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Belgian Drupal freelancers charge between 400 and 600 euros a day.
What seniority, intermediaries and specialisation do to that rate, and why an average tells you little.
Belgian Drupal freelancers list rates between 400 and 600 euros per day, with a median around 550 euros, and the broader Belgian IT freelance market sits around 710 euros per day.
I myself work at 650 to 800 euros per day, excluding VAT.
Those ranges are wide because three things are mixed in: seniority, the type of work, and whether an intermediary is involved.
Below are the ranges in Belgium and the Netherlands, why online averages come in too low, and when which pricing model fits.
What determines a freelance Drupal developer's rate?
The rate follows from three factors, not a price list.
Seniority weighs heaviest, followed by the type of work, and third, whether you work directly or through an intermediary.
Seniority: who makes the decisions
The difference between an implementing developer and an architect is not speed, but who makes the choices.
A developer builds what the ticket says.
An architect decides the data modelling, the content structure, the caching strategy and the upgrade path, and it is exactly those choices that determine what your site costs in maintenance three years later.
How well your brief is already worked out determines which profile you need.
Type of work: building, fixing or taking over
Work for which few people are available costs more.
Setting up a new site on Drupal 11, today the stable version in the 11.4 series, is plannable work with a clear scope.
A stalled migration from a Drupal 7 site, without security updates since 5 January 2025, is not.
Accessibility remediation sits in between: the European Accessibility Act, directive 2019/882, has applied since 28 June 2025 to part of the sites and services, including webshops and financial services, with exceptions for the smallest businesses.
If your site falls under it, that kind of work comes with a deadline rather than a wish.
What exactly needs to happen then is on the digital accessibility page.
Have a lawyer check whether it applies to your situation.
Timing matters too.
Drupal 10 reaches end of life on 9 December 2026, 10.6.0 is the last minor release, and in that same week, the week of 7 December 2026, Drupal 12 arrives.
Anyone who waits until November is buying capacity at the moment everyone else needs it too.
What that end of support means in practice for your planning is in the article on Drupal 10 losing support.
Intermediary or direct: the same profile, three prices
An agency, staffing firm or platform charges a margin on top of what the freelancer keeps.
That is not a criticism, since they take on contract risk, invoicing and sometimes liability.
The amount on your invoice does not tell you what the developer earns.
Government framework contracts almost always run through an integrator, so do not compare platform rates against those.
What ranges do you see in Belgium and the Netherlands?
Belgian Drupal freelancers list rates on Malt between 400 and 600 euros per day, with a median around 550 euros.
The broader Belgian IT freelance market sits higher, around 710 euros per day.
For the Netherlands, Freelance.nl quotes 70 to 90 euros per hour.
Those figures only become comparable once you convert them to an eight-hour day.
| Segment | Day rate | Per hour, at eight hours |
|---|---|---|
| Belgian Drupal freelancers, listed rate on Malt | 400 to 600 euros | about 50 to 75 euros |
| Median of that same group | around 550 euros | about 69 euros |
| Broader Belgian IT freelance market | around 710 euros | about 89 euros |
| Netherlands, per Freelance.nl | about 560 to 720 euros | 70 to 90 euros |
| My own rate | 650 to 800 euros | 75 to 95 euros, my actual hourly rate |
For the market rows, the per-hour column is a conversion at eight hours.
My own hourly and day rates are two separate rates, not a conversion of one another: a full day works out slightly cheaper per hour than loose hours.
A listed rate is an asking price on a profile, not an invoiced average.
In practice it runs higher for specialist work and lower for long engagements.
All figures excluding VAT.
Why low online averages are misleading
The low averages that circulate are not architect rates, and often do not even come with a date.
Many lists mix webmasters, WordPress implementers and Drupal architects into one category, so it reads as a market price when it is actually an average of three professions.
Work through what is actually left of 400 euros a day.
- 400 euros a day works out to about 50 euros an hour over eight hours.
- A calendar year has around 250 working days, after Belgium's ten public holidays.
Leave, illness, bookkeeping, acquisition and training still come off that.
As an exercise, take 180 billed days. - 180 days at 400 euros is 72,000 euros in revenue.
Your business costs come off that: insurance, hardware, software, hosting, accountant. - Social security contributions come off what remains: as a main occupation, 20.5 percent of net taxable professional income in the first bracket, up to 75,024.54 euros in 2026, and 14.16 percent above that, plus your social insurance fund's administration costs.
