How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Copywriter? 2026 US Rates Per Hour, Per Word and Per Project

Hiring a copywriter in the United States costs $50 to $300 an hour freelance, roughly $0.10 to $1.00 per word, or $800 to $5,000 for a typical project like a homepage or landing page. A full-time in-house copywriter costs $55,000 to $95,000 in base salary, with 2026 published averages clustering around $74,000 to $84,000. The single biggest driver of price is not length, it is whether the copy has to convert: a blog writer and a conversion copywriter can differ by four times on the same brief. Below is what each pricing model actually costs in 2026, where the marketplace rates come from, and how to work out which route is cheapest for the volume you have.

Last updated July 2026.

How much does it cost to hire a copywriter?

Expect $50 to $300 an hour for a freelance copywriter, $800 to $5,000 for a defined project such as a homepage or landing page, or $55,000 to $95,000 in base salary for a full-time in-house writer. The spread is real rather than noise: it tracks experience, niche and stakes. A generalist writing blog posts sits at the bottom of every band, and a conversion specialist rewriting the page your ad spend lands on sits at the top, because one is priced on output and the other on the revenue it moves.

The useful way to budget is to pick your pricing model first, then place yourself in the band. Here is what each route costs and what it is genuinely best for.

How you buy	2026 US cost	Best for
Freelance, hourly	$50 to $85 junior, $85 to $160 mid-level, $160 to $300 conversion and B2B specialists	Open-ended work where the scope will move
Freelance, per word	$0.10 to $0.30 basic, $0.50 to $1.00+ experienced; the AWAI 2026 survey puts the professional average near $0.70	Predictable long-form content with a fixed brief
Freelance, per project	Homepage $800 to $3,500; landing page $1,200 to $5,000; long-form sales page $3,000 to $15,000	A launch, rewrite or campaign with a real brief
Freelance, monthly retainer	$2,000 to $8,000 per month for ongoing scope	Steady output without adding headcount
Marketplace hire	Median around $30 an hour, commonly $19 to $45	Volume tasks where you can absorb quality variance
In-house, full time	$55,000 to $95,000 base; averages cluster $74,000 to $84,000; senior conversion writers $95,000 to $130,000	Several pieces a week across web, email and ads
Recruiter placement	Typically 15% to 25% of first-year base, so $8,250 to $23,750 on that band	A senior or specialist role you cannot source yourself
Post the role directly	$199 for a 30-day listing	Reaching marketing writers with no percentage fee

How much does a copywriter charge per hour?

Professional freelance copywriters in the US charge $50 to $85 an hour at junior level, $85 to $160 mid-level, and $160 to $300 for conversion, B2B and SaaS specialists. Small and mid-sized businesses most often land in the $50 to $150 window, while direct response, fintech and healthcare writers routinely clear $200. Hourly billing suits work where the scope genuinely moves, such as an ongoing test program or a messaging project that will change shape as research comes in.

You will also see much lower hourly numbers quoted, and they are not fake. General freelance marketplaces show a median closer to $30 an hour, typically between $19 and $45. That gap is a difference in what you are buying, not a discount on the same thing. Marketplace rates reflect a wide global supply pool competing largely on price for briefed, well-defined tasks. The $150-plus rates reflect writers who do the research, own the strategy and get held to a conversion number. Both can be the right purchase; problems start when you budget the first and expect the second.

How much does a copywriter charge per word?

Per-word copywriting rates run $0.10 to $0.30 for basic content, $0.50 to $1.00 or more for experienced writers, with AWAI's 2026 survey putting the professional average near $0.70 per word. On a 1,500-word article that is $150 at the entry end and around $1,050 at the professional average. Per-word pricing works cleanly for long-form content where the deliverable is predictable and the research load is modest.

It works badly for conversion copy, and it is worth knowing why before you ask for a per-word quote. A landing page might be 400 words that took two days of customer research, sales-call listening and three rewrites. Priced per word that is an insult; priced per project it is a $2,000 job that pays for itself the first week. Most experienced conversion writers will decline per-word terms for exactly this reason, so treat a per-word quote as a signal about the type of work as much as the price.

How much does a freelance copywriter charge per project?

