Hourly rates or fixed prices have been the only available pricing options when setting freelance rates for services — but they don’t have to be.
At Wethos, we work to demystify pricing in the marketing industry to build a necessary structure backed up by more than just the hours you put in, or the fixed rate your gut thought would get you the job.
Should you be paid for 10 minutes of work if it took you 10 years of experience to execute something efficiently? Does Kelly Blue Book recommend car prices based on an arbitrary number? Of course not — so we created a system around value-based pricing.
That question matters even more now that AI is part of how so many freelancers work. If AI helps you finish a project in half the time, should you charge half as much? We don't think so. Value-based pricing holds up because time is only one of the four areas we look at. For the bigger picture, check out our guide to freelance pricing. Here, we'll stick to the math.
What is value-based pricing?
It’s a recommendations system that puts the work first. Take a specific service you offer — whether a workshop you’re leading, a website you’re designing, or a blog piece you’re writing — and price it objectively on how much work you’ll need to do in order to complete it. We define that through four key areas:
Expertise: accounting for the proficiency needed to be able to tackle this work
Complexity: adjusting for the difficulty in this specific task
Time: assuming how long this will take to accomplish
Uncertainty: including buffer for services that are vague or have a lot of unknowns upfront
The four areas above are equally weighted and given a recommended point-value from 1 [very low], 2 [low], 3 [medium], 5 [high], or 8 [very high]. With the pricing levers, it’s simple to calculate the overall value of the service. The higher the rating the further you move the lever line. In the example below, the average value of the service is 4 points.
2+8+3+2=15
15/4=3.75
Rounding, we get 4
But we understand pricing doesn’t just stop at the tangible service you provide, it could also vary by client type.
You might be inclined to give nonprofits or even startups a lower rate than a large enterprise client like Pepsi. We get that! We would have done the same back in our agency days. So the system also takes client type into account:
Nonprofit clients have a multiple of $150 per point
Startup clients have a multiple of $300 per point
Enterprise clients have a multiple of $450 per point
Coming back to that example, if you were pricing for a nonprofit, the cost would be $600 (4x$150). But for an enterprise client, it would be $1,800 (4x$450). Need to change a price half way through a project? No sweat, our platform can easily handle that for you too.
How does AI change the pricing levers?
When freelancers start using AI tools, many assume they should lower their prices. We'd push back on that. AI doesn't take value out of your work — it changes where that value sits across the four areas:
Time usually goes down, and it's the area AI affects most. It's worth being honest about that, but remember that time covers the whole project, including calls, revisions, and reviews, not just the hours spent producing the deliverable.
Expertise goes up. When anyone can generate a rough first version, the real skill is knowing what to ask for, what to keep, and what to throw out.
Complexity stays about the same, but it shows up in different places, like fitting the work into a client's existing systems or keeping a brand consistent across everything you deliver.
Uncertainty goes up. If you're using AI, you're responsible for anything it gets wrong, for where your client's files end up, and for questions about who owns AI-assisted work. That's exactly the kind of risk this area is meant to account for.
A value-based pricing example: before & after AI
Let's say a startup client wants a homepage redesign. Before AI was part of your process, you might have scored it like this:
Expertise 5, Complexity 5, Time 8, Uncertainty 3
5+5+8+3=21
21/4=5.25
Rounding, we get 5, which comes out to $1,500 at $300 per point for a startup client
Now say you're using AI for layout options, asset prep, and a first pass at the code. It's tempting to drop Time from 8 to 3 and leave the other three areas alone:
5+5+3+3=16
16/4=4, which comes out to $1,200
That's 20% less for the same homepage. Instead, rescore all four areas to reflect how the work has changed:
Expertise 8, since you're sorting through a lot more options and deciding which one fits the brand
Complexity 5, since the project itself hasn't changed
Time 3, since it really is faster
Uncertainty 5, since you're now accountable for everything the AI produced and for the client files that went into it
8+5+3+5=21
21/4=5.25, which rounds to 5, or $1,500
The price stays the same, your client gets their homepage sooner, and you still get paid for your expertise. So if you lower your Time score because of AI, take another look at Expertise and Uncertainty while you're at it.
At the end of the day, these are all just recommendations.
We not only allow for changes to the service or project price, but we encourage them. You’ll notice we don’t change prices based on location, as we believe you shouldn’t get paid more or less based on where you live, but we would love your thoughts on it.
The system we’ve created only gets smarter the larger our community gets, and as more people adjust prices, we can begin to provide real-time, peer-sourced data on pricing. Our recommendations aren’t perfect, and that’s okay; we have decades of experience in the freelance and independent market to know that pricing can’t be right or wrong, but that it should be more thoughtfully examined.
Wondering how to explain a value-based price to a client who's used to hourly quotes, or what to say if they ask for a discount because you use AI? Our guide to freelance pricing covers both. If you'd like to turn a value-based price into steady monthly income, take a look at our guide to freelance retainer contracts. And to see how your number compares with what other freelancers charge, try our free Proposal Price Calculator.