A statutory minimum applies per quarter, indexed every year.
Best to check the exact minimum with your social insurance fund.
Contributions are calculated provisionally on your income from three years earlier and regularised afterwards.
At 60,000 euros net taxable you are in that first bracket, which comes to 12,300 euros.
Do not apply this to your own situation without your accountant. - Personal income tax still comes after that, and there is no guaranteed salary, no holiday pay and no year-end bonus.
Someone can work at 400 euros a day.
You cannot run a business on it with continuity, insurance and time to keep up with new Drupal versions.
Anyone offering that rate structurally is either billing more days than they can handle or delivering something other than what you think you are buying.
Hourly rate, day rate or project price?
The pricing model matches the type of uncertainty, not the size of the job.
- Hourly rate: for unpredictable work in small chunks, such as a security release, a bug or a code review.
You pay only for what you use, with no budget cap. - Day rate: for continuous work where I join your team, with a fixed commitment per week.
Predictable for both sides. - Project price: only once the scope is fixed, after an audit or a worked-out technical design.
A fixed price on a vague scope is not certainty, because the risk margin is then baked in invisibly.
That is why I often start with a bounded analysis at an hourly rate and move to days afterwards.
That way you only pay a fixed price once someone knows what that price actually covers.
When you do not need a senior rate for this
For part of what people ask, a Drupal architect is simply too expensive.
If you want a five-page brochure site, some text edits, or a house style dropped into a standard theme, that is work for a junior or an agency with an entry-level rate.
I would rather say that upfront than have you find out after two days that you are paying an architect for typing work.
For platform choices, migration paths, performance and accessibility in the code, the maths look different, because a wrong decision there comes back in maintenance years later.
What I charge myself
I work at 75 to 95 euros per hour and 650 to 800 euros per day, excluding VAT.
For long engagements and returning clients that is lower, since part of my acquisition and setup cost then falls away.
The full explanation, including SLA arrangements, is on my rates page.
How a collaboration works in practice, from the first conversation to a weekly commitment, is on the page about hiring a freelance Drupal developer.
Most often it is a migration or upgrade or technical management and consultancy.
If you want to know who you would be working with first, the page about me covers the background and way of working behind it.
Not sure your question belongs here, raise it via the contact form.
You usually get a reply within 24 hours.
Frequently asked questions
What does a web developer cost per hour?
For an experienced Drupal developer in Belgium you're looking at roughly 50 to 95 euros per hour, depending on seniority and channel.
Belgian Drupal freelancers list 400 to 600 euros per day on Malt, with a median around 550 euros, which at eight hours is roughly 50 to 75 euros.
For the Netherlands, Freelance.nl cites 70 to 90 euros per hour.
Through an agency or staffing firm, a margin gets added on top of that.
What is a normal freelance rate?
Normal is the rate at which someone can run a business after social contributions, taxes and non-billable days.
A self-employed person in main occupation in Belgium pays 20.5 percent social contributions on net taxable professional income in the first bracket, in 2026 up to 75,024.54 euros, and 14.16 percent above that, plus management costs of the social insurance fund, provisionally calculated on income from three years earlier and later regularised.
Don't apply this to your own situation without your accountant.
On top of that, leave, illness and acquisition are unpaid time.
A low listed rate therefore mostly says something about that freelancer's pipeline, and little about what the work is worth.
What does a web designer charge per hour?
For design and frontend work, hourly rates are generally lower than for backend and architecture work, and the spread is wider.
Hard comparison figures are scarce, since that job title covers everything from someone setting up themes to a design-systems specialist.
So look at what's actually delivered rather than the job title, because the price follows the work.
What freelance rates are expected in 2026?
For Drupal specialists I see no decline in 2026, and in the fourth quarter rather the opposite.
Drupal 10 goes end of life on 9 December 2026 and Drupal 12 appears in the week of 7 December 2026, so upgrades and migrations concentrate in a short period.
That's a demand spike, not a structural price increase, so whoever plans in spring normally pays less.
What does it cost on average to have a website made?
There's no useful average for that question, since the spread is bigger than the average itself.
What determines the price is the number of content types, the integrations with other systems, the number of languages, the accessibility requirements, and whether the design is already in place.
Better to calculate with a day rate times an estimated number of days, and have that estimate substantiated per component.
A question about this topic?
Briefly describe your situation, and I'll let you know what's going on and what it would cost. No sales pitch.
