It looks simple on paper:
- You’ve got a full-time gig at a studio
- You do some freelance on the side
- Extra money, a few late nights. No problem!
Clients hear that and think:
“Nice, they’ve got a salary, so my project is extra money.”
Reality: your salary keeps you afloat.
Your side hustle is what funds everything that keeps you sharp, up to date, and able to say no to crappy projects.
Here’s what it really takes to keep a designer working across design and code alive.
Half design brain, half dev brain
Being 50/50 means you’re balancing two complete disciplines in one nervous system:
- The design side: systems thinking, grids, typography, UX, motion, storytelling
- The dev side: architecture, performance, states, edge cases, bugs
You’re not just a “pixel pusher” or someone who simply implements a Figma file.
You’re the one keeping both worlds current, in sync, and on hardware that won’t melt.
That costs money.
Surviving vs thriving
There are two layers in every invoice, salary, and side project:
- Survival layer – the basic cost of keeping a human awake, fed, and in front of a machine.
- Thriving layer – the additional expense of maintaining that human learning, curious, and not crushed by agency life.
A full-time studio salary will normally pay for survival, and maybe a little extra if you're lucky.
Your side work may include:
- Better tools
- Deeper learning
- A safety net
- The skill of walking away from bad work and bad clients
So when someone asks, “why is this side-gig quote higher than I expected?” the answer is usually “because this is my thriving budget, not just survival.”
At least, that’s the answer in my head.
The boring but non-negotiable life costs:
Primarily addressed by salary, but they still lurk in every discussion about side gigs.
Housing
- Rent/mortgage: approximately 700-1,000€
- Fees, taxes, small repairs: 50-100€
Food and essentials
- Groceries and basic meals: 250-350€
- Caffeine and project chats: 40-60€
Utilities and internet
- Electricity, water, gas: 80-120€
- Internet/phone: 40-50€
Transport
- Public transport or fuel: 40-100€
- Occasional Ubers near deadlines: 20-30€
Luckily and for the time being I'm able to walk to work, most do not have this opportunity. Although this situation might change soon, so these are my expected costs
Health and Maintenance
- Health insurance/medical: 50-100€
- Gym or ways to avoid becoming a spreadsheet with a spine: 50-90€
- Physio, massage, therapy, optician, dentist, surprises: 30-80€
You’re usually in the 1,200-1,600€ per month range just to keep one's life online. That’s where most of the salary goes to.
The design overhead
Costs that exist simply because you’re a designer.
Design software
- Figma, Adobe, Affinity, font managers: 20-70€
- Cloud storage: 10-20€
Inspiration and culture
- Museums, exhibitions, books, prints: 20-50€
- Professional design communities or awards that you learn from: 10-30€
Learning
- Courses, pattern libraries, UX books: 10-40€
In total, design alone requires roughly 50–150€ per month just to maintain some sort of visual literacy.
The development overhead
Costs that are present because you are also a code writer.
Dev tooling
- Git hosting services, private repositories, CI tools: 5-15€
- Paid code tools, plugins, SaaS helpers: 5-20€
Hosting for side projects
- Domain for portfolio/experiments/projects: 10-30€
- Hosting/serverless for staging: 10-30€
Testing/hardware
- Additional devices/accessories for testing: 10-30€
Learning dev
- Courses/platforms/books: 15€
Development wise means approximately 40-100 € per month on average.
The Shared Hardware Cost
Both design and development life require modest hardware.
A basic solid setup:
- Laptop ~2,000 € every 3-4 years
- 400-800 € monitoring every 4-5 years
- Keyboard, mouse, backup drive, hubs, cables: 200-300 € every few years
This is the ideal scenario. In reality, most devices get stretched well past their useful life. Buying abroad can soften the cost, and occasionally becomes a decent excuse to travel.
Per month approximately:
- Laptop: 40-55 €
- Monitor: 8-15 €
- Other equipment: 5-10 €
Total about 60-80 € / month.
Some of this gets mentally justified as “work-related” despite keeping separate machines for the day job and freelance work.
The invisible studio plus side gig tax
Besides the money, there is the time and effort you put in.
Agency hours
- 9 to 6, now kept deliberately, because any spillover has a real cost
- Context switching between clients/projects
- The mental hangover from production weeks and launches
Side gig time slots
- Evenings after a full day
- Fridays when your brain is fried
- Weekends that disappear into “just a few more tweaks”
Those hours aren’t the same as the fresh energy of Monday morning. They cost more in terms of energy.
Admin, always admin
- Emails, contracts, scope, quotes, follow-ups
- Invoices, late payments, taxes, accounting
This can consume 20-30% of side gig time.
Taxes on side work
- Freelance earnings are subject to higher taxation. When a client pays 1,000 €, you could end up with 600-700 € after taxes and social security.
Quick, generic numbers you can adjust later.
You’re a Web Designer at a studio:
- Net salary from agency: 1,200-1,500€ / month
- Expenses for normal life: ~1,000-1,200€
- Design/dev overhead plus hardware: 150-250€
You can see:
- Salary pays for life and some overheads
- Not a lot left for savings or future planning
The quiet math of a socialist-leaning country.
Now add a goal:
- You would like your side job to earn you an additional 400-800€ per month after taxes
That money could go to:
- Serious savings or investments
- Paid learning that moves you up
- A runway to go freelance or reduce agency hours
- Just a bit of breathing room
With side income taxed at roughly 23%, earning 400–800 € net means billing closer to 520–1,040 € per month.
Time math
How many side-gig hours is that, really? Let’s translate the money into time.
Assume you can realistically dedicate:
- 2 evenings per week, 2 to 3 hours each
- 1 larger weekend block of 4 to 6 hours
That’s 12 to 16 hours per week, or roughly 50 to 60 hours per month.
On paper.
Now subtract reality:
- Admin, emails, calls, invoicing: ~20%
- Context switching, revisions, feedback loops: ~10%
You’re left with 35 to 45 real deep-work hours per month.
That’s the time you can actually bill.
What the math really asks of you
To bill 700 to 1,200 € per month from those hours:
- At 35 hours, that’s roughly 20 to 35€ per hour
That’s gross revenue.
Before tax. Before exhaustion.
If side work is meant to justify evenings and weekends, the rate has to reflect:
- That these are premium hours, taken from a tired brain
- Higher taxation
- Long-term wear on energy and focus
This is why many people land at 60 to 120 € per hour, or package projects at 800 to 2,000 €, instead of selling tiny slices of time.
Why your side-gig rate is not greed
From the outside, it sounds like:
“You already have a salary. Why is your quote so high for a landing page?”
From the inside, it looks like:
- Every side project competes with rest, relationships, and recovery
- Every post-work hour slows recovery from agency deadlines
- The money is taxed harder
- Part of it funds the tools and learning that keep you competent at both jobs
You’re not charging for a few hours after dinner.
You’re charging for:
- A mind that holds both design structure and code architecture
- A toolbox of patterns, frameworks, and hard-earned shortcuts
- Years of mistakes already paid for
- The fact you’re still willing to open a laptop at 21:00 and ship responsibly
If you want good work, you need people who span design and code
Keeping a designer alive is one thing.
Keeping someone who can design, build, debug, ship, and maintain is another.
Fair side-gig rates are not a bonus. They’re maintenance.
You’re helping fund:
- Software and hardware that don’t fail on launch day
- Learning that keeps the stack modern
- Enough rest to avoid burnout mid-project
If you want strong work from someone who understands both layout and logic, you’re not just paying for their time.
You’re paying to keep that person functional.