Salary benchmarks for 24 markets
What SEO pays country by country and city by city, on one comparable scale.
SEO Contractor vs Employee Calculator
Put a day rate and a salary on the same footing: business expenses, extra self-employment tax, self-funded healthcare and unbillable days on one side, bonus, employer contributions and paid leave on the other.
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Contract offer
Subtract holiday, gaps between contracts and sick days.
Tools, accountancy, insurance, equipment.
In the US, the employer half of FICA. Elsewhere, the equivalent employer contribution you now cover yourself.
Salaried offer
Why a contract rate is not a salary divided by 260
The most common mistake in going independent is treating a day rate as a salary spread across working days. Five things the employer used to pay for now come out of your rate:
- Paid time off. Holiday, public holidays and sick days are days you do not bill.
- Employer contributions. The employer half of payroll taxes and any pension or retirement match.
- Healthcare. Significant in the US, non-trivial in most markets.
- Business costs. Tools, insurance, accountancy, equipment.
- Gaps. The weeks between contracts, which nobody plans for and everybody has.
The break-even day rate in the output is the number that makes the two genuinely equal. Anything below it is a pay cut wearing a bigger headline figure.
The parts that are not financial
Plenty of people take a lower comparable number to contract, and are right to. The trade is not purely about money:
| Contract | Employment |
|---|---|
| Control over what you work on and for whom | Stability, and someone else carrying the risk |
| Higher ceiling, uncapped by an internal band | Compounding within one organisation, including promotion |
| Breadth across many businesses quickly | Depth on one problem over years |
| Income depends on your pipeline | Income depends on the company's health |
| You own the admin, the tax and the chasing | Someone else owns all of it |
Our freelance SEO consultant guide covers what the first year actually looks like, and how to get freelance SEO clients covers the part that determines whether any of the arithmetic matters.
Frequently asked questions
What day rate do I need to match my salary?
Typically 1.5 to 2 times the naive salary-divided-by-working-days figure, once holiday, employer contributions, healthcare, business expenses and gaps between contracts are covered. This calculator produces the exact break-even rate for your own numbers.
Is contracting better paid than employment in SEO?
Gross billings are almost always higher; comparable net is higher for practitioners who can keep a pipeline full at a strong rate, and lower for those who cannot. The variance is the real difference: employment pays a predictable amount, contracting pays a distribution.
Does this calculator handle IR35 or local tax rules?
No. It excludes income tax because it applies to both sides, and it does not model jurisdiction-specific rules such as IR35 in the UK, the Polish B2B structure or French SASU treatment — all of which can materially change the answer. Treat the output as a starting point and confirm with an accountant in your jurisdiction.
How many billable weeks should I assume?
42 to 46 for an established contractor with steady demand. Below 40 if you are starting out. Assuming 50 is how people set a rate that only works in a year where nothing goes wrong.
Sources and further reading
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists — official occupational wage and projected-growth data for the SOC code most SEO roles fall under
- Payscale — SEO Specialist salary research — self-reported pay by experience band, available per country
- Glassdoor — SEO Specialist pay trends — employee-reported base pay and percentile ranges
- ZipRecruiter — SEO salary data — job-ad derived ranges, including metro-level breakdowns
Figures on this page are aggregated market estimates compiled from the sources above and are intended for orientation, not as an offer, guarantee or valuation. See our salary data methodology.