Budget roughly 1 to 6 cents a word. The Editorial Freelancers Association's 2026 rate chart puts proofreading at 1 to 4.5 cents and line editing at 2.7 to 6 cents, so editing a 1,000-word AI draft costs about $10 to $60, plus fact-checking at $60 to $72.50 an hour.
The depth of edit you buy matters more than the rate. AI drafts are usually clean at sentence level, so a proofreader finds little to correct, yet they are the drafts most likely to contain an invented figure, a promise you don't make or a paragraph that says nothing at all. Pay for a proofread alone and you pay for the part the AI already did well.
Published editing rates, from proofread to developmental edit
Three sources publish numbers you can use, and each measures something slightly different. The most useful for business content is the Editorial Freelancers Association rate chart, built from a member survey run between November 2025 and mid-January 2026. Each range is the median rate members reported, with upper and lower estimates around it. The association says plainly that it neither sets rates nor advises members on them, so treat the chart as a benchmark for judging a quote, not a price list.
| Depth of edit | Per word | Per hour | Pace (words an hour) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proofreading | 1.0 to 4.5 cents | $29 to $65 | 1,250 to 5,000 |
| Copyediting | 2.0 to 5.0 cents | $40 to $75 | 1,250 to 3,000 |
| Line editing | 2.7 to 6.0 cents | $40 to $85 | 1,000 to 2,125 |
| Developmental editing | 2.8 to 7.8 cents | $50 to $95 | 750 to 3,375 |
| Fact-checking | Not priced per word | $60 to $72.50 | Depends on the number of claims |
The chart quotes pace in pages and defines a page as 250 words; the words-an-hour column above is that conversion. Pace matters because an hourly quote only becomes a price once you know how many words an editor gets through.
The second source is Reedsy, a marketplace for publishing freelancers. Its page, updated in February 2026 and based on quotes placed through the site, gives proofreading at $0.014 to $0.021 a word, copy editing at $0.020 to $0.032 and developmental editing at $0.026 to $0.053. Those are book manuscripts, where tens of thousands of words bring the per-word rate down. A 900-word service page won't get book pricing.
The third is Fiverr's guide titled for 2025, which quotes business-document proofreading at $0.05 to $0.10 a word, or $49 to $54 an hour. The same guide prices a 1,000-word business document at $25 to $28 per project, which works out at 2.5 to 2.8 cents a word. When one page disagrees with itself by a factor of two, the lesson is to judge the quote in front of you against the EFA ranges rather than lean on any single headline figure.
Why AI drafts rarely need only a proofread
The five services in the table are different jobs, and AI drafts sit awkwardly across them.
- Proofreading catches typos, punctuation and inconsistencies in final copy. AI drafts rarely have typos, so this is the least useful spend.
- Copyediting fixes grammar, applies your house style (numbers, capitals, spellings) and queries anything that looks wrong at sentence level.
- Line editing rewrites sentences for voice and rhythm and cuts filler. For AI copy, this is where it stops sounding like everyone else's.
- Developmental editing changes what the piece says and in what order. You need it when the AI answered a different question from the one your customer asked.
- Fact-checking tests every figure, date, name and promise against a source. Nothing else on the list does this reliably.
Here is an illustrative paragraph of the kind an AI tool produces for a mortgage adviser's newsletter, followed by what each level of edit would catch.
Whether you're a first-time buyer or moving up the ladder, our experienced team will find you the best mortgage deal on the market. With over 2,000 happy clients and a 98% approval rate, we make the process stress-free from start to finish. Rates are currently at their lowest in a decade, so there's never been a better time to buy.
- A proofreader passes it. There isn't a spelling or punctuation error in it.
- A copyeditor might query "best mortgage deal on the market" as an unsupported superlative, and would apply the house hyphenation for first-time buyer.
- A line editor would cut the opening formula, "moving up the ladder" and "stress-free from start to finish", three phrases found on thousands of broker websites.
- A fact-check finds the real damage. The firm has arranged mortgages for about 600 clients, not 2,000. Nobody has ever measured an approval rate, so the 98% was invented. The line about rates being at a ten-year low wasn't true when the newsletter went out, and "never been a better time to buy" is the sort of line a compliance reviewer strikes on sight.
After a line edit and a fact-check, the paragraph might read: "Buying your first home or moving to a bigger one? We compare deals from the lenders on our panel and explain the trade-offs in plain words, so you choose with the full picture. We have arranged mortgages for more than 600 clients since 2014." It is shorter, it is true, and it sounds like a particular firm.
