The average daily rate for freelance developers in France

When talking about independent developers, the first question that comes up on everyone's lips is: What day rate? In which city? For what profile? Etc…

TJM stands for "Taux Journalier Moyen" (Average Daily Rate), basically the amount of daily pay, on average, for a freelancer

In France, this pay can range from 150 euros a day up to sometimes more than 1000 euros depending on seniority and technologies, so it's not always easy to get your bearings, especially when you're just starting out…

Fortunately, the company Pylote, the extension that makes freelance tech life easier (which we've already told you about here), updates its statistical study on day rates every month, based on their user database, and it's a goldmine!

More than 1000 new tech freelancers install the extension every month.

Overall, you'll be able to find out the day rates for freelance profiles, sorted by:

• Region
• Level of experience
• Area of expertise

All in the form of a super simple table, with charts like this one (average day rate in Île-de-France):

To find all the data, just access the document, available for free, here: https://bit.ly/47xWVNj

Some interesting statistics

Paris vs the rest of the country

There is very little difference between the average day rates for a software engineer (all seniority levels combined) in Île-de-France and in other regions.

Around 550€

One hypothesis:

• Remote work may have smoothed out geographical differences, lowering pay in the capital, and raising pay in the regions.

The most lucrative fields

In the top 5 fields with the highest day rates, we most often find:

• Architect
• CTO
• Cloud/Network Engineer
• Cyber-security expert

Overall, these are fields that require a very broad knowledge base, but also assignments that can only be secured with a large number of years of experience.

The least lucrative field

Without a shadow of a doubt, assignments for web integrators are the least well paid, with an average day rate below 400 euros (all experience levels combined).

It's also a field on the road to extinction, in a technical environment where you now have to master both integration AND front-end programming (javascript/typescript)

And what about full-time salaries?

A few months ago, our partner WeLoveDevs conducted a major survey on IT salaries in France, based solely on permanent positions (CDI/CDD)!

All the info is in our article: https://code-garage.fr/blog/comment-comparer-ou-estimer-votre-salaire-de-developpeur