The pricing advice this trade runs on is built from a small number of figures that get copied from article to article until they look like data. Earlier this year we put roughly seventy of those figures through verification: rate tables, project-cost brackets, the confident percentages that open every pricing guide. Sixteen were confirmed to a source that says what the claim says. Nine were refuted outright. The rest could not be traced either way and are treated as if they do not exist.
The working record behind this page is a dated dossier, updated one claim at a time, and the method is described at the end. The two lists are the point of the page.
What survived
Every figure below has a named population and a year, which is the whole difference between a benchmark and a rumour. Read the population before the number.
| Claim | Figure | Source and year | |---|---|---| | Surveyed web designers, hourly | median $92.75, average $100; revenue tiers $76–$131 | State of Web Designer Pricing, Web Designer Academy, 2025 (n=208, ~60% US) | | Freelance designers by seniority | junior $20–35, mid $35–60, senior $60–150+ an hour | Ruul, April 2026, corroborated by PayScale and ZipRecruiter; medium confidence | | UX design skill, US | average $40.62 an hour | PayScale, May 2026 (n=929) | | Illustrator, US | median $29.27 an hour; range $17.45–$73.98 | PayScale, March 2026 (n=156) | | UK freelance day rates, converted | designers ~$63, creatives ~$69, UX ~$75 an hour | YunoJuno 2026 Rates Report, 182,000+ data points, UK | | Pricing model | 82% of surveyed web designers use package or project pricing | State of Web Designer Pricing, 2025 | | Scope creep | ~52% of projects experienced scope creep | PMI, Pulse of the Profession, 2018 (project management generally) | | Late payment | 29% of freelance invoices paid at least one day late | Bonsai, from its own invoicing data, published January 2026 | | Non-payment, New York | 62% of surveyed freelancers lost income to non-payment | Freelancers Union / Authors Guild, New York, 2022 | | Proposal close rate | 36% (2024) and 34% (2026) of proposals sent through Proposify closed | Proposify, State of Proposals 2024 and 2026 (B2B sales teams, not freelancers) | | Written-contract statutes | NY $800 (Aug 2024), Illinois five hundred dollars (Jul 2024), California $250 (Jan 2025), Los Angeles $600 (Jul 2023) | the statutes themselves, verified August 2026 |
Three of those rows carry a warning in the dossier that is worth carrying here. The web-designer survey is a coaching-programme population and skews high; broad aggregators for the same job title land near $35 an hour. The Proposify figures describe sales teams using one proposal tool and are not a freelance benchmark. And the PMI number covers project management across industries, not creative work.
What was refuted
These circulate widely. Each one was traced and found either to have no source, or to have a source that says something different. They are named here precisely so you recognise them when you meet them.
The claim that "57% of web projects cost $2,500–$9,999," sometimes with "2% exceed $10k" attached, was refuted outright: there is no survey behind it, and it is a specimen of the fixed-fee table genre, which failed as a class.
"Value-based pricing earns $96k versus $58k hourly," or a "66% gap," is untraceable and failed verification.
"Freelancers using value-based pricing earn 42% more per project" was traced in August 2026 to a guide published in April 2026 that attributes it to "a 2026 data study," and every other appearance we could find cites that guide, so the citation is circular and the figure is refuted. There is no study.
"The average freelance proposal close rate is 43%," credited to Proposify, is refuted as stated, because Proposify's own reports (2024 and 2026) say 36% and 34%, for B2B sales teams. Wrong number, wrong population.
"63% of freelancers wait more than 30 days to be paid" and "one in three wait more than 60 days" both failed verification.
"91% experienced late wages; 54% were delayed three or more months" failed verification.
Granular UI/UX seniority sub-bands from a talent marketplace, and a set of three UX seniority bands from another, failed verification: neither could be traced to a survey anyone would name.
And one that sits in the confirmed table's shadow: "72% of projects experience scope creep," attributed to PMI. It is not PMI's figure and does not appear in their research. The real 2018 number is about 52%, and the scope-creep page walks through where each came from.
The gaps, stated as gaps
No fixed-fee project range survived for logos, brand identity, websites, illustration project fees, or photography day rates. Not one, in any currency. That is not a failure of searching; it is the finding. The tables exist because articles need tables, and the numbers in them are, as far as we could establish, made up or copied from something made up.
No reliable data exists on how common written contracts are among freelancers, or on what share of projects take a deposit and of what size. The "50% up front" figure you see everywhere is a norm, and a good one, and it is not a statistic. We describe it as standard practice and never as a percentage of anything.
The method, briefly
Each claim went to three independent checkers, each told to find the primary source and to try to break the claim. A claim was confirmed only when the three converged on a real source that says what the claim says, with a population and a year attached. It was refuted only when they converged on evidence that the source does not exist or does not say it. Everything else was recorded as unverified and is not used. Since the first pass, individual claims have been added or moved to the refuted list one at a time, each with the trace written down, and the freshness date at the top of this page is the last time any of it was touched.
The practical consequence is short. If a number on a pricing page has no source and no year, it is decoration. Price from what the outcome is worth to the client, check it against your own floor, and leave the tables to the people who need something to put in a table.
Common questions
- Is there a reliable average price for a logo or a website?
- Not one we could find. Every fixed-fee project range we tested for logos, brand identity, websites, illustration and photography failed verification, usually because the article citing it was citing another article. The hourly figures that did survive come from surveys with named populations, which is why the usable method is to price from the client's outcome and check the result against an hourly floor, rather than against a table.
- What is the 'adversarial three-vote' method?
- Each claim was handed to three independent checkers with instructions to find the primary source and to try to break the claim. A claim was confirmed only if the checkers converged on a real source that says what the claim says, with its population and year; it was refuted only if they converged on evidence that the source does not exist or does not say it. Anything in between was recorded as unverified rather than rounded either way.
Sources checked 2026-08-29