That is the pricing trap in one example. The cheap service catches none of the four problems. If the edit you can afford is a proofread, pair it with your own claims check, which the routine for fact-checking AI marketing copy sets out step by step.
Costing a month of edits for a three-adviser mortgage firm
Take an illustrative three-adviser mortgage brokerage that drafts all its content with an AI assistant. Each month it publishes four website guides of about 1,200 words, two email newsletters of about 800 words and twelve social posts of about 60 words. It chooses an edit depth for each type by risk: the guides carry product explanations and get a copyedit plus a fact-check; the newsletters carry the firm's voice and get a line edit; the social posts go to the editor as one batch for a proofread.
| Content | Volume a month | Edit depth | Low end | High end |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 website guides | 4,800 words | Copyedit (2.0 to 5.0 cents) | $96 | $240 |
| Fact-check on the guides, 20 minutes each | 80 minutes | Fact-check ($60 to $72.50 an hour) | $80 | $97 |
| 2 newsletters | 1,600 words | Line edit (2.7 to 6.0 cents) | $43 | $96 |
| 12 social posts, one batch | 720 words | Proofread (1.0 to 4.5 cents) | $7 | $32 |
| Total | 7,120 words | $226 | $465 |
Over a year that is roughly $2,700 to $5,600. The spread is wide because the EFA ranges are wide, which is exactly why a paid sample (covered below) is worth more than any chart: it tells you where in the range a particular editor sits for your kind of copy.
The same volume costs very different amounts depending on the depth you choose across the board:
| Scenario | What gets done | Monthly editor cost | What it leaves to you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lean | Everything proofread at 1 cent a word | About $71 | Every fact and claim, plus the voice |
| Middle | The mix in the table above, low end of each range | About $226 | Newsletter facts, approvals |
| Full | Everything line-edited at 6 cents, plus two hours of fact-checking at $72.50 | About $572 | Final sign-off only |
The lean option looks cheap until you price your own time. If the owner spends three hours a month checking figures the editor was never asked to check, the saving over the middle scenario is small, and it depends on the owner actually doing it every month.
Per word, per hour or per piece: reading an editor's quote
Editors quote in one of three ways, and the same job can come out differently under each. Take a 2,000-word AI-drafted guide for a financial planner's website, copyedited:
- Per word at 3 cents: $60, fixed before work starts.
- Per hour at $55: at the EFA copyediting pace of 1,250 to 3,000 words an hour, the job takes 40 minutes to 1 hour 36 minutes, so $37 to $88. A draft full of confident, unsourced specifics sends the editor to the slow end, because every figure becomes a query.
- Per piece at $65: sensible once an editor knows your content, for recurring items of similar length such as a monthly newsletter.
Per-word pricing gives you certainty; hourly pricing rewards you for sending clean drafts. Whichever you accept, get answers to five questions in writing before the first job:
- What counts as a word: are tables, headings and reference lists included?
- If the quote is per page, how many words make a page? The EFA uses 250; some editors use more.
- How many rounds of revision are included, and what does a third round cost?
- Is there a minimum fee per job? Twelve 60-word posts sent one at a time can cost far more than one batch of 720 words.
- Does the price include queries about facts, or only corrections of language?
Costs that sit outside the editor's invoice
The invoice is only part of the spend. Five other costs turn up in the first few months:
- Answering queries. A good editor sends back questions: where does this figure come from, do you really offer this, is this the right product name. AI drafts generate more of these than human drafts because they state invented specifics with confidence. Allow 15 to 30 minutes per long piece in the first month, falling as your fact sheet improves.
- Writing the brief once. An editor needs your audience, tone, banned phrases and a fact sheet of true numbers. Expect two or three hours to write it; it pays back on every job after that.
- Compliance sign-off. If your content counts as a financial promotion or legal information, your own compliance or supervising partner still signs it off. A copy editor improves the wording; they don't take regulatory responsibility for it.
- Rework after someone re-runs the AI. A common failure: a colleague pastes the edited version back into the chat assistant "to tidy it", and the clichés and one of the corrected figures come straight back. Lock edited copy, or make the rule that nobody regenerates approved text.
- Marketplace fees, rush fees and minimums. Platforms add service fees at checkout: Fiverr charges 5.5% plus $3.50 on orders under $200, and Upwork's basic client fee is up to 7.99%. On Fiverr, the $15 paid sample described below would cost about $19.33, almost 30% more. Some editors also charge extra for next-day turnaround, so check the platform's fee page and ask before you rely on a quote.
