How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Copywriter in 2026?
A mid-level US freelance copywriter costs $50–$100/hr for content work, $100–$200/hr for conversion copy, or $0.12–$0.30 per word. Most jobs are quoted flat instead: a 1,000-word blog post runs $120–$300, a landing page $750–$1,500, a five-email sequence $1,000–$2,500. The calculator below is already set to a typical brief — a 1,500-word blog post from a writer with four years' experience — so change the content type, length, or experience level to price your own.
Calculate Your Rate
Recommended project price (1,500 words)
$150 — $780
Midpoint: $300 | Blog Posts/Articles
Rates by Content Type
| Content Type | Per Word | Hourly | Typical Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blog Posts/Articles | $0.08-$0.4 | $40-$150/hr | $150-$800 |
| Landing Page Copy | $0.15-$0.75 | $60-$200/hr | $500-$3,000 |
| Email Sequences | $0.1-$0.5 | $50-$175/hr | $500-$2,500 |
| Social Media Copy | $0.1-$0.5 | $35-$125/hr | $500-$2,000/month |
| Technical Writing | $0.1-$0.6 | $55-$200/hr | $750-$5,000 |
| SEO Content | $0.08-$0.45 | $45-$150/hr | $200-$1,000 |
| Sales/Direct Response Copy | $0.2-$1.5 | $75-$300/hr | $2,000-$15,000+ |
US market rates for mid-level copywriters. Specialized niches (finance, medical, legal) command 25-50% premiums.
Which Pricing Model Should You Use?
Per Word
Best for: Blog posts, articles, long-form content. Transparent for clients. Downside: Penalizes concise writing.
Per Project
Best for: Defined deliverables (landing pages, email sequences). Rewards speed. Downside: Scope creep risk without clear contracts.
Hourly
Best for: Retainers, unclear scope, ongoing work. Fair for both sides. Downside: Caps earning potential as you get faster.
Monthly Income Scenarios
| Scenario | Volume | Rate | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blog writer (entry) | 20 posts x 1,000 words | $0.10/word | $2,000 |
| Content writer (mid) | 12 posts x 1,500 words | $0.20/word | $3,600 |
| Copywriter (experienced) | 8 projects | $750/project avg | $6,000 |
| Conversion copywriter | 3-4 landing pages | $2,000/page | $7,000 |
| Sales copywriter (senior) | 2 sales pages + emails | $5,000/project | $10,000+ |
Per Word vs. Hourly vs. Per Project: What You'll Be Quoted
Copywriters quote in three different units, and the same job can arrive priced any of the three ways. The unit matters to you as the buyer, because each one puts a different risk on your side of the table.
| Pricing model | Mid-level rate | Ask for it when | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per word | $0.12 – $0.30 | You are buying volume against a content calendar and the brief already names a length | You pay for length, not results. Research and interviews are usually excluded, so a thinly researched post costs the same as a well-researched one |
| Hourly | $50 – $100/hr content$100 – $200/hr conversion copy | The deliverable isn't a draft — editing, messaging workshops, audits, or an open-ended retainer | You pay more for a slower writer. Fine when you control the scope, expensive when the writer does |
| Per project | $150 – $7,500 by deliverable | The deliverable has a name and an outcome — a landing page, a sequence, a website | Nothing, if the scope is written down. Everything, if it isn't: an unbounded revision clause is where a flat fee quietly becomes hourly |
For most buyers the practical answer is: per word for volume content, flat fee for everything else. Paying per word for a landing page is the expensive mistake, because it rewards padding on the one deliverable where shorter copy usually converts better. A 200-word email that carries an offer is not worth a fifth of a 1,000-word blog post, and no per-word rate can express that.
The calculator above shows the gap directly. Set to the prefilled 1,500-word blog brief it returns $150–$780, midpoint $300. Switch the pricing model to hourly and the same brief comes to $52–$195/hr across an estimated five hours — about $490 at the midpoint. Both are correct; they are pricing different things, which is exactly why quotes for one job land so far apart.
What a Copywriter Costs by Content Type
Flat fees for the deliverables clients ask for by name, from a mid-level US freelancer. These are the numbers to budget against — the per-word and hourly figures above are how the writer arrives at them.
| Deliverable | Typical scope | Mid-level cost | Usually quoted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web copy — landing page | 500–1,000 words, single offer | $750 – $1,500 | Flat, per page |
| Web copy — homepage | 400–800 words, 2 revisions | $1,000 – $2,500 | Flat, per page |
| Web copy — full site | Home, about, services, pricing, contact | $3,000 – $7,500 | Flat, per project |
| Email — single send | One promo or newsletter | $200 – $500 | Flat, per email |
| Email — sequence | 5 emails, welcome or nurture | $1,000 – $2,500 | Flat, per sequence |
| Ads — paid social / PPC | 10 variants, ~400 words total | $300 – $800 | Flat, per batch |
| Long-form — blog post | 1,000–1,500 words, brief supplied | $150 – $400 | Per word or flat |
| Long-form — case study | 800–1,500 words, 1 customer interview | $750 – $1,800 | Flat, per project |
| Long-form — sales page | 2,000–5,000 words, research included | $2,500 – $6,000 | Flat, per project |
US market ranges for a mid-level freelancer who handles messaging and research, not just drafting. Specialized niches — finance, healthcare, legal, SaaS — sit 25–50% above these. Full rates by content type and experience are on the freelance copywriter rates page.
Read down the cost column and the pattern is that price tracks how close the copy sits to a purchase, not how many words it contains. Ten ad variants are 400 words and cost twice a 1,500-word blog post. A 400-word homepage costs more than a 5,000-word article. You are paying for the offer, the message hierarchy, and the decision about what to leave out — the drafting is the cheap part.
That is also the honest read on the two extremes. If you need volume SEO content against a calendar, the blog row is where your budget goes furthest and a per-word deal is reasonable. If you need one page to carry paid traffic, the landing page row is the cheapest line item in the campaign — the ad spend behind it usually dwarfs it, which is the argument for hiring above your instinct on that one deliverable.
Copywriter Cost by Experience Tier
The same brief priced by three writers at different career stages. The spread is wider than in most freelance fields, because copywriting has no licence, no degree requirement, and a floor set by content marketplaces.
| Experience tier | Hourly (content) | Hourly (conversion) | Per word | 1,000-word post | Landing page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner0–2 years, generalist | $35 – $70 | $50 – $100 | $0.05 – $0.10 | $50 – $100 | $300 – $500 |
| Mid-level3–7 years, one or two niches | $50 – $100 | $100 – $200 | $0.12 – $0.30 | $120 – $300 | $750 – $1,500 |
| Senior / specialist8+ years, conversion or niche focus | $80 – $160 | $200 – $400 | $0.30 – $1.00+ | $300 – $1,000+ | $2,000 – $5,000+ |
Beginner conversion work is rare and usually priced closer to the content column — the higher figures in that row belong to writers who have already shipped pages with measured results. Below $0.05/word is content-mill territory, where the output is fast and the editing is yours.
What the extra money buys is fewer of your own hours.A beginner delivers a draft; someone on your side then supplies the angle, fixes the structure, and rewrites the headline. A senior writer arrives with the positioning, argues with your brief where the brief is wrong, and delivers something you approve rather than rebuild. Price the tiers against your team's review time and the gap narrows considerably — a $150 post that costs a marketing manager three hours is not cheaper than a $400 post that costs them twenty minutes.
The tier that fits depends on what the copy has to do. Volume SEO content and product descriptions are a fine place to hire at the beginner end. Anything with money behind it — paid traffic, a launch, a repositioning — should be hired at mid-level or above, because the cost of copy that doesn't work is never the copy fee. You can see the same ladder from the writer's side, with the multipliers spelled out, in freelance rates by experience level.
What Moves a Copywriting Quote
Five variables explain most of the distance between a $400 quote and a $4,000 one for a job the brief describes identically.
Research depth. The largest single factor, and the one briefs leave out most often. Desk research from material you supply is a fraction of the cost of customer interviews, competitor teardowns, or original data. Say which you want; a quote that assumed the first will be re-cut when it discovers you meant the second.
Who owns the messaging. Drafting against your positioning and your outline is a writing job. Deciding the offer, the audience, and the argument is a strategy job, and it is priced like one. Most quote spreads on homepage and landing page work come from two writers assuming different answers to this question.
Revision terms. Two rounds is the workable standard, with a defined round being consolidated feedback from your side, not a trickle of individual notes. Unlimited revisions are either priced for the worst case or will end in a dispute — and the version where four stakeholders each send separate comments is the worst case.
Niche and compliance.Finance, healthcare, legal, and technical SaaS carry a 25–50% premium. On regulated content it is usually the cheaper option: the review cycles a generalist creates inside your organisation cost more than the premium, and they cost it in your team's hours rather than the writer's invoice.
Turnaround and what happens after delivery. A rush job carries 25–50%. Loading copy into your CMS, writing meta descriptions, briefing a designer, or sitting in stakeholder reviews are all real work and frequently omitted from the fee — confirm whether they are in scope or arriving as a second invoice.
The practical move when comparing quotes: ask each writer to state the research included, the revision cap, and who owns the messaging. Quotes that answer those three questions are comparable. Quotes that name only a total are not, and the cheapest one is usually cheapest because it assumed the least work.
Price Your Own Brief
Three briefs clients hire for by name, each loaded into the calculator at the top of this page with the inputs already set. The calculator scales a per-word band, so read its output as the floor on a flat quote for conversion work — the table above is where those jobs actually land.
Landing page
800 words · 5 years · general niche · per project
Returns $160 – $784, midpoint $312 — against the $750–$1,500 the table above puts on the same page. The gap is the research, the offer, and the message hierarchy that no word count can see. Budget the table, not the midpoint.
Load the landing page →5-email welcome sequence
1,200 words · 5 years · general niche · per project
Returns $156 – $780, midpoint $396, where the table puts a five-email sequence at $1,000–$2,500. Most of what you are buying is the order of the five and which one carries the offer — decisions that take the same time whether the emails are long or short.
Load the email sequence →SaaS sales page, specialist
3,000 words · 8+ years · specialized niche · per project
Returns $1,200 – $9,000, midpoint $3,000 — the one brief where the calculator and the deliverable table agree, because long-form sales copy is genuinely long and genuinely research-heavy. This is what a specialist with a track record costs.
Load the sales page →Change any input to model your own job — or swap model=hourly in the URL to see the same brief as an hourly estimate with the hours spelled out.
Related Calculators & Guides
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to hire a copywriter?
A mid-level US freelance copywriter costs $50–$100/hr for content work and $100–$200/hr for conversion copy, or $0.12–$0.30 per word. Most jobs are quoted as a flat fee rather than either: a 1,000-word blog post runs $120–$300, a landing page $750–$1,500, a five-email sequence $1,000–$2,500, and a five-page website $3,000–$7,500. Beginners sit roughly 30% below those figures and senior specialists two to three times above them.
How much does a copywriter charge per hour?
Content copywriters charge $35–$70/hr starting out, $50–$100/hr at mid-level, and $80–$160/hr as seniors. Conversion copy — landing pages, sales pages, ad and email campaigns — roughly doubles those figures, at $100–$200/hr mid-level and $200–$400/hr for specialists with measured results. Very few copywriters actually bill clients hourly, though: the hourly rate is what they use to sanity-check a flat fee, because an hourly quote makes the client pay more for a slower writer.
How much does a 1,000-word blog post cost?
A 1,000-word blog post costs $120–$300 from a mid-level freelance copywriter, $50–$100 from a beginner, and $300–$1,000 from a senior writer with niche expertise. What moves the price inside that range is research: a post written from a supplied brief and existing material sits at the floor, and one that needs customer interviews, original data, or subject-matter accuracy checks sits at the ceiling.
Should I pay a copywriter per word or per project?
Per word for volume content where the brief already names a length — blog posts, SEO articles, product descriptions. Per project for anything where the value is not in the word count: landing pages, email sequences, ad campaigns, positioning work. Paying per word for conversion copy is the most expensive mistake a buyer makes here, because it rewards padding on exactly the deliverables where shorter copy usually converts better.
Why do copywriter quotes vary so much for the same job?
Because two quotes for "a landing page" are usually quoting different amounts of work. Whether research and customer interviews are included, how many revision rounds are covered, whether the writer sets the messaging or just drafts against yours, and whether SEO briefing and headline testing are in scope all change the price without changing the deliverable's name. A quote that names the research, the revision cap, and who owns the messaging can be compared to another one. A quote that names only a total cannot.
Do specialist copywriters cost more?
Yes — writers who work in finance, healthcare, legal, or SaaS charge 25–50% more than generalists. That premium usually pays for itself on the client's side of the invoice, because a specialist needs less briefing, gets compliance and terminology right the first time, and produces drafts your subject-matter experts spend less time correcting. On regulated content, the review hours a generalist creates internally can cost more than the premium would have.
What should be included in a copywriting quote?
Four things: the research included (desk research only, or customer and stakeholder interviews), the number of revision rounds and what counts as one, who owns the messaging and structure versus who is just drafting, and what happens to the copyright on delivery. Add the delivery format if it matters — copy in a doc is normal, copy loaded into your CMS is usually extra. Missing revision terms are the single most common source of a dispute on a flat-fee copy project.