Your number
$12,000
Your rate card
- Day rate$1,150 per day
- Hourlyfor anything that does not fit a day$150 per hour
- A website build$12,000 per project
- Monthly retainera block of days a month, bugs, features, the site watched$9,600 per month
What to charge for each thing (5)
- Landing page, built$3,250 each
- WordPress site$6,500 each
- Custom web app$30,000 each
- Bug fix or small change$325 each
- Monthly maintenance$900 per month
US rates for web developers at your level, adjusted for your market. What you last got wins.
For a website build, the quote is $12,000.
To take home $85,000 after $9,000 of costs and 30% tax you need to bill $134,286 a year. At 24 billable hours a week for 47 weeks that is $125 an hour, $950 a day. Anything under that is a pay cut you did not agree to.
Web developers at your level day at about $1,150 ($700 to $1,600 in New York and LA). Your income math lands under that, so the market number is the one to quote; the gap is a raise you are owed.
A website build runs $3,000 to $20,000 and takes about 80 hours of your time; at your hourly that is $12,000. The number is the higher of the two, because the client is buying the outcome, not the hours.
A retainer is the month, not the hours: a block of days a month, bugs, features, the site watched. It is priced about 20% under the same work bought one at a time, in exchange for the certainty; three months minimum, or it is not a retainer.