites such as Upwork or other networks which don't have a
technical interview process as these are very likely flooded with extremely
low-wage and/or low-quality workers. It is much harder to land a good client
on these websites.

Here's my Toptal referral link: [https://www.toptal.com/#work-with-the-best-
programmers-today](https://www.toptal.com/#work-with-the-best-programmers-
today)

But again, don't just apply there :)

~~~
sdiq
Just asked someone else this question:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14795245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14795245).
Maybe you could also give your perspectives on the same.

------
jasonswett
For the last few years I've made a little over $100K/year. This is mostly from
doing staff-aug-style Ruby on Rails programming at $100/hr.

This year I've transitioned into a mix of coding and training. From training
I've earned between $5,000/week and $13,000/week.

~~~
cronjobma
How does 'training' look like. You give in-person workshops? Sell online
courses?

~~~
jasonswett
In-person workshops, usually 3-day or 5-day classes for big companies.

------
throwawaycash
I make about 0-300k/year fixing apps that others either weren't able to finish
or where they architected themselves into scaling issues. Aside from that, I
am a part time programming consultant who makes about 80k a year (I have a
chronic illness so I spend a lot of time not working, and it's helpful for me
to work in intense bursts with rests in between. It's difficult for me to have
normal full time employment in the US because of the chronic illness.)

It averages out to about $250k/year on 30/h/week

~~~
neuronsguy
This sounds cool. Two questions:

1\. Without giving away secrets, how do you find such clients?

2\. You must have some great stories. Would you care to share any?

~~~
throwawaycash
1\. I found my first few clients literally through happenstance -- people were
describing problems they were having with enough clarity that my 20 years of
dev experience made it fairly clear that the problems were recoverable. Now, I
mostly find customers through referrals and by attending networking events and
talking to people who sound like they have both money and problems.

2\. My customers have the expectation of confidentiality. I will make these
generalizable statements though: understanding ORMs and understanding SQL are
related but not identical; CAP is hard; picking keys is hard; confounding your
data model and your interface is painful for users; sharding is hard; pick UX
libraries based on how consistent they are not on how new they are; developers
that are producing 10x the code may not be producing 10x the value; if week on
week, your project is consistently n/n+1 * 100% done, you have a estimation
problem and just the fact that you're agile doesn't help with this; the whole
point of tags was that not everyone agrees on categories; queuing theory is
real; your spreadsheets aren't as consistent as you think; the fact that an
engineer can figure out the bigO of a sort doesn't mean they understand
efficiency in real life.

------
bintreethrow
I have 3 API services, 2 desktop apps & 3 iOS+Android apps that I have
developed over the course of 7 years after my CS engineering degree in a third
world country, pretty much like the @throwawaytree here. My earnings are at
average rounded converted to 6000 USD/month less server/misc. costs. I live
with my parents(no rent) in a village in this state in India
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala) .
I am 29. I think I have enough savings for a lifetime and most of the revenues
are on auto pilot.

~~~
spraak
How are your apps and services monetised?

------
chris_engel
I am a a web (app) developer - not sure if that counts :)

Right now I am working as a frontend lead for react apps and make 75-80€ /
hour. I am living in Frankfurt, Germany.

There is a huge shortage of experienced javascript developers here.

~~~
k__
Are you doing this full-time (20days * 8hours * 75€ / month)?

Are you charging per hour?

~~~
chris_engel
Yes and yes - I am working at my clients office mostly - around 1.5 days/week
is homeoffice via remote desktop.

~~~
k__
Ah, nice.

I read charging per hour is bad. I charge per month, but I don't make 80€ per
hour (also React stuff), haha.

~~~
chris_engel
My client wanted it that way. And they also pre-booked hours until mid of
december. I guess they try what they can to keep talent.

------
bhyam
The site Codementor just did a survey of 5,000+ freelance app developers to
see how much they made in different countries across the world.

The U.S., New Zealand and Australia had the highest average hourly rates at
$70/hr, and Northern Africa had the lowest at $41/hr

Here's the full article: [https://www.codementor.io/blog/how-much-do-
freelance-develop...](https://www.codementor.io/blog/how-much-do-freelance-
developers-cost-around-the-world-2626eu0rzy)

------
bsvalley
App freelancing (in the US) has been killed by cheap hourly rates thanks to
globalization. As a client, why would I pay $100/h for a local Dev versus
$10/h for a dev located in India or anywhere else where the cost of living is
much lower?

As a full time "app" developer I make $200K/y in the US. I tried freelancing
on the side but it's pretty worthless. We're talking pennies by hour spent
coding.

~~~
huebnerob
I know many people who are doing very well in the mobile development
freelancing space, at least in the NYC area. Many gigs are still onsite or at
least benefit from some kind of physical presence, so if that's a factor, then
it's a much more level playing field.

I'm a full-time mobile developer as well. Haven't taken a crack at contracting
yet myself, but I think that the key to success is a tried and true one:
connections, connections, connections. If you're going on these freelance-farm
type job sites, you're in a race to the bottom for poor quality gigs.

Also, I've heard that it's pretty hard to 'get started on the side' because
many decent contracts want more of your time than you can reasonably offer
when you have a full-time gig. Kind of a chicken-or-the-egg problem with that,
but I figure that's the risk of it.

------
BartSaM
I see not many people want to associate their usernames with income info. I am
a web app and mobile app developer and I make around $25K a year. This
excludes any extra and side projects or gigs from other areas (marketing). I
plan to increase this to $60K by starting doing niche projects soon and
entirely focusing on development, but for now, I am focusing more on my side
projects.

------
jiblyyyy
Varies from 5 to 6-figures/y, working mainly for large companies, mostly in
the edtech space. ([http://jibly.com](http://jibly.com))

------
HekaHouse
From 120-180k over the last 5 years or so, typically doing prototypes and MVPs
for startups across platforms.

Almost every project involves web servers, web clients and mobile clients.

Mostly self taught but also studied cognitive engineering which has helped a
lot in understanding how to create systems and work with AI.

