If you are looking to hire a full-time or freelance graphic designer and you are not sure how much you should budget for the role, we got you covered. In this article, we will do a detailed cost breakdown of of how much does it cost to hire a graphic designer in 2022.
Let's start by mentioning that all the data presented in this cost breakdown comes from the pricing information available in public freelance or job platforms like UpWork, LinkedIn, Fiverr, Indeed, among others. After structuring the information provided by these platforms, our research team consolidated the information with our own numbers and experience as a design recruitment agency, so you can feel confident that the data presented in this report is accurate.
Let's get straight into it and start with the freelance graphic design rates.
Freelance Graphic Designer Pricing Guide
Before starting, it is important to understand that freelance graphic design rates can vary depending on a lot of different factors, and some of the most relevant factors are the following.
Factors that impact freelance graphic design rates
The factors that will impact more on the pricing for your graphic design freelance project are the following:
- Freelancer Experience: Just like on any other industry, experience matters and it matters a lot. While working with a junior design freelancer can be pretty affordable, working with a senior design freelancer with a portfolio of high-quality work for global brands can be multiple times more expensive.
- Required Skills: The skills required to complete your project can be a big factor in the final cost of the project too. While doing a business card design can be pretty affordable as it only requires basic graphic design skills, designing the user interface of a modern B2B SaaS platform can be much more expensive as it requires UI/UX expertise as well as an understanding of the software industry.
- Project Scope: It's not the same to build a simple one-page website design than a 50+ pages e-commerce website. Considering this, the scope of work of your project will be probably the biggest factor to determine the pricing of it.
- Project Timeline: If your project is urgent and you need it ready in a rush timeline, chances are that it can increase the final cost by 20-30%. If you want to keep costs down, it is better to complete the work in a reasonable amount of time.
- Project Value: If the project value is very high (for example, the design work is being produced for a Fortune 500 brand), it is very common to increase the final cost in order to compensate for the risk and experience needed to execute the project.
Graphic design hourly rates
Now, let's analyze the average hourly rates for freelance graphic designers based on the public data from the UpWork freelance marketplace.
- Graphic Designers: For entry level graphic designers, the average hourly rate is $10 to $15 USD. If we take a look at the intermediate level, we see an average hourly rate in between $20 to $25 USD. Finally, if we check the advanced level, the hourly rate we land on is $40 to $45 USD.
- Web Designers: If we move into web design, the costs are slightly higher. For entry-level web designers, we see an average hourly rate of $15 to $20 USD. If we check intermediate web designers, we can expect an hourly rate in the range of $25 to $30 USD. And last but not least, if we search for advanced web designers, the hourly rate we will find is in the range of $50 to $55 USD.
- UI/UX Designers: Finally, we have UI/UX designers, which offer one of the most demanded design skills in the industry right now. For entry-level UI/UX designers, we see an average hourly rate of $15 to $20 USD. If we go into the next category, the intermediate UX designers, we can expect something in between $30 to $35 USD. Then if we go into the high-end level of the advanced product and UI/UX designers, we would see an average hourly rate of around $60 to $65 USD.
It is important to mention that these averages include a good share of freelancers from Europe and Asia, lowering the overall average hourly rate. However, if you are looking to only hire freelancers from USA or Canada, chances are you can expect the numbers to be around 80 to 100% higher.
Now that you know what is the average hourly rates for graphic designers, web designers and UI/UX designers, let's continue with the average pricing of complete design projects. Please keep in mind these can vary a lot based on your project complexity and scope, so the presented numbers are a broad average based on what we have seen in the past.
Please also don't forget that each freelancer sets their own prices, so while a entry-level graphic designer can charge $10 for a logo, an expert brand designer with 10 years of experience and a background of famous logo rebrands can easily charge $50,000+ too.
Logo & Brand Design Price Rates
Logo design is probably one of the most popular design services out there, and the prices can easily vary a lot depending on the logo quality, as well as the scope of the project. While a simple logo can be a fast project, a complete brand book with tens of different brand applications can be much more expensive.
- Low-end pricing: $250 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $1,500 USD
- High-end pricing: $10,000 USD+
Web Design Price Rates
Web design prices are probably harder to estimate, as the complexity of each website can be very different. It's not the same to build a simple 3-page website vs. a fully featured 25-page website that has dynamic functions, custom animations, etc.
Static Marketing Website
- Low-end pricing: $2,000 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $10,000 USD
- High-end pricing: $20,000 USD+
Ecommerce Website
- Low-end pricing: $3,000 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $12,000 USD
- High-end pricing: $25,000 USD+
Please keep in mind the numbers shared on the website design can be lower or higher depending on the features and the number of pages.
UI/UX Design Price Rates
Just like with web design projects, UI/UX design projects can be hard to estimate without knowing more information about the scope and project complexity. For example, if you are looking to design a weather app, it is not the same to design a one-screen app that only shows your local weather, vs. a fully featured app with tens of screens, user functionality, notification management, etc.
