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2026 edition

The freelance Time & Money Report.

Once a year, we aggregate honest data from Ensaria's users — anonymously, with consent — and publish what the freelance economy actually looks like at the hour-and-euro level. The 2026 edition is being assembled now; the full PDF drops in Q1 2027.

PREVIEW · FULL REPORT Q1 2027
Preview highlights

Four numbers from the in-progress dataset.

€73/h
median effective rate (quoted: €110/h)

The gap between what freelancers charge and what they earn per billable hour averaged 34% across the sample.

62%
share of worked hours that were billable

The other 38% went to admin, sales, unbilled revisions, and pitches that didn't land.

23h
real weekly capacity (after recurring work + buffer)

The "40-hour week" is a myth. The median freelancer who tracked honestly had 23 billable hours per week.

+38%
average project overrun in fixed-price work

Designers, writers, and consultants quoting fixed-price projects ran nearly 40% over their quoted hours on average.

Methodology

Sourced from real data, opt-in only.

The report aggregates anonymised, opt-in data from Ensaria users who've granted explicit permission. No identifying details. Median, percentile, and distribution numbers only — never raw individual records. The opt-in toggle lives in Settings → Privacy and is off by default; you have to actively enable it.

This is the opposite of how most freelance surveys work: instead of asking people to estimate what they earned last year on a Google Form, we look at what they actually tracked in real time. The numbers are unflattering and useful in equal measure.

Stay in the loop

Get the full report when it drops.

The 2026 edition ships as a free PDF in Q1 2027. Subscribe below for the launch email — one message, no follow-up sequence.

Or, while you wait — try the real-rate calculator to see where your own numbers sit.