Should you raise your rates? Now? How?

It’s a big question at this time of year: should you raise your rates (side note: seriously, there are eight weeks left in 2026)?

• With existing clients?
• For new clients?
• Should you announce the increase or just implement it? Should you raise your rates across the board, or selectively? 

I wrote a blog post about this in 2023, but the topic bears revisiting. Since then, AI has had a huge effect on the T&I market, and now we’ve got the world economy in general, plus various geopolitical factors. It’s a lot to balance, so let’s dig in. 

Ideally, do a small increase every year 

I’ve said before, and I still believe that small, consistent rate increases are objectively the best option. My accountant and my website manager both raise their rates a little bit every year, with little to no fanfare. “Attached is our fee schedule for the coming year.” 

This ticks a few boxes:

• You’re creeping instead of leaping; raising a small amount every year instead of a massive amount all at once. Rather than an awkward conversation about a 15% increase, you’re bumping your rates up a little bit at a time. 
• It’s easy to go a long time without raising your rates at all. Suddenly, you realize that you’ve been working with a certain client at the same rate for nine years. If you systematically raise your rates every year, that’s not going to happen. 

Other random thoughts

• It’s hard to significantly increase your rates with existing clients. If you want to make 25-50% more (see below…), you’re undoubtedly better off doing so with a new client.  
• Implement a unilateral rate increase (“Here’s my new fee schedule”) only if you don’t care if you lose the client. 
• With very few exceptions, never justify the increase unless it’s to say (more diplomatically than I’m going to say it), “You’re now my lowest-paying client and I’m not going to continue working with you if you can’t pay more.” Never include justifications like “My rent went up,” “My kid goes to an expensive school” “My spouse lost their job” (not the client’s problem even if true). 
• Raising your rates with existing clients is tricky. If you really depend on the client’s work and they won’t go along with the increase, your only choices are to roll it back (in which case they see that you were in some sense bluffing), or to stop working with them. 
• Per-project work avoids at least some of the rate-raising conversation. You just bump up the per-project cost a little bit, and the client is unlikely to even notice.

But…now? 

I’m a die-hard optimist, and I think that this is the most challenging economic situation I’ve dealt with in 24 years of freelancing. I’m still doing fine financially, but I’ve lost several clients this year. It’s a tough time to hit clients with a rate increase. Which doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t: lots of business sectors are doing quite well right now. Kudos to anyone who translates for the luxury travel sector, growing at almost 8% per year! 

Mainly, I think you should be sensitive to your clients’ economic situations (kind of like during COVID), and adapt accordingly. You don’t have to work for them at your current rates, but be self-aware about how a rate increase looks right now. 

Why not just have a conversation? 

I’m a “let’s talk it through” kind of person. And I’m here to tell you that in all the times I’ve tried having an honest conversation with a client about rates, it has never (not once) worked.

It’s like trying to get a client to be the first one to say a number in a rate negotiation. Most clients simply won’t do it, or have told me, “You’re the service provider, it’s up to you to decide how much to charge” (fair enough). 

What I’m doing 

By no means do you need to do what I’m doing, but just for reference, here it is.

With most of my clients, I’m not raising my rates at all. With court interpreting clients, I can’t (rates are set by their state language access program), I don’t feel that most Training for Translators participants can pay more for classes right now, my direct translation and interpreting clients pay quite well at my current rates, and I already have at best a 50% success rate when quoting for official document translation work, meaning that I’m probably already charging more than a lot of people. 

Instead, here’s what I’m doing: taking the fastest-growing area of my business, and marketing for new work at much higher rates. For me, that’s content marketing for companies in the language business (broadly defined as translation, interpreting, other language services, or language teaching companies). I have some really good clients right now, I’m not raising my rates with them, but I’d like to approximately double my revenue from this service in 2027. Thus, I’m marketing for a few new clients at about 50% more than what I’m charging the current ones, because there’s a high demand for this kind of work. 

Stay tuned for results in a future post!