What US magazines pay freelance writers and how to build a contributor budget

What to take away

What the published rate data says

Treat every figure below as a benchmark. None is a union scale and none is audited.

The EFA's rate chart reports what members charged during 2025. The survey ran from November 2025 to mid-January 2026. The page says more than 1,100 members responded, and that the number of answers varied widely by question. It calls them median rate ranges and says the EFA neither sets rates nor advises members on what rates to use. The chart has no row for magazine features. The nearest writing rows are these:

These are the rates of editorial freelancers who belong to the EFA. Trade titles and national consumer titles may pay above or below them, and the chart does not split by outlet.

The second kind of evidence is a named agreement. In September 2022, The Nation and the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project announced an agreement with minimums of $0.25 a word for web articles and $0.40 a word for print. It also provided partial payment for commissioned articles that do not run, though the article did not state the amount.

The third kind is crowdsourced. The union's rate-sharing database takes anonymous submissions through a form and publishes them automatically. The page states a goal of building a more robust database and does not say that entries are verified, so treat them as self-reported. The union's rate tools page lists the earlier Who Pays Writers project as archived. A September 2026 report in Objective Journalism, based on the union's data, says the database holds 1,275 entries and that the average reported rate has hovered near $1 a word since 2020. The same report warns that the sample is self-selected and small, and it gives averages, not medians. Do not budget from it.

Editorial suggestion: use the EFA and Nation figures to test a bid, and the crowdsourced data only to see the spread.

A UK comparison

The State of Freelance Journalism report, by Sheffield Hallam University and Freelancing for Journalists, surveyed 401 UK freelancers between November 2024 and February 2025. Press Gazette's account says 177 of the 354 who gave their lowest offer, 50 percent, had been offered under 10p a word. Of the 353 who gave their highest offered rate, 26 percent had been offered £1 or more and 55 percent had been offered at least 50p. This is an offers survey, in pounds, and not comparable to US member-reported charges. For UK city rates, see freelance rates in Manchester, Bristol and Glasgow.

Per word or flat fee

Editorial suggestion: per-word pricing suits stories whose length is fixed by the page. A flat fee suits work whose effort does not track length: a short piece with heavy reporting, or a package of sidebars.

Convert before you compare. Divide the flat fee by the expected word count to get a per-word figure. Then compare it with the EFA hourly column: a $1,000 feature that takes 14 hours pays about $71 an hour. The hours are the writer's estimate, so ask for it when you negotiate. A flat fee on a long, difficult story can fall below what the same words would pay at 40 cents.

Editorial suggestion: use a flat fee when the brief fixes the scope, and state the word range it covers. If the piece grows past that range, agree the new fee in writing before the extra work. The pitching and commissioning guide covers change records and the contract documents.

Kill fees, revisions and expenses

The Authors Guild's chapter on magazine contracts in its Writer's Legal Guide sets out the writers' side.

The Freelance Solidarity Project gives an example of staged payment. In guidance for work in progress since 1 January 2020, offered as a starting point for negotiation, it suggested 50 percent of the fee on a first draft and 50 percent on publication-ready work, or 34, 33 and 33 percent on assignment, second draft and completion. See its actions and campaigns page.

Payment terms

Three documents give a consistent 30-day anchor:

Editorial suggestion: write the payment date into the assignment letter and the invoice process. Pay on acceptance, not on publication, so a delayed issue does not delay the writer.

A worked issue budget

This example is arithmetic, not a market case. The rates are inputs: 50 cents is the top of the EFA work-for-hire journalism range, and 40 cents is The Nation's print minimum. The expense cap and the word counts are assumptions for illustration.

Fees average $0.44 a word. The same 6,100 words at The Nation's web minimum of $0.25 would cost $1,525, which shows how much the rate choice moves the total. Release the kill-fee reserve when the issue closes. Photography, illustration and permissions are separate lines. Photo rights documents explains what to clear. To place this budget on a timetable, use the editorial calendar guide.

Check each assignment against five questions before approval: Is the rate stated per word or flat? Is the expense cap written down? How many revision rounds? What is the kill term? What is the payment date?

Sources