What Should a Freelance Contract Include?

The six that decide money

1. Scope, and what counts as finished

The most expensive clause in freelance work is usually the one that is not there: a definition of done. Without it, a project ends when the client says it does. Write what you are delivering, how many rounds of revision are included, and what happens on the round after that. A number is worth more than an adjective here, because “reasonable revisions” means one thing in April and another in July.

2. Payment timing, and what late costs

Net 30 and net 90 are both normal-looking phrases and they are two entirely different businesses to run. Fix the number. Then say what happens when it is missed, because a payment term with no consequence is a request. A late fee you never actually charge still helps, since it gives you something to point at when you ask for the money.

Watch for payment triggered by “acceptance” with no deadline attached to accepting. That converts a 30-day term into an open one at the client’s convenience.

3. Who owns the work, and when

Say explicitly who owns the deliverables, and tie the transfer to full payment so ownership moves when the money does. Two things to look for in a client’s version. First, assignment language broad enough to capture work you did before the project or on your own time. Second, language sweeping in anything you “learn” or “conceive” during the engagement, which on a plain reading can include the general skill you brought with you.

If you reuse tools, components or templates across clients, carve them out by name. A client owning your delivery is normal. A client owning your toolkit is not.

4. Termination, and the kill fee

Check whether both sides can end it or only one. A clause letting the client terminate “for convenience” on short notice, with no matching right for you and nothing owed on cancellation, is the single most common one-sided term in contractor paper. It is not automatically unreasonable. It is unreasonable when it is not paired with payment for work already done and some fee for the work you turned down to be available.

5. What you can be held responsible for

This is the clause most likely to be skipped and most likely to be catastrophic. An indemnity obligation with no cap means that in the bad case your exposure is unrelated to what you were paid. A liability cap set at the fees under the agreement is the ordinary ask, and it is a normal thing to request rather than an aggressive one.

6. How changes get priced

Scope moves on almost every project. That is fine and expected. What you need is a stated route from “can you also” to a number, in writing, before the work starts. Without one, every addition is a negotiation you are having while already behind.

What usually gets left out

Absence is harder to notice than presence, which is why these survive. No cap on liability. No kill fee. No stated consequence for late payment. No expense reimbursement, so travel and software come out of your fee. No stated confidentiality end date, which leaves an obligation running forever. None of these look like anything on the page, because they are not on the page.

When the client sends their own paper

Assume it was drafted for them, because it was. That does not make it unfair or unsignable. Read it for the six items above, note which are missing or one-sided, and come back with a short list of specific changes rather than a general objection. “Can we cap liability at the fees and add 14 days to the payment term” gets approved. “I have some concerns about the agreement” gets scheduled.

Where we fit

StraightTerms runs a fixed pass over the whole document rather than waiting for questions, including a check for clauses that should be there and are not, which is the half of this list that is hardest to spot by reading. Every finding quotes the exact clause it refers to, so you can confirm it against your own copy rather than taking it on trust.

Your first review is free with no signup, and after that an email unlocks three a month. This is AI analysis and not legal advice, and for anything with real money attached it works best as preparation for a lawyer rather than a replacement: three specific questions instead of an unread contract is what makes that hour affordable.

Common questions

Do I need a written contract for a small job?

For anything where you would be upset not to get paid, yes. The value of a written contract is not that it wins a lawsuit, which is rarely worth filing at freelance sizes. It is that it settles what both sides agreed before there is a disagreement, and most disputes at this size are genuine misunderstandings about scope rather than bad faith.

Who owns the work if the contract does not say?

It depends on where you are and how the relationship is structured, which is exactly the problem. Silence does not reliably mean you keep it and does not reliably mean the client gets it. A one-line assignment clause, saying who owns what and at what moment, removes the question entirely. Tie the transfer to payment so ownership moves when the money does.

What is a kill fee and what is a normal amount?

It is what the client owes if they end the project before it finishes. Without one, a client can cancel after you have done most of the work and owe only for whatever was formally delivered. Common shapes are a percentage of the remaining fee or payment for the current phase in full. What matters more than the number is that some number exists.

Should I sign the client's contract or send my own?

Whoever writes the document sets the defaults, so sending your own is a real advantage. But refusing to sign a client's paper costs you work. The practical move is to sign theirs with specific edits rather than rejecting it, because a short list of concrete changes is much easier to approve than a wholesale swap.