Joachim Groth has sat through close to 550 rate negotiations in twelve years. His most important piece of advice has nothing to do with negotiation technique. It's about your bank balance.
At Freelance Unlocked 2026, three speakers attacked the same decision from three sides: what do you say when someone asks your price, and how do you defend the number? Roland König walks through the math that pins down your absolute floor. Joachim Groth shares the moves that actually work against recruiters and end clients. And Christian Hunt explains why the best price negotiation is the one that never happens.
The timing matters. According to the Freelancer-Kompass 2026, the largest freelancing study in the DACH region, the average hourly rate has dropped for the first time in years, to 103 EUR. 62% of freelancers don't plan to raise their rates, and nearly a quarter were booked for fewer than 50 project days last year. In a market like this, anyone who can't calculate and justify their price gets squeezed. For the wider picture, see our breakdown of freelance rates across Europe in 2026.
The calculation: know your pain threshold to the euro
Roland König has been a solo IT freelancer for five years, 70% project work, 30% training. Two years in, he realized he couldn't answer basic questions: How much time can I spend on learning? Can I take a spontaneous week off in summer? And what exactly are the "100% availability" clients keep demanding?
His answer is a calculation anyone can copy. Start with the target sum: everything you need in a year. Business costs, private spending, holidays, retirement savings, taxes. "You have to start from what you need to earn as a self-employed person to fully fund your life as you actually live it," Roland says. During Q&A he added a line item he had long carried only as a flat estimate: a buffer for the weeks between projects.
Then the time side. A year has 52 weeks. Roland subtracts six weeks of vacation, six weeks of professional development and 13 public holidays. That leaves 187 working days. On those days he doesn't plan eight billable hours but 6.5, because bookkeeping, marketing, networking and conference talks eat the rest. The result: 1,215.5 billable hours per year. That is his 100%. Ask him for "full time" and that's what you get.
The pain threshold is then simple division: target sum divided by billable hours. Every rate below it has consequences, work more or spend less. And above it?
"Every hourly rate above this pain threshold is extra profit I didn't calculate for and can use for other things." (Roland König)
To keep the math honest, Roland runs an overtime account like an employee would. Bill more than 6.5 hours in a day and the surplus counts as overtime. Sick days get booked as minus hours, no excuses. Conferences only count as education if they genuinely teach him something; otherwise they go into the minus column too. A self-built tracking tool shows him where he stands at any moment, and that's what buys him freedom: when a client postpones a project, he takes two weeks off against his overtime balance instead of panicking.
His closing point matters most: the parameters aren't carved in stone. He started with seven billable hours a day and cut back to 6.5 once his rate rose. Once a year he runs a retrospective on his own rules. A calculation isn't a document. It's a process.
The strategy: negotiating when the market pushes back
Joachim Groth has freelanced in IT for 25 years and chaired the German IT-Projektgenossenschaft cooperative for twelve. He has sat on both sides of the table, and his talk starts exactly where Roland's math ends: you need to know your pain threshold "blind, in your sleep", because you never negotiate on gut feeling. But before tactics, his real foundation:
"If you have no reserves, you can't say no. And saying no is the most important instrument in any negotiation." (Joachim Groth)
Six months of runway for project-free periods, separate from retirement savings and insurance. Without that cushion you negotiate from desperation, and the other side can tell. Joachim has watched confidence crumble around month five or six of a project search. That's precisely when only the pre-calculated numbers count, not the mood of the day.
Then it gets concrete. A selection of his rules from 550 negotiations:
- To publish a rate or not? Fully booked? Don't list a price on platforms. Searching? You must. Recruiters now get well over 100 applications per posting and filter with two limits: the first 24 hours, and a price ceiling. No price listed means you're out, same as pricing above the cap. Joachim's tip: list only your lower remote rate. The on-site rate stays negotiable.
- Say 103, not 100. A round number reads as a wish; a precise one reads as a calculation people hesitate to question. Research backs him: precise anchors produce measurably smaller counteroffers than round ones, as Janiszewski and Uy showed in Psychological Science.
