A €10,000 floor, and why.
This is the long answer to the question we get most — why won't you host small gigs? The short answer: because we think about money the way we think about hours of someone's finite life.
€10k+ project · 10 answers · €10 to meet a team
01
“Good” has gotten slippery.
AI bent the curve in both directions at once — and this is measured, not a mood. Within eight months of ChatGPT, postings for automation-prone freelance work — routine writing, templated code — fell 21% on a major global platform; image-generation tools cut graphic-design postings a further 17%.
The same research found that the jobs which remain in those categories are more complex and pay more. Strategic, integrated, high-trust work did not get cheaper — it got scarcer and more valuable.
So the 2026 question isn't what's a fair hourly rate? It is: am I paying for something a model couldn't do for me, or am I paying someone to operate a model on my behalf? Those are two different products at two different prices.
Hourly is becoming a trap for both sides.
If someone ships in 8 hours what used to take 40, hourly billing pays them five times less for the same outcome. And measured AI gains are wildly uneven: in the best-known field study, novices got 34% faster while seasoned experts gained almost nothing. An hour has stopped being a comparable unit of value. Fixed scope prices the result; hourly still makes sense where the scope genuinely can’t be fixed yet.
One more data point, against our own hype: in a 2025 randomized trial, experienced developers using AI tools were 19% slower — while believing they were 20% faster. Self-reported AI productivity is not something you can bill by.
02
Fair 2026 ranges for a mid-level European team using AI well.
Treat these as floors for real work, not ceilings for cheap work. The ranges are our reading of a moving market, anchored to the published benchmarks under the table — the most arguable numbers on this site, and we'd rather be corrected than vague.
| Deliverable | Range | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page / simple site | €500–2,000 | Down sharply since pre-AI. Commodity work. |
| Business site (strategy + CMS) | €3,000–8,000 | Roughly unchanged. The thinking didn't get cheaper. |
| Brand identity | €800–3,000 | You're buying concept and strategy, not vector files. |
| SEO audit + roadmap | €800–2,500 | Below ~€300, expect largely unedited model output. |
| SEO retainer | €800–2,500 / mo | Under ~€600 typically buys automated reporting, not hands-on work. |
| Digital product / MVP | €10,000–30,000 | Down from €25–60k. Real AI leverage, honestly passed on. |
| Platform maintenance | €2,500–5,000 / mo | Fixes, slices, accessibility and security passes. |
| Editorial / content retainer | €1,800–4,000 / mo | Continuous publishing and campaign work. |
Benchmarks:freelancermap (2026) — DACH avg €103/hMalt (2026) — FR tech €400–700/day
The global map, as honestly as we can draw it. Price is one factor; timezone overlap, language, retention and handoff cost are the others. Offshore rates are real and can be the right call for well-scoped isolated work — they tend to break on fuzzy scope, complex product and tight review cycles.
- South / Southeast Asia€10–35 / h5–8h timezone gap
- North Africa€15–40 / hFR/EN, close to EU hours
- Latin America€25–70 / hNearshore for US clients
- Eastern Europe€30–75 / hEU timezone
- Southern EU€40–95 / hStrong generalists
- Western / Northern EU€70–120 / hMid-level professionals
- US / Canada / AU hubs€90–180 / hLocal rates, high cost of living
- Senior specialists, anywhere€100–250+ / hDeep craft, AI-adjacent engineering
- Below the regional floorA warningUsually resold model output or hidden subcontracting — ask who does the work
Benchmark:Payoneer (2022) — global avg $28/h, NA ≈ 4.2× S/SE Asia
03
Money is abstract. Hours are real.
€10,000 buys somewhere between 50 and 300 hours of skilled human attention, depending on who you hire. That is the honest range. It is also pieces of someone's finite life.
- Senior W-EU specialist (10+ yrs)€100–150 / h65–100 hrs at €10k
- Mid-level W-EU professional€70–90 / h110–140 hrs at €10k
- Mid-level S-EU professional€50–70 / h140–200 hrs at €10k
- Eastern EU / nearshore€30–60 / h165–330 hrs at €10k
Bar length is hours bought per €10,000 — the same money, a different amount of someone's week. Neither end is the honest answer on its own: the question is which one can carry your project.
04
So why a floor at all?
Because below roughly €10,000 there isn't enough room for a team to do the part that makes a project work: understand the problem, argue about the shape, build it properly and still be there when it breaks. Under the floor you are buying hours; over it you are buying a result.
A floor is also the only honest way to run a directory that doesn't take a percentage. We make nothing from the size of your project — posting is free, applying is free, and €10 from each side books the meeting. If we hosted €800 gigs we would have to monetise volume, and the incentives would quietly invert.
Why €30 after launch?
A 30-minute introduction uses about half an hour of professional time on each side. €30 sits at the lower end of the €60–120 hourly range above. During launch, we reduce that commitment check to €10 per side through 31 December 2026.
If your project is genuinely smaller, that is not a failure — it's a different shape of work, and the platforms on the landscape page are built for it. We'd rather point you there than take your money badly.
05
The sources.
The studies and datasets this page leans on. Where a number is ours, we say so in place; where it is measured, this is who measured it — and each entry names its year, because this market moves fast enough that the date is part of the data.
- Demirci, Hannane & Zhu (2023)Who Is AI Replacing? The Impact of Generative AI on Online Freelancing PlatformsHarvard D3 Institute / CESifo working paperPostings for automation-prone freelance work fell 21% within eight months of ChatGPT (−17% for image work after image-generation AI); the jobs that remain are more complex and pay more.
- Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond (NBER)Generative AI at WorkNBER Working Paper 31161 · 5,179 support agentsAI assistance raised productivity 14% on average — +34% for novices, close to zero for the most experienced workers.
- METR (2025)Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer ProductivityRandomized controlled trial · arXiv:2507.09089Experienced developers using AI tools were 19% slower on their own mature codebases — while believing they were 20% faster.
- freelancermap (2026)Freelancer Study 2026DACH · 5,412 freelancers surveyed + 340k platform profilesAverage rate €103/h (IT ≈ €100/h) — the first year-on-year decline since the study began.
- Malt (2026)Malt Tech Trends 2026Europe · 1M+ registered freelancersTech freelancers in France average €400–700 per day.
- Payoneer (2022)Global Freelancer Income Report2,000+ freelancers · 122 countries — the most recent global regional dataset, and dated accordinglyGlobal average $28/h; North American rates ≈ 4.2× South/Southeast Asian rates for comparable work.
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