Freelancers should price their work based on the value they deliver to the client, not on time spent or effort, and that hasn't changed just because AI makes work faster.
Scott argues pricing freelance work has always come down to value delivered, not hours logged, and that AI speeding up production doesn't change that fundamental pricing principle. ✦ AI generated
Scott Tolinski · Syntax · 2026-07-08 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 22:32
“As AI enables developers to build features in minutes that previously took hours or days, how should contractors and freelancers price their work fairly? By time spent, estimated effort, or value delivered?”
At the end of the day, I think value derived is the only way to price this kind of work and frankly for me has always been the only type of way to to price this work.
verbatim transcript · starts at 22:32
22:32estimated effort, or value delivered? They should price it the exact same way they've always priced it or should have always priced it. Value delivered. Uh pricing a lot of This is something you could have gone back to episode number one of [laughter] Syntax when we're talking about freelance stuff and we're talking about like time spent or effort. Like these aren't what makes for a good quote or anything like that.
22:56It can lead you to go off the rails a little bit in spending or or whatever. At the end of the day, I think value derived is the only way to price this kind of work and frankly for me has always been the only type of way to to price this work. >> I have charged hourly and in my career, but that's almost always where they're like, "We will bring you in. What we
23:18need is maybe unknown at this point, but we just want to pay for 20 hours a week of your time and you're just going to work on whatever it is." And And those are okay arrangements, right? Like that's similar to just having a job, but if you are If somebody is hiring you to do a task and how long you do that task should be irrelevant. Um it's it's all about the
23:41value delivered and if you spend a whole bunch of your time learning something, building out a bunch of tools, creating, I don't know, an army of agents that is so special that nobody else can do it as well or as fast as you, that shouldn't be uh factored into how how long it takes you to you just you should be billing based on how much value delivered to the
24:04client at the end of the day. Um Certainly like these things are going to change. Um like people aren't going to be paying you $600 to like refactor a like a one page on their website anymore when like I think like what people are willing to pay for and how much you get paid for doing stuff is is going to be or is already changing, right? But that that that
24:30doesn't make make it that you should be charging based on your thing. Maybe tokens. >> [laughter] >> You know, like at what point does your bill include how many tokens you spent on something cuz now people are saying like you're not talking about how much time you spent, but you're like, "Oh man, I spent $6,000 worth of tokens." >> money to develop now, yeah. Yeah. >> Weird world.