- Under price pressure: silence. When the classic "others do it for 75" lands, say nothing at all. Most people can't handle silence, and what often follows is "well, no harm in asking".
- Trade scope against price. Before the call, pick one nice-to-have skill from the job posting. When the client pushes from 95 to 89 EUR, the answer is: "For 89 I can't offer that skill. That one costs 95." You usually land at 92.
- Build the raise into the contract. If the client genuinely can't go above 89, Joachim signs at 89 and has the contract state that any extension costs 95. Most clients agree, because the extension still feels far away.
- Announce increases early. Clients think in budgets, and budgets are tight. Asking for 3% more when the extension request arrives is too late; say it halfway through the project. And document added value: Joachim emails his project lead asking how they could "sell to your boss" the extra results delivered. The reply is an indirect confirmation he can point to in the negotiation.
- Never bill creatively. "We can't raise your rate, but between us, just invoice a bit generously" isn't a grey area, it's a trap. Accept once and you're blackmailable.
One alarm bell: if a client wants to cut your rate mid-project, they're in trouble. Start looking at alternatives immediately. Joachim himself once agreed to a temporary 10 EUR cut in 2013, but cancelled an extra side project in return: "If you cut your side, I cut mine." The client respected him for it.
The psychology: refusing to play the game
Christian Hunt sells something nobody wakes up wanting: behavioural science for compliance. The former UBS managing director and author of Humanizing Rules has no search term, no budget line, no procurement category. Nobody googles him without him putting the idea there first.
When he went independent, he did what you're supposed to do: fixed prices, join every pitch, chase leads. His verdict on that phase is blunt:
"I lost loads of deals because I was too expensive. I won loads of deals because I was too cheap. And I wasted a ton of time doing crap that didn't serve my purpose." (Christian Hunt)
His realization: a wrong yes is far more expensive than a no. And for work whose value only becomes obvious after the fact, the standard pricing playbook fails. So he broke it, systematically:
- No pitches, ever. A pitch is commoditization: by joining, you signal your work is comparable to everyone else's, and then price decides. When Christian discovers he's accidentally in a pitch process, he gives deliberately bad answers or absurd prices to make sure he isn't picked.
- Show, don't sell. Instead of cold outreach, he throws ideas into the world through his podcast, keynotes and content that sounds exactly like working with him. People who love it come to him and tend to pay more. People who don't are deliberately repelled. That filter saves him the conversations Roland and Joachim would book as unproductive hours.
- Framing sets the margin. Speaking and training are essentially the same activity: a person stands in front of people and talks. But speaking is paid for the performance, training for the content, and speaking pays far better. So Christian frames as much as possible as speaking.
- Publish only your top price. His website lists prices for speaking alone. The most expensive product sets the anchor; everything else stays negotiable. Joachim's anchor numbers, one level up.
Christian's most important line is aimed at everyone who just heard three talks full of rules: question every single one. "Maybe the rules aren't wrong. They just don't work for me." If you have kids, you calculate differently from someone who doesn't. If you hate travel, don't build a business model around on-site rates.
Three lenses, one decision
The three sessions contradict each other less than it seems. They describe the same decision on three time horizons:
- Before the conversation, your number is fixed. Target sum, realistic billable hours, pain threshold (Roland). Without that math you negotiate blind.
- In the conversation, you defend the number with prepared moves: a precise anchor, silence under pressure, scope against price, the raise announced early (Joachim). And with reserves that let you walk away.
- Between conversations, you work on being harder to compare: show instead of pitch, make your own thing visible, set the anchors yourself (Christian). The less you look like everyone else, the less often price decides.
The market is rough right now; the Freelancer-Kompass numbers don't lie. Which is exactly why the freelancers who know their floor, prepare their moves and build something uncomparable come out ahead. If you want to be visible while you do it, create a free profile on 9am and let matching projects find you instead of chasing every posting.
Quotes by Joachim Groth and Roland König translated from German.
Freelance Unlocked is co-organized by 9am together with Uplink and freelancermap. This article is based on the sessions of Joachim Groth, Christian Hunt and Roland König at Freelance Unlocked 2026. Watch the full talks above, and join us at the next edition: freelanceunlocked.com
