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Freelance vs Full-Time Pay: Why Most Developers Miss the Real Numbers

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A software developer writing for DEV Community shares how he initially charged just $11.40 per hour as a freelancer, a rate that shrank further once unpaid admin time and taxes were factored in. He argues that most developers comparing freelance and full-time income focus only on headline figures — salary or invoice rate — while ignoring benefits, self-employment taxes, and periods without work. A turning point came when he switched to flat-fee project pricing, earning over $100 per hour on a $4,500 logistics dashboard that took roughly 40 hours to complete. The shift, he explains, came not from improved skills but from charging for the delivered outcome rather than time spent. He presents the experience as the basis for a practical framework developers can use to calculate and compare their true earnings across both work arrangements.

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