The proofread that cost the most
An illustration of how the cheapest option goes wrong. A small bookkeeping firm had an AI tool rewrite its service pages, then paid a freelancer for a proofread at the bottom of the range. The AI had added two lines: "we reconcile your accounts daily" and "fixed fees from $99 a month". The firm reconciles weekly and its lowest package is much higher. The proofreader corrected a comma splice and a capital letter, exactly as briefed, and the page went live. Three weeks later a prospect on a discovery call asked for the $99 package. The fix took an afternoon; the awkward call and the lost goodwill were the real cost. The proofreader wasn't at fault. The brief bought the wrong service.
Cheaper drafts in, cheaper edits out
Every minute you take out of the editor's job comes off an hourly bill and keeps a per-word editor at the lighter end of the scale. Three habits do most of the work.
First, give the AI tool your facts and your style before it drafts. A one-page fact sheet (client numbers, services, prices, what you never promise) and a house style guide your team and AI both follow stop most invented specifics at source.
Second, run a claims inventory before the draft goes to the editor. This prompt works in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini:
Below is a draft for our website. Do not rewrite it.
List, as a numbered table:
1. Every number, percentage, date and price in the draft.
2. Every promise or guarantee (anything we "will" do).
3. Every comparison with other firms ("best", "only", "fastest").
For each item give the exact sentence and mark it
VERIFY (needs a source), REMOVE (unsupportable) or OK
(general knowledge). Then list any sentence that could
appear unchanged on a competitor's website.
DRAFT:
[paste draft]Run on the mortgage paragraph above, it returns something like this (illustrative):
1. "over 2,000 happy clients" - number - VERIFY
2. "98% approval rate" - percentage - VERIFY
3. "Rates are currently at their lowest in a decade" - VERIFY
4. "we make the process stress-free" - promise - REMOVE
Generic sentences: "Whether you're a first-time buyer or
moving up the ladder..."Two corrections before you rely on it: it marked the 98% as VERIFY when nobody at the firm has ever measured an approval rate, so the honest mark is REMOVE, and it missed "the best mortgage deal on the market" entirely, because superlatives often slip past these lists. The inventory is a head start for the editor, not a replacement for one. Send the corrected table with the draft and the fact-check becomes a list of ticks rather than a search.
Third, tier by risk. Social posts and internal notes can go through a checklist and a grammar tool. Pages with prices, product explanations or regulated wording get the human edit. The method for catching made-up figures in AI-drafted proposals applies to any high-stakes document, not only proposals.
One thing not to buy instead: a "humaniser" tool that rewrites AI text to dodge detectors. It changes the wording and leaves every wrong figure in place. The tutorial on AI humaniser tools covers why that money is better spent on an editor's hour.
A paid 500-word test before you commit
A rate tells you little about whether an editor will catch the errors that matter in AI copy. A paid test does. Take a 500-word AI draft on a real topic and plant five problems in it before sending it to two or three candidates, each paid at their normal rate (at 3 cents a word, $15 each).
A filled-in scorecard from an illustrative test by a law firm choosing an editor for its client updates:
| Planted problem | Editor A | Editor B |
|---|---|---|
| An invented statistic ("73% of disputes settle within a month") | Queried, asked for source | Missed |
| A wrong fee figure that contradicts the fact sheet | Corrected from the fact sheet | Missed |
| A generic opening sentence | Rewritten | Rewritten |
| A house-style breach (figures under ten written as numerals) | Corrected | Corrected |
| A promise the firm can't make ("we guarantee a result") | Flagged as a risk | Softened to "we aim for" |
| Score | 5 of 5 | 2 of 5, plus one half-fix |
Editor B produced the smoother prose and charged less per word, and would have been the wrong hire. Softening a guarantee to "we aim for" still leaves a sentence the firm never approved. For AI drafts, the editor who asks awkward questions about facts is worth more than the one with the nicest sentences.
Doing the edit in-house: the sum to run first
For some firms the cheapest editor is already on the payroll. Run the numbers honestly. Suppose an office manager whose time costs the business about $30 an hour, including overheads, edits at 1,500 words an hour, slower than a professional. The mortgage firm's 7,120 words a month would take about 4.75 hours, roughly $143, which is less than the middle scenario.
Three things change the answer. The office manager's hours come out of other work, so price what doesn't get done. An insider checking an insider's facts tends to share the same blind spots: they know what the firm meant, so they read past what the draft actually says. And an in-house editor is only as good as the brief, the same as a freelancer.
A split works for many small firms: social posts and newsletters edited in-house against a checklist, website guides and anything with prices or regulated claims sent out for a copyedit and fact-check. If you are still deciding whether AI drafting beats hiring a writer in the first place, the cost comparison of AI and freelance content covers that earlier decision.
Whichever route you take, measure it after three months: the words you actually sent, the total spent including your own query time, and the number of errors found after publication. Zero errors after publication at the middle scenario's price is a good result. Errors still getting through at any price mean the brief or the depth of edit is wrong, not the rate.
Paying an editor for AI drafts: follow-up questions
Do editors charge more to edit AI-generated drafts?
None of the three rate sources checked for this tutorial (the EFA chart, Reedsy and Fiverr) lists a separate rate for AI drafts. Editors price by depth of edit and difficulty. AI drafts tend to need line editing and fact queries rather than a proofread, so quotes often land at the upper end of a range. Tell the editor where the draft came from and ask for a quote on a sample.
Is a grammar checker enough instead of a human editor?
For low-risk social posts and internal notes, often yes. A grammar checker fixes sentence-level slips, which AI drafts rarely contain. It cannot know that your firm has 600 clients rather than 2,000, that you don't offer a guarantee, or that a sentence sounds like every competitor. Anything carrying prices, claims or regulated wording still needs a person who knows the facts.
Should I tell the editor the draft was written with AI?
Yes. It changes what a good editor looks for: invented figures, promises you never made, repeated points and filler, rather than typos. Some editors also have their own policy on AI work and will want to know before they accept the job. Hiding it means you pay for a proofread of a draft that needed a fact-check.
Can I put an editor on a monthly retainer instead?
Yes, and it suits a steady content calendar. Agree a monthly word allowance, the edit depth for each content type, the turnaround and what happens to unused words (most retainers don't roll them over). Price the retainer from the per-word sum for your usual volume, then review it after three months against the words you actually sent.
Further reads
- Tone of Voice Examples: AI Copy Before and After Editing — Side-by-side edits showing what a line edit changes in AI copy.
- Grammarly vs ChatGPT for Checking Business Writing — What the cheap automated checks catch before a paid edit.
- AI Content Approval Workflow: Draft, Check, Sign Off — Where the editor sits in a draft, check and sign-off process.
- AI Words to Avoid: A Banned-Phrase List for Your Brand — A banned-phrase list that shortens every line edit.
- How to Check AI Content for Plain English and Readability — Readability checks you can run yourself before paying anyone.
- Does Google Penalise AI-Written Content on a Business Website? — Why edited, accurate AI content is what search engines reward.
- AI Content Workflow for Agencies: From Brief to Approved Draft — Six gates from client brief to approved draft, with the AI's job and the human's job at each, plus a filled-in brief, outline prompt and claims log.
- How Videographers Use AI to Edit, Caption and Quote Faster — Transcript editing in Premiere, Resolve and Descript, a caption proofreading routine, an enquiry-to-quote prompt with sample output, and rights checks.
- How Freelance Writers Use AI Without Losing Their Voice — Keep control of the angle and first draft, then use targeted prompts to find weak passages without flattening your writing.
- How to Write Website Articles With AI That Still Rank on Google — A step-by-step method for AI-assisted website articles that rank: evidence packs, outline and draft prompts, the edit pass, and what to check in Search Console.
- Claude vs ChatGPT for Business Writing, Proposals and Reports — Choose your writing assistant by testing factual accuracy, scope, voice and the time needed to turn drafts into finished work.
- Brand Voice Tools Compared: Jasper, Writer and Custom Instructions — Prices, voice features and banned-word enforcement compared for Jasper, Writer and shared ChatGPT or Claude instructions, with a scored trial.
- How to Check AI Content for Plagiarism Before You Publish — A pre-publish plagiarism routine for AI-drafted copy: checker prices, a match-triage table, cross-client duplicates and why AI detector scores prove little.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Editorial Freelancers Association 2026 rate chart (member survey, November 2025 to mid-January 2026); Reedsy, How Much Does an Editor Cost? (updated February 2026); Fiverr, How Much Do Proofreading Services Cost in 2025? (all checked September 2026).