The short answer
Independent UI/UX designers charge $50–$150 per hour, with a typical experienced rate around $90 per hour. UX (how the product works) and UI (how it looks) often come from the same person on smaller projects, and that’s usually the right call — splitting them only pays off once the product is large enough to need it.
| Tier | Range | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| DIY / template kits | $0–$40 | Figma community files and UI kits. A starting point, not a finish. |
| Junior / offshore | $30–$60 | Can execute a defined design. Weak on research and structure. |
| Independent professional | $60–$120 | Research, user flows, wireframes, tested prototypes, a design system. |
| Senior product designer | $120–$150+ | Fixing broken products, complex flows, work backed by real usage data. |
What actually moves the price
Research versus decoration. The cheap end of this market draws pretty screens. The expensive end figures out what the screens should be before opening the design tool — interviews, flow mapping, and prototype testing. If a quote skips straight to visuals, you’re paying for decoration and inheriting the risk that the product is confusing.
Scope of the system. A five-screen landing flow and a fifty-screen dashboard are different animals. Rates rise with a designer’s ability to build a reusable component system rather than hand-drawing every state, because that system is what keeps your product consistent as it grows.
Handoff quality. A design that developers can build from without a dozen clarifying questions saves you money downstream. Ask how a candidate hands off — annotated specs, a component library, defined states — because a cheap design that stalls your build isn’t cheap.
How this guide is priced
Ranges are compiled from public market data and published rate listings — see our data methodology. As the Mindhyv marketplace grows, these figures will come from real, anonymized platform data instead.
Before you hire
Read the UI/UX designer hiring guide for the portfolio questions that separate researchers from decorators, and use the freelance rate calculator to sanity-check an hourly quote against your project’s size.