Should You Work for Free to Get Your First Freelance Client?
Every freelancer hears the same advice early on: never work for free. It sounds clear-cut, but it ignores a real chicken-and-egg problem. Clients want to see a portfolio before they hire you. Building a portfolio requires doing work. If nobody will pay you yet, the only way to get started is to do something unpaid. That does not mean all free work is a good idea. It means the blanket rule is too simple.
The actual question is not whether to work for free. It is whether the specific opportunity in front of you is strategic or exploitative. Those two things look very different, and the contract (or lack of one) is usually what separates them.
Strategic free work vs. exploitative free work
Strategic free work is a small, defined project that you choose on your own terms. You pick the client, you set the scope, and you control the timeline. The deliverable goes into your portfolio and helps you land paid work. You are investing in yourself, not donating labor to someone else's business.
Exploitative free work is the opposite. The scope is vague, the timeline is open-ended, and the client is getting real business value from your output without compensating you. The promises are always the same: "this will be great exposure," "we will pay you on the next project," or "we are a startup and cannot afford to pay right now, but equity is on the table." These are not offers. They are warnings.
Red flags that a free project is exploitative
Not every unpaid opportunity is a scam, but certain patterns reliably predict a bad outcome. Watch for these:
- No defined deliverables. If the client cannot tell you exactly what they need, the project will expand until you burn out or quit. Strategic free work has a clear output: one logo, one landing page, one article. Not "ongoing design support."
- An open-ended timeline. A free project should have a hard end date. If there is no deadline, you are not doing a project. You are providing unpaid labor on retainer.
- Promises of future paid work. If the client is serious about hiring you later, they can put that commitment in writing with a dollar amount and a date. A verbal promise of "more work down the road" is worth nothing.
- The work matches what they would pay an agency for. A nonprofit asking for a simple flyer is different from a funded startup asking for a full brand identity. If the project has clear commercial value and the client has budget, you should be paid.
- They resist putting anything in writing. If a client will not sign even a basic agreement for a free project, that tells you how they will treat you when money is involved.
Why free projects still need a contract
This is the part most freelancers get wrong. They assume that because no money is changing hands, there is nothing to formalize. The opposite is true. Free projects are where scope creep is most dangerous, because there is no budget boundary to enforce limits. When a client is paying $5,000, they think twice before adding requests. When the work is free, every new idea feels costless to them.
A written agreement for a free project does not need to be long. But it should cover three things:
- Scope. Exactly what you will deliver and what is not included. Be specific. "One homepage design in Figma, desktop only, up to two rounds of revisions" is a scope. "Website design" is not.
- Intellectual property. Who owns the final work? Can you use it in your portfolio? If you are doing the project specifically to build your portfolio, you need an explicit license to display it publicly. Do not assume you have that right just because you did the work for free.
- Timeline and exit. When does the project end? What happens if the client keeps requesting changes after the agreed scope is complete? A simple sentence like "this agreement covers work through March 31; any additional work will be billed at $X per hour" sets a clean boundary.
A practical framework for deciding
Before you agree to unpaid work, run it through these four questions:
- Is the scope small and defined? If the deliverable would take more than a week of focused work, it is too large for a free project. Keep it to something you can finish quickly and add to your portfolio immediately.
- Will the finished work help you get paid work? A portfolio piece in your target niche is valuable. A generic task that nobody will ever see is not. Be honest about whether this project moves you forward or just fills someone else's need.
- Can you get it in writing? If the client will not agree to a short written agreement covering scope, IP, and timeline, walk away. The contract is your only protection, and it costs the client nothing to sign.
- Does the client have budget but is choosing not to pay? There is a difference between a local nonprofit with no money and a funded company that wants free spec work. The first is a genuine opportunity to do good work and build your book. The second is exploitation.
The bottom line
Working for free is not inherently bad. Working for free without a written agreement, without a defined scope, and without a clear end date is. If you are going to invest your time in an unpaid project, treat it like a real engagement. Define the work, protect your rights, and set a boundary. The freelancers who build successful practices from early free work are the ones who treated it professionally from the start.
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