A day rate charges a client a flat amount for each day you work on their job, while a project rate sets one fixed price for the entire job no matter how long it takes. Day rates bill your time; project rates bill your outcome.
Day rate: paid for your time
With a day rate, you quote a single number per working day (say, $600/day) and the total scales with how many days the job runs. It is a close cousin of the hourly rate, just bundled into bigger blocks, which is why it suits work where the scope is fuzzy or likely to shift: editing days, shoot days, on-site consulting, or a developer embedded with a team for a sprint.
- Best when scope is unclear, the client may add work mid-stream, or you genuinely don’t know how long things will take.
- Watch out for the ceiling problem: clients see the day count and may push you to rush. Pair it with a clear estimate of expected days so nobody is surprised.
Project rate: paid for the outcome
A project rate is one fixed fee for an agreed deliverable, “a 5-page website for $3,500,” regardless of whether it takes you three days or five. The client gets budget certainty and you get rewarded for efficiency: if you finish fast, you keep the upside. The risk flips onto you, though, so a project rate only works when the scope is genuinely nailed down.
- Best when the deliverable is well-defined and you’ve done similar work before.
- Watch out for scope creep. Spell out exactly what’s included, and treat extras as a separate line or a fresh estimate.
Tip: Unsure which way to go? Estimate the project rate by guessing your day rate times the days you expect, then add a buffer for revisions. If the buffer makes you nervous, bill by the day instead.
A real-world example
You’re a video editor quoting a brand film. As a day rate, you’d line up four edit days at $700 each, total $2,800, and the number moves if the client wants a fifth day of changes. As a project rate, you’d quote a flat $3,200 for “final delivered film, two rounds of revisions” and absorb the timing risk yourself. Same job, two very different conversations about money.
How Fee-Lion handles it
Both models live inside one estimate, so you can mix and match on the same job. Open Estimates in the left sidebar and start a new one:
- For a day rate (or hourly), add a Task line. Tasks are hours × rate, so enter your day rate as the rate and the number of days as the quantity, or convert to hours, whichever reads cleaner for the client.
- For a project rate, add a Fee or Unit line. These are quantity × rate, so set quantity to 1 and the rate to your fixed price for a clean, single-figure fee.
- Layer on any discounts or surcharges, then set your tax and deposit % at the bottom.
- Send it. The client reviews and approves in a no-login portal, and once they do you convert it to an invoice in one click.
To stop retyping your numbers, save your usual day rate and tax under Settings → Preferences, where your payment terms, tax, and deposit defaults live. If you bill by the day a lot, time tracking can feed real hours straight onto an invoice line so your billed days match what actually happened.
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