---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
  - en
pretty_name: "US Self-Employed & Trade Service Pricing Rates (2026)"
tags:
  - pricing
  - freelance
  - small-business
  - services
  - trades
  - economics
  - tabular
size_categories:
  - n<1K
task_categories:
  - tabular-regression
  - tabular-classification
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files: "pricing-rates.csv"
---

# US Self-Employed & Trade Service Pricing Rates (2026)

Typical 2026 US price ranges for **226 service, trade, freelance, and maker professions**,
each expressed in the trade's natural pricing unit (per hour, per job, per square foot, per word,
per session, and so on). Built and maintained by [WhatToCharge](https://getwhattocharge.com),
a free pricing toolkit for the self-employed.

This is, to our knowledge, the only openly licensed, machine-readable dataset that normalizes
pricing across this many independent-work professions in a single schema.

## What's in it

One row per profession. Columns:

| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `slug` | string | URL-safe identifier for the trade |
| `trade` | string | Human-readable profession name (e.g. "house cleaning") |
| `category` | string | One of 12 industry categories (Home Services, Creative & Freelance, etc.) |
| `unit` | string | Machine key for the pricing unit (`hour`, `job`, `sqft`, `word`, `session`, `month`, ...) |
| `unit_label` | string | Human label for the unit (e.g. "per hour") |
| `low_usd` | number | Low end of the typical 2026 US range, in USD, in the stated unit |
| `typical_usd` | number | Typical/midpoint rate, in USD |
| `high_usd` | number | High end of the typical range, in USD |
| `source_url` | string | Canonical WhatToCharge page for that trade |

A richer JSON version (adds `price_factors` per trade) is published at
<https://getwhattocharge.com/data/pricing-rates.json>.

## Example uses

- Train or evaluate a pricing-recommendation or rate-estimation model for independent work.
- Benchmark a quote against the market for a given trade and unit.
- Power an agent or assistant that answers "how much should I charge for X" with grounded numbers.
- Study pricing-unit conventions and rate dispersion across service categories.

## How the figures are derived

Ranges are built from published market-rate data, common industry pricing models (hourly, per-job,
per-unit, retainer), and standard pricing psychology. They are typical real-world ranges meant to
inform a pricing decision, not guarantees, and are reviewed and reissued on each site build. No
per-city figures are included, because verified per-city data is not part of this set.

## Citation

```
WhatToCharge (2026). US Self-Employed & Trade Service Pricing Rates.
https://getwhattocharge.com/dataset  (CC BY 4.0)
```

## License

[Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Use it freely, including commercially; just attribute WhatToCharge with a link.

## Contact

hello@getwhattocharge.com