How I Price My Services as a Software Engineer

The single question I get asked more than any other: how do I price myself as a developer?

After roughly four years of freelancing across more than thirty businesses — startups in Cameroon, agencies in Europe, and a few enterprise contracts — here's the structure I actually use. It's not magic. It's just packaging.

The two-client problem

If you're working from Africa or any developing market, you'll quickly notice your clients fall into two camps:

• Low-budget clients. They will negotiate every line item. They need the work done but cannot pay European or US rates.
• High-budget clients. They care about quality, timeline, and risk. They are far more flexible on price than you assume.

The trap most engineers fall into is choosing one of these camps and pricing for it. Price low and you starve while doing too much. Price high and your local pipeline dries up before the international one fills.

You don't have to choose. You package.

Three plans, one engineer

I split every offer into three tiers. The names matter less than the structure, but here's what I use:

1. Basic Plan — for budget-constrained clients. Limited scope. Fixed deliverables. No frills. Honest about what they're getting.
2. Business Plan — the default for serious clients. Proper discovery, proper architecture, proper handover. This is where most of the work and most of the margin lives.
3. World-Class Plan — for organisations that need certainty. Includes everything in Business plus dedicated time, faster turnaround, formal documentation, and post-launch support.

Each tier has different deliverables, different timelines, and different prices. The client self-selects based on what they actually need.

Why packaging works

Three reasons it consistently outperforms hourly rates:

It removes the price negotiation. You're no longer arguing about your hourly rate. You're discussing which of three pre-priced products fits their problem.

It anchors the high tier. Most clients won't pick World-Class. But its existence makes Business look reasonable instead of expensive.

It protects your time. Basic clients get less because they pay less. That's not punishment — that's matching effort to revenue, which is the only way freelancing scales without wrecking you.

The thing nobody tells you

The biggest pricing mistake isn't undercharging. It's pricing yourself the same for every client. When you do that, your highest-value clients subsidise your lowest-value ones, and you never have time to find more of the former.

Package once. Sell many times. Adjust the tiers as your skill grows.

That's the entire system.