Freelancer Rate Benchmarking Calculator for Agency Owners
Why This is an Opportunity
The problem is information asymmetry: agencies don't know if they're overpaying or lowballing freelancers, and freelancers don't know if their rates are competitive for agency work specifically (which differs from direct-to-client rates). Existing salary sites like Glassdoor focus on full-time roles; freelancer rate data is scattered across outdated blog posts. The app collects anonymous rate submissions (role, experience, location, rate, project type) and displays aggregated ranges. Simple CRUD with an anonymous submission form and a search/filter dashboard. The value compounds as more agencies contribute data. Seed it with publicly available rate survey data to bootstrap.
Key Pain Points
- •Salary sites report full-time compensation, not freelancer project or day rates for agency subcontracting
- •Asking rate questions in Slack communities yields anecdotal responses with no statistical reliability
- •Rate expectations vary wildly by whether the freelancer is US-based, nearshore, or offshore — no easy way to compare
- •Agency owners either overpay (hurting margins) or lowball (losing top freelancers to competitors)
- •Published rate guides from staffing firms are years old and don't reflect post-2023 market shifts
Original Discovery
Agency owners hiring freelancers — designers, developers, copywriters, video editors — constantly wrestle with whether a quoted rate is fair for the skill level and market. They ask around in Slack groups, check outdated salary surveys, or just guess. A benchmarking tool where agency owners input the role, skill level, location, and project type, then see a calculated range based on structured rate data contributed anonymously by other agencies, would replace the current guesswork with something actionable. Think Glassdoor but hyper-focused on freelancer day rates for agency subcontracting.
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