Why Your Hourly Rate Is Probably 30% Too Low Right Now

If you have not touched your expert-network rate in the last 18 months, you have almost certainly been donating a meaningful slice of your income to the margin between what clients pay and what you receive.

The Short Version

Networks have been quietly raising what they charge clients. The pass-through to experts has not kept pace. If you set your rate when you first signed up and left it there, you are almost certainly underpriced — not by a rounding error, but by something closer to 25–35% based on self-reported data across expert communities including the Tegus forum and independent consultant groups on LinkedIn.

The gap between the lowest and highest honorarium for equivalent expertise runs routinely at 40–60%. Most of that difference is not about credentials. It is about what the expert asked for, and when.

What Is Actually Going On

The Markup Math Most Experts Never See

Networks are intermediaries. They charge clients a rate, pay experts a rate, and keep the spread. That spread has widened since roughly 2022 as client demand — particularly from private equity and hedge funds — recovered and then grew, while networks competed on speed, compliance, and service quality rather than expert compensation.

A few networks, notably AlphaSights and some of the smaller boutiques like Dialectica and Prosapient, have moved toward slightly more open rate conversations with experts. Most have not. Guidepoint, GLG, and Third Bridge in particular tend to anchor hard to whatever figure appeared on your original profile submission.

Why Your Original Rate Stuck

The rate you accepted on your first signup became a floor, and then a default. Networks use your accepted rate as a signal of your own valuation. If you said yes to $250 once, the routing system treats $250 as your number indefinitely. Screeners are incentivised to close engagements quickly. Renegotiating your rate costs them time and risks losing the placement entirely. They will not volunteer that you could ask for more, because doing so is not in their short-term interest.

Where the Underpricing Is Sharpest

Not all experts are equally affected. The gap tends to be largest for:

• Mid-career operators at Director or VP level — high demand, lower negotiation confidence than senior executives, less likely to have tested the ceiling
• Non-US experts billed in USD — often quoted at a generic domestic US rate despite providing genuinely scarce local-market intelligence
• Technical experts in currently hot verticals — AI infrastructure, GLP-1 supply chain, grid-scale energy storage — where clients are paying meaningful surcharges that are not flowing downstream to the expert

Seniority does not self-correct this. C-suite alumni and partners from major professional services firms routinely sit at rates that a well-briefed expert in a hot vertical at the VP level beats.

What This Costs You in Practice

At $300 per hour doing three calls per week, a 30% underpricing costs roughly $14,000 per year in foregone income — with zero additional time committed. That is not a theoretical number. It is arithmetic.

Rate also shapes call quality in a less obvious way. Higher-rate experts get pre-screened more carefully because the client has committed more budget and wants to be confident in fit before dialling. Low rates attract exploratory, poorly-scoped calls that run long and produce little. This is a pattern that experienced experts on multiple networks report consistently, and it compounds: a stale low rate generates low-quality volume, which wastes your time and reduces your appetite for the whole channel.

There is also a multi-network arbitrage most experts ignore. Your rate is not portable by default. An expert quoted at $275 on GLG and $400 on Guidepoint for identical work is not unusual. The difference is entirely a function of when and how each rate was set. Understanding how rates vary across networks is the first step toward correcting it.

The Playbook

1. Benchmark before you negotiate
   Pull 6–12 months of call data — topic area, client type (PE, corp strategy, hedge fund), average call length. Cross-reference in communities where experts share rates: Expert Republic Slack, the Tegus forum, LinkedIn groups for independent consultants. If your calls are running 45–60 minutes without early termination, you are likely underpriced.
2. Request a rate review, not a raise
   Frame the conversation with your relationship manager as a "rate review" triggered by updated market positioning. Cite new credentials, recent vertical-specific engagements, or time elapsed — 12 months is a defensible trigger. Ask for 20–40% above your current rate; target the top of that range and expect to land in the middle.
3. Use competing activity as quiet leverage
   Reactivate or activate your profile on one or two other networks and let the process run in parallel. You do not need to wave an offer letter. Noting that you are "reviewing your network relationships" is sufficient signal. Networks with dedicated relationship managers — AlphaSights, Guidepoint — respond more predictably to this than platforms running mostly automated matching.
4. Build a rate floor into every new network signup
   Whatever you earn today, add 30% before submitting a new profile. Networks anchor to the first number you give. The ask is always easier before the relationship is established than after.
5. Track it or it drifts again
   Set a calendar reminder every 12 months to review rates across all active networks. Log every engagement: network, honorarium, topic, client type. This is your negotiation data for the next conversation.

FAQ

Will asking for a rate increase get me deprioritised for calls?

Networks route based on fit and availability, not rate alone — within a range. A rate that puts you outside the client's approved budget will reduce volume on that specific project type. A rate that is simply higher than your current one, but still within client budget norms, will not. The risk of a reasonable rate increase is largely hypothetical. The cost of staying underpriced is concrete and annual.

How do I know what rate to ask for if I cannot see what others charge?

Triangulate from three sources: communities where experts self-report (Tegus forum, Expert Republic Slack), the rate you are implicitly signalled when a network pushes back hard versus accepts quickly, and call length. Consistent 45–60 minute calls that end on the client's schedule, not yours, are a reliable signal that the client feels they are getting value. That is your leverage.

Can I negotiate differently across different networks?

Yes, and you should. Each network holds its own rate and there is no cross-network visibility. Optimising your rate with each platform separately is normal and expected. The process for managing multiple network relationships simultaneously is worth treating as a recurring admin task rather than a one-off event.

What if my relationship manager says the rate is set by the client?

Sometimes it is — clients do set budget ceilings per call. But the ceiling is often higher than the default rate your profile is flagged at. Asking specifically whether your rate is below the client's approved ceiling is a reasonable and direct question. If the answer is yes, the next question is straightforward: update the profile rate to reflect it.

Does this apply to Tegus, which uses a different model?

Tegus operates on a transcript and per-minute model rather than a traditional hourly honorarium, so the direct comparison is imperfect. The underlying principle — that your initial rate anchors all subsequent compensation unless you actively revisit it — applies across business models. Tracking your effective hourly rate across all engagement types, including Tegus calls, is part of managing expert income properly.