Ref PR 02 · Practice and business How to price freelance illustration work
Method Edition of 20/08/2026 also filed under: estimates, licensing, terms
Pricing: the act of turning a described job into a figure, using either the time it will take or the value of the use being licensed, and stating which of the two you used.
In short
- Time pricing answers to your costs. Licence pricing answers to the client's use.
- The same drawing can carry very different fees, legitimately, because the licence differs.
- A figure you cannot explain out loud is a figure you will discount under pressure.
1. Two models
Almost every illustration fee is built one of two ways. Time based pricing sells days or half days at a rate you calculated from your own costs: it suits production work, storyboards, retained studio work and anything where the client controls the scope from day to day. Licence based pricing sells a defined use of a finished picture: it suits editorial, publishing, advertising and any job where the same drawing could be worth ten times more in a different context.
The models are not rivals. A common structure is a licence fee for the use, with a day rate named in the same document to cover extra work that falls outside the brief.
2. Building a day rate
A day rate is not a wage. It has to carry the days you cannot bill, the equipment, the software subscriptions, the accountant, the insurance, the pension and the tax. Build it from the bottom in four steps.
- Target income: what you need to take home in a year, after tax.
- Business costs: everything the business spends in a year, listed from last year's books rather than from memory.
- Tax provision: the share of gross income your national system will take, plus social contributions where they apply.
- Billable days: the days you actually invoice for.
The rate is then the first three added together and divided by the fourth. The step people get wrong is the fourth, so count it honestly: a year holds about 260 weekdays (52 weeks of five). Take off public holidays, the holiday you intend to take, and a few days for illness. From what remains, take off the time spent on quoting, invoicing, bookkeeping, outreach, unpaid roughs and admin. A working illustrator who bills two days in three is doing well, and that ratio, not the daily figure, is what most people discover they got wrong.
Recalculate once a year from your own records. The first version is a guess; the second one is evidence.
3. The five licence variables
When you sell use rather than time, five variables define what is being sold. Leave any of them out of the paperwork and the default is an argument.
| Variable | The question it answers | Typical wording | What happens if it is missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media | Where the picture may appear | One national magazine, print and its digital edition | The client assumes every channel they own |
| Territory | In which countries | United Kingdom and Ireland | Global use is assumed by default |
| Term | For how long | Twelve months from first publication | Use becomes indefinite in practice |
| Exclusivity | Whether you may license it elsewhere | Non exclusive, category exclusive, or exclusive | Exclusivity gets assumed without being paid for |
| Extent | How big the use is | Print run, impressions, number of sites, cover or spot | The fee stops tracking the value of the use |
Wide table: scroll it sideways.
Two words deserve care. Exclusive means you cannot license the same picture to anyone else during the term, including to yourself for prints, so it costs more than a non exclusive licence. Buyout means nothing in law: it means whatever the contract says it means, so make the contract say it.
4. Estimate against quotation
An estimate is a figure attached to a description of the job. If the description changes, the figure changes, and saying so at the start makes the later conversation routine. A quotation is a fixed price for a fixed scope, which only works if the scope is genuinely fixed and the revision policy is written down.
Define a revision before you offer any. A revision is a change requested within the agreed brief. A change of brief is new work, and it is priced as new work. Two rounds of revision, named in the estimate, covers most jobs and gives you a clean place to stop.
| Document | What it fixes | When it moves | What it must repeat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Estimate | A figure for a described job | When the description changes | Brief, deadline, licence, revision rounds |
| Quotation | A price for a fixed scope | Only by written agreement | Scope, exclusions, validity date |
| Invoice | What is now owed | Never, once issued | Reference, dates, terms, licence granted |
Wide table: scroll it sideways.
5. Clauses worth their space
- Deposit: a share of the fee before work starts, standard for direct clients and new accounts.
- Kill fee: what is owed if the job is cancelled after work has begun, usually stated as a share of the fee that rises with the stage reached.
- Payment terms: the number of days from invoice to payment, and the interest applied after that. Many countries give freelancers a statutory right to interest on late commercial payments; check the national rule and cite it in the terms.
- Ownership of roughs: sketches and unused concepts stay with you unless the contract says otherwise.
- Credit line: whether your name appears, and where.
- Approval chain: who signs off. One named person, not a committee.
6. Where money is lost
The recurring losses are not dramatic. They are: pricing against other freelancers instead of against your own costs; forgetting that tax is not income; agreeing unlimited revisions to seem easy to work with; handing over full copyright when a two year licence was all the client needed; and doing paid work on a promise while an unsigned document sits in a drafts folder.
Published guidance exists and is worth owning: the Graphic Artists Guild publishes the Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines, revised across successive editions, and the Association of Illustrators in the United Kingdom publishes fee guidance and contract templates for members. Both explain method as well as market, which is the part that survives a change of currency.