Latin America's Freelance Impact on the Global Market

Discovering Latin America's rising role in global remote employment and digital finance

Nebeus, a global payment platform, has conducted a study to delve into the landscape of freelancers across all Latin American countries, examining their skills and comparing them with one another.

What do Latin American freelancers specialize in? How much do they charge? Are they more affordable than their European counterparts? Do they receive better reviews than freelancers from Southeast Asia, renowned for their exceptional freelancing skills? Do they have as much experience as British freelancers? What country has the best developers? Writers?

All these questions are addressed in this study, offering a comprehensive exploration of the state of freelancing in Latin America and its comparison with global trends.

Additionally, we broaden our scope by including the top 10 countries globally with the highest presence of freelancers, providing insight into how Latin American freelancers fare in the global market.

Let’s start with a general overview. In this infographic you’ll find:

Rank of Most Freelancers: This section highlights the countries with the highest total number of freelancers.
Most Freelancers per Capita: Here, we identify the countries with the highest number of freelancers relative to the size of their population.
Active Freelancers: This metric represents the percentage of freelancers who have created a profile and are actively engaged in work on platforms, receiving reviews, and completing projects. This data is based on the top 100 profiles per country from freelancer.com. You can find the full methodology at the bottom of the page.
Average Rating: We present the average rating received by freelancers upon completing their work, rated on a scale from 0 to 5, with 5 indicating exceptional client satisfaction.
Price per Hour: The median hourly rate charged by freelancers for their services.
Year Joined: The average year in which freelancers began their freelance work. This provides insight into the distribution of experienced veterans versus newcomers in the freelancing arena.

Insights into Latin American Freelancers: The general analysis

Argentina Emerges as Freelance Powerhouse

Argentina emerges as the leading country in Latin America for freelancers, ranking second globally in both total number and per capita. Notably, they boast the highest average rating of 4.97 among all Latin American freelancers.

Pricing: LATAM Freelancers Average $17 per Hour

The average hourly rate for Latin American freelancers stands at $17, with Colombia and Peru emerging as the most cost-effective options.

Evidently aware of their expertise, Argentine freelancers command premium rates, positioning themselves as the most expensive in the region with an average hourly rate of $25. This rate surpasses that of some regional counterparts by more than double, yet remains half the price of freelancers in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Only 8 countries have a high percentage of active freelancers

Compared to the rest, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela have much more actively engaged freelancers than the rest, receiving requests, completing projects and being consistently online.

Countries like Paraguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and Bolivia exhibit relatively low activity percentages. While the few active freelancers excel in certain areas, they hold little significance on the continental stage.

New to the market: Most started working in 2020

Lastly, let's consider the tenure of Latin American freelancers in the market. They are relatively new! On average, they began entering the freelance world in the year 2020, less than 4 years ago! The most experienced ones (Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela) joined in 2017 though, which is closer to their international counterparts like Filipinos, Pakistanis, and even Indians, who have been in the game, on average, since 2015!

Indeed, while Latin Americans entered the freelance arena a bit later, they have become strong competitors, offering competitive prices for high-quality work.

Now, let's delve into specifics. What do Latin American freelancers specialize in? What are their strongest professional areas?

LATAM Online Workforce Profession Distribution

Now, let's take a closer look at the 4 most popular categories: design, computer science, administrative and data entry professionals, and content writers. Let's examine their subcategories, prices, ratings, and comparison with global levels.

In Latin America, most freelancers work in design (40%), mainly focusing on graphic design and 3D modeling. Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela have the most graphic designers, while Nicaragua, Paraguay, and El Salvador have the fewest.

The average hourly rate for graphic designers in Latin America is $16, with Mexico having the highest rate at $24. If you're looking for affordable graphic design services, Bolivia offers the lowest rate in Latin America: $10 per hour.

Compared to the rest of the world, graphic designers in Latin America have lower rates. Most countries outside Latin America have an average rate of $20 per hour, with the United States charging the most at $40.

Overall, Latin American graphic designers receive high ratings, mostly above 4.9. Nicaragua ranks highest with an average score of 5, while Costa Rica has the lowest score in Latin America, though still high at 4.82.

IT professionals in Latin America account for 30% of all freelancers. Most of them, 24.6%, are PHP Developers, followed by Javascript Developers (11.2%) and Website Designers (10.4%).
The highest concentration of IT freelancers is in Bolivia (40%), followed by Costa Rica (37%) and Uruguay (36%).
Overall, the proportion of IT freelancers in Latin America is higher than in other countries, behind only Indonesia (33%) and Pakistan (32%).
Rate-wise, you can find the cheapest in Bolivia and the most expensive in Argentina ($13 and $30 respectively).
The average rating of IT freelancers in Latin America is quite high at 4.93, with Guatemala on the podium (4.99) and Honduras in last place (4.88).

When it comes to admin professionals, responsible for organizing information in spreadsheets and databases, we see that prices in LATAM are significantly more affordable than in the rest of the world.

For example, Argentina has the highest prices at $43 per hour, but it doesn't come close to the British costs of $100.

Many countries stand out for their good reviews, with 8 of them receiving 5/5 stars.
The percentages of freelancers in this area are quite low both in LATAM and outside of LATAM. Certainly, we can infer that administrative roles are more challenging to execute remotely, and most businesses require an on-site employee for these tasks.

Finally, it came as a surprise that writers have low representation in the freelance world.

In this category, language is crucial. Among Spanish-speaking countries,

Venezuelans emerge as the cheapest, and judging by their excellent reviews of 4.95, they are also the best writers in terms of quality-price ratio, although they only account for 4% of participation.

Native English speakers are considerably more expensive, with Britons being the priciest at $40 per hour.

In Brazil, the only Portuguese-speaking country on the list, only 2% of the top freelancers specialize in writing, and they charge only $7 per hour. Certainly, Portuguese content is not in as high demand in the online world as the popular Spanish and English languages.

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Methodology

To determine the countries with the highest total and per capita number of freelancers, we aggregated data from platforms that publicly display such information and are highly regarded in the industry: Toptal, Freelancer.com, Guru, Workana, and PeoplePerHour.

For other comparisons, we analyzed the profiles of the top 100 freelancers per country on the Freelancer.com platform. We categorized and examined their occupations, hourly rates, quantity and quality of reviews, as well as the year they joined.

This approach enabled us to obtain a homogeneous sample across all countries, ideal for comparisons.

It's important to note that these numbers reflect only the top 100 freelancers with the highest visibility and positioning when filtering by country on Freelancer.com. Therefore, even lower ratings are relatively high, as we are comparing the best of the best.

For mathematical calculations, we considered the mean values regarding the year freelancers joined the platform, hourly rates, number of recommendations, and number of reviews. The rating was calculated as an average.