A freelance web developer shared this story on Reddit:
"My best friend of 20 years asked me to build his business website. I gave him a 50% discount. He then asked for 'a few changes' every week for six months. When I finally said I needed to charge for the ongoing work, he said: 'I thought friends help each other out.' We haven't spoken since."
Twenty years of friendship, destroyed over a website.
This story isn't unusual. It's the norm. Research from freelance communities shows that 95% of freelancers have done work for friends or family, and 65% of those had a negative experience. The friend discount doesn't protect the friendship. It destroys it.
Why Friends Make the Worst Clients
This isn't about bad people. It's about bad dynamics.
The Expectation Gap
When you hire a freelancer, you expect professional boundaries: defined scope, invoices, deadlines, revision limits. When you ask a friend, those expectations evaporate. The friend-client expects:
- Discount or free pricing ("we're friends, right?")
- Flexible timelines ("no rush, whenever you have time" — then texting daily asking if it's done)
- Unlimited revisions ("can you just tweak this one more time?")
- Priority access ("I know you're busy, but can you look at this real quick?")
None of these are unreasonable requests between friends. All of them are devastating to a professional engagement.
The Guilt Dynamic
When a paying client asks for something out of scope, you can send a change request. When your college roommate asks, you feel guilty charging them. So you absorb the extra work. And the resentment builds.
Every absorbed hour is a silent grudge. Eventually, the grudge becomes visible — in shorter replies, in less enthusiasm, in lower quality work. Your friend senses something is wrong but doesn't know what. The friendship starts to fracture.
The Quality Trap
Here's the cruelest irony: friend-clients often receive your worst work. Not because you care less, but because the project was underpriced, under-scoped, and squeezed into gaps between paying work. Your friend deserves your best, but the economics make it impossible.
The Two Approaches That Actually Work
After reading hundreds of freelancer stories about friend-and-family projects, a clear pattern emerges: there are only two approaches that consistently preserve both the relationship and your income.
Approach 1: Full Price, Full Process
Treat your friend exactly like any other client. Same pricing. Same scope agreement. Same revision limits. Same change request process.
This sounds cold. It's the opposite.
When you charge full price and follow your standard process, you give your friend your best work, your full attention, and your professional commitment. There are no hidden resentments because there are no hidden concessions.
Use a Scope of Work even for friend projects. When they see the document, frame it as protecting them:
"I use this with all my clients to make sure we're on the same page. It protects you as much as it protects me — you'll know exactly what you're getting and when."
Most friends respect this. The ones who don't were never going to be good clients anyway.
Approach 2: Completely Free, Completely Separate
If you want to do something nice for a friend, do it as a gift. No scope document. No revisions. No timeline. You'll build them a website / design them a logo / write their copy when you have time, as a favor, with zero expectations on either side.
The key is: no middle ground. A 50% discount creates the worst of both worlds. You feel undercompensated. They feel entitled to more. Nobody is happy.
As one freelancer on Reddit put it: "Do it for free or do it full price. Anything in between kills the friendship."
The Conversation Script
If a friend asks for work, here's how to handle it:
If You Want to Work Together (Full Price)
"I'd love to work on this! I want to make sure you get the same quality I give all my clients, so I'd like to run it through my normal process. I'll send over a scope document and a quote. Fair warning — I treat friend projects extra seriously."
If You Don't Want to Mix Business and Friendship
"I appreciate you thinking of me! I've learned the hard way that mixing friends and business can get complicated, so I have a personal rule about not doing paid work for friends. Let me recommend someone who'd be great for this."
If You Want to Help for Free
"Tell you what — I'll do this as a gift. No charge, no timeline. I'll work on it when I have space. Just know it might take a while, and I'll do one round of the core work. Sound good?"
When You're Already In Too Deep
If you're currently in a friend project that's gone sideways:
Name It
"Hey, I want to talk about the website project. I feel like the scope has grown a lot beyond what we originally discussed, and I want to make sure we handle it in a way that's good for both of us."
Offer Options
"Going forward, I can either: (A) continue with a formal scope and billing for additional work, or (B) we can wrap up where we are and call it done. Either way, I value our friendship more than this project."
Don't Apologize for Having Boundaries
Setting professional boundaries with a friend isn't selfish. It's the thing that preserves the friendship. The freelancers who lost friendships over projects are the ones who didn't set boundaries — who absorbed resentment until it exploded.
Protect Both Relationships
Real friends pay full price — because they value your time, your skills, and your livelihood. And real friends use the same professional process — scope agreements, change requests, documented deliverables — because professionalism protects relationships.
The friend discount feels generous. It's actually the most expensive thing you can offer.