~~~
el_benhameen
If you don't mind answering the usual questions, how'd you get your start, and
how do you pick up clients?

~~~
HekaHouse
There are a lot of start up hubs in big cities, I recently started working
with some of the people involved in creating these in Ohio and they are
becoming my primary resource for work.

Instead of considering projects as clients, I look for collaboration efforts
where there is a path to equity. Regardless it almost always begins as some
sort of contract for an initial trial collaboration.

------
mattlohkamp
I'm charging $75/hr for web app programming work, as a freelance front end
developer, in a lead dev role. I'm working in Angular, Node.js, and using an
Electron wrapper to adapt our web app to the desktop. The project is a sales
tool for a big tech brand. I work from home, my coworkers are rad, and my boss
is an angel.

This is the best contract dev position I've ever had, possibly the best I ever
will have.

------
asow92
I work a full time iOS gig and do freelancing on the side. Typically I bring
in an extra 10-20k per year at around $100 per hour depending on the job.

~~~
rismay
Sounds awesome. I'm an iOS developer and hoping to go the same route. Where
are you based out of?

~~~
asow92
Good old NYC.

~~~
newbear
Should I learn swift if I want to go this route? Or should I focus on
something like ReactNative or something else entirely?

------
chuck32
In the UK (not in london) as a freelancer in Ruby on Rails I charge £40 / hr.
For contract jobs (you basically work exactly like a permanent employee but
get paid as a freelancer - so no job security or benefits and contracts
usually last 3 months - 1 year at most) i was paid between £300-350 / day. In
London it seems the same type of jobs usually pay £400-450.

~~~
srednalfden
How is the market for Rails outside London? I've seen a few comments that said
it's hard to find work outside the capital.

~~~
chuck32
In Manchester there are plenty of opportunities for rails work. Also companies
around here seem a lot more flexible about semi remote working i.e. you
commute from Manchester to Liverpool/Sheffield/Leeds etc. once a week but work
from home the rest of the time. In London remote working seems to be frowned
upon and will at most be one day a week from home.

------
simon83
I'm not freelancing, but I'd love to hear advice from other freelancers.

I have 11 years working experience as a full stack web developer and I think
I'm pretty good at it by now. I'm currently employed and underpaid, and I live
in Germany. I have no idea how I'd go about freelancing. What would be your
advice to get me started?

~~~
dmilicic
I actually wrote a comment which may help you:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791665)

~~~
simon83
Thanks a lot!

I saw toptal mentioned in another comment, and their "Why 3%" page is quite
unnerving. I don't work at Wharton, MIT, CERN, or Google, and I'm not a Top
100 Django or Rails contributor. Or is this just the 3% of the 3%, and the
remaining 97% are more mortal?

~~~
dmilicic
Don't worry about that number. If you have ever passed a typical technical
interview then I believe you can also get into Toptal.

~~~
simon83
Thanks, I'll take a closer look into those freelancer networks you mentioned,
it looks quite interesting.

------
b_zak
I live in France. Beside my work, I take 4 weeks a year o teach software
development (AngularJS, Spring, Struts, Apache CXF,...). The rates in France
start at 300€/day (7hours).

Additionally, I develop apps (APIs, AngularJS apps, etc.) 10 to 20 hours a
week (evenings + weekends) with rates starting at 35€/hour.

------
morcutt
Last year ~115k. If I was actively seeking clients all year, I could get that
number up much higher. I want to work on side projects though. That was with a
40/hour a month retainer and one big job that lasted ~5 months.

~~~
rrrrrraul
Retainer, that sounds like an awesome setup. How many years have you been
freelancing?

------
jfmandroid
The rates vary a lot depending of where the freelancer is located.

From the most expensive to the more cheapest (in general):

\- US & UK

\- West Europe

\- Est Europe & Latin America

\- Middle Est & Asia

In Latin America the rates normally go from 20 to 40 USD per hour depending of
experience.

------
drchaim
This threads make me mad. In a theorically developed country making about
10€/h from freelancing as a side job. Mostly web with Python/Django and
frontend.

~~~
chuck32
Damn! Not sure exactly which country you're in but the minimum wage of most
western european countries is between €8-10 / hr. There are cleaners who make
the same money as you!

Seems like you've got to up your game. Don't get mad though, take this as a
lesson and learn from it. If anything this should be good news because now you
know you can earn way more than you are currently for the same exact work.

------
jibreel
I do Web and API for apps. while my rate is 20$/hour i most often end up with
a per-project price.

------
ne0free
I had one client, he paid me 65-70$ for scraping escort sites.. He had it
coded from some one in portugese, it was pho scraper.. So i added 7 more sites
.. and finally i quit becoz i was not getting private time .. every time there
were people arround me Btw i am from india.. ne1 looking for freelancer (php,
nodejs, go, etc..) can get in touch..

~~~
chuck32
lol what do you mean by "not getting private time"?

------
duby
As database consultant/developer I can go from 60$/h to 170$/h.

------
testb
College student, doing Android + light backend work.

~80/90/hr.

Caveat is that I've only had 1 client so far.

~~~
newbear
How did you end up getting that rate?

~~~
testb
I had a previous relation with him and knew that they were getting quotes from
other mobile agencies in the area. Given that info, I knew I could comfortably
name <$100/hr and still be the cheapest.

Of course it also helped to have the relevant experience/portfolio. I also
prototyped a few wireframes (1 user flow) for free which gave me a leg up
because he knew what I had in mind regarding the project.

------
juanpotato
I'll tell you once I get any clients :(

