How Much Does a Blog Post Cost? Freelancer vs AI Writer
Freelancers charge $0.25 to $0.45 a word for blog posts, so a 1,000-word piece costs $250 to $450. Here's what an AI writer costs instead, and what you still have to check yourself.
Freelance writers in the Editorial Freelancers Association's 2026 rate chart charge $0.25 to $0.45 a word for work-for-hire blog posts, which puts the blog post cost of a 1,000-word piece at $250 to $450. An AI writer changes that arithmetic completely, but it moves some of the work onto you.
Below are the real numbers for both routes, what pushes a price up or down, and how to pick without regretting it.
Average blog post cost: what freelancers charge
Expect to pay a freelancer roughly a quarter to 45 cents per word for a blog post, so the typical blog post cost lands between a few hundred and a bit under seven hundred dollars. The spread comes from who writes it, how much research it needs and how the writer prices their time.
Per-word rates from the EFA 2026 rate chart
The EFA's chart is based on a survey of its members run from November 2025 to mid-January 2026, covering rates charged during 2025. For ghostwritten blog posts it lists $0.25 to $0.40 per word, or $75 to $100 an hour. Work-for-hire blog posts run $0.25 to $0.45 per word, or $74.50 to $87.50 an hour.
The EFA says it neither sets rates nor advises members on what to charge, so treat these as a map of what members reported, not a price list. Its chart also has no separate web content category, which is why blog posts are read from the ghostwriting and work-for-hire lines.
What a 1,000 or 1,500-word post adds up to
Multiply the per-word range by the length and the cost of a 1,000-word blog post is easy to see.
| Post length | Ghostwriting ($0.25 to $0.40 a word) | Work-for-hire ($0.25 to $0.45 a word) |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 words | $250 to $400 | $250 to $450 |
| 1,500 words | $375 to $600 | $375 to $675 |
Those are the writing fees alone, and a regular schedule multiplies the blog post cost quickly. A series of four posts a month at 1,500 words therefore runs well into four figures before anyone has edited a sentence.
What makes a blog post cost more or less?
Four things move the blog post cost: how much expertise the subject demands, how much research it needs, how long it runs and how the writer charges. BrightEdge lists exactly these in its guide to blog post pricing.
- Expertise: technical posts cost significantly more than a basic one.
- Research: a post that needs interviews or original digging takes more hours.
- Length: longer pieces cost more under a per-word rate.
- Payment model: per word, per project or per hour, with most brands ordering per word or per project.
You'll also see much lower quotes. BrightEdge says the figure freelancers cite most often is around $100 for a basic post, and that per-word quotes stretch from $0.10 all the way to $2. A $100 post and a $675 post are not the same product, so compare what each quote includes before comparing the totals.
How much does an AI writer cost per post?
With AIBlogWrite the first four posts are free for life: the free plan is $0 forever. After that, the Own API key plan is $19 / month. Compared with a freelancer's few hundred dollars for a single post, the AI blog writer cost is a small, predictable subscription.
AIBlogWrite researches, writes and publishes SEO blog posts in your business's voice, and delivers them to your WordPress site on schedule. We tuned the writer on real WordPress sites with Rank Math, and every post scores 81 or more out of 100.
Using your own API key
On the Own API key plan you connect your own account with an AI provider and pay that provider's per-token price directly. Anthropic's published API pricing shows what that looks like: Claude Sonnet 5.5 is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens.
As a rough illustration only, a 1,500-word post is around 2,000 to 3,000 output tokens. Feed it 50,000 tokens of research and the model charge comes to about 13 cents. Real usage varies with the number of drafts and how much research goes in, so treat 13 cents as a ballpark rather than a quote.
Freelancer vs AI writer: the real difference
A freelancer sells you hours of a person's research and writing. An AI writer sells you the drafting at software prices, and leaves the judgement about what's true and what's right for your business with you. That single difference explains almost every other trade-off.
It also changes what you scale. Doubling your output with a freelancer doubles the invoice, while an AI writer's subscription barely moves.
Fact-checking and editing time
Cheaper drafting doesn't mean no review. Google's guidance on using generative AI content warns that generative models "don't retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words", so outputs can contain errors. Its advice is blunt: "It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing."
Google adds that the review should cover titles, meta descriptions and image alt text, not just the body. Set aside time for it on every post.
If you'd rather not do that yourself, a hybrid costs far less than commissioning from scratch. EFA members list copyediting at $0.03 to $0.04 per word, so a human pass over a 1,500-word draft is roughly $45 to $60. That's still a fraction of the writing fee for the same length.
When a freelancer is still the better choice
Hire a freelancer when the post depends on something only a person can get: an interview with your engineers, a photo of a job you finished, a view formed by years in a narrow field. An AI writer works from your website and published sources, so it can't sit in on a call with your head of service.
The same goes for posts where a single sentence carries legal or safety weight. Pay for the expert, then use the AI writer for the steady run of everything else.
Will Google penalise AI-written blog posts?
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No, not for being AI-written. Google doesn't say AI content is banned. Its concern is low-value content produced at scale: using generative AI to create many pages without adding value for users "may violate Google's spam policy on scaled content abuse."
So the question isn't whether a machine drafted the post. It's whether the post is accurate, relevant and useful to the person reading it. Google also suggests explaining how automation was used so readers understand how the content was made, which is an easy line to add to an author note. We cover the ranking side in more depth in can AI-written blog posts rank on Google.
How to choose between a freelancer and an AI writer
Choose by volume and by what each post must contain. If you need a handful of expert-led pieces a year, a freelancer's blog post cost is easy to justify. If you need a steady flow of posts for a WordPress site, the subscription route is the one that fits a normal marketing budget.
A short test settles most cases:
- Count the posts you want each month and multiply by $250 to $450 to see the freelancer total for 1,000 words.
- Mark which posts need first-hand knowledge only your team has. Those can go to a person.
- Start the rest on the free plan, read the four posts against your own standards, and only then move to $19 / month.
You can also judge the output before spending anything: read a few posts on our blog and compare them with what you'd get for $250 or more.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I pay for a 1,000-word blog post?
From a freelancer, EFA member rates for blog posts work out to $250 to $450 for 1,000 words. Lower quotes exist, with BrightEdge citing around $100 for a basic post, but expect them to come with less research and less expertise.
Is an AI-written blog post really cheaper than a freelancer?
On the numbers, yes, and the blog post cost gap is wide. The free plan costs $0 for four posts and the Own API key plan is $19 / month, against $250 or more for a single freelancer post. The saving shrinks if you pay someone to review every draft, but even a paid copyedit is a fraction of the writing fee.
Do I still need to edit an AI-written post?
Yes. Google says it's critical to manually factcheck and review AI-generated content before publishing, including titles, meta descriptions and alt text. Read each post against what you know to be true about your business, and read what AI content needs to rank on Google before you publish.
Can I use an AI writer with my WordPress site?
Yes. AIBlogWrite delivers finished posts to your WordPress site on schedule, and each one is tuned to score 81 or more in Rank Math.
Sources
- EFA 2026 Rate Chart — Editorial Freelancers Association
- How Much Does a Blog Post Cost? — BrightEdge
- Google Search's guidance on using generative AI content on your website — Google Search Central
- Pricing - Claude API Docs — Anthropic
Cover photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels
