Following the money

Welcome to the second part of Freelance Market Analysis series by Volna, where we decipher the trends behind Upwork data. This article is focused on money: hourly budgets and fixed-price rates across different roles in over two million projects published on Upwork in 2025. We also compare them to last year’s numbers to highlight key trends and shifts in the market.

Key Insights

• Legal jobs continue to dominate in hourly pay, especially at entry and intermediate levels. Admin Support and Customer Service remain the lowest-paid categories.
• Creative and Writing work is more often fixed-price, while service-based roles stick with hourly billing.
• Web & Mobile Development projects lasting 3–6 months now reach up to $5,000 making it the highest paid category for fixed priced jobs.
• Budgets for long-term projects don’t always scale with experience — some entry-level freelancers earn more than experts, depending on category.

Legal Experts on Upwork Earn $50–150/Hour

Hourly rates have remained relatively stable year over year, but there are a few notable shifts across experience levels and categories. Legal projects continue to top the charts. In 2025, expert-level freelancers in Legal command $50–150/hour, unchanged from 2024, and no other category comes close.

At the same time, Legal saw clear growth at the entry and intermediate levels compared to last year. Median entry-level rates rose from $9–25 in 2024 to $12–50 in 2025, with a similar upward shift for intermediate roles ($20–55 in 2024 vs $20–60 in 2025).

Admin Support and Customer Service remain the lowest-paid categories, with median rates of $6–14 and $6–13 respectively, and this pattern holds across experience levels.

In most other categories, median hourly rates typically fall between $15 and $40, and can reach $60 for experts in areas like IT and Data Science.

Entry-level rates stayed largely flat across categories, except Legal, where they skyrocketed, and IT & Networking, where the median maximum fell from $35 to $25.

Expert-level hires in Sales & Marketing, Writing, and Design & Creative were also paid slightly less in 2025, with top median rates down by about $5/hour compared to 2024.

Fixed-price budgets: $20–150 for short gigs, up to $5K for dev contracts

Half of all fixed-price projects in 2025 were expected to wrap up in under a month — a trend that hasn’t changed much since last year. Another 37% are short-term projects (1 to 3 months), while multi-month projects comprise slightly less than 10% of all fixed-budget jobs.

Entry-level jobs for short-term tasks (under 1 month) remain low-budget. In categories like Writing and Translation, median project budgets often start at just $15, with typical ranges ending at $50. The only exception here is the Legal category, where even entry-level projects can be priced as high as $200 — although the number of such projects remains relatively low.

For expert-level roles and longer timelines, budgets climb quickly. For example, Web & Mobile Development projects lasting 3–6 months now reach up to $5,000. To compare, last year the same type of projects capped at $4,000. Legal jobs are not the best paid in this group.

For 1–3 month projects at the intermediate level, budgets are highest for Development jobs ($90–600) and lowest for Translation ($50–200).

Interestingly, budgets for long-term projects are less sensitive to experience level. For example, Customer Service projects lasting more than 6 months pay up to $1,500 at entry level — more than intermediate- or expert-level ranges. The same applies to Legal and Translation: the latter shows the most diverse pricing, with several long-term jobs listed at $50K or more.

Last year, Data Science projects were clear outliers, with long-term expert contracts reaching up to $6,000. In 2025, we no longer see that many high-paying jobs in this category — likely because they’ve shifted into the shorter “Development” track.

Another noticeable trend: short-term Legal and Accounting projects show strong growth in fixed-price budgets at all experience levels — suggesting increased demand for fast, professional work in these fields.

57% of Upwork projects are billed hourly, service jobs more often

Same as last year, hourly projects make up slightly more than half of all projects posted on Upwork in 2025 (57% to be precise).

Customer Service, Accounting & Consulting, and Legal top the list with the highest share of hourly projects (74%, 70%, and 68% respectively). These fields tend to involve ongoing tasks or flexible scopes, which makes hourly billing more practical for both clients and freelancers.

On the other hand, Design and Writing stand out as the only categories where fixed-price projects dominate, making up slightly over half of all assignments. This suggests that creative work is more often packaged into well-scoped deliverables with a clear start and end.

That’s it for our deep dive into freelance rates and project budgets in 2025. From hourly trends to fixed-price surprises, one thing is clear: getting paid well depends not just on your category, but on how your work is structured — and how long it lasts.

In the next article, we’ll take a closer look at freelancer competition: how many people are applying to each project, which categories are getting the most invites, and what it really takes to get hired in 2025.