FairClause › Guides

Kill Fee Clauses in Freelance Contracts: What's Fair

A kill fee is the clause that pays you something when a client cancels a project after you've started — instead of nothing. Most freelance contracts don't have one until the freelancer asks for it. Here's what a fair one looks like.

What a kill fee actually is

A kill fee is a fixed amount or percentage a client owes you if they cancel or "kill" a project partway through, after you've already put in time. It's separate from your normal invoice for completed milestones — it exists specifically to cover the situation where work stops before the project is finished and there's no deliverable to bill against in the usual way.

Without one, a mid-project cancellation defaults to whatever the contract says about termination — and a lot of freelance contracts say nothing at all, which in practice means you eat the hours already spent on research, drafts, or revisions that never shipped.

Where the term comes from

The phrase originates in magazine and newspaper journalism: a publication commissions a piece, then decides not to run it — the story is "killed" — and pays the writer a partial fee instead of the full commissioned rate. That publishing origin is why the term still shows up most in writing, design, and consulting work, where a project can be abandoned without ever producing a finished, invoiceable deliverable. It's less standardized in software development, where milestone-based payment schedules often do similar work under a different name.

Typical rates

There's no legal or industry-mandated number — a kill fee only exists because a contract specifies it — but in practice freelance kill fees commonly fall in a fairly narrow band:

The tiered structure is worth the extra sentence of wording: it rewards you fairly whether the client cancels on day one or after you've delivered a full draft, and it's easier to defend to a client than a single flat number that feels arbitrary either way.

What the clause needs to cover

A kill fee clause that actually works when you need it has four parts:

• The trigger. What counts as a cancellation — written notice, or no client engagement for a stated number of days (useful for the client who just goes quiet instead of formally cancelling).
• The amount. The percentage or flat figure, ideally tiered to the stage reached.
• What's owed alongside it. The kill fee is usually in addition to payment for any milestone already delivered and accepted, not instead of it.
• Timing. When the kill fee invoice is due — immediately on cancellation is standard, same as any other invoice.

Sample wording

A minimal version you can adapt into most freelance agreements:

Adjust the bracketed figures to your project size and the milestones you've already defined elsewhere in the contract — a kill fee clause leans on the milestone schedule, so the two should be written to match.

Kill fee vs. deposit vs. cancellation fee

These get used loosely and interchangeably, but they cover different situations:

• Deposit / retainer. Paid upfront, before work starts, regardless of whether the project is later cancelled. It's often applied toward the final invoice, not on top of it.
• Kill fee. Triggered specifically by cancellation mid-project. Compensates for work already done that has no other invoice to attach to.
• Cancellation fee. A broader, informal term for the same idea as a kill fee — some contracts use one label, some the other, and there's no meaningful difference once the clause is actually written out.

A deposit and a kill fee aren't mutually exclusive — a deposit protects the start of a project, a kill fee protects the middle, and using both is normal on a longer engagement.

If the client pushes back

Kill fees are negotiable in both directions, and pushback is usually about the number, not the concept. If a client resists a flat 50%, the tiered structure is the easiest concession — it's hard to argue with 25% for a cancellation on day one, and it makes the case for 50% later in the project on its own. If they resist entirely, the fallback is "payment for time already invested" — effectively the same protection under a less loaded name, billed at your normal hourly rate for hours actually worked rather than a percentage of the total.

Also see: contract red flags freelancers shouldn't sign and how to negotiate a freelance contract.

FairClause is automated pattern analysis and drafting help, not a law firm and not legal advice. Contract enforceability varies by jurisdiction. For anything binding, talk to a licensed lawyer where you are.