How Much to Charge for Copywriting Work in 2026

What a copywriting quote needs to include

"Website copy — £900" tells a client nothing about what they're actually getting. Cover these ten things and the quote reads as a scoped piece of work with a price attached, not a number guessed at over coffee:

1. 1Your business details and, if VAT-registered, your VAT number.
2. 2The client's business name and a one-line description of the deliverable — "homepage plus four inner pages for a new joinery business", not just "website copy".
3. 3Each deliverable listed individually — per page, per blog post, per email — not one lump "content" figure.
4. 4A word count or length stated as a guide, not a hard cap, so you're not penalised for writing exactly as much as the piece needs.
5. 5Research and discovery time — interviews, competitor review, tone-of-voice work — priced as its own line when it's substantial.
6. 6Number of revision rounds included, and the hourly rate for anything beyond it.
7. 7SEO requirements — target keywords, meta descriptions, internal linking — priced separately from the core copy if the client wants them.
8. 8Ownership and usage rights — standard practice is full ownership transferring to the client on final payment; say so, and flag clearly if you're licensing the work rather than assigning it.
9. 9Payment terms stated in days, not left blank — 30 days is the legal default if you don't say, and the late-payment clock starts regardless.
10. 10A kill fee for work cancelled after a brief or first draft is delivered, so a paused project isn't unpaid work.

Project fee, day rate, retainer or per word — which to use

ProCopywriters' own guidance, drawn from its 2026 member survey, sets out four models and is fairly blunt about which one does most of the work:

• Project fee — a single sum for defined deliverables. Described as the most common approach and usually the best for both sides, because the client knows the number before you start and you're not penalised for working efficiently.
• Day rate — best for work that can't be scoped in advance, such as a workshop, a strategy day, or genuinely exploratory work.
• Retainer — a monthly fee for ongoing content needs, worth setting up once a client has continuous (not one-off) demand.
• Per word — common in content mills, rare among experienced copywriters, because it rewards length over quality. Worth avoiding as your default, even though it's the model clients sometimes ask for first.

2026 UK pricing benchmarks

• Day rate: £300–£1,800, median £440 (ProCopywriters, 383 freelance copywriters surveyed).
• Hourly: £50–£75 for experienced copywriters, £45–£65 on bulk or ongoing monthly work.
• Website page: £100–£200 per page.
• Blog post (roughly 800–1,200 words): £120–£250.
• SEO landing page: £100 upwards, plus keyword research time.
• Product or category page: £50–£150.
• PPC ad copy: around £50 per ad set.
• UX copywriting: £75/hour or £600+/day — a specialist rate above general web copy.

The 30-day payment law most freelance copywriters never use

Copywriting clients are almost always other businesses, which means almost every invoice a freelance copywriter sends is covered by the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. It applies automatically to business-to-business invoices — it doesn't cover invoices to individual consumers — and it doesn't need a clause in your contract to take effect. If no payment date was agreed, the invoice is legally due 30 days after the client receives it. From the day after that due date, interest starts accruing automatically.

The current statutory rate is 11.75% — the Bank of England base rate (currently 3.75%) plus the Act's fixed 8 percentage points, recalculated as the base rate moves. On top of the interest, you can also claim fixed compensation per overdue invoice, on a sliding scale: £40 for invoices under £1,000, £70 for £1,000–£9,999.99, and £100 for £10,000 and above — independent of, and in addition to, the daily interest. The one situation where it doesn't apply is if your own contract already sets out a different, genuinely substantial remedy for late payment; you can't simply be talked out of it after the fact.

In practice, very few freelancers ever invoke this — chasing a client for interest can feel disproportionate on a £600 invoice. But knowing the number changes the conversation: "this invoice is now 40 days overdue, which under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act entitles me to £23 in statutory interest plus a £40 fixed compensation fee" reads very differently to a client than a vague "please can you pay this". You don't have to charge it every time. Knowing you're entitled to is leverage either way — and it only works if you're tracking which invoices are actually overdue in the first place, not guessing from memory.

A worked example

A small joinery business needs a new website: a homepage, three inner pages, and one SEO landing page targeting a local search term. Priced as separate lines rather than one round "website copy" figure:

£1,280 for a five-page project with research and one revision round built in — a clearer number for the client to say yes to than "£900, plus extra if it needs more work," and a clearer number for you to defend if a second or third revision round gets requested. Ownership of the final copy transfers to the client on payment of the balance; 50% deposit due at booking, balance due within 14 days of final delivery.

Five details that get copywriting quotes accepted faster

• State the pricing model plainly. "Fixed project fee, not billed by the hour" reads as more confident than a number with no explanation attached — and it heads off the client who assumes they're paying for your time rather than the finished piece.
• Give a word count as a guide, not a cap. "Roughly 600–800 words" protects you from being told to "just add more" for free, without boxing you into padding a piece out to hit an arbitrary target.
• Name your payment terms in days. "Due within 14 days of invoice" beats silence — silence defaults to 30 days under UK law anyway, and the statutory interest clock starts ticking whether you mention it on the invoice or not.
• Separate SEO add-ons from the core copy fee. Keyword research and meta descriptions are real extra work. Pricing them as their own line stops "can you just add some SEO stuff" from quietly eating your margin on a job you already quoted.
• Put a deposit on anything past a single blog post. 50% upfront on a multi-page project means a client who goes quiet halfway through the brief hasn't cost you a week of unpaid work — and it's a normal ask, not an awkward one, once it's just a line on the quote.

The fastest way to do all of this

A single blog post is easy enough to quote over email. A multi-page project that mixes per-page pricing, a revision limit, SEO add-ons and payment terms — and needs to look properly itemised so the client trusts the number — is exactly where a vague back-and-forth costs copywriters real time, and sometimes the booking itself.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "homepage, 3 inner pages and 1 SEO landing page, 1 revision round included, 50% deposit, balance due in 14 days" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute. Your client accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click — with paid and unpaid status tracked automatically, so you know exactly which invoices have crossed 30 days without digging through your inbox to check.

Whichever way you produce the quote, the principle holds: price the deliverables individually, cap the revisions in writing, state your payment terms in days rather than leaving them blank — and remember that the 30-day clock, and the statutory interest that follows it, is already running whether you mention it or not.

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