For the sake of keeping things simple, we will assume we are designing a mobile Task Management app with around 10 screens.
- Low-end pricing: $2,000 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $4,000 USD
- High-end pricing: $10,000 USD+
Illustrations Price Rates
Illustrations price can vary depending on the illustration style and the illustrator experience. You can expect some of the following prices per illustration.
- Low-end pricing: $100 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $300 USD
- High-end pricing: $1,000 USD+
Please keep in mind that the mentioned rates are considering 2D illustrations. 3D illustrations can be much more expensive due to the amount of time it takes to produce them.
Business Card Design Price Rates
Business Cards can be a considerably cheaper graphic asset in comparison to more complex things like web design or logo design, so you can expect lower prices on this.
- Low-end pricing: $50 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $150 USD
- High-end pricing: $600 USD+
Infographics Price Rates
Infographics are getting very popular in recent years, so while it was very expensive to produce infographic designs in the earlier days, the costs have gown down because of the high offer of designers that can produce them.
- Low-end pricing: $100 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $300 USD
- High-end pricing: $1,000 USD+
eBook Design Price Rates
eBook design pricing can be pretty variate, as it depends a lot on how many pages the eBook has, how many graphics it needs, among some other scoping questions. To keep our estimation simple, we are considering a medium-complexity eBook design that requires a cover, 40 pages, and minimal graphics inside those pages.
- Low-end pricing: $500 USD
- Mid-end pricing: $1,500 USD
- High-end pricing: $5,000 USD+
And those are the average prices for some of the most popular design services. As mentioned above, please keep in mind the final cost will depend a lot on your project complexity, project scope, skills required, as well as the rate and experience of the design freelancer you are working with.
Let's now continue with the average annual salaries for full-time graphic designers.
Full-time Graphic Designer Pricing Guide
If on the other hand, you are looking to hire a full-time graphic designer to join your team, this is the article section designed for you. First, it is important to mention that hiring the right full-time designer can be a tricky process, as it involves posting the job opening in the right job platform, checking resumes and portfolios, interviewing candidates, etc, so if you are not familiar with all of this, we recommend you to read our How to hire a graphic designer article that goes in-depth about all of this.
All of the data presented in this analysis is gathered from the data combination provided by Glassdoor, and properly analyzed to ensure it matches the salary trends that we see in our design recruiting agency.
Graphic Designer Average Salary
Graphic designers have the lower average salary due to the lack of demand vs. other categories like web design, product design or UI/UX design. The median salary of graphic designers in the USA is of $47,693 USD per year. However, if we look at the entry level salary for a junior graphic designer, we would be in the range of $39,000 USD per year.
If we take it two levels further and we analyze the top 10% percentile of graphic designers, the average salary is $72,000 USD per year. Please keep in mind that a good share of this average is coming from lower income states in the US, so if you are hiring in higher income states like California or New York, it is likely these numbers should increase by 20 to 25%.
Web Designer Average Salary
Web designers have a considerably higher average salary than graphic designers, taking into consideration that the amount of web designers available is considerably lower than the number of graphic designers available. Also, because web design often requires extra knowledge and understanding of the web fundamentals.
If we take a look at the average salary for Web Designers in the USA, the number would be $65,968 USD per year, almost an extra $20K over traditional graphic designers. If we take a look at the top 10% percentile, the number increases considerably to an average of $103,000 USD per year.
Because of the high demand for Web Designers, depending on the set of skills, it is very common to see this number go considerably higher to around $150,000 USD for candidates that have experience not just in web design, but also in web development.
UI/UX Designer Average Salary
Last but not least, we have UI/UX designers, which are at the top of the ladder salary-wise.
UI/UX designers, or product designers as some refer them to, need a considerably different skillset to be able to execute their job. Unlike traditional graphic design, most of the design requires an in-depth thought process to ensure the designs are easy and intuitive for the final user. This requires a deep understanding of the most popular UI and UX patterns of the web (or mobile), to be able to deliver an interface that is easy to use and is easy to understand.
On average, the salary for UI/UX designers in the US is $84,283 USD per year, however, the top 10% percentile goes into a considerably higher average of $131,000 USD per year, almost 30% over the top 10% percentile of web designers.
Just like Web Designers, UI/UX designers can still aspire to earn more if they have the right skillset. With more and more software companies launching and disrupting the industry, UX designers with in-depth experience in software design are demanded more every day.
And that's all for the moment. With this information, you should have a more clear idea of how much you should budget to pay your graphic design freelance or full-time designer.
If you would like to know more about the average salary of any other type of designer, please feel free to ask in the comment section, and we will update our article in the future. If on the other hand, you would like to know a price estimation for any other graphic design freelance service, please just let us know.
