Free Freelance Contract Template

A deposit of 25% to 50% before any work starts is standard across most freelance fields, and on longer builds it is common to split the remainder into milestone payments instead of invoicing everything at the end. Late-payment terms usually pair two mechanisms: interest on overdue amounts, and a clause letting you pause work until the account is current. The pause tends to be the more effective of the two. Statutory late-payment rules and interest caps vary by country, so pick a rate you can justify rather than a punitive one.

This is the scenario most worth drafting for, because it is common and rarely malicious. Add a dormancy clause: if the client does not respond within a stated period — often 14 or 30 days — the current stage counts as approved, the amount due becomes invoiceable, and restarting later carries a reactivation fee and a fresh slot in your schedule. Pair it with a feedback window so 'we are still reviewing internally' has an end date. Otherwise a stalled project quietly becomes unpaid work you cannot close.

Define what a round is, not merely how many there are. One round means the client gathers all feedback and sends it once; three people firing contradictory notes on separate days is three rounds, and saying so up front prevents the slow grind that eats freelance margins. Two included rounds suits most creative work. State the hourly or per-round rate beyond that and frame it as available rather than forbidden — clients rarely object to paying for extra work they chose to ask for.

That is the usual arrangement and it belongs in writing: ownership of the final deliverables transfers to the client on receipt of full payment, and until then they hold no license to use them. Keep your own pre-existing tools, components, and templates outside the transfer — you licensed those for this project, you did not sell them. Third-party assets are a separate trap, since fonts, stock images, and plugins are licensed to whoever uses them, so name who buys those. General information, not legal advice.

Read for five things first: unlimited or undefined revisions; an intellectual-property clause that sweeps in tools and code you built before the project existed; termination language letting them walk away without paying for work already delivered; an indemnity making you responsible for materials they supplied; and payment terms stretching to net 60 or net 90. Each is negotiable, and asking to change one is ordinary professional behavior. If their contract arrives as a PDF, upload it here (PDF, up to 4 MB), drop your signature and date fields on the right pages, and return it signed.

Three practical things. Name the currency and who absorbs transfer, conversion, or platform fees, because a wire that lands forty dollars short is a conversation nobody enjoys. Be realistic about governing law: naming a court on the other side of the world rarely helps a solo freelancer recover a modest invoice, so your deposit and milestone structure protects you more than the jurisdiction line. And expect tax paperwork — U.S. clients commonly request a W-9 from domestic freelancers or a W-8BEN from foreign ones, while EU VAT or reverse-charge rules may apply. This is not tax advice.

For ordinary commercial work, an electronic signature is simply how business gets done. The U.S. ESIGN Act and UETA, and the EU's eIDAS regulation, support simple electronic signatures for agreements like this, and a signed contract with a timestamped audit trail is far stronger evidence than an email reading 'sounds good'. Each finished document is sealed against later edits and paired with a Certificate of Completion showing who signed, when, and from where. The free plan covers unlimited link signing plus 30 emailed signature requests a month; paid plans drop the small 'Secured by tuyaform' credit.