Per-project rates are where most business buyers actually transact, because they price the outcome rather than the hours. These are 2026 US figures for a copywriter with roughly three to five years of experience; senior writers commonly add 40% to 80% on top.

Deliverable	Typical 2026 US project rate
Homepage copy	$800 to $3,500
Full website, 5 to 7 pages	$3,000 to $12,000
Landing page for ads or a launch	$1,200 to $5,000
Long-form sales page	$3,000 to $15,000
Single email	$300 to $800
Welcome sequence, 5 to 7 emails	$1,500 to $5,000
Automated sequence, 10 to 15 emails	$3,500 to $12,000
Blog post or article	$300 to $500 typical, more with heavy research
Press release	$150 to $750

When you request a quote, send the brief rather than the word count. A writer pricing a homepage needs to know whether you have positioning already, whether they get access to customers, how many rounds of review the copy passes through, and who signs it off. Those four things move a project quote more than the number of pages do.

How much does an in-house copywriter cost?

A full-time copywriter in the United States costs $55,000 to $95,000 in base salary, and published 2026 averages sit in a tight band across sources: roughly $77,200 on Indeed, $83,900 on Glassdoor, $76,400 on ZipRecruiter and $74,000 on Talent.com. The 25th to 75th percentile spread runs about $58,000 to $86,500, with the 90th percentile near $121,500 for senior conversion and specialist writers. Add 25% to 40% for payroll taxes, benefits and software to get true loaded cost.

Location and industry move the number more than title does. Writers in New York and San Francisco command meaningful premiums over the national median, and SaaS, financial services and healthcare pay at the top of the band because conversion copy in those categories carries real revenue. If you are budgeting a first writer seat alongside other roles, the wider role-by-role picture is in the guide to how much it costs to hire a marketer.

Is it cheaper to hire a freelance copywriter or a full-time one?

Freelance is cheaper until you need copy every week, then in-house wins. The crossover is easier to see with numbers than with principles. An $80,000 in-house writer costs roughly $100,000 to $112,000 fully loaded, which is about $8,300 to $9,300 a month for someone producing continuously. A mid-level freelancer on a $4,000 monthly retainer costs less than half that, but delivers a defined scope rather than unlimited availability.

So the honest rule is about volume and continuity. If you need a handful of pages once, or you want a specific specialist for a launch, freelance is faster and cheaper and you should not think twice. If your team ships copy across several channels every week, and someone is spending real time briefing and reviewing, a full-time writer usually costs less per piece within a few months and gets better as they learn your product. The same crossover for every other marketing role is worked through in the comparison of freelance versus full-time marketers.

Why is there such a big difference in copywriting prices?

Because "copywriter" describes two different jobs that share a title. Content writers produce volume: blog posts, guides, product descriptions, social copy, measured in traffic and engagement. Conversion copywriters produce revenue: landing pages, emails, ads, pricing pages, measured in signups and sales. The second involves customer research, positioning work and accountability for a number, which is why the rates diverge by three or four times on briefs that look similar on paper.

Deciding which one you are buying is the cheapest thing you can do before you spend anything. If the need is steady volume that feeds every channel, you may actually want a content marketer rather than a copywriter, and for the highest-volume, most repeatable pieces a tool that researches keywords and drafts SEO articles automatically can carry the routine work so your budget goes to the pages where wording decides whether someone buys. If the need is pages that convert, pay for the specialist and give them access to customers, because their research is most of what you are buying.

How do you hire a copywriter without paying a recruiter fee?

Post the role directly to marketers instead of paying a percentage of the salary. A contingency recruiter typically bills 15% to 25% of first-year base, which on an $85,000 copywriter is $12,750 to $21,250 for a single hire, and retained search runs higher still. That fee buys sourcing and screening, which is genuinely worth it when nobody on your side has hours for applications, and a poor trade when a hiring manager can run a shortlist in a couple of hours a week. The two fee models are compared in the guide to contingency versus retained search.

MarketerJob lists marketing roles only, so a copywriting job goes in front of people who filter the board for content and copy work rather than into a general index. A 30-day post is a flat $199, every applicant relationship stays yours, and the salary band on the card screens out the mismatches before they apply. The full picture on rates, screening questions and what to put in the ad is on the hire a copywriter page. Listings shown on the board are illustrative product UI.